Cowboy Bebop, good?

Cihan said:
Hmm, isnt episode 5 when the main storyline kicks in and we get an awesome confrontation between Spike and someone else and Yoko Kanno's music begins to become legendary and stuff like that?

Blackmanta said:
So... If I watch ep5 and I still think it sux I can really drop it?

sHsIkuA said:


Yes, why not? After all you are the one who judge it, not us. I know alot of people who drop an anime after the first episode. I for one won't judge an anime its good or crappy without finish watching it, maybe I have never encountered anything that I can't bear to watch another episode YET.

Cowboy Bebop are consistent during the middle episodes and have a pretty damn awesome ending IMHO but the fact it is "quite" episodic puts me off (still rated 8, that speaks alot)

Cihan said:
I dont know how you can drop this series after the first episode. It represents everything Cowboy Bebop is about. Action, humour, sci-fi, romance and tragedy.

Blackmanta said:
Didnt drop after 1st ep. I did give it 4 eps and it was a pain to get through them.

Blackmanta said:


Know that it is up to me. But why I am asking is that I thought that the first 4 eps was crapp. Just wondering if it is going to get better or is it going to be same all the way. After all some animes are not to great first eps.

Frenz said:
Go sit down, and rethink your life.

Neverender said:

This is the correct answer.

Chelle said:
Drop it now... waste no more time on it. It's not worth all the hype. I wasted countless hours watching all episodes. Even re-watched 1/3 of them, because I fell asleep during them. So... if that tells you anything.

Blackmanta said:
I watched Cowboy Bebop for like 4 episodes. Is it going to get better or staying like it is to the end. Just asking because I found it to be really crappy.

datormenta said:
just wondering should i watch cowboy bebop sub or dub

mr_outside said:


Sub definitely.

Well... at least I like it better. ^^

nina4life said:
Just wanted to another guy (myself) on the list of people actually NOT liking Bebop. I heard so many good things about it I prepared for something truly epic. Instead I get a show about unsuccessful bounty hunters (nothing different than Outlaw star in that point of view), and storyline which consists of 4-5 episodes.

Truly epic...epic failure that is. Still, I gave this show 7, for it was fun and entertaining at times, and also had a great ending.

Ontario said:

I really want to say something about you not liking Cowboy Bebop and giving CG a 10... but I'll refrain from it.

sbyrstall said:
Those who think otherwise need to decide what they like in anime. CB's really only weakness was that it was episodic, but that's also it's strength..

nina4life said:
Why? Because they don't like what you like?
Anyway, the whole point is that, while so many people have the right to say this anime is the next best things this world has after sex, nobody is allowed to say this anime is not so good in their own opinion. As soon as someone says words Bebop and "Not good" in the same sentence, his anime style is shi***. Why?

If everyone is allowed to say its good, I think others who didn't like should be able to say it's not so good without getting insulted.

sbyrstall said:
CB set a high standard for anime with a combination of deep characters, music that set the mood of the scene and natural character interaction and, IMO, many today fail because they seemed forced. Hey, but that's what you like, more power to you. Just remember, you're choosing the Twilight series over Shakespeare's work. ;)

sbyrstall said:

CB set a high standard for anime with a combination of deep characters, music that set the mood of the scene and natural character interaction and, IMO, many today fail because they seemed forced. Hey, but that's what you like, more power to you. Just remember, you're choosing the Twilight series over Shakespeare's work. ;)

nina4life said:
P.S. Twilight? Damn dude, did you really have to ruin my day? xD

datormenta said:
just wondering should i watch cowboy bebop sub or dub

Neverender said:

This is the correct answer.

Kaiserpingvin said:
I hate Cowboy Bebop. That in itself is remarkable, as I very seldomly hate anything at all.

It was tremendously boring; for everything, exactly everything, was predictable, and there was nothing else to enjoy apart from the music. I hated nearly all episodes - they were so tremendously uninspired, so incredibly thick in "oh I have seen that before", so very much plain and dull I would rather have watched Mars of Destruction twenty-five times. The story was written with the average panache of a brick on the head.

tarheel91 said:
Really? You, for example, guessed that I'm calling BS on that. If you're talking about the main plot, then I'd sure hope you were able to predict what was going to happen. The relevant episodes were drenched in foreshadowing.

Kaiserpingvin said:

Pierrot le Fou was one of the three episodes I liked. But yes, it didn't have any surprises in it. Episode twenty-three was especially egregious.

The scriptwriter simply was lazy. He put events in and then hoped the director would do something interesting with them, because he himself sure wouldn't. Too bad the director didn't. Considering the director was one of the scriptwriters that's especially sad.

tarheel91 said:
*facepalm*

tarheel91 said:
Regardless, plot twists are not the only reason something like an anime is enjoyable (it's also one of the most unsophisticated reasons at that). Just because a show doesn't depend on them doesn't make it bad. Cowboy Bebop's episodic, almost vignette-like style strives to capture a life style, not thrill you with unexpected conclusions. There is a big counterculture theme (music inspired by that of various countercultures' music like jazz, blues, rock, etc.) that bounty hunters are central to. The stories of these 4 people (and one dog) are told nearly flawlessly, in an amazing way that synthesizes music, images, and minimal dialogue.

tarheel91 said:
By the way, that second paragraph made absolutely no sense. Can you perhaps use evidence from the show instead of just speaking incredibly generally? I could copypasta that last paragraph and use it to complain about any anime. I hope I addressed some of your issues with the show in my preceding paragraph, but I can't be sure.

tarheel91 said:
Also, as an FYI, egregious is already strong enough on its own; its connotation approaches that of an absolute. You don't ever need something like "especially" or "very" before it. It's redundant. Sorry for harping on grammar, but that particular mistake is a major pet peeve of mine.

Kaiserpingvin said:

Gren too, yes. That was one of the worst moments.

Do you know why things are predictable? Can you give exact reasons for such sensations? Maybe it's just that I read too much pulp as a youngster, and watched too many Hollywood flicks with badly paired near-antihero cops on wacky escapades, and from that internalised a specific structure of narrative. That's what I would go with. There were potent markers of stereotype tweeeests all over the place. Whichever case, I found it all predictable. The causes be as they may.

Never said it was. I noted that in my first post: Since there was nothing else to be interested in, the lack of even surprising tweeests carried it from "tedious" to "painful". That is, it didn't even satisfy the lowest common denominator of entertainment. Something even relative crap like Code Geass can do effortlessly.

The counterculture theme may be as it is, it doesn't really have anything to do with the plot, as it's not a thematic as much as an æsthetic. Even if I don't think it's there at all. You might as well say LoGH is about anti-rationalism since it uses so much Romantic music.

I don't think the null hypothesis is that the story is good. You really have to prove that the story is good, rather than the reverse.

Either way, something would be well-thought out if small details mattered, if the story fit together in a novel manner, or anything of the sort. Bepop never did anything of the sort. It's hard to show a negative fact, in fact impossible, because by definition I have no examples to point at. The story unfolded in a very formulaic manner, with very formulaic characters and devices, and with very formulaic approach to them. It's not as if your statements ("near flawless", "amazing way which synthesizes...", well wow, are you describing Haibane Renmei or Clannad?) are any less generic, but you have a choice.

Er. First of all, "especially" here obviously shows that it is comparative. Which means that the rest was also egregious, that particular case was just moreso.

Secondly, that's not grammar.


Really now. I hate this show intensely. But it's good. It's solid. That the plot is just trite doesn't detract from the obvious solidness of the rest. So what you should try to argue, if anything, is either
a) that I do not actually hate it, but love it
b) that I do not have a right to hate it.
Both ways seem rather absurd. If you are trying to argue that it's good, then I agree.

Kaiserpingvin said:
I... still don't see what you are trying to do here. I think it's good. So you're trying to tell me it's good. Because it's good. That's the only way I can get what I already do get, that it's good.

Pretty impressive as far as nonsense goes. Unless you somehow are deeply incapable of separating "good" from "like", in which case you arguing just becomes more inane. It's like trying to tell someone who dislikes Gouda cheese that this Gouda cheese, by god!, this cheese is made from the finest milk from the finest cows, and with the love and care of the best farmers, so therefore he has to love the taste of the cheese, and he does have to love its bland uninteresting taste. Nevermind that the matter of the taste and the craft behind the cheese are entirely different.

So really, what are you arguing for, against whom, and why? The only point of qualitative contention I had was that the plot was not good, something you didn't talk about at all, so that cannot be the case here.

Also.
a) no, egregious is not bivalent, nor does it mean 'completely terrible'. It's a modifier showing there's a lot, and it's negatively connoted.
b) no, the null hypothesis is definitely not common opinion, that's a fallacy. Argument to popularity, basically.

Kaiserpingvin said:
Those who hail it as the best anime ever have not seen Legend of the Galactic Heroes, which has a far stronger position. That aptly illustrates one of the many - and not even nearly the strongest - reasons as to why argument to popularity is a fallacy (namely that the populace may not know all alternatives - easily shown in this case).

And, you see, the contrary opinions you pose there are in need of elucidation because there are arguments as to why they are false, not because everyone agrees that 2+2=4. For example, very few would say that 1=0.999... is true, which it is. Majority rule does not truth or justification make. (This illustrates the stronger problem. Popular opinion is logically not related to facts past exactly popular opinion.)

This is basic logic. You cannot get more basic.

In any case, what largely accepted idea AM I arguing against?

As for the plot, you said it yourself: The overarching plot is small, it's set up in sessions (why you said something anyone who'd seen it would know is beyond me). And those individual episodes have plot. And those plots are boring. Would you hold that plot is unimportant in all of those too? Then what on Earth are they for? The main plot is thin and drawn out, and didn't interest me at all - again, that there were no surprising twists is merely the lowest level of complaint, I can totally enjoy predictable things which are interesting (after all, I like Aria, and that one is far more predictable). No twists means that it lacks necessary minimum of entertainment value.

We both agree on the plot being bad and/or irrelevant, so that's that, isn't it? (If I thought the plot was more than incidental to the work of art in question, I would not have said it was good, mind you. It's evident that's not what it goes for.)

As for watching it again, that's possible, or I wouldn't be wasting time talking about it. But it really is like asking someone to go back in the torture chamber to see if he can get used to getting spikes hammered in under his fingernails. It might so happen he will, but he isn't too eager to find out.


All my original point was that even someone who hates this show can find it good, which is a pretty remarkable merit. You do not seem to think so :/