So, accounting for the absence of focus towards other areas, the one that is most negatively affected is the story. With that said, it is an action series, which are typically sparse in story for the obvious reason that if you have to regularly include action sequences, then that’s going to subtract from the available time to produce a story. Bubblegum Crisis seems to have all the intent to set up a story with the makings of something like Robocop, i.e. an action series that actually has a well thought out and multi-layered story, but calling the story surface level would be generous – the issue with Bubblegum Crisis’s story is not that it is too generic or too black-and-white, the problem is that there is almost no story in the first place. The basic premise is that robotic people named Boomers are knocking about, mostly hiding in plain sight with the rest of society, and some of them do a competent job of hiding in plain sight, looking like just like regular people, whereas other people are built like The Terminator. In general, there appear to be a wide variety of models of Boomers, some of which don’t attempt to hide at all and just look completely like regular robots, and it seems the majority of Boomers seem to exist for the main purpose of beating the shit out of people, although when it comes down to it they’ve probably got more in common with people from Ancient Greece than people from the 1960s, considering they all insist on fighting naked. In any case, the Boomers don’t really serve much narrative purpose apart from the fact they exist, these particular robots superficially resemble humans, but there’s not any particular reason for it. They’re largely lacking in any actual humanity, there isn’t any reason for them to keep that fake human flesh on, they aren’t wrestling with a sense of self-awareness, or perhaps mistreated on account of being Boomers, or anything at all. They’re just robots who appear to enjoy committing terrorism, because I guess that’s what robots like to do.
But, what’s more critical than an absence of story, is that there is not a huge amount of consistency in the small story that is told. While in the majority of the episodes, it’s kind of small, there are some wherein it becomes a huge focus, and the main characters, the Knight Sabers, are vaguely developed. Not much to say about the main characters, they’re women, they wear these combat suits and fight the Boomers. However, once or twice, they do try and develop these characters, by trying to get them to talk about their feelings, and it just does not work. A series needs consistency to work, you wouldn’t want something to completely change genre halfway through, and the same goes for subtler things like the episode composition. When it changes from finding and killing Boomers to the main characters talking about their fear of abandonment, it’s a less than welcome paradigm shift. And, that’s the main issue, there is not much consistency, while sometimes the episodes are good, nothing astounding, not something that’s going to permeate my psyche the way Robocop did, but the kind of thing you can tune in to with a chippy in one hand and a drink in the other, and just have a good time. But it does not consistently offer that experience, and that’s the issue, it’s not consistently good, yet it’s not consistently bad either, which leads to a conflicting feeling. And, I wouldn’t necessarily object to them changing the tone or the pacing now and then if it was actually integral to the central questions the viewer may have. A major one that comes to mind is how society evolved into the way it is, to which you’re given “a war happened”, and that’s it, or how Boomers cultivated into the way they are, or who the Knight Sabers are, their backstories aren’t particularly compelling, and neither are they. Soldiers who begrudgingly fulfill their duty to kill the Boomers, and there’s not a huge amount else to say about them, as for their backstory, the most you get is that they also happen to be rockstars, but that certainly doesn’t correlate to their character, there’s no sense of rebellion you’d expect from a rockstar, they don’t even make musical puns when they fight, it’s a detail as insignificant as their blood type. They don’t tell you any of these basic details, but they throw in a ton of pointless side characters, like some photographer who appears in the last episode, who is about as important as you can typically expect a character introduced in the last episode to be.
The aesthetics are certainly impressive, the visuals of the city look great, and there were some legitimately cool looking robots once or twice, although this is somewhat held back by a poor budget, it’s an action series but they don’t seem to have the budget to properly orchestrate action sequences, most certainly not the sort that involves them jumping around like crazy, so it can feel a bit disjointed at times. And, while I’m typically opposed to any more than one music video put into a single series, Bubblegum Crisis just barely gets a pass for having music that’s a lot better than usual.
In summary, Bubblegum Crisis is a shit sandwich with some nice sprinkles on the top. It’s got a couple good parts, and some decent ideas that could probably work if they were elaborated upon, but it’s got some major problems, and even with its good points, they are held back by its shortcomings, resulting in a work that ranges from mediocre to somewhat good, depending on which episode it is.
