The Constant Bleeder Doesn’t Know Anime From Aunt May #7: BUBBLEGUM CRISIS episode 7, “Double Vision”

Since I started this series years ago, the world has changed, but you know what hasn’t changed?

I am still a massive 80s wimp.

I’m an old ripped pair of parachute pants. I’m a worn-out Rick Springfield cassette. I’m Eddie Deezen guest-starring on Punky Brewster. I’m Pac-Man cereal. I’m the last hour of Night Flight. I’m a Frogger machine in a movie theater that’s showing Losin’ It. I’m a foam McDLT container owned by some weirdo who collects old fast food packaging.

It’s my cozy place. When I need escape, I head in the direction of vintage neon and synthesizers like the zombies toward the mall in Dawn of the Dead. This is just how it is. Don’t tell me to get a life. I tried that already.

Yes, I’ve been slow in covering Bubblegum Crisis, but I like to think that’s because I’ve been savoring it.

Because this shit is mega-80s. It’s deliciously 80s. It’s beautifully 80s. And I took a long time to get to it, so why rush now?

Either that or I’m lazy.

If I had to name the element that I miss the most from the first episode, it would easily be the girl band stuff.

When our heroes in The Knight Sabers aren’t slipping into armored suits and fighting the evil Genom corporation, they’re in a band called Priss and The Replicants. They dress up in wigs and leather and knock out tortured love songs for rabid club crowds.

The series threw that aside for awhile. Priss and The Replicants play music about as often as I write anime reviews.

But in this episode, it’s BACK.

Priss and the girls are still on hiatus, I guess, but there is another, bigger band called Vision and The Revengers who work the same slick sound.

We open in Houston, Texas, where the band play in front of a video backdrop of their singer, Vision, firing guns and doing combat training. It’s supposed to be cool visual wallpaper for the audience, I guess, but it turns out that it’s real because she’s on a secret death mission when the lights go out.

When the song is over, we see a glittering city high-rise where the evil Genom people make a deal with some sleazy Texas businessmen for the construction of ever more deadly machines. A few minutes later, we see those guys get slaughtered by a mystery robot hiding outside.

It’s Vision fresh off the stage! And her brother. They have an old family grudge against Genom and work to thwart them wherever they can, though Vision can’t bring herself to kill anyone directly.

One guy survives the Houston attack and he gets flown to Mega-Tokyo for protection (and indulgence in many call-girls at his luxury hotel suite), but that just happens to be Vision and The Revengers’ next tour stop and our anti-heroes intend to finish the job and get to Quincy, the CEO of Genom.

The twist is that The Knight Sabers get hired by this guy to protect him, which puts them in the awkward position of working for someone who’s involved with their arch enemy, but they do it for the money and the information.

After some entertaining drama, confusion, and intrigue, The Knight Sabers eventually figure out these interlopers and join forces with them for a climactic battle that mostly reveals that Genom’s new model of Boomers have living tissue integrated into their hoses and circuits. When they tear through a hulking Genom robot, wet, slimy internal organs spill out. Creepy!

Humans are constantly turning out to be robots and robots sometimes turn out to be humans in this world. It’s kinda fucked up.

The big theme in this installment though is Vision and how she’s unhealthily consumed by revenge and needs to move on. The robot-fighting life isn’t for her, even if she doesn’t know it. She’s a pop star, goddammit, and her place is on stage entertaining people. Our happy ending depends on thether or not she performs that night at her band’s stadium gig.

I don’t WANT to spoil what happens, but let’s just say that the episode closes with a big, syrupy ballad and a montage of faces staring toward a stage. The Knight Sabers are there, too, awed like everyone else.

The bad guys are never truly defeated. You can blow up a few of their robots, but they have more. Some battles never end. Or at least they sure are taking a long fucking time.

If you can achieve a pleasant night out listening to music though, you’re not truly defeated. You’re doing okay.

For the moment, at least.