28 Day Bubblegum Crisis Challenge, Day 18: Saddest Moment

There are a lot of sad moments in Bubblegum Crisis, and most of them involve death (or near-death). Priss has to kill Sylvie, her probably-most-definitely girlfriend, Leon is beaten to a pulp a bunch of times because he tries way too hard to be a good cop, and Irene is murdered by a boomer because she's trying to reveal that a boomer killed her fiance (at the order of Genom), etc. But really, the Ultimate Sad (TM) is from the first episode, "Tinsel City," which not coincidentally also has to do with death.

28 Day Bubblegum Crisis Challenge, Day 17: Favorite Songs Off the Soundtrack

Eeee! These are always some of my favorite challenge days, because YouTube! Reliving the moments! Singing along (when applicable)! Despite the 80s-ness of Bubblegum Crisis music, it was infinitely more awesome than Tokyo 2040's attempts. Not that I didn't enjoy the trance, underground techno metal - seriously, I'm running out of adjectives here to describe it - because I did; hell, I still own one of the soundtracks and listen to it regularly. But there's a reason that the first video below is the ringtone on my phone and not one of Opus 4s tracks.

28 Day Bubblegum Crisis Challenge, Day 16: Favorite Reference to Blade Runner

I could make this easy on myself and say that Priss' band's name, the Replicants, is my favorite; sure, it's the first one that I recognized, but not really my favorite. To be honest, I watched Bubblegum Crisis before I had ever seen Blade Runner (which, I knooowwww), so I didn't catch the references until I finally rented the movie from Blockbuster when I was in high school, and it took repeat viewing before I caught most of them.

But my favorite? Yeah, has to be in "Scoop Chase."

28 Day Bubblegum Crisis Challenge, Day 15: Favorite Fight Scene

While the fight scenes in this series are numerous, they aren't really the reason that I watch Bubblegum Crisis. Actually, the fights scenes tend to be short and sweet - akin to punctuation, in a way - where the action is just a natural resolution to the drama (and occasionally, political intrigue) that's been building throughout the episode. To be honest, I kind of like that aspect of the series. There's a reason that I can't stand to watch most of Michael Bay's movies, like the Transformers franchise, and why I felt that the Wachowski's The Matrix was so extraordinary: while the former's films are, at best, minimally entertaining - if you turn your brain off and think "ooooh, pretty explosions!" - I walk away feeling like I've gotten absolutely nothing from the experience, except to feel like I've been manipulated into thinking the movie is better than it actually is. With the latter, however, the fight scenes served a purpose, to show that Neo was becoming more attuned with his destiny and abilities. The Knight Sabers aren't necessarily learning anything about themselves in Bubblegum Crisis, but their encounters with boomers display to the audience who and what the women are and propel the plot forward.

The Pull List for February 18, 2015

Well, Wednesday is the day that my sister departs for South Korea, where she will be teaching English to adorable Korean kids ages 3 - 6, so while I will be purchasing my comics, she will be crossing the Pacific Ocean to begin a new stage of her life. Good luck to you, Sister Person! Send me a Korean skin regimen! Also, don't forget about our book club; you are still due to review Divergent, and we - and by "we," I mean "you" - haven't picked anything for this month!!

28 Day Bubblegum Crisis Challenge, Day 14: Which Episode(s) Would Be the Best to Adapt into a Movie?

Happy Valentine's Day, LOVAHS! I know, I know, I don't celebrate the holiday because I think it's a little silly, but to those that do, enjoy your chocolates and roses!

Anyway, I'm spending the weekend in Nashville to see my sister off to South Korea (click over to her website, 52 Weeks of Wordage, to wish her the best of luck!), but that's doesn't mean that I'm still not doing my BGC challenge posts. Obviously. Just look at that title.

Ahem. 

Even though I feel that Bubblegum Crisis would be very difficult to translate well into a movie, especially an American one, there are a few that I feel might do the series justice - given, of course, that they didn't whitewash the cast, and of course they would, because this is Hollywood we're talking about. "Tinsel City" would probably be a good introduction with a rather bittersweet ending, and "Moonlight Rambler" paired with "Red Eyes" has relationship drama in it that would ground the more action-oriented sequences. However, I think the best option would be "Scoop Chase," the final episode produced that delightfully centers around the least likely person imaginable, Nene Romanova.

28 Day Bubblegum Crisis Challenge, Day 13: Favorite Boomer

So I'm going to go into a bit of fan theory here because, well, a lot of the boomers in Bubblegum Crisis are essentially copies of each other beneath the skin (kind of like humans?) and not a single one really stands out to me, except maybe Largo, but I think I've covered him fairly well. Then again, my choice as favorite boomer is Sylia, who as you remember is my favorite main character, but hear me out.

28 Day Bubblegum Crisis Challenge, Day 12: Comparison to the Remake, Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040

Like I said way back on Day 1, I actually watched the reboot of Bubblegum Crisis before watching the original, so I came at the series a little different than those who'd done the opposite. Now, I actually prefer 80s anime over most modern series, and a lot of that comes from character design, which I guess is the best place to start here?

Since you've seen plenty of images from the original series, I'll start with this one from Tokyo 2040. 

Via Hero Machine

28 Day Bubblegum Crisis Challenge, Day 11: Least Favorite Secondary or One-Shot Character

Okay, so remember Irene, the woman I referenced back on Least Favorite Main Character? Well, Irene was such a close friend of Linna's that Linna didn't know that Irene was related to a very popular singer, Vision, pictured below.

Via JapPop

I'll be clear here: I really, really like "Double Vision" as an episode, even though I have ragged on it a little bit in the past few challenge days. It's definitely in my Top 5 BGC episodes, but that doesn't mean that I agree with portions of it.

28 Day Bubblegum Crisis Challenge, Day 10: Favorite Secondary or One-Shot Character

Wheeee! I have been looking forward to this particular day because OMG how much do I love this character. If anybody ever gets the idea to do a whole new series around Daley Wong and his awesomeness, I am there.

Via Comic Vine