The Bubblegum Crisis Center > Articles
"Boomer" or "VOOMER"? The Truth
Some of you may have seen more than one series of Bubblegum Crisis and have noticed that in some of those series the humanoid machines are referred to as "Boomers" while other series refer to them as "VOOMERs". I have had people asking me which one of these terms is correct and what the story is behind the usage of these terms. Well then, for everyone's sake I have written this article to clarify the usage of "Boomer" and "VOOMER".
The first series to be released was Bubblegum Crisis, an OVA made in the mid 80s that became a cyberpunk classic. In this series the humanoid machines are referred to as 
"Boomers". It is agreed universally that in the original BGC the machines are called "Boomers" and nothing else. When the series was dubbed by AnimEigo the name "Boomer" was kept and there is no mention of "VOOMER" anywhere in the original series. Two more series were released, Bubblegum Crash and AD Police OVA, and both used "Boomer" to describe the androids.
Now here comes the interesting part. Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 was released along with another lesser known series, AD Police TV. Both series feature a written form which explains an acronym for a new word describing the machines, "VOOMER". This is the first time this word has ever been used in a Bubblegum Crisis universe.
The meaning for the acronym, "VOOMER", is:
V O o d o o
O r g a n i c
M e t a l
E x t e n s i o n
R e s o u r c e
However, because there is no V in the Japanese language, the Japanese voice actors in both BGC2040 and ADPTV continued to say "Boomer" because of their language limitations in that area. This all seems pretty simple and understandable up to this point but it gets worse...
The day came when ADV Films acquired both Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 and AD Police TV. Interestingly ADV Films decided to tell their voice actors to refer to the machines as "Boomers" instead of the new word "VOOMER", due to the already established word in the Bubblegum Crisis OVA made in the mid 80s. At the same time, they also dubbed AD Police TV and in that series they accepted the use of "VOOMER" so their voice actors used that word instead of "Boomer", which is puzzling isn't it? Why would ADV Films use "Boomer" in BGC2040 and "VOOMER" in ADPTV? Well it could be the fact that the acronym of "VOOMER" first appeared in written form in episode 22 and the folks at ADV Films didn't know about it until that point. ADV Films finally took notice of this HUGE error they had made. In the extras of their DVDs they claimed that in Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, the androids known as "Boomers" were the older androids which looked more like robots while "VOOMERs" were the newer, human looking androids. Also in ADPTV they claimed that the word "Boomer" was a slang word used to describe "Rogue VOOMERs." These two facts should be disregarded completely since they are not true to the original Japanese version. ADV Films has confused you all with this information and misuse of words.
Now to sum up everything I had just said. If you use the word "Boomer" you are correct to a certain extent. If you use the word "Voomer" you are also correct to a certain extent. Here is a list of the correct terms to use with each series.
Bubblegum Crisis OVA - "Boomer"
Bubblegum Crash OVA - "Boomer"
AD Police OVA - "Boomer"
Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 - "VOOMER" (However, "Boomer" is acceptable)
AD Police TV - "VOOMER"
Parasite Dolls - "Boomer"
Now that you know, spread the word. Personally I don't care what you really call them, this is just for your information.