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cathyr19355 at 12:43am on 21/11/2004
cathyr19355 at 12:43am on 21/11/2004Another thing Eric and I have been doing with our copious spare time lately is renting Cowboy Bebop episodes from our local "if they don't have it, it doesn't exist" video store.
For anyone not familiar with it, "Cowboy Bebop" is an anime TV SF series about a crew of bounty hunters in 2071 CE. ("Bebop", if you're wondering, is the name of their spaceship, and Cowboy a reasonable description of the series ethos). The two main characters are Spike, an ex-member of a Chinese mafia-type gang, and Jet Black, an ex-cop. So far we have watched the first 10 episodes, and they have already acquired three more crew members--a woman, a kid, and a dog. There is something special about each of them, but I won't go into details here, because it's more fun if you just watch the episodes and let the story unfold....
The feel of the series is a lot like that of the ill-fated US "Firefly" series. The ambiance of Bebop is much grittier--think William Gibson's Sprawl rather than frontier planets. But both have the same idea at their core--a bunch of broken people, thrown together largely by chance, cruise through interstellar space in the near future doing things on the edge of the law to scrape by. As with Firefly, many of the Bebop plots turn upon the interactions and peculiarities of the main characters--which come across surprisingly well. The music (mostly but not entirely blues) is very good, and some of the visuals, particularly the planet scapes and space station shots, are stunning.
Is there more anime out there that is like this? If there is, I could really learn to like anime.
For anyone not familiar with it, "Cowboy Bebop" is an anime TV SF series about a crew of bounty hunters in 2071 CE. ("Bebop", if you're wondering, is the name of their spaceship, and Cowboy a reasonable description of the series ethos). The two main characters are Spike, an ex-member of a Chinese mafia-type gang, and Jet Black, an ex-cop. So far we have watched the first 10 episodes, and they have already acquired three more crew members--a woman, a kid, and a dog. There is something special about each of them, but I won't go into details here, because it's more fun if you just watch the episodes and let the story unfold....
The feel of the series is a lot like that of the ill-fated US "Firefly" series. The ambiance of Bebop is much grittier--think William Gibson's Sprawl rather than frontier planets. But both have the same idea at their core--a bunch of broken people, thrown together largely by chance, cruise through interstellar space in the near future doing things on the edge of the law to scrape by. As with Firefly, many of the Bebop plots turn upon the interactions and peculiarities of the main characters--which come across surprisingly well. The music (mostly but not entirely blues) is very good, and some of the visuals, particularly the planet scapes and space station shots, are stunning.
Is there more anime out there that is like this? If there is, I could really learn to like anime.
awake
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