posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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
(no subject)
Memories is an anime anthology under the creative direction of Katsuhiro Otomo, the renowned creator of Akira. You will find none of the tired cliches of anime. Otomo's own segment, Magnetic Rose, is like Bebop in that it presents a vision of the future that transitions from credibly-researched futurics, into breathtaking blue-sky speculation at the fringe of technological plausibility. Rose has a bruising emotional impact. Although CB excels in music, characters, and kung-fu, I would say that for me, Rose edges out even Bebop when it comes to actual science fiction, to stand as the best SF ever animated.
Another stunning anime anthology is The Animatrix, based on the Matrix franchise. The last segment reminds me of the ambitious first chapter of Greg Egan's novel Diaspora, in which Egan described the flowering of sapient consciousness in a seed artificial intelligence.
(no subject)
Thanks for the recommendations!
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
You ask: Is there more anime out there that is like this? If there is, I could really learn to like anime.
Before I was introduced to Cowboy Bebop, I didn't really like anime all that much. Since then, I've found one other series that I like just as much as Cowboy Bebop. It's a Japanese TV series called Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (http://www.manga.com/ghosttv/index2.html). I believe it's in its second season in Japan but season one is starting to show on the Cartoon network here in the states and is slowly starting to come out on DVD. The music in GitS:SAC is done by the same person who did the music in Cowboy Bebop -- Yoko Kanno. She's quite good, and is what initially attracted me to GitS:SAC. The story, however, is what kept me on the edge of my seat. GitS:SAC is about a semi-secret section of the police (military?) in the Japanese government called "Public Safety Section 9". The story is set in the future where "cybernetic implants" have become common and most people have at least some form of them. Section 9 is called in to solve fairly tricky cybernetic crimes (more or less). Anyway, that's the short story. I highly recommend it.
P.S. Eric probably doesn't remember me, but when he came down to North Carolina and spoke at the Triangle Linux Users Group Meeting (http://www.trilug.org/) I was the TriLUG steering committee member that gave him a ride back to his hotel. On the off-chance he does, please tell him Tanner Lovelace said hello. :-)
Re: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Thanks for the recommendation.
Eric does remember your name, at least. He says hi.
Eric also tells me that he has had other people recommend "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" to him before.
Since I wrote the post you're replying to, Eric and I have watched a lot more episodes of "Bebop." Although we do enjoy the music a lot, we are getting rather frustrated at how many episodes don't seem to have any plot--or have a pseudo-plot that doesn't make a lot of sense. (We didn't feel that way about the First Session episodes of "Bebop", by the way.) Does "GitS:SAC" have stretches of plotlessness too? If it does, I'm not sure we're interested.
Re: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Actually, that's one of the things I like the most about GitS:SAC -- it has a definite arc to it. It starts somewhat slow, but picks up as it goes along with each episode adding a little bit to an overall arc. So, I'd say, no, it doesn't have "stretches of plotlessness" to it like Cowboy Bebop does.
Re: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex