Cheap Bubblegum Crisis - Tokyo 2040 - For All Mankind (Vol. 6) (DVD) (Hiroki Hayashi) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Bubblegum Crisis - Tokyo 2040 - For All Mankind (Vol. 6)

A satisfying conclusion to a great series
This is the end of BGC2040: the last five episodes on disc 6. Galatea completes her conquest of Tokyo and sets her eyes on a bigger prize: Earth and all of humanity. While disc 5 was rather aimless, this disc picks up the pace again. The first episode is still a little slow, but once the battle picks up again, there are only brief interludes, which are used to good effect for character interaction. Unlike a lot of shows, the ending doesn't rewrite the rules of the game; rather, the battle with Galatea builds on a lot of the revelations made about boomers in volumes 4 and 5.

Technically, these episodes are top-notch. The last two, in particular. These two were not aired on Japanese TV and probably benefited by having bigger budgets. An unfortunate side-effect is that the creators decided to throw in some nudity in the last two episodes for no reason. It's all either long distance shots or really weird angles, so it probably wouldn't be terribly offensive to anyone, but it's rather pointless. That nitpick aside (and for some, it won't be an issue), this is a satisfying ending to a really impressive series.

Good Remake
I just finished watching this series, so I've decided to review it. This series is a remake of the original 8-episode "Bubblegum Crisis" OAV series. It's 26 episodes long and spans six DVDs. The first four DVDs contain four episodes each, and the fifth and sixth DVDs contain five episodes each. There are some nice extras, such as character profiles and voice actor credits. However, there is no credits list for the English Sylia voice actor. Credits for the Spanish voice actors would have been nice, too. The DVDs are trilingual, containing Japanese, English, and Spanish audio tracks. The opening and closing songs are in Japanese on all three tracks, and the in-episode songs are dubbed into English only. The Spanish track contains the Japanese audio of the songs. The English dub isn't quite as accurate as for the original "Bubblegum Crisis". My advice is to watch it in Japanese with English subtitles first and then in English. Sometimes, I like to watch DVDs in English with English subtitles. It allows me to easily see the changes in dialogue. With only two songs for the opening and closing credits, it would have been nice to dub them into English, but this wasn't done. As for the series itself, I won't say that it's better than the original series. It isn't, but it isn't worse either. Some things are the same, and some things are different. All of the character designs and voice actors (Japanese and English) are different. My one complaint about the character designs is that some characters, most notably Priss, have pale skin with no explanation, though Priss does sometimes appear darker. The series takes place in another universe than the original series. There is plenty of character development. The series doesn't focus on music as much as the original does, and the 2040 techno remix of "Konya wa Hurricane" doesn't appear in the series. The music that does appear is more techno and punk than the original music. Unfortunately, the final episode suffers from the same problem as the final episode of "Street Fighter II V". Too much time is devoted to fighting and visual effects. While the ending of this series is more satisfying (all of the characters return to Earth alive and well) than that of SF2V, they could have cut a lot of the visual effects and shown the Knight Sabers reuniting. Instead, the series ends with Sylia, Mackie, and Nigel at Sylia's old house; Leon apparently in a bar somewhere else; Nene and Linna on a tropical island; and Priss in the desert, singing. While we can assume that Sylia will go out looking for the others and find them, we aren't shown this. All of the hard suits except for Sylia's are trashed. Will she make new ones? Unlike SF2V, this series doesn't waste time with redundancies or episode recaps. Also, each episode is longer than episodes of SF2V. So, while this series is three episodes shorter than SF2V, it's actually longer. Overall, this is an enjoyable series, but the ending could have been better.