The series begins in the late 2032, seven years after the Second Great Kanto Earthquake has split Tokyo geographically and culturally in two. During the first episode, disparities in wealth are shown to be more pronounced than in previous periods in post-war Japan.

The main antagonist is Genom, a megacorporation with immense power and global influence. Its main product are boomers - cyberdroids used for manual labor and military purposes. While Boomers are intended to serve mankind, they become deadly instruments in the hands of ruthless individuals. The AD Police are tasked to deal with Boomer-related crimes. One of the series' themes is the inability of the department to deal with threats due to political infighting, red tape, and an insufficient budget.

The Knight Sabers are an all-female mercenary team and have considerable combat abilities using highly advanced suits of powered armor. They battle against long odds to overcome grave threats throughout the OVA series and preserve the overall safety of Mega Tokyo.

The OVA series is eight episodes long. It was originally slated to run for thirteen episodes, but due to legal problems between the two studios who jointly held the rights to the series, Artmic and Youmex, the series was discontinued. The problems may have been brought on by the series' lackluster sales in Japan. In North America, however, the series did comparatively well and has remained a fan favorite.

In Japan, a number of comic books were produced that featured characters and storylines based in the BGC (a common abbreviation for the series name) universe. Some were very much thematically linked to the OVA series, others were "one shots" or comedy features. A number of artists participated in the creation of these comics, including Kenichi Sonoda, who had produced the original Knight Saber character designs. A North American comic based in the Bubblegum Crisis Universe was published in English by Dark Horse Comics.

The series involves the adventures of the Knight Sabers, an all woman group of mercenaries who don powered armor and fight various problems, most frequently rogue boomers. Boomers are humanoid robots designed to perform a variety of tasks, from construction and firefighting to combat; a particular model of Boomer, the BU-33S "Sexaroid", is designed for sexual purpose, and also in need of human blood, as been revealed in episode 5

One of the central themes of the series, showing its Blade Runner influence strongly, is the exploration of what "human" really means. As in Blade Runner, this is often done by using the android characters, especially focusing on BU-33S.

Bubblegum Crisis was notable also in that it was one of the few early anime series that were brought over from Japan unedited and subtitled with English captions that still have a great deal of popularity today. While anime has become much more popular in the intervening years, in 1991 it was still mostly unknown as a storytelling medium in North America.

In 1997, a new series was created, titled Bubblegum Crisis 2040, but was not a sequel to the original OVA series. Headed by Chiaki J. Konaka, it was a standalone television series, and while it used similar themes to the original, it employed new designs for the characters and the mechanical devices. This series ran for twenty six episodes. Some discussion has taken place between the production companies for a second season, tentatively titled Bubblegum Crisis 2041.

Despite the age of the original series, a non-Japanese fandom still exists for it. The community of fans have produced large quantities of "fan fiction" and "fan art" based on both the OVA and television series with the current estimated count of fanfiction in English language alone well exceeding four hundred texts, though there is a preponderance of works and discussion based on the original series.