My Life In Fandom: The Bubblegum Crisis Story, by Mercury Falcon

The 1980s is sometimes called "Peak Anime" due to the boom in high-quality productions thanks to the emergence of Original Video Animation, i.e. direct-to-(home)video. Of the OVA titles to emerge during this time, one continues to endure at home and abroad: Bubblegum Crisis. The combination of cyberpunk, rock idols, and mecha proved to be magic but the full story is as tragic as it was trimuphant. Mercury Falcon's video goes well into it, and at under 20 minutes you can squeeze this into your work day without worry.

It did not take long for Bubblegum Crisis to come to the West. AnimEgo got the rights around 1990, did a fantastic subtitle job, and put in translated inserts into the VHS boxes. I had a copy of the first episode on VHS by 1992, and along with Akira it was what I brought to parties to spread the word about animation that didn't suck.

The soundtrack, on the other hand, only got West thanks to Taiwanese bootlegs for the longest time and to this day it's a pain in the ass to get hardcopies that aren't suspect without importing from Japan. That OST--regardless of the shady practices in making it--remains hot fire, as it typical of 80s music--to this day. With time, even those that went sour about the experience will appreciate that they are known because of this series.

We'll likely never get to see the full vision originally planned, but what is works just fine and both the series and its soundtrack are fine relics of a day now past.

If you haven't seen Bubblegum Crisis, do yourself a favor and make time for it. It's a whopping eight episodes in length, and by the time it's over you'll be wanting to snag a physical copy. Retrocrush has you covered for streaming, and for hardcopy you can hit up RightStuf or Amazon.