Reviews

Anyway, starting off with the usual: the visuals. The art style is somewhat gritty and dark, very similar to Western animation, and misses some of the usual tropes we’ve come to expect from anime – huge eyes, crazy spiky hair, et cetera. The only character who looks particularly anime-like is Faye, but she’s a visual anomaly all to herself. Seriously, what in the world was up with her clothes? I could overlook that in a less serious anime than this but it’s so freaking hard to take the show seriously when this woman is dancing around in a… whatever kind of get-up that is. I don’t even know how to describe it. Anyway, the animation is pretty consistently smooth and good-looking, although they like to notch it up during fight scenes. You’ll rarely see fight scenes as dynamic and sexy as those in Cowboy Bebop. All considered, this anime looks awesome, although not particularly like an anime.

The cast of characters is also obviously influenced by Western entertainment. Spike, the laidback, goofy badass; Jet, the battle-hardened mechanic and only responsible person on the Bebop; Faye, the tempestuous and self-absorbed woman; they all feel like they were pulled right out of a Western show and animated. Ed is the only exception here – she’s too heavily moe to really be anything but an anime character. The show focuses almost exclusively on developing these four characters’ backstories, and resolving their conflicts from the past. All of them have some sort of important past – Spike and Faye especially – and each episode usually happens to bring those pasts back to them. It makes for a cast of characters that have more depth than many I’ve seen in anime before.

The story – yeah, that’s right, also pretty Western-influenced. The show is heavily episodic, where each episode contains its own small story that’s resolved by the end, except for a pair of stories that were both spread into two consecutive episodes. However, like I mentioned earlier, these little stories have a tendency of bringing in, with incredible regularity, parts of the several grander, over-arching storylines that pervade the show. What looks at first like it could be just another bounty being tracked down, might somehow actually connect to some part of Jet’s old life, or Faye’s, or Spike’s, or even Ed’s (although I think Ed only has one episode that deals with her past). And if the episode doesn’t do that, then it instead uses that bounty to highlight the issues of the setting – usually political issues, sometimes just personal issues that have been blown out of proportion. Pretty much every episode has another layer of depth and meaning to it (except maybe the mushroom one because I don’t really know what the point of that one was).

Basically, this anime rocks and you should watch it. It has a startling level of depth and complexity that is uncommon in anime, especially modern anime. The only thing to really look out for is the decidedly non-Eastern style, but I seriously doubt that could ever be a problem. This show is too damn good to dislike for a dumb reason like that.