Genre: Science Fiction

Creator:

No of Episodes/Volumes of Manga: 26 Episodes

Reviewer: StorminNorman

Review:

Cowboy Bebop has style. It has lots of style. From the suave stylings of Spike Spiegel, through to the sheer sexiness of Faye Valentine (the sexiest female anime character ever) and Jet Black, the obligitory wise old man, Cowboy Bebop makes sure that you know it has style. And lets not start on Radical Edward (is it a girl? is it a boy? is it a super-elite hacker?) and Ein, the dog.

Cowboy Bebop is a 26-part series, set in a future where the earth is no longer truly habitable after an event called the `gate accident' which destroyed most of the moon, and left moon rock raining down on the surface of the planet. The story centres around the crew of the Bebop, a group of bounty hunters who never seem to make much money from all the bounty hunting that they do. They all have dark pasts, which get explored through the series, making for some excellent episodes as the series continues.

It's worth mentioning that the first few episodes of CB are rather subdued, and it isn't until episode 8 or 9 that it really picks up. Also, the series, while telling a continuous story, has several episodes that could be viewed out of order with the rest of the series. This is quite rare in an anime series, where every episode usually continues the story from the previous episode.

But Cowboy Bebop is not a regular anime. It's one of those rare series that actually manages to survive translation pretty well, and even the dubbed version is pretty decent (though this review is, of course, based on a subtitled version). CB is also one of three series that came out in 1998 that had spaghetti western influences (The other two series are Trigun, which is the most western of them, and Outlaw Star). CB is by far the best of these series, filled with intriguing plot developments, and a bunch of characters that you can like.

The animation quality in Cowboy Bebop is excellent, featuring high quality CG, alongside traditional cel animation. The colours are vibrant (hey, this is outer space... of course its colourful) and the locations are excellently drawn. From the opening episode's Tijuana, to the cities on Ganymede and even the post-apocalyptic earth, every place that the Bebop crew visits feels real.

With a title like Cowboy Bebop you would expect there to be some strong musical influences in the series, and you'd be right. Every episode has a name that resembles a song (or, in the case of `Honky Tonk Woman' is a song), from `Jupiter Jazz' to `Ganymede Elegy' and `The Real Folk Blues' (the name of the 2 part series finale, and also the closing credits theme). Not only that, but Bebop has one of the best anime soundtracks this side of Serial Experiments Lain. Composed by Yoko Kanno-- who I am convinced is a musical genius-- the soundtrack features Ry Cooder style slide blues, some emotional rock songs (check out `Blue' or `Space Lion'), and of course, jazzy bebop. Throw in some sultry lounge numbers and you have the perfect musical compliment to the visual stylings of Cowboy Bebop.

One of the great things about CB is that it appeals to a wide audience. It lacks the tortured psychologies of Serial Experiments Lain, yet doesn't suffer the slightly overdone humour of Trigun. It is still emotionally involving however, and has an ending that is both understandable, and sad.

Cowboy Bebop is proof that good anime doesn't have to appeal to a closed community of freaks and fans, and is the sort of series that, if network television could get over it's `cartoons are for children' attitude, would find a home on any of our commercial free-to-air networks. Failing that, SBS should snap this up in a flash, as it will become more popular than South Park. Well... a boy can dream can't he?

Oh yeah... did I mention that Faye Valentine is sexy?

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