Cowboy Bebop

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spike Marshall 

Easily one of the more debated series in the ongoing 'Anime: Only for Paedophiles?" debate the series western influences have allowed it stand out from the crowd.

I personally flip flop all the time on the relative merits of the show. On the one hand it's got an incredibly weak start, the Spike/Vicious duel is when things really get going for me personally, it's gratingly 'hip' and Ed as a character typifies a lot of what their is to hate about anime in general. But then you have the cool stuff, like the really beautiful animation, the stand alone nature of the episodes, the absolutely brilliant music and surprisingly tight plotting (considering most stories run about twenty minutes and are usually book ended by Spike and Jet complaining about food).

In my view it's up there with Miyazaki, Akira, Last Exile and Ghost in the Shell in the 'anime to give a damn' about stakes and I'm curious how far the backlash against the show has spread.

I've rarely seen it summed up better than that. I can't speak about its place in anime, because I've barely seen any anime other than Bebop and Miyazaki, but it holds up really well against almost any live-action action or sci fi series I can think of.

And I was just thinking about this series the other day as a show which got a lot of mileage out of being playful with various genres, not in as bald-faced a way as something like The Simpsons or Community, more in a Tarantino kind of way. It's sometimes dismissed as being style over substance but in reality I don't find it that way any more than anything the likes of Tarantino or Edgar Wright have ever made. Maybe what the works of those darlings and Cowboy Bebop have in common is a filmic love and celebration of style which may sometimes be shot through with the odd genuinely touching and heartfelt scene but which generally only aim to entertain by creating vivid characters to follow through various fun/thrilling action set pieces.

And at the risk of sparking off yet another subs vs dubs Mexican standoff I'm guessing that if you've given it a shot before and found it lacking there's a 97% chance you saw the ropey dubbed version. Not that there aren't people who find the dubs to be fine and dandy, just that if you're not an anime fan (and I'm not) the typically corny dubs may repulse you because they may give the show the same corny vibe as every other corny anime. Watching it with the original Japanese actors, as long as you're not bugged by subtitles, was significantly more rewarding for me because instead of sounding like a light-hearted children's cartoon it sounds like a cool Japanese action series.

The series feels like it's made by someone who loves Kurosawa and Leone and Noir and Blade Runner. If you love them too I'd say there's a good chance you'd grow to love Cowboy Bebop

The AV Club has been doing a pretty interesting episode by episode re-watch and review if any Chewers want to play along.

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/tvshow/cowboy-bebop,185/