Tinsel City (episode)

Tinsel City is the first episode to the original Bubblegum Crisis OVA series. It was released on February 25th, 1987 and had a runtime of 45 minutes.

Synopsis

It is the year 2032 A.D. Like a Phoenix, the city of MegaTokyo is rising from the ashes of a devastating earthquake. In the twisted canyons of the megalopolis, the Knight Sabers, a small band of high-tech mercenaries, fight a lonely battle against the evil GENOM Corporation and it's sinister android "Boomers." A hard-rock soundtrack and gritty "cyberpunk" style propel this intense action film into an all too probable future, where technology has run amuck, and emotion is all that separates man from machine.

Characters

• Sylia Stingray
• Priscilla "Priss" Asagiri
• Linna Yamazaki
• Nene Romanova
• Quincy
• Brian J. Mason
• Leon McNichol
• Commander
• Dr. Katsuhito Stingray
• Bogey
• Retort
• Daley Wong
• F. G. Frederick
• Deputy Commander
• Checkpoint Guard
• Cynthia
• Female Boomer
• Mackie Stingray

"Data Readout" / Liner Notes

Photo of the VHS Insert "Data Readout".

Even from the viewpoint of world history, there are few cities as prone to disaster as Tokyo. The city was completely destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and the Carpet-bombing of Tokyo at the end of World War II, as its name suggests, reduced the city to a smoking pile of rubble. But each time, Tokyo rose again from the ashes.

Photo of the VHS Insert lyrics and credits page.

And so we have present-day Greater Tokyo, the political and economic heart of Japan. Some say it is already tembly overcrowded - but the overwhelming crush of humanity that each day floods into the city is but a taste of what is to come.. The Tokyo Bay Causeway; the information/communications network base, expected to be built on Section 13. reclaimed from Tokyo Bay, and requiring an outlay of ¥130,000,000,000; a project, set for completion between 2000-2029, calling for a colossal waterborne city; and the well-known "Futureport 21" Project; these gigantic projects for Tokyo's reconstruction, advocated by JAPIC (the Japan Project Industrial Committee), are all butting heads with one another, competing for resources. Surely, Tokyo is rushing towards tomorrow, the future, and furthermore is transforming itself into a gigantic integrated city.

And it is MegaTokyo, the future, some fifty years from the present, which is the setting for this story. The time is the year 2032! Tokyo, the world's most overcrowded city - the heart of industry, culture, information, and conflict. The Second Great Kanto Earthquake, only seven years before. dealt the city a devastating blow, and the new waterborne city coming into existence in Tokyo Harbor, was abandoned just as construction was beginning, and has since become a ghost town.

Presently, the capital is a city of confusion, in the midst of recovering from the ruins, physical and political, which were the result of the colossal earthquake. Cars running on gasohol (a mixture of gasoline and ethanol) and battery cars (electrically-powered automobiles) crowd the streets, and a scar of the earthquake remains: a huge fault running through Tokyo, 50 meters wide at its widest point, separating the city into East and West. A gigantic tidal power plant has been established at Chibajuukuuri, and the world's first solar power plants have been founded at Yokosukachuu and Mashino City, supplying this megalopolis with the electricity it consumes. Even now, clumps of office buildings, with rooftop-mounted independent photovoltaic collectors, await the sun's first rays, and the start of another day in MegaTokyo.

And youth... ah, yes, for youth, there has been no change, even now, in Tokyo's standing as "the city of great possibilities."

There is Priss, a rock singer who belts out songs on a stage where light and sound mix and mingle. There is Sylia, and her little brother, Mackie, who, having inherited their father's bequest, own a fashion building. There is Linna, an aerobics instructor. And there is Nene, a member of the ADPolice. But these women all have an additional identity...

As the curtain of night falls, a show has begun in a dark corner of the city. Armored vehicles, carrying members of the AD Police, the Special Crimes Control Unit, are gathering at an expressway interchange, drawn like moths to a flame. It's a Boomer!

Once again, a Boomer is on a rampage! Boomers are an artificial life form, born of the technological union of mechtronics and biotechnology. They were originally created to substitute for humans in the development of outer space, but recently, a slightly different variant on that original concept has started to appear.

They are terrifying cyberdroids, their entire bodies a cluster of weaponry; walking tanks, covered in super-high-density Abotex; and possessed of their own will. Naturally, their existence is illegal. And on top of all that, they even possess the power of matter fusion.

This particular Boomer bears the Minigun from the police chopper it downed, uses it to replace its lost right arm, and runs amuck, strafing anything and anyone who comes within range! The heavily-armed ADPolice are helpless before it. Who would let these things loose, and to what end? Just then, four figures appear before the Boomer. The slim silhouettes possess graceful, elegant lines, as if to say, there are females inside these battlesuits. In the wink of an eye, these women annihilate the Boomer, with the long-needle railguns, rotary lasersword, and laser cannon integrated into the artificial fingers of their suits. They call themselves the "Knight Sabers." ADPolice officer Leon, who has rushed to the scene, can only watch in amazement. These women, attired in hardsuits surpassing the military's newly-produced Type K-12 battlesuit, are vigilantes who smash lawlessness for money. Having defeated the Boomer, they vanish into the night, but their next job soon comes calling, in a most peculiar manner.

The client is U.S.S.D. (the Space Defense Force). The job is to find a technician, and his little sister, Cynthia, who have been abducted. From then on, they are entangled in a gigantic conspiracy. When they cross swords with Frederick, the ultimate Boomer, in the ruins of Aqua City, they also see the shadow of... a colossal organization?! It is the mysterious Genom supercorporation which the keys to the mystery that confronts them.

Genom: a company which rules from behind the scenes over the political and financial affairs of the entire Western World, and whose full aspect unknown. Its temple-like headquarters, Genom Tower, a skyscraper nearly 1000 meters tall, symbolizes it well, oppressing all other, lesser, buildings in District Three of Tokyo. It continues to extend towards the heavens even now, eight years since its construction began; a modern-day Tower of Babel. The Knight Sabers, who have been stalking the places where evil dwells, and striking it down, will, at the end of this battle, catch sight, however dimly, of the form of their true enemy...