Cowboy Bebop (1998)
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Cowboy Bebop Review
Cowboy Bebop is a 1998 sci-fi western anime series directed by Shinichiro Watanabe. It’s a very overrated piece of anime entertainment.
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“I’m watching a dream
I’ll never wake up from“
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There is no denying the fact that this show is very well crafted across the board. Not only is the animation very polished, but it’s also incredibly grounded in reality for anime, and overall highly respectable. The same goes for its sound, and in particular the score with the opening theme being instantly recognizable.
It also features some worthy themes of exploration with the highlights being adult crisis of boredom as well as the difficulty of escaping your past. It’s admirably raw and serious in its tone, but that was also its downfall as the show lacks a sense of fun or excitement to it.
The dialogue is great undoubtedly, but the plot is not for me. That is to say that this is above everything else a western show and I do not care personally for that genre, and those elements bored me to death here. Also the neo-noir stuff isn’t all that exciting or memorable.
The sci-fi elements are actually pretty good, but overall they are minor in comparison to those aforementioned genres which led to a duller than expected watch for me. The structure is also very problematic as the show is episodic to a fault, but it introduces at times its main ark storyline, and simply that mixing of the two felt rushed and haphazard.
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Jet is a very memorable character and I really liked Faye, but Spike is just your standard action hero type of guy meaning that he’s boring and forgettable. I found the action overall rather pedestrian in this show, and the handling of its female characters obviously male-centric. This show can only thus appeal to the straight male demographic.
So in the end, I liked Cowboy Bebop to a degree, but I mostly respected it instead of truly liked it. It’s a solid, but forgettable and somewhat dull diversion with most of its twenty six episodes not being all that memorable when all is said and done. This is why I find the series highly overrated when it comes to its high placement in anime rankings. And subjectively speaking, it is simply not my cup of tea in any shape or form.
Worst Episodes: Ganymede Elegy, Jupiter Jazz Part 1 and Cowboy Funk.
Best Episodes: Honky Tonk Women, Bohemian Rhapsody and Brain Scratch.
