Cowboy Bebop

Cowboy Bebop was originally an anime series created by Shinichiro Watanabe in 1998. It consists of 26 episodes, a mini-sode, and a theatrical movie. It was released in America in 2001, and is one of the few anime franchises to be more successful in North America than in its native Japan. I have seen the 26 tv episodes and the movie. I already know what a lot of you are doing right now after glancing at the numerical score I gave; you're hitting up the comment box on my profile and writing these exact words:

"Fuck you! Cowboy Bebop is a classic! You're not allowed to ... criticize it!"

The more astute viewers will note that I scored the series a 6, but the movie a 9. I kind of like Cowboy Bebop. It does do some things very right. It had the potential to be one of the greatest franchises ever. Alas, while its production values are unmatched, the writing . . . doesn't always match up with the production. Because of this, the series ended up being a style-over-substance experience for me, but why was that?

The premise of CB is that in the late 21st century, mankind has started living in places in the solar system besides Earth. In this future are bounty hunters known as Cowboys. Cowboys do whatever they can to make cash to keep the food stockpile stocked and their spaceships running. The show follows one such group of Cowboys who pilot a ship called the Bebop. In the beginning, we meet Spike Spiegel, a former gangster, and Jet Black, a former cop. As the series progresses, the Bebop also has Ein, a super smart dog, Faye Valentine, a woman on the run, and Edward, a really, really, REALLY weird hacker girl. Cowboy Bebop has been described as a series that has a continuous plot, and has standalone episodes at the same time. Having seen the series, I can tell you that technically, most of the episodes aren't standalone, but many of them are only connected by the core characters.

Here's where one of my problems lie. When Cowboy Bebop is good, it's really good. The setting is very mature; it never condescends to the audience. The action scenes are superbly well done, the dialog is believable (though cheesy at times), and the atmosphere really pulls you in. How many episodes are actually really good? Seven. If you count the movie as an episode, that brings it up to eight. Eight out of twenty-seven episodes were good. The rest were not.

The problem with most of the episodes is one of two things: one, it's really boring, or, two, it's so clichéd, you will be able to predict exactly what happens by the end after the first two minutes, or both. I have to be honest, a lot of the episodes of CB are just plain boring. If this wasn't a "classic" and a more ordinary anime series, a lot of them would be branded as what they truly are; filler episodes. And if it's not boring filler, it's hackneyed.

Watanabe is known for being a huge fan of American cinema, and that's obvious in CB. Unfortunately, he ripped off a lot of American movies virtually piecemeal. Now, you may not suspect it, but I am more knowledgeable of American cinema than I am Japanese animation. To describe it as best I can without spoiling, if you have seen at least one movie directed by Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, John Woo, and Michael Mann, then you have already seen Cowboy Bebop in another format. This is actually a clever trick though; most anime fans reject Western pop culture, and may not notice this when watching CB, so they'll think it's "fresh" and "original", when it's fact, it's actually MORE clichéd then most anime. But hey, when CB is exciting and isn't (too) blatantly ripping off Hollywood, it's worth watching.

At least, when the worthwhile characters are onscreen. I like the main character Spike a lot. He is the embodiment of cool, like a 21st century version of Steve McQueen. He's cool, but he's very human too. He's reckless, he makes mistakes, but he knows how to charm people, and he also knows how to beat his targets. I also like Jet. He's a constant worrywart, which is a funny contrast to his rough appearance. Some of the incidental characters are memorable too, (but usually only in the good episodes and movie). Something else I liked was the Bebop crew was not always a stable group, or nakama you could say. In most anime, when the heroes band together, nothing ever separates them. That doesn't happen in CB. Sometimes, the crew gets in arguments, and sometimes, one of them will leave the Bebop for a time, and so on. It's a touch of realism I appreciate.

However, some of the characters didn't click with me. I never really cared for Faye. I don't dislike her, but I don't really care for her either. Edward is amusing, but she feels out of place in a series like this. The incidental characters in the less memorable episodes are just that, unmemorable. However, what I'm about to print in the next paragraph will anger thousands, possibly millions. (And maybe make hundreds say "Right on!") Mind you, it's just my opinion. Everything I print in these reviews is just my opinion; you don't have to take it personally, but the following opinion of mine needs to be said:

Vicious is one of the lamest villains ever.

The main antagonist is a man known as Vicious, someone who's still a part of the gang Spike came from. He's cunning, ruthless . . . and is absolutely lame. What's his motive? Does he just want power, or to mess with people? Even if so, why is he so boring to watch? The villain from the movie was a lot more interesting. Overall, you got two really good protagonists, some interesting chemistry between the protagonists, one-shot characters who are either interesting or not, and a forgettable antagonist. Yay.

And I haven't even touched upon the ending yet! Short version, I don't like CB's ending. (More flames incoming! Duck and cover!) Now, the ending is not quite as bad as the ending for, say, Akira, or the anime version of Chobits. It does have a sense of finality to it, something most anime endings don't have. However, I did not find it "legendary." I found it disappointing. First of all, the ending is extremely predictable. It's virtually telegraphed to you before it even happens. Not only that, when I saw it, my reaction was, " . . . that's it? Seriously, that's IT?"

But I better move on to CB's technical aspects before I get too letdown. Its artistry leaves no complaints. CB is probably the best-looking pre-digital anime I've ever seen. Even if you were to remake the series with digital enhancements, I doubt you could make it look better than it already is. Sumptuous backgrounds, top-notch character art, animation that ranges from above-average to really good, no off-model shots, this is a visual feast. The movie looks even better. It's obvious a lot of care was put into the visuals of CB. My only being the primitive CGI, but you get used to it.

And now we touch upon CB's greatest aspect; its soundtrack. It's the sort of the soundtrack that makes you go, "Ah yeah, baby!" This is why you watch CB, the music. The music is the magnum opus of Yoko Kanno. A combination of jazz, blues, and rock, but it isn't just any old jazz, blues, and rock, it's GOOD jazz, blues, and rock. Everything from the opening, to the incidental music, to the endings, you get music that will set your soul on fire. The only anime I've seen whose soundtrack could rival CB's is Death Note's. Something I noticed about CB's soundtrack is the music sounds more like music from albums rather than typical soundtrack music. Another smart move; most people are accustomed to listening to music from CD and MP3 albums as opposed to soundtracks, so when they hear CB's music, it'll be more familiar-sounding than most other anime soundtracks. Regardless, even if you hate CB, you gotta score this music.

CB is also famous for having what is perhaps the oldest English dub for an anime series that is considered god-like. I saw this on Adult Swim, and I can safely say, this is another masterpiece from Bandai and Bang Zoom. Every character sounds like how you would imagine them to, and the voices are neither wooden nor over-acted. All the different accents the characters have sound really cool too. I did sample the Japanese dub on the movie, and I will say, Spike and Jet sound really good in both Japanese and English, but I will never get used to Faye's Japanese voice. Yeah, this is one you gotta see in English. (Though in retrospect, the Japanese performances aren't bad, it just doesn't click like the English dub)

While CB is still often regarded as a classic, I'm not the first to criticize it like so. There has been some backlash against CB in recent years. Some people complain it's not "Japanese-y" enough, that it's too Western. I mentioned that earlier, but there is another anime I've seen, Baccano, which is also very similar to American movies, but it was consistently entertaining, and not as predictable as CB, so I did not mind. Others have mentioned the same things I have, that it's boring, the plot isn't strong enough, it's style over substance. This isn't a disaster by any means, but I do have to say that, outside of the production values, CB is one of the most overrated anime I've seen. It's not one of the worst, certainly not, but it's not quite the experience I was promised either. To put it in other words, there were some episodes that I would score a 4 out of 10. And yet, there are some episodes, including the movie, that I would score a 9 out of 10. The 6 overall is just from mixing the good episodes with the bad.

I like to imagine that in an alternate dimension, CB was an OVA series instead of a tv series. All the episodes I do like, (# 2, 8, 12, 13, 17, 20, and 22) were released on separate OVAs, as well as a few others to bridge the plot gaps. Then a theatrical came out (Knocking on Heaven's Door), and then another to end it all (The Real Folk Blues, albeit with a revised conclusion), and it would be grandiose. Alas, I don't live in that universe. Hey, Shinichiro Watanabe likes drawing influence from Hollywood, right? What's something it's doing a lot of right now? Continuity reboots? He could still do that. I can dream, can't I?

EDIT: This review was revised on 9/17/2015 to be less awkward to read.

Let be the one that forces down the hammer of judgment on this Anime, because honestly it is one of the Anime (and i rarely do this) that i really do not advise you to watch, if you are the one the feels attached to the characters throughout the story-line (i hope you get me on that one).

First of all i should say that in the animation, sound fields the Anime did pretty well considering the date in which the Anime was Aired. However i should say that the story-line failed miserably. It is rare for a 26 episodes Anime, to not have develop an ... escalating intensity of events as the story goes on, yet Cowboy Bebop demonstrated the utmost failure a writer could achieve. At the beginning of the story till before the last two episodes the story would be running in a direction(really boring direction), however, and i do not know why, in the last two it goes in a totally different direction totally irrelevant to what you have seen in the first 24 episodes. The Characters also fail, in result of the writer unable to decide what he wants to show out of them. Again i really do not know why they expect people to applaud to the ending. They wanted to make the ending look epic, i seriously thought that in the end it will be all like a dream a Character is having, i was shocked when it ended.

I started because it's supposed to be a classic, but I was disappointed. There were certain aspects that I enjoyed, such as the music. There's a different style of music every episode, reflecting the theme and setting of whatever's going on, which is pretty unique.
The main thing that turned me off was the story-line. There are a few recurring themes, but it is mainly episodic, with maybe one arc that lasts and entire two episodes. The individual stories of each episode are generally okay and sometimes go deep into the backstory of the characters, giving the audience a better idea of who they are and ... where they cam from. However there's just nothing to pull everything together. Each character has a few episodes to illustrate their backstories, but there's just nothing to pull it all together.
Overall, I think it's worth watching. It's a classic, and it's only 26 episodes. I just think that it was so over-hyped (being a classic and all) that I was just expecting more.

Cowboy Bebop is hailed as one of the greatest anime of all time, which acts as a testament to how the drug called nostalgia can be so addictive in clouding critical thought. It's by no means a bad series, but neither is it fully original nor amazingly executed.

If I were to sum up the series in several words, I would choose "style over substance." The art is good, as is the voice acting for both dub and sub, and the music is fantastic. However, those are just dressing for the feast that is a series and unless the actual meat of a series that is ... plot and characters has much substance to it, there's little taste to gain from it's flavours overall.

That said, the plot can be hit or miss. I find the sci-fi setting to be decent, but it's not executed to anywhere near it's full potential. You won't be finding the thematic exploration that space can provide in series such as Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Gundam's Universal Century or Planetes, with the space setting being used primarily just to allow the series to stand out from the norm. There are story elements I do like, such as the ending being solid. However, most of the episodes are skippable due to the series' episodic nature, which shows how loose the narrative is. The majority of it tends to be just tributes to western cinema, which whilst nice, don't really offer much to the series itself.

The main drawing point for most is the characters, though even they aren't anything too grand. They are at least consistent, so none of them are bad, but the only one who stands out as being much more than average is Faye with her search for identity. Spike is alright with his dual nature of goofy yet experienced, though the trope has been done far better elsewhere such as Onizuka from GTO or Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin. Despite the focus given to his past, especially in the last two episodes, we don't really get much in-depth exploration for his timeline or psychology. Jet is a stereotypical gruff guy with good intentions and Ed is just the trope of a child genius. Finally, there's the main villain of Vicious who, despite his history with Spike, has little personality to stand on his own as a character and purely serves as a foil to Spike.

The element of characters is still executed competently enough to place the series slightly above average, but that's about as high as it goes. It at least improved on the eccentric episodic ensemble of Lupin III as a purely fun series and as far as episodic space series go it surpasses Space Adventure Cobra due to character decisions having a permanent impact on the plot, but it's no golden standard for the medium. Overall, Bebop only really stands out as a case study in the history and rise of anime's popularity in the west and if wanting an anime with a wide array of themes and well-developed characters, there's the true peak of the medium that is Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

Overall ranking - 5.5/10

Episodic series are complicated. On one hand, there's a huge degree of freedom that can go into them that you don't obtain quite as easily in semi-episodic or comparatively linear narratives, but on the other they run the risk of running dry due to a lack of variety in their narratives, uninteresting subplots or characters that remain stagnant throughout the show's run.

Cowboy Bebop is interesting because in many ways it encapsulates both the best and worst things about episodic series within its runtime.

The premise is simple enough and works perfectly for the kind of story Cowboy Bebop is - one about these drifting mercenaries simply ... doing odd jobs across the universe, with no overarching goal beyond living paycheck to paycheck. The cast are a colorful bunch and have a fair amount of fun interactions with each other, and the episodic stories vary wildly in terms of what they're about. Good enough, so what then is the issue?

The episodic stories are incredibly inconsistent in terms of quality, some being excellent, others being mediocre if not outright bad.

The more comedy-focused episodic stories are fine, but act as a kind of mood whiplash with the darker parts of the series - but then there's ones that are outright pretty damn bad, standouts including the infamous Feng Shui episode or the episode Edward's introduced in. This lack of consistency (to say nothing of most episodes following a certain format, more on that later) make Cowboy Bebop an incredibly difficult show to sit down and get engrossed in.

That's to say nothing of how the central narrative is structured - this show is episodic in the true sense of the term and from what I can gather not even told in chronological order, which while makes sense to an extent (the entire point is that these characters are static and numb to what's happening around them) means that the central narrative and random episodic stories have a clear, thick dividing line between them, with the narrative essentially coming out of nowhere at random. There's an argument to be made about how this fits the idea of Spike trying to run away from his past, with his past finding a way to chase after him anyway - this is a weak argument that isn't helped by a certain issue in how the story is presented.

You don't get to see virtually any of the side cast outside the scope of the episodic parts they're introduced in, and this includes characters who are relevant to the central narrative outside of a few quick flashbacks. This was a deliberate design choice and I heavily disagree with it because it leaves the viewer thoroughly disengaged from everything happening in the story, meaning when the main narrative does return and kick back in full force, I have no reason to care about it beyond being an observer to Spike's mistakes. Why should I care about his emotional investment to Julia, or rivalry with Vicious, when his dynamic with Jet and Faye are what I see much more of anyway? And while there can be an argument that much like them being observers to all the tragedies that happen and growing numb to it, we're placed in a position where we too are growing numb to their issues, it also makes it impossible to relate to these characters despite the themes about overcoming the past being general and easy to relate to - the distance the story uses to invoke this message is paradoxically both its strongest asset and worst enemy.

The central cast are a largely static bunch in a sense - they do progress slightly over the course of whatever there is for a narrative, Jet has several episodic arcs dedicated to that in particular - but their dynamic stays as that of a pack of strangers keeping their distance from one another while awkwardly trying to get closer only to drift further. This isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself, but the way the series presents this is through the cast (and by cast I really just mean Spike and Faye) rushing headlong like headless chickens over and over again into making mistakes as other cast members (which happens to be consistently Jet) tries to stop either of them from doing so. This very quickly gets old and I refuse to digest the idea that this is repetition for the sake of emphasis because it happens so many times that the viewer is likely to get really sick of it really quickly - Faye going off gambling is one of the most unfunny gags in the history of anime and she's such an annoying character with such a thoroughly uninteresting backstory that it baffles me to the moon that people can point at her and claim she's one of the greatest female characters in anime history. That backstory is relevant to the themes of the story, but it's so emotionally uninteresting and overdone that it's shocking that it isn't shat on harder by fans and detractors of this alike.

This isn't to say that there's no positives to Cowboy Bebop - hell, I'd dare say there's more positives than negatives. Spike does manage to be an engaging character from start to finish, even if there's issues I already went over in how his arc is presented. Jet's actually a character I didn't have much of an issue with - his tolerance for Faye's bullshit notwithstanding, his comradery with Spike was authentic and genuine, and several of the best moments in the series were with him and Spike bickering over how horrid the food is. Ed's actually somewhat entertaining after her debut episode - the cringe factor still occasionally comes back, but it's nowhere near as bad as some people would have you believe. And Ein, well, being a dog aside, is pretty fun.

The visuals are absolutely stunning and have aged magnificently - the backgrounds are beautiful, the animation's gorgeous and the way the series does worldbuilding is actually something I find pretty underrated - there's no massive infodump on the world, just scattered pieces of exposition as the cast explore random parts of the setting, with said setting having extremely varied locations and cultures that always if nothing else showed a nice, new thing for the viewer to look at. The soundtrack is spectacular and great, there's a fuckton of neat references to Western pop culture, the action is usually absolutely gorgeous and varies from gun fights to spaceship battles to hand-to-hand combat, all of which is done insanely well. The central narrative despite all my issues with it is still decently engaging, and the ending is memorable as hell and among the most iconic in anime history for a reason.

If this review comes off as harsh, it's because Cowboy Bebop is put on such a high pedestal insofar as episodic anime goes that it comes off as baffling - not even by the fanbase, but even by the series itself, which claims in random transition slides that it will be a new work that will invent a genre of its own (which by any standard is a shockingly narcisstic thing to put in there, influential and classic this show may be it certainly did not do that). There's better episodic anime out there (Natsume and Mushishi) and better cautionary tales out there (Fate/Zero and Gundam IBO) than this series, and they're not nearly as infuriating to watch at points as this is, nor do they have a strange theme about the maturity of accepting the status quo as is - which while makes sense in the context of what the series is trying to preach about humans being cogs in a machine, interesting that everyone from the environmental activists, revolutionaries and terrorists is just portrayed as though their fight is pointless and nothing can or will ever change. The political implications of such an attitude is obvious, and while the series doesn't portray such an attitude positively, it also provides no real counter to it.

In a way, that's the highest I can say about a show like Cowboy Bebop - for all its talk about being revolutionary, the show is in many ways more of the same if you've seen a sizeable number of episodic shows or cautionary tales. And that's just about the biggest slight I can make against a show like Cowboy Bebop - it's decent, but nothing outstanding.

Thank you for reading my review, any and all feedback would be appreciated.

Cowboy Bebop was an interesting watch. It's definitely one of the anime that requires you to read in between the lines as not everything is presented to you at face value like most anime nowadays. However because of that it may be hard to grasp some of the overarching themes in this show without having to watch an explanation video of the entire series. For this reason I gave it a 7, as personally I believe that a piece should portray it's themes clearly, otherwise it'd probably be an 8 or 9.

But the more I think about the show I can see why people enjoy ... it so much. The approach to this anime is very realistic in it's portrayal. In fact I could say that in the far fetched future this could very well be the life of someone out there floating in space if we ever advance that far scientifically. As the anime has its boring episodes where it doesn't really add anything to the plot point, episodes with action aplenty as you would expect from a life as a bounty hunter, and finally episodes that build at the overarching theme, which is rather quite similar to the life we live ourselves; minus the gun slinging action for most of us of course. Looking back at it in that perspective it's almost as though we are just witnessing a portion their lives through a scope and it somewhat makes those boring episodes more bearable. As if we are just watching someone live out their life to the best of their abilities.

Overall I would say to give it a shot. I can see why this anime can hold a special place in people's hearts, but Cowboy Bebop is definitely starting to show its age.

Cowboy Bebop is one of those things that has not aged well. Not because it wasn't a high quality, groundbreaking show that helped to define the genre, but BECAUSE it helped to defined the genre. I'll say now: I didn't grow up with this show. By the time I got around to watching it, I was about 20 and have seen these formulas and characters over and over again. Did Cowboy Bebop do it first? Probably not. Did they do it well? The popularity suggests they did it very very well.

However, over the years people have used this formula so many times that it has ... fallen into a cliche. To someone watching it (without nostalgia value) everything is predictable and gets painfully boring painfully fast. There wasn't anything shocking in it, nothing I couldn't see happening 5 episodes beforehand, and every character was one I had seen a million times before and wasn't interested in seeing again.

If you're asking me for specifics on what I didn't like, I can't even give that many. It was, for me, a totally forgettable experience. While I would never deny someone their nostalgia, I'd warn newer viewers to check out something a little more fresh.

Cowboy Bebop is often told to be one of the greatest anime of all time, and is frequently considered to be great for people who hate anime. While it excels in many areas, it also has some severe flaws. There are some excellent episodes of the show, but also some incredibly boring ones. In this review, let's start with the good qualities.

Animation: 10

The animation and art in Cowboy Bebop is absolutely amazing. The quality puts just about every other anime, including many high-budget Studio Ghibli films, and even modern anime to shame. The frames per second seems to be higher than other anime, and the ... motion is incredibly fluid. The art style is also very good. The only minor flaw that could be pointed out at all would be that some of the planets that try to look 3D look a little odd at some points.

Music: 10

Cowboy Bebop is known for its soundtrack, and while it seems quite generic (but still good) at first, it does deliver if you keep going into just a few episodes. While at some points it may feel a little bit unfitting to have lyrics in some of the songs, there are only a few of these points. It does seem a bit odd to have almost every song in English in an anime, but the songs all sound very good.

Everything looks excellent so far! However, the rest of the stuff is not so excellent. Now we will describe Bebop's many flaws:

Characters: 5

Many of the characters propped up a lot in Cowboy Bebop are quite mediocre. The main character, Spike, often comes off as a complete jerk, and sometimes a clumsy oaf too. While this can be kind of funny at points, its mostly just annoying. People only think he's cool because he smokes, which in reality will just give people lung cancer. Jet is mostly okay, but is a bit of a sexist. Faye Valentine is also incredibly annoying, and is lazy and arrogant, much like Spike. The main villain of the series only appears in about 5 episodes of the entire series. However, there are also some good characters who show up in the anime, like Ed, but many of the good characters only appear in one episode, like Pierrot.

Story: 4

The main story in incredibly simple and quite lame. Only about 5 episodes actually focus on the main story, as the series is mostly episodic. However, there are some mini-stories in some random episodes, which are often simple but sometimes a bit entertaining.

Originality: 3

There is very little originality in Cowboy Bebop. Spike Spiegel is directly inspired by Lupin, and the whole anime borrows heavily from spaghetti westerns. While some viewers claim that Cowboy Bebop is "original", they have likely never seen any Old Western-themed stuff before. The reason that Bebop scored a 3 and not a 1 in this category is because the soundtrack, while generic at points, was originally made for Cowboy Bebop. And the mixing of space and Old West was a little bit unique, although it did pretty generic stuff on both fronts.

But the worst flaw of Cowboy Bebop cannot be described with a number score. The worst flaw lies particularly in the first 7 episodes of Cowboy Bebop. They are supposed to introduce us to the show, but all episodes except for 2 and 5 are incredibly boring. That is the worst thing a show can be - boring. And some other episodes after these have a problem with being boring, albeit less of one. While some episodes are absolutely incredible, there are some boring ones that can really ruin Cowboy Bebop. However, since most of the first 7 episodes are incredibly boring, it makes Cowboy Bebop incredibly difficult to start for some people.

Overall, Cowboy Bebop has severe flaws. However, there are also some things it excels tremendously in, such as the animation and music. While there are some incredibly boring episodes, especially within the first 7, there are also some amazing episodes, particularly in the middle portion of the series, despite some of them lacking originality. However, it you aren't too bothered by things being boring, and don't mind the lack of originality in Cowboy Bebop, you can surely enjoy watching it.

Overall, watching Cowboy Bebop is a high-risk, high-reward endeavor. It will bore many people, but many others will surely enjoy it.

According to synopsis main cast are bounty hunter with dark past,premise and story setting is interesting like cowboy/bounty hunters in space.
Story really doesn't focus on past of MC instead each episode feels like fillers or very episodic with little to no connection to main story although there was character development but ending ruined all the development that had happened in the story.
Story has only 5 to 6 episode of past content that to with vague explanation. Didn't understood the motivation of the villain and ending came out of no where. Apart from that anime is really funny with misunderstanding/misfortune of the main casts and their ... daily life struggle.

It has pretty good music/sound selections that perfectly fit the tone/mood.For the animation you can't believe it is from 90's with all the space travel and fights are animated very well of that time.

With that I'll recommend this anime to people who want a laugh and not bothered with story or ending.or mature enough to understand and enjoy the anime.

I usually don't write reviews or read reviews ,in fact this is my first review😅.Have a good day and thank you for reading this long.

This was a tough watch for me, basically because I'm not into episodic storys and most of the episodes seemed like more or less good fillers. In the end i wished i only watched the 5 very enjoyable Vicious episodes and maybe the Jet and Faye background arcs. Especially episode 5 was a great 9/10.

The optics were mostly good except for the computer generated parts that was horribly upscaled for the bluray release, animation was superb and the soundtrack was a pleasant experience. I would recommend to watch only the 10 best rated episodes to make it not as protracted.

Let Cowboy Bebop serve as an example of why I consider praise for a series to be a spoiler in and of itself. For decades I have heard nothing but exaltation for Cowboy Bebop, and in the face of that kind of overwhelming critical and cult acclamation... it's hard not to be disappointed. If someone leads you to believe you will have your mind blown and your life changed, anything less makes the whole thing feel like they've made you put on a damp sweater.

Maybe Cowboy Bebop is best considered within a particular social timeframe and cultural mindset. Maybe Cowboy Bebop is great because ... of the effect it had on a genre. Because I came to Cowboy Bebop almost two-decades late, however, none of that can bear upon my review of it. I can only review it as I experienced it. This is to say, I thought Cowboy Bebop was on the high side of okay.

I like the characters. They're fun, they're interesting, they have some depth (but not a lot of growth). I like the world and the setting. The series passed the time. That's kind of where it ends for me. Perhaps it's a matter of taste, but I'm not very interested in episodic, short-term story telling and I wish that there'd been a series-long arc covering the dealings with the Syndicate to tie everything together. As it is, each episode is just a cast of characters doing a bunch of random crap and remaining unchanged as a result. This kind of storytelling is deeply dissatisfying for me--there's a reason why serialized dramas are ruling TV these days and why self-contained procedural dramas don't win awards.

Ultimately, I was disappointed that Cowboy Bebop didn't strive to do more, to BE more, given the perfect cast, setting, and set-up for an engaging high-concept story. Bebop is a series that is better discovered at random--late night on TV or on a shelf in a 00's video store--than it is discovered due to its acclaim. It's better experienced for what it is than for what it could or should have been.

Cowboy Bebop is quite possibly the most overrated anime of all time in my opinion, But that doesn't mean it was a total waste of a watch. The anime is a collection about 20 one shot stories with little snippets of character lore thrown in that seem useless for the most part. The main villain seemed to have no prevalent motive and was in about 4 episodes or something. Here are my thought on it

Story: 5
The story was a major disappointment, like I said its kind of irrelevant. Its just a bunch of one shot episodes and if your lucky maybe you'll have 2 ... parts. The episodes aren't bad , just this anime would have been SO good if it held a prevalent storyline and went into the trauma of some of the characters (FAYE) more.

Animation/art: 9
The art and the character design is beautiful, and the animation is pretty damn good excluding some bad cg planets. The costume for Spike is the embodiment of swag and really gives him that nonchalant badass vibe. Also not to mention the fights were very well animated especially the first episode.

Music: 10
What can I say, The music fucking slaps bro . I mean bebop IS in the name. Yoko Kanno really did a good job boring that space cowboy and jazzy vibe to the story.

Acting: 9
Lots of people who watched this while it was airing in America love the dub, I think it has one of the better dubs out there but I do prefer the sub. The voice actor (kaji from eva so sexy) for spike really is just perfect for his badass vibe and the others characters delivered very well for there characters too .

enjoyment:7
It was an easy watch and kept you enticed for the most part. Not like " I need to see the next episode now" though.

overall :8
Most people seem to be blinded by nostalgia on this one . While it does deliver amazingly in most categories, I'm still disappointed in the story. This could have been one of the all time greats if the story was prevalent. I still would recommend it to most , just don't go in thinking its amazing

I'd say for 18 years or so, most everyone Ive known that likes Anime always ranks this as their favorite Anime. Some people love it to ridicules levels. I had a friend hand one of our friends Cowboy Bebop to watch and his exact words were
"This is the best Anime ever made all other anime will suck after you see it"

I found that to be a bit pretentious
Now I've seen parts of it back when it use to air on adult swim many years ago and infact bought it and it sadly sat unwatched for many years. Maybe i didnt watch it because ... i wouldnt think it was the ebst Anime ever and have to listen to my friends drone on how wrong I was.

Well enough droning on and ill get to my thoughts on it now.

Its an ok Anime
There are some great things about it. Like the Music is great I like how its a mix of many different things that somehow combine into one very well. The Voice acting is pretty solid > i really like the art style and animation. Characters are alright Some cool action scenes, which some look very stylistic.

My problem comes from the fact that the overall story just sucks because its mainly a single story episode show. Most episodes are heres are bounty, lets go get them and some of those stories are alright. When it does back stories on the characters thats good stuff but for an over all plot...eh... I had a hard time getting myself to watch the next episode. I felt like I had to force myself just so I could get this anime done so I could move on. I'd watch about 2-3 episodes at a time. Then when the enxt day came I was like well I need to finish it not really wanting to invest my time into it.

Thats a very bad sign when you are watching a show. They have no real hook or and overall goal that you need to see the next episode to see how they progress or who's the bad guy in all this or some kind of Hook that grabs you and pulls you in and you HAVE to see that next episode to see what happens next. To me an Anime that grabs you like that because you want to know more and then blows your mind when you find out is a great anime.

I feel like most of the ingredients are here for this to be a great anime it just forgot a great story. Sorry for those of you who love this and prize this as the GOAT
It just wasnt really for me

This short review reflects my honest opinion about this show, I don't intend to spark a flame war with it and I'm writing simply my sincere thoughts about this series.

Cowboy Bebop is an anime that has been long since praised and is regarded as a cornerstone of Japanese animation, unfortunately, the show didn't struck me as impressive in spite of having watched it more than twice over the years.

Story: 3

The story is set in the year 2071 and revolves around bounty hunters, specifically Spike Spiegel and his "partner", Jet Black, who make a living by chasing criminals of the solar system, later on, the ... crew grows larger thanks to the voluptuous Faye Valentine and the skilled hacker Edward.

The plot doesn't show any sign of plot progress until the fifth episode, where Spike's former friend and nemesis, Vicious is introduced, however, the plot of the various episodes fluctuates between linear bounty hunting and secondary or rather silly episodes that barely bear any significant change to the story, this is exactly what disappointed me the most, in fact, the show could be summed up in three or more episodes, perhaps I'm being hyperbolic here, but twelve episodes could have worked just as well. Frankly, episodes like "Mushroom Samba" bore me to death no matter how many times I rewatched the show, the fact is that Cowboy Bebop is full of these kind of episodes, hence forcing myself to watch it took me several efforts, as it goes without saying that it wasn't easy.

Art: 7
The animation doesn't belong in the trash, but neither is anything stunning from my point of view, although it makes the show enjoyable, there's not much to say about it.

Sound: 8
Music is one of the strongest points of the series, I always appreciate Yoko Kanno's works and the songs she composed for this show are no exception, almost every song in the show is worthy of being called memorable, as you'll probably wish to listen to the soundtrack at least once in your life.

Character: 5
It's unfortunate the characters don't match my taste at all, I guess I just can't relate to any of them or found them utterly generic, I like Spike, he's a cool and skilled guy and everything, but it doesn't get deeper than that, even after his backstory was explained along with Jet Black's and Faye's, it didn't impress me in the slightest, the characters are still cliched to the core from the beginning to the end of the anime, thus I can't help but say that I disliked them.

Enjoyment: 6
I always believed that if might have watched the show back when it came out, I would've enjoyed it much more. In my opinion, Cowboy Bebop has aged and nowadays it can't be regarded as a masterpiece as back then.
I prefer shows like Darker than Black or Dimension W over it, while the two aren't as praised as much as Bebop, they don't feel nearly as generic as it. I enjoyed the ending which took a very unique turn for the better, but all I can say about Cowboy Bebop is that it's an okay show, and doesn't deserve the praise it gets.

Overall: 5
From my previous experiences, I have a hunch that I'm going to anger the fandom. be labelled as a troll or a person with considerably "shit taste" one way or the other, but it doesn't influence my thoughts about the show. I didn't enjoy Cowboy Bebop, but I could have enjoyed it if I watched it in the age it came out. This brief review only describes my subjective opinion and is in no way meant to offend somebody.

Anime Genre Roulette 🎰 Review 8 🎰 Space

Was this anime worth the hype? The short answer, no

It's peak 90s animation and gorgeous world and character designs make it a feast for the eyes, and of course we can't forget the most adorable little fluff-ball Ein
But this show is the most classic case of style over substence. 5 episodes in and i've yet to find even one memorable moment, like i literally can't remember any of the plot from previous episodes i only watched a few days ago

Maybe the story just didn't click with me, but aside from a few fun jokes here and there, this ... whole experience can be summed up in 3 words: total utter bordem

The production value of Cowboy Bebop is unquestionably top notch. It has a lot of style, great art direction, great fighting choreographies, great animation, great dubs and great soundtrack. It still holds up pretty well, and looking back at when it was released it is definitely pretty impressive in that regard!

My problem with the show is entirely about it's writing. And not because of it's episodic nature, the writing just didn't seem very good to me at all.

Other than Faye, Jet and Spike, every other character is flat and uninteresting, hard to care about. Almost every episode introduces characters that are flat out good/just struggling ... with characters that are, in the other hand, flat out evil. Most episodes are also very formulaic: the Bebop Crew is financially broken and looking for bounties to make some cash; they find about the bounty and go for the hunt; when they arrive to the location they meet someone (the good person) struggling with something generally in conflict to the evil character; the crew get out of their way to help the good person and generally lose the bounty in order to help this random good character.

Most characters introduced are annoying and too cliché. I guess that at the time the show was released it wasn't so evident as it is today (because it was quite an original series and anime/movies/tv shows were not as accessible). But now it is really hard not to notice.

The pace of most episodes are also unbearably slow, with very little actually going on. Not rarely I got myself at the brink of snoozing because even the self contained plots of each episode hardly moved forward while characters would, all the time, interchange some melodramatic dialogues. I guess it worked better when people waited to watch one episode at a time when it aired on TV; but definitely not a good binge watch.

I know that's not a very popular opinion, but that's it for me: great production value; apparently ahead of it's time; but unfortunately boring storytelling.

As a fairly new anime fan I obviously started with some of the most recommnded shows, and Cowboy Bebop was one of the first. This show is considered a masterpiece thanks to the alleged fascinating characters, outstanding story and amazing music.

Let's start with the latter- the Jazz soundtrack is really cool, though not notable or memorable in most of the parts. The openening theme is super cool, and I almost never skipped it (a thing I usually do).

The show has a nice background story- after an accident in the hyperspace the Earth became uninhabitable, and humanity colonized the other planets and moons of ... the solar system. Meanwhile, crime rates have risen, and bounty hunters help the police catch criminals. In short- a fair setting for a space western. There are indeed some beautiful views and space battle scenes in here.

The problems begin when the story starts being told. First, like most in of the shows in which the episodes' plots aren't tightly connected, troubles tend to get fixed to quickly. A more major problem is that the first 10 episodes are absolutely boring! If the show wasn't considered a must-watch classic that luckily has only one season, I probably wouldn't have gone past them. The 11th episode is a turning point in the manner of the plot quality, altough such episode was probably made in every show with a spaceship ever.

But eventually, the biggest cause for my personal relative unenjoyment was the thing that the show is most praised for- the characters. It is true that all the main characters have mysterious troubled pasts that are explored throughout the show. However, because we know nothing of them at the beginning of the show, and their backstories are revealed way to slowly, I couldn't find even a small piece of interest in any of the characters until the very last episodes. For example, Jet's past which was the first to be revealed, is actually quite an uninteresting unoriginal cliche. Around episode 20 I realized that my favorite character is actually Ein the dog! Combining that with the boring first 10 episodes, I got a show that I would likely drop in an early stae unless I was feeling obligated to watch it until the end as a so called classic.
Also, I was really bothered by the unproportional bodies of Spike and Faye, or more specifically- their extermely long legs.

I normally don't write reviews until I've fully finished watching a show, and if my opinion changes at all, I'll update the review, but I have a lot to talk about as I find this specific anime - or rather the culture behind it - particularly fascinating.

This anime is touted as a classic, and is said by many to be the greatest anime of all time. And whilst I can see why people would think that, I personally feel so indifferent towards the show.

I have issue finding things I legitimately dislike about it beyond "it's a product of its time and hasn't aged well and ... there's shows since that, in my opinion, have done similar things to what Cowboy Bebop does, but done them better", because I love the art, I love the soundtrack, and I love the characters.

My only issue with Cowboy Bebop which is entirely irrelevant of its age, derives from it being an aesthetically driven show that relies on the subtleties and connotations of its aesthetics and scenery rather than actual quality storytelling per episode. So it has the whole "space western" aesthetic down to a T, and the characters are also great, but I'm not a fan of its style of storytelling. I'm not exactly expecting an epic from a show that's mostly episodic with only a few references to previous episodes, but I often find it confusing and sometimes straight up pretentious with how visual its storytelling tries to be. It doesn't really leave me on the edge of my seat wanting to know what happens next, though whilst this is partially due to me not liking the stylistic writing choices, I don't really feel that's what this show was going for either. For me personally, if you can't write your show in a way that grips me and makes me really want to find out what happens at the end of the episode, or next episode, then I'll lose interest fairly fast.

Back to the whole "it's a product of its time" argument, however. I feel it's in Ocarina of Time, Half Life and Final Fantasy 7 territory, when you compare it to video games because of that. It's regarded so highly because for its time it would've been groundbreaking but nowadays it's just... I mean, it's enjoyable. There's some parts of this anime that were so ahead of its time, especially in terms of aesthetics, the fusion of futuritistic and antiquated scenery, and use of Western tropes. It also, given its age, has fairly decent LGBT representation, which is rare for anime nowadays, even.

The thing is, we're in 2018 now and there's been so many Japanese shows since that have given their take on Western tropes, that it just doesn't hold up when you separate it from its roots and its place as a piece of anime history. You can't entirely separate the show from its roots, however, because of how much it influenced its successors. This leaves me in an awkward position where as a standalone anime, I don't particularly care for it either way, but I have to also look at it in the grand scheme of things.

This led me down the path of realising that I probably would've liked this show a lot more if I'd have watched it, say 10 years ago when I was growing up. I'd have had less to compare it to back then. Then I remembered I said something similar in my Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt review, and it was at that point that it hit me that the point in which you consume a piece of media, not just in terms of your age, but in terms of the actual point in time, affects your judgement on said media. This can really sway how you perceive things. I think this was the major issue I had with Cowboy Bebop, and this is why I say it really is a product of its time, which to me personally, has not aged particularly well.

I'd last of all like to add, however, I'm not really the target demographic of this show, being a woman in my 20s. If I was a young adult man, finding myself and growing up, I feel this show would've done a lot more for me and generally been more interesting.

Cowboy Bebop is one of the few series that got recommended to me by both my real life friend and my net friends. I really wanted to like this show, I was so excited to watch this and my expectations were at an all time high which is what led me to dub cowboy bebop as the most disappointing anime ever

There are definitely worse, much worse series out there of course but I never expected much from them. Cowboy bebop however, is one of the most loved anime and everything I heard about it was positive which ultimately led me to expect Cowboy Bebop to ... be an masterpiece that cannot be hated by anyone. Boy was I wrong

Well, that's enough of that, let's get on with my review

Story:
Cowboy Bebop is episodic for the most part and what's worse is that it's pretty much in the monster of the week format. There are a lot of standalone episodes in the series that aren't really important but they tried to force it at the end. I didn't like most of the standalone episodes but I hated what they did at the end even more

Characters:
They were able to give the most of the main cast a believable back story which properly explained why they acted the way they did. Not much of Ed's past is revealed though like why she even knew how to hack and what motivates her to act the way she does. They could've inserted that anywhere given how much standalone episodes they have but they didn't

Art and Animation:
I don't really mind the art style but some of the scenes just took me out of the anime because of how terribly animated they were but this can be forgiven because this is a 90s anime. The animation for the wormholes in particular were absolutely nauseous

Sound:
I'm not a fan of Jazz so I have nothing to say about the music


Enjoyment:
This is one of the few anime where I actually had to push myself just to finish. I usually just drop them but given how highly acclaimed the series I held on unto hope that maybe, just maybe the next episode would be better and it wouldn't bore me out of my mind but no, that didn't happen and when I finished this series, I was just glad that it was finally over and I can finally watch something that I actually like. This series was boring from start to finish, the only exception being episode 8, the sole episode that I like

Overall:
It's not as good as people make it out to be and it failed to live up to my expectations but most importantly, and when I say most importantly, I mean that this is the only part that matters for me, it was boring and I didn't enjoy it which is why I'm going to give this a 6.

Oh hey I just checked but my overall score for Cowboy Bebop is still a 6 if i take the average of my scores for it's separate aspects. 6.25 if I didn't count my score for the music (I divided it by 4 ofc, I'm not that dumb)

I don't think numbers can properly convey how much you like or dislike a show so take this sentence as my rating:
It still had some bits that I enjoyed but it was really boring as a whole.

P.S. This is ofc just my opinion so don't send me death threats for this, okay? Cool?

Right, so here's the thing. I have been told to watch this anime as one of the classics, and I will give it the fact that it is alright, but I also think it is massively overrated.
One of my biggest problems with the show is that you can watch the first 3 then last 2 episodes and it is still consistent as if the 20ish episodes in between did not even happen.
The characters, music, and animation are all wonderful and I will praise it for that, but the show itself leaves little to no impact on me. I will probably be getting a lot ... of "not helpful" reviews here because I will not be writing about any spoilers.
Some of the comedy in the show is enjoyable and somewhat make up for the fact that it takes so long to do what it does.
The reason why this anime scores so low for me is because it feels unnecessarily long and the pay off for the last two episodes was just straight up not worth it in my mind after sitting through some of the painstakingly boring episodes.
It's an alright anime, it does not sit even close to the top of my recommendations, but it is a top recommendation for many others. Watch it if you want to, but this anime is just not the best and is the first anime I am writing a full review for because I know I stand in the minority when I say that this anime is really just okay.