Sylvia and Anri, Boomers

Zachary Reiss-Davis, '08, The Cyborg Self, Brown University, Spring 2005

Episode 5 of Bubblegum Crisis is an anime television show written 1987 and dealt with most of the same issues of Blade Runner as well as issues of sexual identity.

These androids called Boomers are built from the same mold, in the same world as Blade Runner's NEXUS-6 models. There is already a page of cyberartsweb showing a few of the allusions from BGC to Blade Runner which can be found here. Besides the direct allusions, the themes of the episode we watched and the world it is set it are also very closed modeled on Blade Runner

Questions

After viewing this and other works with humanoid cyborgs, including those in Blade Runner, are the Boomers more or less sympathetic characters? Why?

Are the Boomers more or less human-feeling?

Max Headroom, from the TV series of the same name, was created in the same year as BGC and focuses on a completely different type of AI. Which of the two

What elements of BGC are the most compelling? Which make the show worth watching still today, twenty years later?

How does the mood and setting of BGC feel different from that of Blade Runner? What part of the difference is caused by the medium versus artists' choices within the mediums?

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Last modified 22 March 2005