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A li'l somethin' BUBBLEGUM-CRISIS-related!
🕑 Added 2023-10-23 13:00:06 +0000 UTCSo!
Last week, I wrote a brief forward to an upcoming compilation of design material from the first Bubblegum Crisis anime series; more details on this book down the road, okay?
However, writing this piece belatedly led to me a fairly startling epiphany about my stint writing and drawing the 1994 Dark Horse Comics miniseries Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal, which I'll address in more detail shortly. In the meantime, here's the text piece I worked up:
The year was 1987, and my grand total of three lessons’ worth of study in a Let’s Learn Katakana workbook was being pushed to the limit as I struggled to decipher the untranslated title of an intriguing new anime that had just been announced in Animedia magazine.
“Baburugamu Kuraishisu,” my ignorant younger self puzzled out phonetically. “Wait, is that title supposed to mean… Bubblegum Crisis? Seriously?”
That was indeed the case, Dumbass Younger Me would soon discover, once the first videotapes of BGC episodes hit the East Coast months later. To my subsequent chagrin, I have to admit that, despite my then-fanatical and still abiding love of cyberpunk SF, I ran a bit lukewarm in my opinion of the compelling but rather uneven early chapters of Crisis. Of course, who couldn’t appreciate the series’ striking, music-video-styled setpieces such as the especially Streets of Fire-riffic “Konya wa Hurricane” from episode 1 or the “Mad Machine”-scored opening scene from ep.2? But in terms of Youmex/Artmic/AIC anime of the late 80s, ‘tis true that I was definitely more of a Gall Force fan back then.
I didn’t become a true connoisseur of the BGC experience until I elected to write and draw the original English-language miniseries Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal—long out of print, and all but certain to remain so—for Dark Horse Comics in 1993-94. This would be the first time in my career that I ever took on a comics job with the intention of imitating other artists’ work throughout an entire project, but such was my appreciation for the work of BGC’s ace character designer Kenichi Sonoda, who had been one of my earliest artistic keystones as a manga-influenced creator.
Unsurprisingly, while drawing Priscilla S. Asagiri—Priss’s full name, as seen on her driver’s license in ep.8!—and company several hundred times for BGC: Grand Mal, I developed even keener admiration for both Sonoda-sensei’s initial artwork establishing the cast and what I dubbed “the second wave” of more confident and refined character designs he worked up for eps. 5-8. (Seriously, compare and contrast Sonoda’s years-apart takes on the Knight Sabers’ chara designs later in this very book for a case study in artistic improvement.)
Beyond that, though, having to draw my own iterations of all the other artistic elements in the Bubblegum Crisis universe led me to a much more sweeping appreciation of the copious hard work, inventive creativity, and meticulous attention to detail underlying the anime’s visual spectacle. Easy, I suppose, for the casual viewer to admire in passing the teeming panoply of mecha, vehicular, architectural and environmental design work on display throughout the series, but I can assure you that attempting to (re)draw a fair chunk of that that rigorous artistic content yourself would grant you even greater respect for what BGC’s artists achieved. (However, I am happy indeed that I’ll never again have to break out a half-dozen ellipse guides to draw that g-d AD Police HQ building.)
Regardless, no need for you to spend most of a year of your life working on a Bubblegum Crisis homage when you can just pop open this fine tome and feast your eyes on the very same gorgeous designs and eyepopping artwork that 1993-94 Me once pored so avidly over! As you do so, rest assured that you’re perusing l‘oeuvre de BGC in a form presumably superior to my aging, Japanese-language collection of yellowing, battered 1988-vintage Movic design books or the worked-to-pieces remains of my treasured copy of the 1991 Bandai B-Club Special compilation artbook, okay? (That said, I’m quite looking forward to adding this latest and no doubt greatest compendium to the Bubblegum Crisis collection on my reference shelf.)
-Adam Warren
[Caption under under BGC commission artwork, probably using a smaller and/or italicized font:]
Even as my short-lived foray into Bubblegum Crisis content recedes into its 30th anniversary this year—quick, somebody cue up ep.8’s opening song “Bye Bye My Crisis”—I still draw a Knight Sabers convention sketch or two on a regular basis.
Yeahp, the published forward will be accompanied by one of the BGC commissions in the gallery above.
Anyhoo, writing that text piece's first paragraph triggered a surprising realization on my part: Namely, in retrospect I have no idea whatsoever as to why the heck I elected to write and draw a Bubblegum Crisis miniseries in the first place! As decorously hinted at in the forward, at that time I had only watched the first three OVAs in the series and, after the rather lousy ep.3, had bailed out entirely on the BGC experience years earlier. Only after I volunteered to do the miniseries did I check out episodes 4-8, which are a vaaaaaast improvement both artistically and narratively on the first three OVAs; and only then did I become a true Bubblegum Crisis fan.
But why the heck would 1992-93 Me have chosen to draw an entire project in someone else's art style (well, sorta) based on an anime which I didn't particularly enjoy?
For the record, the project came about when, in conversation with my late friend Toren Smith sometime in '92-'93, he quite dismissively mentioned in passing that Studio Proteus could probably get the rights to do a Bubblegum Crisis adaptation, a prospect which was of no great interest to him. Early 90s Me, however, immediately jumped at the chance, and volunteered to write and draw a BGC miniseries for reasons that are now entirely lost to me.
To be clear, I am extremely glad that I chose to do BGC: Grand Mal, as that miniseries' truncated format forced me into a desperate series of narrative innovations that radically expanded and improved my creative approaches to writing comics. In truth, no other single project I ever worked on was even remotely as important to my development as a storyteller.
But... why did that project ever happen? Was I that much of a Kenichi Sonoda fanboy that I wanted to do an entire project based on his design work? I don't think so, but can't say for sure. Amazingly enough, your guess may well be as good as mine; 'tis indeed a mystery, folks!
NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, but something should be coming up in the next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we?
Comments
Karlos
OK, this new BGC book is sounding very exciting indeed. So happy to be a part of this Patreon!
Strypgia
I think Grand Mal was the very first thing of yours I picked up. Still have it after all these years. Still a damn good cyberpunk story. And the appreciation for the Sabers' good penmanship still makes me laugh.
Burninator
Bonus fun fact: the pandemic caused an honest to Jesus Bubblegum Crisis: sales dropped like a third with people staying home and being less concerned about fresh breath.
Burninator
A while ago, I ran into some grody old Usenet post from back when Grand Mal had just came out. Jabroni #1 was complaining about the book as being some grand insult to everything good and holy. In response, Jabroni #2 points out that Kenichi Sonoda gave it his approval, to which Jabroni #1 replied by accusing Sonoda of being a hack that doesn't know the first thing about Bubblegum Crisis!
pi8you
Welp. Looks like I've got a new book to look forward to.
ericlvargas
Still treasure my copy of Grand Mal! BGC was one of the first OVA's I saw as a kid, to this day Konya wa Hurricane will sometimes play unbidden in my mind.
Eric
I should really ask for one of the Knight Sabers in Distress one of these days.
Steven Ng
Great news about a new BGC design book. I remember the dual signing at Anime America in Santa Clara in 1993 when you showed Grand Mal photocopies. After looking through them, I congratulated you on your artistic improvement and you nodded towards Kenichi Sonoda and said you were following a master.
Otaku Twenty-Four Seven
My eternal thanks that you did in fact take on that project, your work on Grand Mal got me to actually spring for the (back then) very hard to get hold of and expensive as hell BGC video collection just so I could appreciate the story more. I already had the music video collection tapes as they were mercifully cheaper and available on domestic shelves as opposed to import only, and my personal favourite was always Burning Highway with its techno beat and solid baseline.
