I have to say that this was a pretty hard anime for me to watch. The difficulty arose from the fact that I have never seen any BUBBLEGUM CRISIS before this. Well that's not entirely true, I did see one episode of the original BUBBLEGUM CRISIS and didn't think too much of it. But I did know the basic premise behind the series, so, even though I sometimes didn't have the faintest idea of what the heck was going on, I wasn't too terribly disoriented (although I did have a lot of trouble following the last volume mostly because I didn't see volume eleven.) So here's what happens in the third to the last and the last volumes of BUBBLEGUM CRISIS: TOKYO 2040.

In volume ten, "Burning Metal," the Knight Sabers finish off a particularly powerful boomer but their celebration is short-lived as Galatea throws a massive force of boomers at them, driving the heroes to the outskirts of the city where the last of Tokyo's residents have taken shelter in the forest. In volume twelve, "Deathstrike!," the three remaining Knight Sabers, having already launched their final assault against Galatea in volume eleven, are now rushing through outer space towards Galatea's orbiting citadel in a suicide mission to destroy the Umbrella and stop the boomer plague from sweeping across the entire planet.

Despite not knowing exactly what was going on, I did get some enjoyment out of these two volumes. Overall, I thought BUBBLEGUM CRISIS: TOKYO 2040 was alright. Not good enough to make me want to go out and get the other ten volumes which I haven't seen, but enjoyable enough nonetheless.

The animation was what you would expect from a TV series—good, but not great. As with most anime TV shows released nowadays, everything had a shiny gloss to it. Though the animation was a lot better than a more recent AIC production (BLACK HEAVEN), you can start to see AIC's steady decline, especially when it comes to character designs. Many of the characters looked an awful lot like those found in other AIC productions, most notably EL HAZARD. Also, another thing about the animation production was that, for a TV show, BUBBLEGUM CRISIS: TOKYO 2040 sure had a lot of skin in it. I guess that is why it came with an age 15 and up rating.

The music was also just alright as well. The bubblegum (no pun intended) eighties pop that the original OVA had has been replaced with a more nineties hard-edge rock/electronica sound. Though this does seem like an improvement (to me anyways), the score wasn't that great. The opening song, "Y'Know," did have a nice sound to it, but the lyrics were not that well written.

The dub was pretty good, but no one actor stood out much. The dubbed singing found in the final volume was good, and it's a shame that we don't get much dubbed singing these days. I do have one complaint, however, that doesn't pertain to the dub itself but to the audio track. When ADV was producing the dubbed version they could've done a better job with the quality of the audio track. In the final tape, the volume of the audio varies greatly. Some of the dialogue is spoken so softly that you have to turn up your volume to hear it, but then some of the yelling is so loud that you have to turn the volume down again. This constant adjusting of the volume got pretty annoying after a while.

Overall, my impression of BUBBLEGUM CRISIS: TOKYO 2040 was that it wasn't that bad. As you could probably guess, I thought it was alright, and actually I have to say that it was better than average. I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had seen the other volumes, and I probably would have been able to appreciate the epic ending that this series seemed to have as well. But I can only base my review on what I saw. So if you have been enjoying the series so far, you will probably enjoy its ending.