Instead of going with a direct a remake of the original, and risk the ire of otaku, AIC decided to give an original spin to Bubblegum Crisis universe with pretty decent results. Gone are the smaller story arcs of the original in favor of just one central story arc. Characters also change and are given more depth, one would hope since this is true since there are 26 episodes. Also there are new character and mechanical designs.

Story wise 2040 has a pretty solid plot focusing on Sylia’s (founder and leader of the Knight Sabers) family past and the problems it is causing in the present day. While at times the story follows the ever-popular problem of the week formula, all the loose ends do get wrapped up at the end of the series, but in a sort of ambiguous manner that seems popular in post-Evangelion anime. The major characters, in particular the Knight Sabers, have enough depth to make them interesting. All are given time for character development which is an improvement over the original series.

Animation is pretty solid for a television series, but problems do arise with the character and mechanical designs. The original series had some nice, if somewhat old school, character designs by Kenichi Sonoda, but 2040 seems to incorporate a lot of stock AIC designs. For example, Sylia bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain El Hazard character with long, blue hair. Mechanical designs also suffer in that Sonoda, in the original series, designed the hardsuits with multiple weapons, but in 2040 the Knight Sabers are limited to their signature melee weapons, with their hands & feet as the only backups.

The soundtrack is a pretty nice one that captures mood of the series pretty well. Voice acting on the Japanese side is pretty good, but the English dub suffers from miscasting and implying things that are not happening. The redeeming part of the dub is Hilary Haag as Nene’s voice actor in that Haag really does a better job capturing Nene’s character than her seiyuu counterpart.

2040, even with its faults, is a solid series that is worth watching if you want some action mixed in with an interesting story.

Individual Rating: Art: 7; Story & Plot: 8; Characters: 8; Sounds: 9

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 27th, 2002 at 11:52 am and is filed under Bubblegum Crisis 2040, Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.