Cowboy Bebop - The Movie
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Movie Reviews of Cowboy Bebop - The Movie
Movie Review: Grand style
Summary: 5 Stars
What is it about Cowboy Bebop that everyone loves? It's not often the same thing, but the series has so much to offer that nearly everyone will find something. For me, it's the style. I knew little about anime and nothing about Cowboy Bebop until I caught, at random, the first episode of its early run on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. That was all it took. Cowboy Bebop is so good that you will forget it is a cartoon. I've never had that happen before or since. Part of it is that the animation itself is so refined and precise, but another part is that the storylines are compelling and downright artful. Everything, including the laconic main character Spike, moves along at its own pace in a sort of dreamlike, sunny afternoon lull, even during moments of intense, teeth-rattling violence. This is not anime for children..people die, often and graphically, there is sex, love, betrayal, and brutality. There is also humor, and, above all, an abiding sense of grace.The film loses none of these aspects. It plays like an extended episode set somewhere around the middle of the episode series, where all the main characters have been established and have already partially come to grips with one another. That, I think, was my greatest disappointment (although obviously a relative one); I would have loved nothing more than a post-series movie following up on our favorites rather than an insert. Nonetheless, the film captures the grace and style of the shorter episodes while giving each character their due. There's a lull in the film that makes you wonder whether it was going to be a 2-3 parter and was recast into a film format, but otherwise it stands alone.
The focus of the film is a presumed-dead Martian special forces soldier incubating an experimental cellular-level of nanobots that make him immune to other violent nanobots. Those, naturally, become his weapons of choice. After a tanker truck explodes on a downtown Martian overpass, sickening and killing thousands with what turn out to be malignant nanobots, a massive bounty is offered for his head. Enter our intrepid heroes, the cast and crew of the starship Cowboy Bebop, and their great noses for a profit. Also hence arises the greatest overarching question, at least to me, of all the series.. what is Spike's morality? You have bounty hunters seeking only the highest rewards, yet inevitably they pursue the case once the hint of a reward has long since vanished..or once it proves dangerous in extreme proportion to its petty payoff. Indeed it often becomes the challenge of the thing that is its own reward, and such is the case here. Spike meets his match, Jet Black's den mothering skills are tested in the extreme, Ed and Ein...well, they keep up the good work. If you loved the series, you will get the movie. If you've never seen the series, the film is a great introduction. In either instance, you should get it.
Movie Review: just a random buy turned out to be a perfect buy!
Summary: 5 Stars
see before i even watched this movie, i knew very little about the show, I read the first book of the manga and thought it was pretty cool, so i decided to pay 20 for this movie and sat down, turned up the DVD player's sound up to 30 and kicked back for 1 huour 45 minutes of action, suspense, madness, intrigue, humor and sensuality.what really pumped this movie up was the way the fight sequences and the movie were filmed. If you are in the know on anime, you will notice that scenes in cowboy bebop the movie and the animatrix look very similar in actuality. the reason why that is, is because Shinichiro Watanabe, the director of CB:TM also directed the shorts "Kids Story" and "Detective Story" from the animatrix. the animation styles are very similar they use more in depth animating for these scenes to make the pacing very fast and thrilling.
another cool thing was the music of the movie. i grew up (i'm still a teenager) listening to all styles of music and i was surprised to find such a well developed soundtrack for this movie in particular. in most animes (not all, just some) the soundtrack is mostly j-pop (japanese pop music) and doesn't fit in with the action of the movie, but the music placed in Cowboy Bebop is very funky, jazzy and rock and roll-ish. i'm mostly into jazz and hard rock, and i can tell you both styles are used to their abilities in this movie. i'm glad there is finally another cool anime to have a good soundtrack, the other being Akira.
The DVD of Cowboy bebop the movie, is a mixed bag. The features are mostly directed to fans of the TV series who didn't get any special features on the other DVDs. You get a whole lot of still images, about 30-60 minutes of behind-the-scenes featurettes, music videos (these are textless opening and ending credits), character biographies and so on. this isn't really a feature packed dvd as one might expect from a disc billed as a Special Edition. i was expecting a commentary from Watanabe, an isolated audio track in 5.1, a bonus disc so the film could have one disc and the features another, leaving enough room to make a SuperBit image and sound reproduction.
The movie looks average. it isn't a flawless image. it has its scratches and stuff but it is a good picture that is best seen on a widescreen tv. The sound is awesome when heard in either the english (the dub was good i just wish the script would have been exact to the original japanese translation) or the original japanese versions which are both in Dolby 5.1 audio. The bass is well used during the monorail and ending fight scenes and the surrounds are mostly used for panning dialogue, falling rain, cross sound effects like bullets and stuff like that.
I would recommend this DVD to anyone who likes anime because it is a very good dvd that should be seen by everyone who is a fan of animation!!
Movie Review: Bebop's in the Blood
Summary: 5 Stars
I only discovered the Cowboy Bebop series some six months ago. What I found was a surprising series that featured three eccentric bounty hunters (Spike, Jet, and Faye) and their two sidekicks (Ed the hacker and Ein the data dog) as they careen across known space looking for an easy credit, and all too often finding the truth instead. What made the series exception was a happy mix of writing, art, and music. Given the tight budgets that TV series have to work with, Cowboy Bebop managed to exceed everyone's expectations, and still does.Now the producers have created a feature film set in the period around episode 21 of the series. At this point in time the characters have reached full development, and the series has left behind its happy-go-lucky outset and turned toward closer examination of the issues that made its main characters unique. The film picks up these threads, but does not overemphasize them, instead providing a new story line that fits into the series as a gem does into its setting.
A tanker truck explodes in a crowded Martian city, and suddenly people are dying from something that kills swiftly and leaves no traces whatever. Faye, while tracking down a hacker, witnesses to the explosion, but decides not to get involved until the bounty offer or 300,000,000 woolong proves so attractive that the Bebop's entire crew enter the hunt. What they find is part hush-hush military secret and part Zen tragedy as they find their real opponent is the final survivor of a terrible biological warfare experiment. Vincent, cold and alone, without a past, seeks to end the life of a world as a means to reopen the closed doors of his own heart.
The byplay of the crew keep this from being a deathly serious film, but it touches on many issues. Love, loyalty, the cruelties of war and the inevitable human foibles that happen when people become more intent on saving face than saving the world. Spike displays a fore echo of the strength of character made the end of the series so remarkable. But all of the performances are extraordinary (Ed is a standout).
A feature film offers an opportunity to focus on art and animation in a way that cannot be done in the TV world. Cowboy Bepop is no exception. What the aficionado will discover is that, while the are is at a whole new level, the visual continuity with the series is so careful that one doesn't really notice the difference until it is looked for - and then it is spellbinding. Yoko Kanno's music, which has been a highpoint all along continues to reflect and extend the film without ever overwhelming it.
This, along with Miyazaki's Spirited Away are this seasons to must see films. As different as they are from each other, they offer great insight into the breadth of Japanese anime. The only thing I regret is that there isn't a sequel -- yet.
Movie Review: Gotta Knock a Little Harder!
Summary: 5 Stars
A man who lived in dreams, that's what he was...
After being delayed for over a year, our favorite bounty hunters come to the big screen in North America. I was lucky enough to see this in a movie theater, and damn was it worth it. Sure i had to travel an hour by train to see it in Times Square, but hey, it was that good. The movie in question is "Cowboy Bebop", and as a huge fan of the series, I was definetly salivating with seeing these characters on the silver screen.
Taking place between sessions 22 and 23 of the series, the film definetly does not feel out of place or just "stuck in" but a natural part of the series' tapestry.
Halloween, 2071. The movie starts out simple enough, in a scene that establishes who Spike Spiegel is and what he does, for those who don't know, he's a Bounty Hunter. He and his partner Jet Black take down an armed robber gang as the movie opens, and then we et to the real plot.
Enter Vincent, a mysterious villain in black, who blows up a tanker truck unleashing what seems to be an airborne virus which kills dozens and hospitalized hundreds more. The government of Mars puts a 300 Million Woolong reward for his capture, and the only one who's seen him pull off this attack and could indentify him is our badass vixen: Faye Valentine. Naturally, Faye decides to go after him on his own.
Sounds simple, but this movie is a lot deeper than that. There's a lot of twists and turns, conspiracies within conspiracies as Spike ends up teams up with a former soldier named Electra (who is also hiding secrets connecting her to Vincent) to take Vincent down before he unleashes his weapon on the entire Mars population
While the entire main cast is in it, this is definetly Spike and Faye's show, which Electra and Vincent end up sharing with them. And though they don't have as much to do this go, Jet, Ed and Ein are along for the ride and have their moments in the sun.
The plot is great, the animation is just gorgious, and the voice-acting is better than most American animated series and movies. The voice-actors from the series easily fall back into their roles, and you could watch this between Sessions 22 and 23 and it plays perfectly within the series. And as I mentioned in my series review, the English dub is actually superior to the original Japanese in this case.
The DVD release was nicely done with great extras talking to the series creators, Yokko Kanno and the voice actors from both sides of the Pacific. If all you've seen is a bootleg, the DVD is easily worth the $25 to pick up. Oh, and it's just known as "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie" here in the States. Apparantly Bob Dylan's lawyers did not approve of the title.
Are you living in the real world?
Movie Review: Not just a cartoon, a new genre itself
Summary: 5 Stars
A spacecraft making a crash landing on a highway bridge, a taxi screeching to a stop and the pilot jumping out to say, "Yo, taxi!" symbolizes the situation humor in Cowboy Bebop. This movie, "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (as titled in Japan) is set between episodes 22 and 23 of the TV series.
Bebop is the animated tale of 27-year-old Spike Spiegel, a slick Martial Artist and shooting ace estranged from the mafia, and his comrades: Jet Black, a 36-year-old former cop, Faye Valentine, a 23-year-old gambler on the run from her debts, Edward, a 13-year-old girl hacking genius, and Ein, a Welsh Corgi dog that was given above-average intelligence in lab experiments.
The setting of the movie is Mars in the year 2071. Mars, along with the other planets in the solar system, has been terra-formed into an Earth-like planet after a cosmic accident forced a mass emigration from Earth to other planets in the system. Smoking, Jazz and Cup Ramen still exist, while space travel blurs the distinction between living in space and living planet-side.
This ragtag bunch of "cowboys," or bounty hunters, travel the solar system in a spacecraft carrier ship, the Bebop, taking on often near-fatal missions to locate and apprehend dangerous "bounty heads" as they struggle to stay fed and keep their ships in good repair.
The antagonist, a former subject of military experiments which they all seek to find and stop, is bent on the destruction of human life on Mars through a nanovirus plague. A test vaccine made him immune, but also gave him amnesia and dreamlike hallucinations.
In Bebop, story and music are always linked. The movie is named after Bob Dylan's song. Yoko Kanno, a prolific composer of game and anime music, wrote the soundtrack for both the TV series and the movie. The TV series is mostly set to bebop, while the movie takes a rock beat.
Anime, the style of animation that director Watanabe Shinichirou chose for both the TV series and movie, is made up of stylized colorful art, futuristic settings, violence and sex. Some may say this is "just a cartoon," but with the violence, dirty words and bad habits of the characters, this is definitely not a cartoon for kids. For the mature viewer, intelligence put into the script, imagination into the art and virtuosity set to playing the music, transforms that classification into, to borrow a line, "a new genre itself."