Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040

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The Knight Sabers of Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040: Sylia (top), Nene (left), Linna (right), Priss (bottom, and in the blue hardsuit)

The 1998 "reimagining" of the classic OAV Anime series Bubblegum Crisis, Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 is infamous for bearing almost no resemblance to its forebear. Set in a Tokyo rebuilt after a devastating earthquake and now much of the manual labor is done by robots called Boomers, which are built and sold by the mega-corporation Genom.

Linna Yamazaki is an Office Lady who has moved to Tokyo to pursue both her career and the Urban Legends known as "The Knight Sabers" -- a small group of women in Powered Armor who protect the city from rogue boomers. She witnesses a Boomer going rogue, causing destruction and attacking people, and watches as Tokyo's elite AD Police fail to contain it only for the Knight Sabers to appear and save the day. With the Sabers confirmed to be real, Linna tracks the group down and joins them as a close combat specialist. The group is an eclectic one: Priss Asagiri, a punk rocker and heavy assault specialist; Nene Romanova, a perky hacker who handles sensors, ECM and battlefield communications; and billionaire Sylia Stingray, founder and leader of the Knight Sabers, who rarely enters the field. Supporting them is Nigel Kirkland, an engineer who helped create boomer technology.

Over the course of the series, the Sabers' campaign against rogue boomers frustrates AD Police officers Leon McNichol and his partner Daley Wong, nor is Genom happy with their activities. Even as they seek to eliminate the Sabers, Genom CEO Quincy Rosenkreutz and advisor Brian J. Mason are also delving into the secrets of the boomer technology, which Genom stole from its creator -- Sylia's father, Katsuhito Stingray. The plot comes to a head when Mason uncovers and reactivates Galatea, a humanoid based on Sylia’s DNA who is able to control all boomers, only for her to go rogue herself, along with all other boomers everywhere, just has Genom has had the AD Police's funding cut and they go on strike. It's left up to the Knight Sabers to track down and defeat Galatea.

Tropes used in Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 include:

• Action Girl: All the Knight Sabers, but mostly Priss and Linna.
• Adaptation Dye Job: Nene went from being a redhead to a blonde in 2040; Sylia became a White-Haired Pretty Girl instead of a Brainy Brunette.
• Adaptational Badass: While many people debate whether the original or new series is best, what they don't debate is that Linna took twenty levels of badass in 2040. While in the original series she was a ditzy, materialistic and (to most of the series' plot) inconsequential character, in 2040 she's a much more down-to-earth girl with a strong personality and a hidden intolerance of authority. A big part of her character in the new series is how being a Knight Saber lets her cut loose and be more true to herself than she can be when in the civilian world. She has such a strong personality, she actually manages to impress Priss, of all people, and when she joins the Knight Sabers she becomes their close-combat specialist, Priss's Lancer and her full equal in combat ability.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The rogue boomers.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: 2040 has a full-scale invasion of the Sabers' base once Galatea starts the Robot War.
• Alternate Continuity: The OVA series, AD Police OVAs and Crash form one continuity, while 2040, AD Police TV and Parasite Dolls are a separate universe.
• Arranged Marriage: Linna's family tries to set her up in one; it takes some fast talking (and the other Sabers) to prevent it.
• Ascended Fangirl: Linna came to Tokyo because she'd become a fan of the Sabers and wanted to join them; because of her encounter with Priss and other lucky breaks, she succeeded.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Boomers can only be destroyed by attacking their core, a small red sphere embedded somewhere in their body.
• Big Bad: Several—Genom, Quincy, Galatea.
• Body Horror: An important aspect of the OVA Boomers' design that was unfortunately absent from 2040's Boomers.
• Broad Strokes: 2040 vs. the original. Provoked reactions of They Changed It, Now It Sucks from some fans of the OVAs.
• But Not Too Foreign: Most of the characters have names (and appearances in some cases) that suggest they're of mixed ancestry, but they still all speak Japanese and are pretty obviously Japanese culturally. Part of this has to do with the show's genre and Japan's take on impending multiculturalism (well, for The Eighties at any rate).
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience - Each Saber has a different colour that identifies them:
  • Sylia, White/Bluish-white and Blue
  • Priss, Blue and Red
  • Linna, Green and Orange
  • Nene, Red and Pink
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Just about everyone in Genom.
• Cross-Popping Veins: Near the end of the series, Linna and Nene are riding behind Priss on her motorcycle; all three of them are wearing hardsuits. Linna and Nene get cross popping veins on their hardsuit helmets, which then detach and float away on the wind. The cartoonishness of this scene qualifies as a Non Sequitur Scene.
• Die Hard on an X: Nene gets to go through this along with Da Chief and two random office workers when Galatea reanimates the Boomer wreckage stored at ADP headquarters into a Zombie Robot Apocalypse.
• The Dragon: Brian J. Mason, to Quincy.
• Eccentric Millionaire: Sylia
• Enhance Button: The last notable element of Blade Runner that the original OVA didn't borrow shows up in episode 7 of 2040 instead.
• Evil Twin: Arguably, Galatea, for Sylia.
• Expy: Sylia, Galatea, Mackie and Kain Smith (Linna's boss) look almost exactly like Ifurita (OVA version), Ifurita (TV version), Makoto and Jinnai, respectively, from El-Hazard: The Magnificent World.
• Fake Band: Sekiria, Priss' band.
• Fan Nickname: "Ifursylita" and "Mackieoto" (see Expy above.)
• Guinea Pig Family: Professor Stingray created the Boomer prototypes Mackie and Galatea by implanting their cores inside a young Sylia's brain and letting them learn its structure. He created the cores by dissecting his wife's brain -- which is why it only worked with Sylia.
• Humongous Mecha
• Invisible to Gaydar: Daley.
• Jumped At the Call: Linna
• Lighter and Softer: Tokyo is much cleaner and shinier in 2040 than the original OVAs -- at least before the Robot War.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: To the hardsuits.
• Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness: Priss may get up to level 6 with amateurish punk songs like "Bug List".
• More Teeth Than the Osmond Family: A frequently-seen characteristic of rogue Boomers.
• Mr. Fixit: Nigel.
• Multinational Team: If you count base ethnicity rather than actual citizenship. Specifically, Priss seems to be part-American, Sylia is at least part British or otherwise Western European (unless you consider the Grand Mal comic canon, in which her name is really Stengovich), Linna seems to be straight-up Japanese and Nene has some blatant Russian/Eastern European background, if the name didn't clue you in.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The Boomers start out as mostly-believable humanoid cyborgs, only to degenerate into magical fusing zombie ghost robots by the end.
• Non-Singing Voice: Priss.
• One-Winged Angel: The boomers do this when they go rogue, becoming distorted mockeries of their "normal" states (see the waitress boomer).
• Our Graphics Will Suck in the Future, along with Technology Marches On: Three words: Microsoft Excel 2040 (which looks less like Excel 2007 and more like Excel 2000.)
• Playful Hacker: Nene.
• Plucky Office Girl: Linna's day job.
• Police Are Useless: With three exceptions.
• Powered Armor
• Promotion to Parent: Sylia, with Mackie.
• Robot War: Finally breaks out in the second half of 2040.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Galatea.
• Space Elevator: A "skyhook" connecting Tokyo and an orbital power satellite play several important roles in the plot. Genom is building a network of tunnels beneath Tokyo to store energy released by the satellite, which are put to other uses by both Mason and Galatea. Sylia also tries to use the energy discharged by the skyhook to power a BFG so she can try to fry Galatea while she's still Sealed In A Can. (It doesn't work.) Before the end, the Knight Sabers have to hitch a ride into orbit.
• Spell My Name with an "S": Boomers vs. Voomers vs. Buma, anyone?
• Superhero: The ladies are basically a quartet of Iron (Wo)men. However, Sylia has more in common with Bruce Wayne than Tony Stark.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Played for laughs; Linna (over)reacts to Priss riding off after accidentally making Linna drop her lunch by shouting "Yurusan!" and running after her.
• The Tokyo Fireball