Revenge Road is the fourth episode of the original Bubblegum Crisis series. It's directed by Katsuhito Akiyama, Hiroaki Gôda, Hiroki Hayashi, Masami Ôbari and Fumihiko Takayama; and written by Toshimichi Suzuki, Katsuhito Akiyama, Shinji Aramaki, Emu Arii, Hideki Kakinuma and Ken'ichi Matsuzaki; with the voices of Yoshiko Sakakibara, Kinuko Ômori, Michie Tomizawa and Akiko Hiramatsu.
A gang of futuristic bikers are causing havoc at night. After they assault and injure a couple, the man wants to have his revenge and asks a tech-mechanic, the one Priss goes to to fix her bike, to have his car modified in order to get some payback. Meanwhile, The Knight Sabers train, eat together and pass the time since GENOM and their boomers have been mostly absent for a while, leaving them basically unemployed. However, when Priss gets attacked by a reckless mysterious vehicle and has an encounter with the hurt couple already mentioned, the girls set out to stop the now unyielding machine racing in the streets.
There's kind of a dry feeling of melancholy present throughout this episode, one that isn't foreign to Bubblegum Crisis considering the events of the previous episodes but sometimes the angst and levels of tragedy are extended and elongated further than before. The ending isn't truly happy but it's not a downer either, so it stays in a comfortable middle ground that remains a bit detached. You do feel for the new characters but they aren't meant to be charismatic or likable, they are more or less there just for the pathos.
The typical eighties jokes and pop culture references are present and the action is as wonderfully animated as ever, this time managing to feature car crashes, engines, detailed machinery and vehicle action that's as close to being perfectly illustrated and animated as possible, so it's not like the fun factor isn't here.
I do feel like the writers realized that the girls don't really do much in this plot and decided to add an undeniably cool training sequence to have them do some awesome things on screen, even if the stakes are low. Other than that, we also get some nice interactions and good laughs with the gals, adding to our familiarity with the team, even if the episode itself is peripheral to the main storyline.
Overall, it is a good episode that shows how the technological advancements and the unforgiving mentality of this oddly dystopian future affects and harms the innocent.
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