Linna Yamazaki

Linna Yamazaki (山崎 リンナ"Yamazaki Rinna") is a fictional character from the Japanese anime series Bubblegum Crisis, its spin off Bubblegum Crash and its TV remake Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040. Her original OVA voice actress was Tomizawa Michie. Her english voice actress was Elizabeth Becka.

Background

Linna is a member of the Knight Sabers and is identified by her green combat armor, which comes with "ribbon cutters", long, electrically charged nano-molecular ropes that can be used to slash through boomers and other high tech opponents. She was also armed with explosive "knuckle bombs", which were explosive charges in the right hand of her hard suit that could deliver devastating blows, as well as a high-caliber machine gun. Working various jobs including aerobics instructor, she once hoped to pursue a career in professional dancing. She switches to stockbroker consulting in Bubblegum Crash. Her name means "mountain headlands" and her height is 176 cm.

Original Series

In the original series Linna, 22, is an aerobics instructor with black triangular hair mysteriously held upright by a head band. Linna is treated as a caricature of a yuppie: she is often presented as greedy, shallow, superficial and constantly blowing through boyfriends (none of whom are ever seen), but occasionally showing a more sensitive side. She was often treated as comic relief, along with Nene Romanova. Compared to the other major characters, Linna got very little character development and was seen as by far the least complex of the four central characters and the least interesting.

Linna is an orphan; her parents were killed in a Boomer rampage following the Kanto earthquake. She developed her dancing skills, but her first tryout was unappreciated by all but Sylia, who recruited her into her team as the close combat specialist. She is portrayed as the perhaps most worldly of the Knight Sabers: she goes after money and breezes through a lot of relationships with an ever-increasing number of ex-boyfriends. She was a good friend of Irene Chang, whose fiancee worked for Genom and died in a laboratory "accident" in Episode 2 of the OAV series "Born To Kill". She had vowed to expose Genom's involement in his death, but she was murdered by Boomers later in the episode. Linna eventually avenged her, and later met her older sister Reika, who is also the pop singer Vision in Episode 7, "Double Vision".

2040 Series

Linna was given considerably better treatment in the 2040 remake than in the original version, developing her character far more than the OAV and presenting her as far more important to the overall plot (which the original series rarely, if ever does). The series opens with Linna, 20, arriving in Tokyo as an awkward and unsophisticated country bumpkin with brown sidetails, having come to the city partially to get away from her family in the country and hoping to find and join the Knight Sabers, whom she read about over the internet. In high school, Linna was a track and field star and all around multi-purpose athlete.

Linna is portrayed as slightly naïve but idealistic, with aims to help people much like a superhero would, and with a desire to do more with her life than simply be an office lady, which is what her job ends up being when she takes employment at a GENOM subsidiary company, where she is constantly harassed by her male supervisors and her boomer overseer.

Priss runs afoul of Linna early on, but Linna recognizes her as a Knight Saber and seeks her out, making her goals clear, and follows Priss to the other Knight Sabers, Sylia Stingray and Nene Romanova. Sylia then tests Linna in a simulator, and decides to use her as Knight Saber; after a couple of rough starts, Linna proves herself very capable. Linna develops a big sister/little sister relationship with Nene and a slight rivalry with Priss, her polar opposite. At one point Linna's family tries to bring her back home with hopes of getting her to marry a nice businessman named Masaki, and while Linna likes the guy, she decides to stay with the Knight Sabers in Tokyo. She proves very steadfast and dependable in the battle against Galatea. After the battle, she and Nene are left stranded on a tropical island, both of them completely naked; their fate is unknown from there.