Cowboy Bebop

[lhb412]

In honor of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie making it's US Blu Ray debut later this month I've started rewatching this cultural touchstone (for me, anyway) of a series. I'm only a few episodes in (Asteroid Blues, Stray Dog Strut, and Honky Tonk Woman) and I'm still amazed by how strongly the show starts off. Most great shows seem to need at least a little time to build up to greatness, others that start out with a bang - but actually blew their wad at the beginning and have less to show for it as they go on. At the very least, anime typically reserve the first few episodes for introducing all their characters, and while Cowboy Bebop does technically do that it takes its own sweet time. You get the feeling that there position is that they'll complete the main cast when they feel like it. The introduction we're given to Spike and Jet in episode one is brief, and we end up learning about how they operate through the episode's main story without even thinking that's what we're doing, fully invested as we are in the plot about a performance enhancing madman and his lady friend being hunted down by both the mob, the law, and our bounty hunter protagonists. This philosophy of exposition extends to the whole series and is a big aspect of what makes the show great: there is world building and character development and several story arcs being carefully built up, but they never diminish the individual episode's commitment to being a good story on its own. I suppose what I;m getting at is that the first episode is a great way to start the series, a great introduction, but it doesn't feel like an introduction. Come to think of it, adding or subtracting a few shots of Ein the dog to the episodes (the only way to tell the order since he joins the crew in episode 2) the first three episodes could be aired in any order!

[metal_bryan]

[MekaGojira3k]

I love Cowboy Bebop. I've been catching re-runs here and there on Adult Swim recently, and my god..that show has aged well. It's just so well made that I can't find anything to complain about. I really need to sit down and re-watch it some time, maybe this summer.

[Dr Kain]

[lhb412]

[EricDent]

[lhb412]

[Andrew Nguyen]

This is one of the finest of not the finest Japanese anime show ever. Too bad they don't really produce these types of shows anymore.

[kiryugoji04]

[Andrew Nguyen]

[MekaGojira3k]

[lhb412]

All four of the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack albums are now on US iTunes.

... pretty cool.

[Dr Kain]

[EricDent]

[kiryugoji04]

[Silver Kamen]

I've never seen it either... guess I'll start watching now.

[lhb412]

[Dr Kain]

Just sold off all of my DVDs today since I won't end up watching the series until the BDs are out (of course, I also haven't watched those DVDs in 6 years)

[Silver Kamen]

[Dr Kain]

[Silver Kamen]

[lhb412]

[lhb412]

Just got the recent-isn Blu-Ray of the series and I'm loving it all over again.

(special note: while the Blu-Ray benefits the traditional animation of the series, the digital effects were done in standard definition, so don't get mad at your copy for 'not really being HD!' or something like that)

It's really interesting how the series teases a whole lot of worldbuilding backstory and just leaves it on the table. The world of Cowboy Bebop is so immediately familiar because of how it reflects cultural touchstones, but you're occasionally reminded that this vision of the future has gone through a whole lot of tumult since our present - but none of that is too important for the stories at hand. It's just something that rewards attentive viewers. One element of that I really love are the clues that after decades of a society being in a 'Wild West' kind of state things are just now becoming stable and our characters (bounty hunters and gangsters) are becoming outdated. It's the end of an era, and that sort of ties the whole series together.

[kiryugoji04]

See, one of the things I kind of hated about the series was how lazy the world-building felt. Mars is SPACE HONG KONG! Titan is SPACE AFGANISTAN! Venus is SPACE TURKEY! And Callisto is LITERALLY SPACE RUSSIA!

[Rody]

I also started watching the show again via my Blu-ray copies, and I'm loving the show even more.
...Which reminds me, I need to get back to it...

As much as I admire world building in fiction, I haven't given Cowboy Bebop's world building as much thought; but maybe that's just indicative of how subtly immersive I find the show to be.