I have now finished off all the Cowboy Bebop (CB) available as DVDs on Netflix (Discs 4 and 6 are permanently unavailable).\u00a0 This includes the 2-hour movie which I watched last night.\u00a0 And I think that\u2019s sufficient to allow me to make a definitive judgement on the series vis-\u00e0-vis my taste.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s good.<\/p>\n
It has some weaknesses from my point of view.\u00a0 There is a silliness that can be annoying for me.\u00a0 The crazy adolescent girl Edward can be a bit much.\u00a0 Some of the episodes are pretty thin on plot.\u00a0 And some of the space battle scenes seem (not surprisingly) cartoonish.\u00a0 I think most of this can be chalked up to the standard cartoon sci-fi conventions.\u00a0 Things are simplified and standardized to allow economic production of the animation product.\u00a0 And to be fair, since I have never been a comic book or movie consumer, I\u2019m not their primary audience.\u00a0 To an anime consume, CB is probably well to the right side of the standard deviation curve with respect to production values, plot and characterization.<\/p>\n
I like the quality of the animation especially the scenes in outer space.\u00a0 Some of it is strikingly well done.\u00a0 I liked the scenario of independent contractors moving in and out of the legitimate world acting as bounty hunters while they themselves are not without a certain air of criminality.\u00a0 And obviously here are the similarities with Firefly.\u00a0 After viewing the majority of CB I\u2019ll state that I\u2019m convinced that Whedon borrowed heavily from it when making Firefly.\u00a0 But I\u2019m sure CB borrowed from earlier anime for some of its ideas so I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a big deal.\u00a0 But I will say that at this point I\u2019d much prefer a big screen (or big budget tv) version of CB were made rather than of Firefly.\u00a0 Whedon is such an SJW that he’d probably have Serenity going back in time just to battle Donald Trump.\u00a0 \u00a0My only hedge on having CB instead of Firefly is that is I\u2019d like to see Jet Black played by Adam Baldwin.\u00a0 He would be damn near perfect for the part.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I would say that the CB movie demonstrates how a longer treatment of the material improves it.\u00a0 More characterization shows through and there is more scope for interesting story telling.\u00a0 Also, the animation of the city in the movie was extremely well done.\u00a0 It looked like whole sections of New York City were digitized to make the action possible in the chase scenes.\u00a0 And speaking of the chase scenes, one of the flying chases was a little too long.\u00a0 Although intricate and well laid out it eventually started to drag on.\u00a0 The fight scenes between the protagonist Spike and his nemesis were very good and enjoyable.\u00a0 Most of the minor characters were fairly well utilized.\u00a0 Surprisingly, the seemingly superfluous presence of the welsh corgi dog on the space ship actually felt like a positive addition to me.\u00a0 But maybe I just like dogs.<\/p>\n
So, bottom line, Cowboy Bebop is good sci-fi anime.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t particularly like anime you still might enjoy it.\u00a0 It has piqued my interest in the genre enough that I\u2019m going to give another anime movie (Ghosts in the Shell 2.0) a look-see and find out if this was just a one off or not.<\/p>\n
See you Space Cowboy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have now finished off all the Cowboy Bebop (CB) available as DVDs on Netflix (Discs 4 and 6 are permanently unavailable).\u00a0 This includes the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237,4,243,244,240],"tags":[9,312,310,48,345,44,309,344],"class_list":["post-1441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","tag-adam-baldwin","tag-anime","tag-cowboy-bebop","tag-firefly","tag-joss-whedon","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-space-cowboy"],"yoast_head":"\n