Cowboy Bebop [review]

On Tuesday, May 24, 2011 0 comentarii



Alternative Titles
Japanese: カウボーイビバップ

Information
Type: TV
Episodes: 26
Status: Finished Airing
Aired: Apr 3, 1998 to Apr 24, 1999
Producers: Sunrise, Bandai Visual, Bandai Entertainment
Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi, Space
Duration: 24 min. per episode
Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Review

Story: It's the year 2071 AD, and mankind has colonized the entire solar system. Spike Spiegel is a Cowboy (this era's term for bounty hunters) who works with Jet Black to track down bounties and struggle to live off of them. Along the way, they pick up a few extra people and their pasts are bought to light.

Cowboy Bebop is, for the most part, a bounty of the week episode, with some minor continuing threads. All in all, it's done pretty well, with bounties delving into the pasts of characters, and being just interesting in general. The characters are an interesting bunch of people, with Ed taking the cake as crack in human form. :P

Some will complain that the plot in the last two episodes comes out of nowhere, but they're a bit inaccurate there; the threads have been building up in episodes here and there throughout the show, though they are admittedly a bit scattered.

Art: The show's a bit dated, obviously. But, compared to other shows that were airing around that time (Ruroni Kenshin, Beserk), the animation is pretty good. The designs for characters are very well done, and the designs for the ships and all the backgrounds in particular are amazingly detailed.

Music: Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts did the work for this soundtrack, and it's absolutely amazing. There's so much variety in all the variations on jazz and blues that they do for this, and it's amazingly catchy. This was one of the first soundtracks I actively noticed in a show and tried to find.

They also did work on the OP, "Tank!" (which Baccano! takes a cue from) and ED, "The Real Folk Blues", both of which are instantly memorable and fit the series quite well.

Length: I liked sixteen out of the twenty-six total episodes, and the series probably would've done well to keep those episodes in the long run and cut the rest. Still, all in all, that's a pretty good percentage.

Seiyuu: Megumi Hayashibara (famous for her roles as Rei Ayanami in Evangelion and Atsuko Chiba and Paprika in Paprika) plays Faye Valentine in this, and Jouji Nakata appears in a minor role. I admire Ed's seiyuu for being able to capture the sheer crazy of her character. All in all, a pretty good job.

Voice Actors: Cowboy Bebop was one of the first anime I watched, back when it was regularly airing on Adult Swim. When I went back to watch it, I found that, all things considered, the voice actors did a pretty good job with their roles. The voices weren't quite the same, but, all in all, still fit the characters pretty well. One of the better dubs I've seen out there.

Dub: Looking back on the dub, it was one of the better dubs I saw back when I was first getting into anime. A few lines of dialogue were altered in the English version, and some minor edits were made so that it was able to air on TV, but compared to DiC's butchering of Sailor Moon, it was a pretty good job. If only they could've all been this good.


Overall: A well-done show, with an episodic plot that delves into it's character's past that sporadically builds to the conclusion, detailed animation, amazing music, and a pretty good dub.

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