I’ve been heads down trying to finish the biggest Zimmerit ‘zine yet (the ARTMIC Fan Book—I’ll post about it soon), and while putting together the endnotes, I came across a bit of a Bubblegum Crisis mystery–or perhaps more accurately, a couple of mysteries.
You’ve probably seen the old photos from B-Club of Priss’ voice actress Oomori Kinuko posing in a Hard Suit costume around Shinjuku. These iconic marketing images appeared in B-Club magazine and later in the Bubblegum Crisis B-Club Special and other books. That same B-Club Special also included photos of Nene’s voice actress, Akiko Hiramatsu, posing with a costume of Nene’s Hard Suit and a single photo of a helmet based on Linna’s Hard Suit. Oomori Kinuko was also featured in the same B-Club costume in a brief sequence at the end of Hurricane Live 2032.1
Full-sized costumes as promotional tools weren’t uncommon during that era, and these particular Hard Suits came shortly after the Briareos mask featured on the cover of B-Club #23 which I made a whole video about. Interestingly, at least some of these costumes (or maybe all? That’s part of the mystery) ended up in the hands of fans in the United States in the early 2000s.
Let’s start from the beginning.
In late 2000, AnimEigo auctioned off a couple of Hard Suit costumes. I reached out to AnimEigo founder Robert Woodhead to ask about them. Aside from remembering they had come from Japan, he couldn’t recall why or how AnimEigo had ended up possessing them. He did, however, guess that it was “Probably one of those ‘we don’t need em, do you want them’ things.”
The Hard Suits had been displayed at AnimEigo’s booth at various conventions, but had fallen into rough enough condition they decided to auction them off. While the original auction listing and and page on AnimEigo’s website are both long gone, Bubblegum Crisis archival site Ravens Garage has a backup page with the images from the auction and the description from AnimEigo’s site and the original AnimEigo page can be found on the Internet Archive. The two costumes sold for a combined $4750, equivalent to a little over $8000 today.
Among other details, AnimEigo’s description said that the suits were built by Takagi Ryousuke and were seen in B-Club Magazine. More on that later.
I reached out to the admin of Raven’s Garage to see if they had any more details or could recall who ended up with them, but unfortunately, my email to the address listed on the site couldn’t be delivered.
According to a contemporary Anime News Network report from January 2001, both Hard Suit costumes were won by the same person who intended to display them at the Boston-area anime store Tokyo Kid. The article didn’t specify if the person who won the auctions owned Tokyo Kid or what their connection was to the shop. A thread on Bluesky I started did result in at least one person who confirmed having seen the costumes on display at the store. Unfortunately, Tokyo Kid went out of business in 2011 and as far as I can tell, there’s been no mention or sight of the Hard Suits since.
I reached out to an individual in the Boston area with a name that seemed to match the former owner of Tokyo Kid to see if they had any idea where the suits had ended up, but I never received a response. So, the fate of the Nene and Linna Hard Suits remains unknown. So, that’s the first mystery.
It turns out, however, that there was another Hard Suit in AnimEigo’s possession. If you clicked on the Raven’s Garage link above, you’ll have noticed that at the bottom of the page is a collection of photos of a similar Priss Hard Suit costume that ended up in the hands of one Ben Cantrick, along with an alt.fan.bgcrisis2 message from 2002 that explains how he acquired it.
Digging into the USENET archives on groups.google.come turns up a later thread from 2010 on alt.fan.bgcrisis, where an individual named Dan explained he had acquired the incomplete Priss costume from AnimEigo a little while after the Nene and Linna costumes were auctioned off. What’s interesting is that he was sure that the Priss costume he acquired and later passed on to Mr. Cantrick wasn’t the same Priss Hard Suit featured in B-Club and used in the photoshoot with Oomori Kinuko. That would mean two different Priss Hard Suit costumes were made. That’s mystery number two.
B-Club Magazine ran multiple articles about the Priss Hard Suit used in the Kinuko photoshoot, beginning in #29, with an article detailing the construction of the suit. B-Club #30 had a shorter article about the Kinuko photoshoot. Now, comparing 20-year-old digital photos to 35-year-old magazine photos is challenging, but to me, the two Priss suits look the same. Unfortunately, the poster didn’t elaborate as to why they were convinced the suits were different (aside from saying construction and materials) so I’m curious why they were so sure. Perhaps they didn’t have access to the clear photos in B-Club #29 (the B-Club Special has far fewer photos of the suit), and really, how many promotional Hard Suit costumes could they have made?
Admittedly, USENET poster Dan actually handled the costume and I haven’t, so I’ll accept I could be completely wrong on this. Compare the photos on Raven’s Garage to the photos below and see what you think.
The provenance of the Nene Hard Suit seems to be agreed upon, however. While that suit only got one or two photos included the B-Club Special, B-Club #34 featured four pages of color photos of the costume and it looked identical to the one AnimEigo auctioned off.
The complete Linna Hard Suit costume wasn’t featured in the B-Club Special, and in fact, just a photo of a helmet for the costume was included alongside the aforementioned Priss and Nene suits. A look through contemporary issues of B-Club doesn’t produce any photos of the Linna suit, so perhaps it wasn’t finished until after the B-Club Special had been printed (and thus, presumably, after the marketing efforts for Crisis had died down). That may be mystery number three.
Now, there is one last bit of information that could shed light on why the Priss costume AnimEigo sold to a fan wasn’t the one featured in the B-Club photoshoot. On page 85 of the B-Club Special, photos of three suits are featured: the B-Club Priss Hard Suit, the Nene Hard Suit auctioned off by AnimEigo, and the helmet (and only the helmet) of a similar Linna Hard Suit. The accompanying text specifies that while the Priss costume was built by Fuyuki Shinada (the same artist who made the Briareos mask featured on the cover of B-Club #23), the Nene and Linna costumes were built by a “fan” named Ryosuke Takagi. The text on AnimEigo’s site named Takagi, too.
Could the Priss Hard Suit sold by AnimEigo have been a third Takagi-built suit, thereby explaining why it wasn’t the same suit as seen in B-Club? That would explain a lot. On the other hand, why would Takagi have built a second Priss Hard Suit if ARTMIC and Youmex already had the Shinada-built costume?
So that is, to the best of my ability currently, a rough overview of the three or so mysteries swirling around a few promotional costumes that were featured in the pages of B-Club, toured around North American anime conventions, and then ended up in the hands of fans before disappearing.
If you happen to have any leads or know where these costumes ended up (or if they’re in your possession), feel free to send me a message or leave a comment below. I’m sure I’m not the only person curious about the fate of these costumes.
Special thanks to GreatSG and Nick Nick Goose on Bluesky.
Additional Images
Notes
- The first of two music video compilations that combined footage from Crisis with music from the series. 2032 also had some original animation that showed the origins of the Knight Sabers and some new footage of model kits and live-action scenes.
- A Bubblegum Crisis USENET newsgroup that was active in the late ’90s and early 2000s.