Cowboy Bebop
Date of last revision: 04/08/03
Genre: Action | Comedy | Drama
Company: Sunrise
American Licensing Company: Bandai Entertainment
Format: 25 minute episodes (26 total)
Dates: First run showed miscellanous 12 episodes: 04/03/1998 to 06/19/1998, Second run showed 26 episodes: 10/23/1998 to 04/23/1999 (due to show changing stations from Tokyo TV to WOWWOW)
Original Creator: Hajime Yatate (Original Concept)
Age Rating: 15-18 and up
Synopsis: Spike Spiegel, a bounty hunter, lives on wit and barely gets his bounties, or not at all. His partners Jet Black, Faye Valentine, Ed and Ein the dog all help him in his adventures through space. But, it's not all adventure and games. Spike has a dark past that won't stop haunting him.
Time for interstellar fun with a bit of retro class!
SCORE: 81%
Plot: Plot? What plot? Actually, this show doesn't need a definite plot; it worked anyway. That is suppose to be how this show works; almost every episode has it's own self-contained story. That's part of the show's charm; you don't have to actually stick with it the entire time to keep up with the plot. You might not like that, so if that is the case, be happy to know that eventually there mult-episode plot...except it's almost entirely in the last two episodes.
When it comes to originality...this show has it, yet it doesn't. That's because this show has a very retro feel to it, and for good reason. The old anime, Lupin the III, is apparently the biggest influence of this show. Spike is Lupin in some attitudes and definitely in dress. Faye is Fujiko (slick money-digger) and Jet is Jigen (righthand man that is reliable and gets important stuff done). The odd-balls out are Goemon and Ed, but they match together since both tend to be the socialably weird ones (both help immensely in fights and struggles in their own oddball ways). ^_^
Not much more to say plot wise, since the plot isn't extremely prominent. This series is much more about characterization and flashiness than a overly driven plot.
Visual: Visuals were excellent in this series, and the opening itself is awesome. Machinery was cool, so were computers, gunplay, explosions, and character designs. CGI seemed to be used a bit too much and was a tad unnecessary at times, and was definitely a display of what the animators could do. Soft shading in this show really brought out the atmosphere of the scenes, be in the shading of sensual clothing or a lazily trailing whisp of cigeratte smoke.
Sound: The soundtrack is awesome, and the opening TANK! by Yoko Kanno and her group The Seatbelts, always makes a person want to dance to this jazzin' beat. The titles of the episodes themselves are all titles of famous songs, and really added to the show. The music is beautiful, excellent and always fits the mood.
Sound wasn't extraordinary, but worked well.
Voices were very good, and even though I've heard several of these voices before, they were't boring.
The Dub: Good dub. Spike's voice is by a voice actor notorious for being emotionless (people like the sound of his voice, but sometimes he sounds very listless). However, this voice fit Spike pretty well. All the other dubbing voices were also good, with plenty of variety that matched the characters and their backgrounds.
Dub Letter Grade: A
Extra Rants and Bitching: This was a great show to watch...maybe the first 12 episodes, and then the last two! Don't get me wrong, but as good as this show is, missing one episode never hurts since there is usually not underlining plot to keep track of.
Score Comments: The score is pretty good for this series, I think. It's a good show. I liked the characters, even if the lack of orignality is a bit aggravating. No doubt about it though, this show is definitely a classic, especially here in the U.S., for making so many more anime fans out of Americans.
Websites:
Have a website about this series, or do you know of a good one? Want me to link to it on this review? Well, the feel free to email the sucker to me! Just make sure to put "Review Link" in the subject.