Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040-Volume 6: For All Mankind (1998)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Main Menu Audio & Animation Biographies-Character DVD Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	121:24
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Hiroki Hayashi
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	None Given
Case	Click
RPI	$29.95	Music	Kouichi Korenaga

    This is the final volume in the series, titled For All Mankind. The series Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 is exciting all the way through, but this volume pulls out all the stops. I recommend that you make sure you have plenty of time when you put this one in your player. I was planning to watch just one or two episodes, but I couldn't stop.

    The five episodes on this disc are:

• Physical Graffiti - the whole of Tokyo is infected by the rogue boomer contagion. Even the Knight Sabers' headquarters ("Silky Doll") is invaded. We get a real insight into Mason's childhood, and what makes him behave as he has.
• Hydra - appropriate title - how do you kill something that grows more heads as you chop them off?
• Light My Fire - the conflict shifts into space - the Knight Sabers have only one chance to get there.
• Walking on the Moon - we finally get an understanding of what motivates Galatea. The Knight Sabers face doppelgangers, with their own skills.
• Still Alive and Well - must the Knight Sabers sacrifice themselves to save the rest of mankind? And will they be enough?

    The conflicts between the members of the team are forgotten as the threat posed by Galatea outweighs everything else.

    Watching the four males (Nigel, Leon, Mackey, and Henderson/Meisio) wait around for the girls is amusing - a nice role reversal from the norm.

    This is hot stuff. As well as providing some heavy duty action, this raises questions about religion, and whether there's a next step to evolution.

Video

    The video quality on this volume is excellent.

    These episodes are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, not 16x9 enhanced. That's exactly how they were made.

    The image is wonderfully sharp. Still shots are crisp and clear. Moving shots show some aliasing on pans, both horizontally and vertically, but that is pretty much unavoidable on animation like this. Dark backgrounds, like night-time skies, show some light low level noise, but it is fairly minor.

    Colour is strong, beautifully saturated without oversaturation. The brightly coloured hardsuits show it well.

    There are no serious film artefacts, just a minor fleck or two. There are no MPEG artefacts. Apart from the aliasing, there are no noticeable film-to-video artefacts.

    The English subtitles are presented nicely, in yellow, and a simple font. The opening and closing song subtitles are burned into the picture, and show some minor dot crawl. The rest of the subtitles show no dot crawl at all. Even so, I recommend that you turn them off. They are nowhere near as good in conveying the story as the English dub.

    The disc is single-sided, single-layer. No layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    I listened to the English soundtracks all the way through. I watched an entire episode (the last one) with the Japanese soundtrack. Both soundtracks are Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, not surround-encoded. There are no other soundtracks.

    Dialogue is clear on both soundtracks, and the English is readily understood. I saw no audio sync problems on the English soundtrack, but I saw problems with the Japanese - the animated mouths would be moving when there was no dialogue, or not moving when there was dialogue. The English dialogue track must have been made very carefully - the pacing of the actor's voices matched the animation really closely; this was not always the case with the Japanese dialogue. I suppose it is possible that the animation was made to fit the English dub, but I doubt very much that that would be the case. Combine that with the subtitles, which I feel do not convey the whole story, and you should see why I recommend listening to the English dub. The ratings I've given apply to the English soundtrack.

    The score is well-fitted to the action. Priss gets to sing a couple of times during this volume - the voice actresses doing her voice really can sing.

    The surrounds and subwoofer are not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The extras on this volume are identical to those on volume 5. On both discs the trailers have been dropped to leave enough room for the fifth episode - I like this idea.

Menu

    The main menu is animated, with music. It is similar to volume 5. Like volume 5, there is no aliasing.

Character Profiles and Hardsuit Descriptions

    There are four extra profiles, being for the (English language) voice actresses for the Knight Sabers. The hardsuit descriptions are unchanged.

    The Region 1 disc has even less in the way of extras, but is otherwise identical. I see no reason to spend the extra money to get the R1.

    Now that I've seen the entire series I can recommend it without reservation - this is a action serial (with a plot!) with good-looking intelligent heroines who have feelings and problems. It has replay value, too - I'll be watching this again, more than once.

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are basic.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall