Bubblegum Crisis is one of the staples of 80's anime; a true classic with a massive following. That said, the new series has an impossible challenge to live up to: Update itself and stay current, or extend itself and satisfy oldschool fans. This one has chosen the former, which is probably best.

The main character is now Linna, who is now a new hiree for the Genom Corporation. She's been following the events surrounding the mysterious power-suit vigilantes the Knight Sabers for quite some time, and now that she's in Tokyo, she wants to become one! Easier said than done...

She hunts down Priss, who was quite rude to her earlier, and confronts her with the request to become a Knight Saber. She's taken to Knight Saber HQ, where she meets Sylvia (a business woman who looks an awful lot like Ifurita) and Nene (who is now blond and slightly more mature). After a much better than normal start, she gets her baptism by fire soon enough...

Easily, the best thing about Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 is the music -- a hard rock soundtrack with an opening and ending to die for. The animation is great too. 100% digital, slightly hard-edged, but well drawn and animated with minimal panning effect. It's one of only a handful of successful computer-animated anime titles. Even better, the updates are mostly improvements... Nene is now a lot easier to tolerate!

What isn't so great is the pacing of the new plot. Slow to build and sometimes downright boring, every possible stereotype for this kind of anime is followed. The result is a mish-mash: a technically excellent show bogged down by less-than-stellar storytelling. What a shame.

What's worse, the dubbed version is directed by Matt Greenfield, who does one hell of a great slapstick comedy dub, but his style of having the actors overdo their lines doesn't carry a serious series very well at all. Perhaps it'll get better with time, but for right now, he has some work to do in making his dubs more low-key.