Bubblegum Crisis got me into anime.
It wasn't my introduction to it--like most kids growing up in the 80's, I'd seen my share of Voltron, Robotech, and such--but it's the first one I totally fell in love with. Four women flying around in power armor, kicking ass, taking names, and sticking it the corporate "Man" in the form of multi-national conglomerate Genom and their mechanical life hybrid Boomers, all to the best 80's pop/synth rock you can't help but sing along to even if you can't understand most of the words...shit, son, if it wasn't love at first sight, it was at least lustful fantasizing with the best of intentions.
So yeah, I fell in love with Bubblegum Crisis, and much like your very first crush, there's something special about that feeling no other relationship can ever quite capture. Priss, Linna, Nene, and Sylia won my heart all thanks to a VHS tape picked up for a couple bucks at a yard sale on a whim. I was in 8th grade.
Fast forward a few years to March of 1994 and, having discovered manga thanks to my friendly local comic store (which has sadly been out of business now for many years), what should I see on the shelves one day but a Bubblegum Crisis comic book. Number 1 of 4, at that. Holy cow, there were going to be more!
At this point I didn't know a thing about Adam Warren because I hadn't read his work on The Dirty Pair, but I knew I loved me some Knight Sabers, so I plunked down my money, took home issue one, and read it about 50 times waiting for issue #2. Then did the same thing with that issue, and the next. By the time the final fourth issue landed, I was completely infatuated but slightly confused at the same time. Something felt off.
Why, for instance, was Mackie introducing Priss to the Motoroid, when she'd used them numerous times in the videos? Why was there no mention of Mason, Largo, Sylvie, Vision, or heck, even Gibson from Revenge Road (yes, I even like Revenge Road, and if we have to come to blows over this, be aware I will fight to the last testicle)? Why were the Knight Sabers in their standard suits, not the upgraded ones Sylia revealed later in the series?
It wasn't until I sat down next year with the TPB (because of course I bought it!) and really, REALLY read carefully did I realized what an idiot I was. Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal isn't a sequel to the BGC storyline, meant to bridge the gap between Bubblegum Crisis and Bubblegum Crash, or anything of the sort. Grand Mal is a prequel which takes place a year before the first OVA, and it only says this, like, all over the place.
1990's me was kind of a dolt. In the 21st century, not much has changed.
In any case, Grand Mal works extremely well in this capacity. Prequels are hit-or-miss affairs, because right from the start you know who has script immunity. In this case, we know the Knight Sabers are going to win because they have to be around in 2032 or else Tinsel City Rhapsody and everything following it is a horrible lie and I refuse to live in a world where Priss Asagiri has never performed 'Konya wa Hurricane' on stage.
For reference...
Of course the Knight Sabers prevail. But how they win, who they're fighting, and why--those are the crucial story elements for any narrative where the ending is a foregone conclusion. The book takes plenty of time to dribble out the answers to those questions, a little piece here, a droplet there, until we've put the whole picture together.
I love Warren's primary antagonist. He's powerful, he's an absolute match for the Knight Sabers in their pre-OVA status, and there's a certain irony with how he winds up in their lives.
Peter Vashnevskaya (the guy with white hair, a cigarette dangling off his lips, and the 'Genom' blood tattoo in the first image up top) is a living weapon with a short fuse, a former soldier tapped for a secret project with a disastrous outcome. He suffers from grand mal seizures, which induce blinding, psychotic, hallucinogenic, and violent bouts of rage, and he's returning to Tokyo to get revenge on the ones who ruined his life. The people who betrayed him worked for Genom. The only mistake they made was not finishing him off. Now, with brain lesions shortening his life expectancy, he's going to use the weapon his team died protecting to shorten theirs in exchange. You know, you almost feel sorry for Genom having made such an enemy for themselves.
Almost. They're still Genom.
The weapon Vashnevskaya's assembling is the Skorpion, a piece of pre-Boomer technology. It's basically a walking series of networked computerized robots with an important skill: the ability to interface with, and eventually control, other computer tech. Partially-activated during the debacle of Vashnevskaya's original mission, it's spent the last several years worming its way into every computerized database and information source it can find, and boy, let me tell you: it's uncovered a lot of stuff people would prefer remain unknown. It's mainly learned interesting things about Genom though; specifically that Genom's success is partially attributable to Sylia's father's work on Boomers. These low-functioning Boomers are only half the story though. While Genom would never admit it, they have dabbled in creating higher-functioning Boomers by augmenting humans with cerebral circuitry that re-wires the neurons in their brains, turning them into living, breathing autonomous computers. These human/Boomer hybrids serve as strategy officers, able to analyze Genom's plots and work out the optimal tactics for everything from hostile takeover bids of rival companies to the perfect amount of scientists to throw at a given problem. They are the reason Genom has so many legs up on the competition.
Vashnevskaya's plan is to capture one of these augmented humans, use the Skorpion's technology to take it over and, like the Borg from Star Trek, add its biological and technological distinctiveness to its own. With such power and knowledge at his disposal, Genom would crumble before his onslaught. Given their mutually-compatible goals with regards to Genom's demise, one might think he and the Knight Sabers would be on the same side. Unfortunately, the Skorpion's intelligence gathering operations over the last few years have also uncovered the private journals of Sylia Stingray, and while collating all that data, he's learned more than a few things about her life and work she'd prefer no one else knew. Things that put him on a direct collision course with not just Genom, but also the Knight Sabers and the AD Police.
Warren captures the neon-lit realities of this cyberpunk realm beautifully. Like a mad music video director, he weaves flashbacks, asides, cameos and history into his narrative tapestry, interrupting the normal flow of information with smash-cuts to clips from the Skorpion's audio and video archives. This rapidly-changing presentation provides everything we need to know, but like the archives residing in the Skorpion's data banks, it demands we as readers comb through it again and again, finding and collating the relevant information amidst the hive of noise via re-reads. Your first time through Grand Mal will be a hideous, disjointed experience. It's a book meant to be re-read, re-experienced, as it throws you firmly into the deep end of Vashnevskaya's head and world. It's his story--the Knight Sabers get dragged into it by sheer circumstance. If you're looking for the typical prequel-style fare that gives background details on everyone before they were a team, this isn't a book for you.
On the other hand, if you want a look at the world the Knight Sabers call home from a viewpoint outside what we're shown in the anime, Grand Mal will be right up your alley. I respect this book more the more times I read it, and for that reason it's no surprise BGC creator Sonoda Kenichi himself threw his support behind Warren's tale in the introduction. He doesn't come right out and say it's canonical, but he doesn't disavow the story either, and I think that says plenty.
For more fun:
If you're familiar with 80's and 90's anime, it's amusing to read this and play 'spot-the-cameo' in Warren's artwork. Bean Bandit from Riding Bean, Kei and Yuri from The Dirty Pair, and plenty of others pop up in the foreground and background, turning Grand Mal into a grand game of Where's Waldo? for the otaku set. See how many you can find!