Ranked #103

Cowboy Bebop - Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door is a great addition to the Cowboy Bebop series, but no more. It is by no means a sequel, and after watching it, I found that it's best watched in the middle of the series, and not neccesarily at the end. If it's got a specific place or not, that I don't know, but that's not very important at any rate, and if you've watched the entire series, it shouldn't be hard to mentally place it inside the series anyway.

This time, a terrorist possesses a weapon capable of killing countless people, and there's a bounty of 300 million woolongs on him; the largest bounty ever given. Of course, this means that our heroes will chase him. And so starts the process of gathering information, meeting and getting to know people related to the bounty in some way, and eventually, squaring off against him in a final fight. Oh, and throw in a save-the-world thing this time, and there you have the movie. Nothing really new, a formula that's been used several times. There's also details here and there left unexplained, and things may just happen for no reason at the rare occasion. Its 120 minutes might be a little too long to some, but it never came off as boring at any point to me; they certainly did a good job of fleshing out those 120 minutes.

Though, that may be credited more to the characters than the plot itself, as the movie threw some really interesting characters at us. The orignal cast is, well, pretty much the same as they always are, the same characters which you (probably) got to love while watching the original series. As for the movie characters, we have for example Vincent, the main bad guy. He's quite the interesting fellow, though the more I think about it, the more I can't help but feel that I've experienced his type somewhat before - he's got a mysterious past; a forgotten love included, he's going to kill loads of people for no good reason, and he blathers out sentences about religion and whatnot. Nevertheless, he comes off as an interesting character, mostly because of him being similar to Spike - both in physical prowess and their considering themselves 'dead' men due to past events. Then we have Electra, Vincent's past love once forgotten. She remembers him though, and well, she wants him to remember her as well. We can see where that's heading...

The animation quality is superb; its detail and overall quality is unmistakably a work done by people who knows what they are doing. Be it backgrounds or landscapes, they're all top-notch. Lighting effects are good, and more than I'd exect from something out of 2001, and the overall quality of special effects are great; much, much better than the original series. The character designs are the same old, with some improvements, and they work very well with this anime and movie. The character motions and their fluidity are great, and the few action scenes in the movie are done so well that I could probably learn some nice figthing moves merely from studying them. The coloring is the only thing that's a bit behind, but considering its age it's not a problem. And moreso, the dulled coloring actually melds perfectly with the style of the movie, and helps on the movie's atmosphere.

The soundtrack is what you should expect from the original series; awesome. Yoko Kanno does her work as she did in the series; with an amazing soundtrack that fits perfectly with the atmosphere of the movie and its individual scenes, and the opening and ending themes are wonderful to listen to. The only downside is that there is a lot of silent scenes, where no background music is present at all.

Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' On Heaven's Door is a movie that delivers the goods, but stops at that. It's not marvelous, but it's great, and a must-see movie for any Cowboy Bebop fan. read more

Anime movies always appear to be there as an obligatory part of a series. It seems that every popular anime is going to get a movie eventually, or perhaps a ton of movies on some occasions. I never really thought about seeing them before because I am not much of a movie person, and I think the series is the real deal. Knockin' on Heaven's Door changed my mind though, as it entertained me from beginning to end and proved to be a worthy addition to the Cowboy Bebop series. It's arguable where it fits into the time-line, if it does at all. I would say it occurs some time in between the anime's beginning and end, but that's not too important.

The story holds its own nicely, and it felt a little bit like the TV show 24 to me. The excellent character design is still there, and some of the new characters are very nice additions, especially the villain. Vincent is as heartless as Kefka from Final Fantasy VI, and that says something. I found some of the concepts were hard to follow since the movie likes to jump around all over the place, but I eventually caught on. It covers a lot within about 2 hours, but I would say it all comes together nicely, in a somewhat bitter way. This storyline gets to be quite deep, and has all the twists and turns in the right places so that it never gets old. However, the ending could be the only problem with the story, as it lacks some impact.

The film is visually stunning. Whether it's the highest quality of 2001, I have no idea, but everything was so smoothly animated that it's pure eye candy. Not to mention it was nice to see shadows and lighting effects that I never noticed in the original series, if it had them. The fight scenes were violent and some of the best I have seen, and always kept me at the edge of my seat. The music is, once again, superb. This time around I found that I liked the entire soundtrack. Every piece was put where it should be to appropriately fit the tone. Every aspect of the movie was top notch and had me going "Now that's what I'm talking about!". It is definitely not a disappointment, especially if the ending of the show had you wanting more. I didn't get the backstory I would have hoped for, but I can settle with this just fine.

Simply put, Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door is a must-see for fans of the original series, and in my opinion, surpasses the series in practically every way. A pleasant surprise indeed.

Story - 9
Art - 10
Sound - 9.5
Character - 10
Enjoyment - 10
Overall Grade - 9.6 read more