Tonight, we will be viewing the seventh and penultimate installment of Bubblegum Crisis, "Double Vision." This is certainly my favorite episode, primarily because of the new character it introduces.... But more on that in a moment.

One of the delightful complexities of the BGC series is the non-continuous ordering of the stories that are told through the eight episodes. For example, Cynthia and Largo, in BGC 1 and 6, respectively, represent the beginning and the conclusion of the particle-beam satellite story, a subject that was absent from OAVs 3, 4, and 5. In a similar manner, tonight's episode will finish a plot that began in BGC 2 and has not been touched upon since. So, let us recap the story:

Bubblegum Crisis #2, "Born to Kill," introduced the character of Irene Chang. Irene was in Linna's aerobics class, and through the course of the OAV, the two became good friends. Linna found out that Irene's fiancé was an engineer working at Genom on the new "superboomer." (This was Mason's pet project and provided the new villain for BGC 2.) Not long before, he had told Irene that he feared for his life. He said that anyone who spoke indiscreetly of the research going on at Genom would be killed. Irene's fiancé died shortly thereafter in an explosion at a Genom laboratory. When it became clear that neither Genom nor the AD Police would perform an investigation into the "accident," Irene vowed that she would expose Genom's involvement in her fiancé's death.

Alas, she was never able to accomplish this. As she was walking home from having coffee with Linna, Irene was hunted down by one of Mason's boomers/bodyguards. She was killed by the boomer before our heroines could save her. Linna took Irene's engagement ring as a reminder of her friend. The rest of the OAV shows the Knight Sabers extracting their justice for this incident and destroying the new superboomer.

Thus begins BGC 7, and thus enters Vision. Vision is the beautiful, enigmatic leader of the American rock group, "The Revengers." She has just come out of a one-year, self-imposed retirement and is kicking off her new world tour with a huge show in MegaTokyo.

However, Vision has a hidden agenda.

Vision, or, more properly, Reika Chang, is the older sister of Irene Chang. Reika is holding quite a grudge against Genom and against Genom's new partner in business, Gulf & Bradley Corporation based in Houston, Texas, for the deaths of several of her immediate family.

Also worth noting, Vision is not all beauty without brawn. Reika is poised to, shall we say, take over the family business. For generations, the Chang family has been leading the "Hou Bang" (Tiger's Stripes) crime syndicate. Once Reika takes care of some matters of personal interest on her concert tour, she is prepared to assume control of the Hou Bang.

An intriguing aside: Due to some contractual difficulties that the creators of Bubblegum Crisis were having with Oomori Kinuko, the voice actress of Priss, the character of Priss was originally slated to be killed in a spectacular scene at the end of BGC 6. Following this plan, Reika/Vision would have become the new fourth Knight Saber in BGC 7. All of this planning was for naught, since Priss proved to be too popular a character to be killed off.