Year:
1998
Studio:
Bandai Entertainment/Sunrise
Feature:
4/5
DVD:
3/5
Feature
"Cowboy Bepop" is a Japanese anime series, 26 episodes in length. There
is a beginning, there is an ending, but for the most part almost all of
the episodes are standalone stories, with some episodes contributing a
little to the series metaplot. The animation is fairly standard anime
scifi, the soundtrack and music has a blues-y/western feel, and the
english voice acting is superb.
The series is based in the not too far future, 50 to 100 years from
now. Man has colonized the solar system's planets and moons, yielding a
lot of places that look like normal earth cities. Long distance travel
is by hypergate. Earth is a devastated wasteland, though many people
still live there. It's a universe with a frontier/wild west feel.
The main protagonists are a group of space cowboys, a term meaning
bounty hunter. Spike is the young hotshot with a dark past. Jet is the
wily veteran, retired from the police force. Faye is the female version
of Spike, except she doesn't even remember her past. Edward is the kid
computer whiz who has a rather stream-of-consciousness personality. Ein
is the short, cylindrically shaped enhanced dog.
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The group is
constantly short of money and many times Faye and Spike
are competing on the same bounty. Throughout the series you slowly get
to see the universe and people that inhabit it. There's quite a bit of
wry comedy, plenty of action, and over the course of the series lots of
character development. It's a very cool series.
Very cool up until the very end that is. It has a sad ending and I hate
sad endings. I can understand (maybe) why they wanted to do it that
way, but I don't agree with it. Still if you take out the last minute
of the last episode, it's a five star series.
DVD
There are six DVDs in the set. All the DVDs include four anime
trailers, though they repeat a lot. The first few DVDs include little
featurettes, short interviews with production people and cast, and a
couple of music videos for the excellent title song.
Recommendations
Highly recommended, especially if you're into science fiction and anime.
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