So I'm working on a Bubblegum Crisis reboot screenplay...

[classicdrogn]

I was going over Shadowjack's 'In Which I Watch' BGC thread the other day, and picked up that he thought that Reika's origins were tied to that Triad just 'cause Triads were a big deal in Hong Kong action movies at the time. So I'm torn between keeping that origin when I drag in Reika or someone like her - a megacorp-sized Triad with contacts across the diaspora - or just straight up the CWPC, a conglomerate of privatized SOE's, and 'Reika' a dishonored daughter of a princeling who got offed after the last Stalinist purge.

Having the corporate leadership tied into a crime family does give them an excuse to be more minded to let her go on a personal quest for bloody vengeance, and to have black money to throw around in pursuit of it. OTOH, if it works better for the plot (or just the running time) to leave that out, by all means make the change.

I went and changed the name in my screenplay after reading this. It makes more sense that Celia is her name - but do I have to rename Miss Yamazaki Lena by that token?

Since it's intentionally a new retelling you don't "have to" do anything, but you certainly can if you want to. I don't remember seeing that one myself, but in 2040 it was always pronounced LEE-na like the sorceress who throws explosive spells around like candy at a parade, so maybe that's where they got it from?

One thing that dawned on me today is that the running sequence of events that makes up the second Crash! OVA would probably fit the narrative better than the relatively simple thing going on with Crisis 1 - I always liked how Priss and Adama spent most of their time underground, first in the sewers, then the subway, then Geo City itself. (Also her fight with the stupidly-designed scorpion Boomer was pretty bitchin' too.) Paralleling that, maybe bringing a Saber or two into the floodwater repositories under Megatokyo (like the ones they have today but bigger) would be cool...

Go ahead and try it; if it works, great, if not maybe you can adapt it for a later part. The only thing I'd absolutely keep from BGC OVA1 is the Silky Van as a mobile transport/support unit to let the Sabers deploy without being seen hop-skipping halfway across the city (or launching a highly distinctive aircraft RIGHT OUT OF THE SUPPOSEDLY SECRET HQ like in Crash...)

One, I need to somehow bridge the gap between Priss being a rough-and-tumble bosozoku in the time before the 'film' and also an underground singer at least by the end of the movie - like I said, I want Konya Wa Hurricane to go over the ending credits. So: Did Priss sing professionally while she was a bike gangster?

Probably? If nothing else, she's gotta pay for food and gasoline (and the expensive custom bikes she keeps driving to destruction) somehow after all, and even as a gang member she doesn't seem the type to be dealing drugs or running prostitutes.

Getting a band together is probably not that rard though, at least if she has some kind of connections to the local music scene. Just floating the word that she's got a line on some gigs (through Sylia's finagling with venue owners maybe?) and/or needs some guys for a few recording sessions should be able to get your standard druns, synth, bass & lead guitarist together in the short term. Getting along and being successful enough to stay together is another question, but with how she apparently flakes out of shows on the regular having "the Replicants" be a rotating group of whoever has the night free and doesn't completely suck would also make some sense.

Two, I want to establish Mason as a villain by the end of Act 1. Just that he exists, and that he's the Bad Guy, and that he and Sylia used to be close when they were really little. I think making Sylia's conflict with Mason more personal than 'your dad killed my dad now you must suffer' is a fertile ground for interesting scenes. So there needs to be at least one interaction they have before Mason shows up in Act 3 at her building. By the same token - do I have time to include flashbacks as to what happened with Priss and Nene, their respective tragedies involving Mason? Or should they just tell those stories to the other Sabers as exposition and be done with it? Just thinking about this.

It might work better to cover Celia and Brian's past with a comment that it's really disappointing how he changed as a reaction to one of the other Sabers' stories, though some of it could also be worked in if she gets a call at some point and he's inviting her out to dinner - "We haven't talked in so long, it seems we've both become busy adults," or something along those lines - and one of the others (Nene for preference, but any could fit) tease her about having an admirer, but she strongly disapproves of any such ideas, and adds "You know him as well, or of him - Brian J. Mason, head of GENOM Special Projects. It seems he's become a real snake," thereby prompting their own story.