Bubblegum Crisis came out way back in 1987, a year when the top preoccupations in my life were comic books, movies, reruns of The Monkees TV show and trying to get Ruby, the cute girl in my 4th grade class, to notice me for even a few seconds. I picked up on rumblings about anime while I browsed the racks at Lone Star Comics (R.I.P.) or when I read comics news ‘n’ reviews mags like Amazing Heroes (R.I.P.) that covered animation on the side, but I never touched the stuff myself.
I don’t know even know how I would have watched this in my little corner of Texas back then. I don’t remember it showing on television. Maybe it was at the video store (R.I.P.), most likely lumped in with Strawberry Shortcake and Inspector Gadget in the greasy kid stuff section.
No matter. Decades later, I’m now digging into some anime at what I’m sure we’d all agree is the perfect time in a person’s life for it: when you’re a broken down, washed-up old man.
SO, in this second episode, Mega Tokyo in 2032 is still in danger from killer robots, but there ARE two major differences from the debut:
a) cartoon nudity
and b) cartoon violent death.
In the US, it took us a lot longer to get our heads around the idea that every animated series didn’t have to be “just for kids”.
Meanwhile, this episode offers up boobs and blood casually, like it’s nothing. Go Japan!
Like many good things, “Born to Kill” begins with the sound of a drum machine.
The song is “Mad Machine” and it’s so 80s that you can smell the synth programmer’s hairspray from the first note. The (translated via subtitles) lyrics are something to behold, as well (“I don’t want to cool my raging passion/ Until my sadness is torn to shreds”). It’s our soundtrack as we watch the construction of a big mean nasty-looking robot. Could it be yet another “Boomer” made to terrorize the concrete jungle of Mega Tokyo?
Why, yes. Yes, it is. The evil Genom corporation is at again, those creeps. But what else can you expect from a company mostly staffed by robots?
The twist here is that the creation of this Boomer results in a sudden explosion in the lab that kills a human scientist. His fiance says that he was a nice guy who was coerced into the job and now she’s hellbent on exposing the truth about Genom. When she’s not in her aerobics class, at least.
This also means that the Genom people now want to turn Miss Leotard into tomato paste, too.
That’s where our masked and armored heroes the Knight Sabers enter to at least try to save the day. There are no scenes here of them playing as Priss and the Replicants (their rock band real identity) at The Hot Legs Club, but there are plenty of other thrills. More explosions, lots of bullets, flaming robot heads, a showdown in your classic 80s-style industrial space and a scene for the cartoon-pervs out there where the girls get naked and slip into their hero suits.
Also, Leon, the cop who spent most of the last episode trying to get into group leader Priss’s pants is still on the prowl. This time we learn though that he has a gay cop partner, Daley, who sports a snazzy pink shirt and bolo tie on the job and who keeps trying to get HIM into bed.
This is a fun episode with all the cyberpunk trimmings. Pseudo-humans who are really robots. An electronics-driven society who receive public announcements on giant screens in the streets. A corporation who’ve made the government their bitch. Sparkling urbanity.
The hyper-mechanized Japan of the 1980s was one of the influences on the cyberpunk genre. Here, some Japanese animators turn it around by doing their take on the West’s Japanese inspirations.
There’s an artery of seriousness that runs through it, but the approach overall is still total camp. It’s for “adults”, as long as they don’t mind their dystopian themes topped with plenty of Silly Sauce.
In other words, it’s for adults like me.