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Plot Synopsis

In the semi-distant future, bounty hunters have become a major reality. Cowboy Bebop follows the crazy antics of two bounty hunters named Spike Spiegel and Jet Black. Throughout the anime they come across many odd faces of bounties and even some friends. By the middle of the series, the Bebop--the ship Jet owns as an HQ for his team--is filled not only with Jet and Spike, but Faye, a beautifully dangerous bounty hunter, and Ed, a crazy 9-year-old tomboy master hacker. Throughout the twenty-six episodes and one movie (that takes place between episodes 24 and 25) the Bebop crew go through many bounties and crazy adventures just to scrounge around for some type of income to keep them alive. In the many episodes the animation is just perfect, with real-physics fighting and great-choreographed battles, with an amazing soundtrack done by Yoko Kanno. Bebop is an anime for the people who love comedy mixed with great action and drama.

Story & Characters

In this series the viewers follow a charismatic, and often cocky, green-headed bounty hunter named Spike.

The story takes place far into the future where Mars is colonized and space portals can whisk you off to the corners of space. However, the crime rate has gone up in the years, and high crime is the new ‘it’. With few heroes and a lacking police presence, it is up to bounty hunters such as Spike to catch the bad guys and clean up the galaxy.

As we follow our bounty hunter from job to job, we slowly piece together his jumbled up past. Sometimes we learn about his past through dreams and back-flashes, and other times through confrontations with old foes and friends. All in all, the lack of background info is somewhat made up for by the kick-ass action scenes that can actually get you jumping out of your seat.

The plot from episode to episode is not always connected, and sometimes you can get lost in the subtleties of the story. The flow of the main story line is not always strong enough to keep you interested, and the action scenes, although riveting, lack the importance and magnitude that story line enriching (is that right?) scenes do. I found myself drifting and sometimes just totally turned off by the slow pace of it all.

I’m not gonna lie, I found this series to be unexciting and sometimes dangerously slow. It could have been exceptionally better if there wasn’t so much missing as far as character pasts. Also, I wish the plot was more firmly established towards the beginning, too.

Rating

3 (poor)

Art

The art of Bebop was smooth and well produced. I adored the intricate characters and their movements. The shading and lighting was exceptional most of the time as well. Although sometimes the animator(s) went a little to light, all in all, good animation.

Characters were sharp and nice, and no confusion as to light sources or any confusion as to where shadows should and shouldn't go. However, I didn’t really like how the amount of clothes the characters wore was dictated by their gender. Call me old fashioned, but I kind of think girls should wear shirts in deep space. I mean, come on, I know it’s provocative and sexy, but we don’t need THAT much man!

The only thing i had a problem with was the slightly dull qualities of really light, sunny scenes.

Rating

7 (above average)

Sound

Audibly, Bebop is pretty good. It doesn't just have one volume, and nothing is visibly missmatched in the dubbed version.

However, sometimes the voices on the dubbed version are to soft. It might just be my DVD player, but it might not.

The background music is jazzy and eccentric as far as anime music goes. This lends a level of authenticity to the series. Not very many anime series have this genre of music, and Bebop does, which gives it a sense of originality and ‘zip’.

I believe that the jazz track is the main allure, subliminally, of this anime series. Without the jazz, this series, quite simply put, has no jazz.

Rating

7 (above average)

Presentation

As far as originality, Bebop is spot on. It does at times remind me of Tenchi Universe, but that's only because the space ships are kind of similar (Tenchi Universe beats Bebop though). Robin Witchhunter had a very similar vibe about it, and the humor is almost identical between the two (Robin being slightly less humorous than Bebop, of course.)

The feeling is vintage 1990’s anime meets old school tech, and the innovation on the settings and characters is very pleasing. Bebop is definitely original.

The humor of Bebop isn’t usually slap stick, but more of a dry, intelligent type. Mature as it can be, the humor does change for most of the characters. The funniest character by far would have to be Ed with her crazy talk, and Spike is sarcastically witty to boot. All in all, pleasantly funny.

Most of the humor takes place towards the end of the episodes, but that isn’t unusual. Once all the conflict is over, humor is usually a common step. That doesn’t mean it’s the most pleasing step, just the easiest. It would have been more intriguing if there wasn’t so much of sarcastic Spike, and more physical humor during appropriate action scenes (i.e.-FLCL, Inuyasha, Ramna1/2, etc).

As I said before, although the action scenes are riveting, and the audibility is moderate-exceptional (especially with the background jazz track), I still didn’t really enjoy the plot, or story line.

Many have called this series genius, but honestly, I see it as a moderate to pretty good series, dubbed or not.

Rating

6 (average)

Final Verdict

5.33 (moderate)

Reviewed by Muffincakes, 3y 37wk ago