3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Tale of two formats Jul 14, 2007
reviewed by larryniven
I have to divide this review up into an anime review and a manga review, because they're significantly different. To begin with, the anime (including the movie):
***** out of ***** There's not one bad thing I can say about the Cowboy Bebop anime. To begin with, the music is a joy. Yoko Kanno, no jazz expert, composed several CDs worth of fantastic music, ranging from fast-paced bebop to a particularly entertaining hard rock track. The music, together with Shinichiro Watanabe's super-cool directing style, makes the Cowboy Bebop universe totally realistic and very easy to get into.
But that's not all the series has going for it: the main character, Spike Spiegel, is, to be straightforward, a total badass. He's a bounty hunter (badass) who owns spaceship (badass), knows all sorts of martial arts (badass), and has his own personal nemesis (badass). He and the other main characters fit right into Watanabe's noir-esque universe, and they develop at the natural pace of the series. Their adventures and misadventures develop not just our understanding of the characters, but also our understanding of the world around us.
The animation is high-quality, the acting is spot-on, and the series has enough subtlety and deep meaning that you'll want to watch it more than once. This, to me, is almost the perfect anime. Unfortunately, the manga doesn't quite keep up:
**.5 out of ***** Adapted from the anime, the manga presents a few original stories. All the main characters are back, looking just like they did in the anime. The problem is that the entire atmosphere gets lost in translation. There's no music, first of all. The deadpan humor of the original series gets thrown off by the author's brighter sensibilities. The plotlines fail to take advantage of the dark tone that the anime established. In general, it just doesn't feel like Cowboy Bebop. If this was its own series, unconnected from Watanabe's work, it would've been entertaining enough to get 3 or 4 stars. But it just had too high of a mark to hit. Definitely watch the anime, but only read the manga if you absolutely must.
larryniven also recommended: Samurai Champloo, Outlaw Star,
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