Cowboy Bebop - Anime Review

Welcome to a video that I have wanted to make for a long time, and that is where I sit down and talk about my favorite anime television show of all time after I just had the privilege of seeing what it looks like. Cowboy Bebop, directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, one of the best anime television shows ever made, is finally available on blu-ray from Funimation. Now, I have talked about this show in the past, but a lot of people, and rightly so, have asked me for a more in-depth video in which I talk about my favorite episodes, my favorite moments, some of the ways it inspired me, and some of the ways it's inspired anime fans around the world, and people who are just fans of good entertainment. Cowboy Bebop is set in the year 2071, and it follows a group of bounty hunters who are trying to survive. They don't always get along very well, and each one of them has a very difficult past, and the entire show explores that in depth and in a beautiful way. If any anime out there is proof that good character means that you've got a great show, that's Cowboy Bebop, because every character in this show is vastly interesting as a person, and the fact that I'm actually referring to them as a person really tells you how awesome these characters are, because they're drawings, you know, but I feel like they're people. The lead character is Spike Spiegel, who's voiced by the great Steve Blum in the English dub, which, by the way, the English dub, in my opinion, is superior, and one of the few dubs that almost universally is viewed as superior. The character of Spike Spiegel is an amalgamation of many different people in classic film. Clint Eastwood, for one. Bruce Lee. He practices Bruce Lee's fighting style, and you can see it quite often in the show. In the first episode of the show, Asteroid Blues, you see Spike practicing that fighting style, but he's also a very lazy, sleepy guy who really likes to just lay around and eat noodles, but what's so good about this character is his past, and from episode one, before the opening credits even air, you see a little glimpse of that past, and you realize it's going to add a weight to the show, weight that you're going to carry. If you haven't seen the show, you won't get that. For those of you who have, he has this epic, depth-filled past with this guy named Vicious, the main antagonist of the show, and the polar opposite of Spike, and whenever these guys clash, it's just crying, like I cry. Tears, okay? But since this review is kind of special to me, I'd like to tell you a little bit about how I discovered Cowboy Bebop. It was the first ever anime that was broadcast on Adult Swim back in 2001. It is still broadcast on Adult Swim's Toonami today, but I vividly remember when Adult Swim was brand new, and it was just like the home movies cartoon and things like that. I saw a promo for this thing called Cowboy Bebop, and I thought, that looks really awesome. I'd like to watch that. I have this memory burned into my head. I was with my family at a friend's house. I knew Cowboy Bebop was at home recording on the VCR, yeah, and I was like, I can't wait to get home and find out what happens in Jupiter Jazz Part 2, because it was like a to-be-continued arc, and I was just like, oh my gosh, what happens? It's a show that starts out, and you think, this is just really fun, really well-animated action, cool characters, but by episode five, it's called Ballad of Fallen Angels, and it's the episode that hooked me. I remember just watching it, being like, this is more than animation. This is actually transcendent of animation. It just felt as if it had something else about it, the stylistic quality of it, and Yoko Kanno's music. This woman is a genius. To this day, she is probably my favorite composer. I think she is absolutely brilliant. Everything she's done with Cowboy Bebop, and the things she's done since with Anime Like Kids on the Slope, and Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex, this woman is a genius of musical composition, and her score for Cowboy Bebop, in my opinion, is the greatest soundtrack to anything in television ever. It's so well done, and it's the kind of music that reminds you of classic jazz, and Cowboy Bebop had a huge impression on me in regards to liking jazz as well, and I'm not talking about, like, going to a club and wearing tight pants and going like this. I'm talking about, like, Miles Davis stuff, like the good stuff, the good jazz that makes you appreciate music as an art form. The kind of stuff that Vincent talks about in Collateral, you know, the unpredictability of jazz. I love the score for this show. It's one of the best ever. If you like that type of music, all you gotta do is listen to the opening theme called Tank, and you'll love it. Now, about those characters. Faye Valentine is devastatingly sexy as an anime character, and I say devastating because she's a cartoon, so part of me is like, wow, I'm a huge nerd, and then the other part of me is like, she's not real, but she's also really funny, a total badass. Like, she doesn't need any men to take care of her, but once you do really find out what's happening behind that hard exterior of hers, she becomes one of the most heartfelt characters in the whole show. Spike's partner, Jet Black, is freaking awesome. I mean, this guy is like the father figure of the entire Bebop crew. He also has a very important past, and that's what I love about this show. All the characters are so fleshed out to the point where you could really watch them do anything, and a lot of the episodes are just them kind of hanging out and talking, and of course the little girl named Edward. That's right, little girl named Edward is just insane. She's crazy. She's like the comedic aspect of the show. You know, she's kind of the comic relief, but she's not an annoying character. Like, you could look at her and think, wow, that character could be very annoying. She's this strange hacker kid who just like says random stuff all the time, and you would think that would get tiresome after a while, but she's great, and the little dog Ein is adorable, and for a long time I wanted a Welsh Corgi. That didn't happen, though. In regards to favorite episodes in the show, by far, Ballad of Fallen Angels Episode 5 is that one that hooked me, and the one where I went, okay, this is more than just a fun anime show. It's one of the episodes that made me realize that anime truly can be an art form that transcends the fighting genre or the Sailor Moon type stuff, you know? Cowboy Bebop was the show that was sort of like what Metal Gear Solid was for me in video games. When I played Metal Gear Solid, I went, wow, games can really go beyond... When I watched Cowboy Bebop, I realized that anime could really go beyond... I do love me some Dragon Ball Z, though. Fan for life. One of the most underrated episodes, I think, of the entire show is an episode called Toys in the Attic that feels completely separated from the rest of the show. It's like a total standalone episode. It's very similar to the Fly episode of Breaking Bad. You're like, what? Like, where is this? This episode just comes out of left field. The entire episode's a tribute to the movie Alien. Some strange thing is loose on the ship, and it's giving everyone this virus, and Spike and everyone has to try to figure out where it is. It's very suspenseful, it's very creepy, and it's very artfully done, and I love that episode. Another great one is Parole LeFou, which is this creepy clown guy who's gone insane, escaped a mental asylum, and is just wandering around killing everyone, and he can challenge Spike in a fight, and it's awesome. And of course, no spoilers, but the last two episodes are truly heart-wrenching. There honestly is not a single dull moment in the entire 26-episode run of Cowboy Bebop. Even the worst episode, which is probably Boogie Woogie Feng Shui, even that one I could watch over and over again, because the characters. The characters. You care so much about these guys, they're so much fun to watch, they're so interesting, and they have so much depth to them that you can watch them do just about anything. I haven't even mentioned the brilliant animation. The animation is still to this day some of the best. It uses a very little bit of digital computer enhanced imagery. The rest is hand-drawn, and it's better. I mean, I'm talking leaps and bounds better than some of the animation that's being produced today in America, and even in Japan, because there's this over-reliance on computers now. Cowboy Bebop is absolutely a treasure of animation. It's a masterpiece. It's better than any anime I've ever seen. If you have not seen Cowboy Bebop, I've probably over-hyped it to the point of insanity, and you will not have the same love that I have for it, because it taught me so much about anime. It taught me about music. It taught me about film noir in animation. It taught me so many things about art. Cowboy Bebop, of course, gets an A+. It is one of the best things in animation that your eyes can see. You've been wonderful to me over the years. I've loved you very much, but now we have the Blu-ray. Thank you, Funimation. This is available right now for a very good price. Definitely check it out, guys. Also, if you saw my anime review for Yamishibai Japanese Ghost Stories, you know that I am running a great promotion right now with Crunchyroll.com. If you guys go to Crunchyroll.com slash Chris Stuckman, you can get 30 days of this anime streaming service for free. They have no ads. You get things an hour after it premieres in Japan. There isn't anything else like that in America. This is great for anime fans. This is a site built and run by anime fans to preserve the quality of anime in America. That is just crazy awesome to me, because I've been a huge fan of anime for so long, and the fact that you can watch all of this in HD with no ads and only an hour after it airs in Japan is just, like, it's free. 30 days. Just go to Crunchyroll.com slash Chris Stuckman, and there's a ton of amazing anime entertainment at your fingertips. My gift to you guys. So, guys, if you have never seen Cowboy Bebop, I strongly recommend picking up the Blu-ray. It is one of my favorite television shows ever made, and in my opinion, one of the foremost examples of how anime can truly be important. Guys, thank you so much, as always, for watching. I have a ton of videos to make. My best of the year, my worst of the year. Still a few more movie reviews to do. All of this is coming to you guys very soon. Thank you, as always, for watching, and if you like this, you can click right here and get Stuckmanized.