SnoopyStyle
It's 2071 and humanity has spread out to the rest of the solar system with the use of hyperspace gates. A gateway accident has left the earth's surface inhabitable due to the random rain of rocks. The kung fu savant Spike Spiegel and the weary ex-cop Jet Black are bounty hunters on their spaceship Bebop. They are joined on the crew by rival Faye Valentin, wacky hacker girl Edward Wong, and a data-dog Corgi.This is a fun, inventive space crime western. The closest comparison is Firefly. It's got great characters. I would have started the show with the entire crew instead of adding them one at a time. The ninth episode would be a great pilot where they add Edward, the final crew member. Each of their arrival on the ship could have been done as flashbacks. The jazz intro does lead to the jazz inspired feel of the show where the flow can be jumpy at times. A smoother flow would allow for an easier story telling. It's a stylistic choice that has both positives and negatives. As half-hour episodes, not every episode is a fully fleshed out story. It does lead to some two parters. This is an ambitious show with memorable characters.
tomchaud
I love itttt this anime has a special place in my heart i nevere skipped the intro, old school graphics, badass characters, nice soundtrack, and i love samurai champloo too this two animees are such a classics, with nice soundtracks
Caden Engel
Before watching Cowboy Bebop I considered anime to be for losers and introverts. I quite honestly never really understood what drew people into them until watching the aforementioned show. This show has every thing you can ask for almost as if you made a robot that could do anything you ever wanted and do these things immediately after you wanted them to happen. The show has great music ranging from Jazz to Rock n Roll. It has a well driven and well formulated plot that will leaving you on the edge of your seat wanting more and more. It has a set of characters that are by far my favorite from any TV, movie, or video game series. All of the characters have their own unique and interesting past, experiences, and motivations, that help tether all of them together. This show blew me away. I was awestruck at everything, the action scenes, the music/background, and the dialogue and characters. Everything was perfect and in my honest opinion it was how I would want my ideal show/anime to be or resemble. This show will get you so emotionally invested into itself you'll place it as the most important thing of your life. It will leave you wanting more and like myself horrified at the realization that their is no more content left to watch. It will get you addicted into watching anime and even wanting to read their manga source material.There are a few things in life you have to experience before you move on into the next one and watching Cowboy Bebop and seeing the adventures of Spike, Jet, Faye, Ed, and Ein is one of them.
Victreebong
No doubt you have either caught a few seconds of Cowboy Bebop on Adult Swim, or have some mixed feelings about it that brought you here. The truth is, Cowboy Bebop is GENRE DEFINING. It is not over-hyped, it is lauded for a multitude of reasons.We'll start off with main cast. We have a go-to overly confident tall handsome antihero with a dark past. Spike Spiegel drives a spike through the word "cool". He's polite, cunning, charming, talented, a bit of a klutz, good with the ladies, better with everyone else, he's a great guy. He knows how to kickass, but he definitely gets his ass kicked a couple of times too. His partner in crime is levelheaded ex-cop with a handicap; Jet. Then there's a Welsh corgi (Ein means one in German people), a hot gambling super bitch (the lovely Faye Valentine), an air-headed pre-teen hacker chick who has no reserve or inner monologue (Ed), Cowboy Bebop has quite the cast of tropes. (By the way, "Ein" is "one", Ed has two letters, Jet has three, Faye has four, do I need to tell you who has five? Even in the names of this series there's a meaning!) And yet, they blend right in with one another! The best episodes, the one's that really get viewership and make the Bebop a family are the ones in the middle of the series where everyone interacts with each other. And what do they do, hunt down cons for moola of course! Which brings us to setting. Beautifully, almost poetically the creators set this series in and around our solar system, not just on Earth. A fatal accident during early stages of hyper speed space travel caused a gate collapse which destroyed sections of the moon, causing large boulders to bombard Earth. So civilization seeks refuge from Venus to Saturn. The leftovers live subterranean. The result is artistic license of moons and planets of solar system envisioned in ways that exaggerate what we're accustomed to on Earth. For example, Venus has toxic gases that can only be mitigated by pills from plants foreign to the planet, Calisto has a frozen tundra similar to the Ukraine, you get the idea. Meanwhile, lots of space means lots of room for crime just like on Earth.Which brings us to plot. Cowboy Bebop is about people. Of all walks of life and colors. While Spike, Faye, Ed and Jet may be Japanese in basis, the rest of the cast is far from it. This is a melting pot similar to what we see everyday in the U.S. This is the first show I can recall that in all seriousness displayed homosexual men and a transgender individual in all seriousness, and did it very well. The bounties range from a child whose paralyzed controlling a computer network, to an elderly man seeking revenge against a corporation that caused the gate accident, all the way to love interests of the main cast. They are not homogenized Japanese or Caucasian. And there's good ones mixed with plenty of corrupt ones.Which finally gets me to character development. Bebop is gloriously and frustratingly short. It is heralded as the only anime that ended too soon. And although we could watch Spike and Ed's antics for years, what was given to us is concise, precise and deliberate. We see everyone's back history, where they are going, and why from start too finish, while still imagining what else could be in store. There is no scene in this show which is filler, it never overstays its welcome. If there's one trick to staying a hip cat like Spike Spiegel, its not being the last on to leave the party. Cowboy Bebop stays true to form.So if you're on the fence about the show, watch at least a few episodes if you haven't already. It has a mix of Americana and music from several walks of life (each episode is an actual or very similar title of a famous song that plays to the theme of the episode). The animation is extremely well done, the tone is noir mixed with funk, and the whole series is just a masterpiece."You're going to carry that weight."
