カウボーイビバップ | Standard Edition

Cowboy Bebop: The Complete Series Blu-ray Review

The biggest bopper.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, December 12, 2014

Should Steve Miller have sued for copyright infringement? After all, on Miller's iconic 1969 album, the guitarist and vocalist introduced the world to the idea of a "Space Cowboy," at least with that particular verbiage, even if the general concept of a rootin' tootin' good guy astronaut had been around from the glory days of. Of course, Miller himself purloined a certain well known Beatles riff for "Space Cowboy," so maybe he didn't want to tempt fate by putting the creative staff behind the legendary animeon notice. Spike Spiegel may not be a joker and/or a midnight toker, but otherwise falls squarely into space cowboy territory, in the anime's future semi-dystopian world where bounty hunters corral the vast reaches of the universe to bring various criminals to justice. The basic setup ofis as fundamentally simple as the rest of this intriguing series is satisfyingly complex, from both a character standpoint and (perhaps especially) a design aesthetic perspective.is regularly cited as one of "those" animethe kind of rare show that cuts through the pop culture clutter to not just take hold of the public's imagination, but to help define its art form for that public. The show is a riot of influences and ideas, but remains uniquely organic, offering both bristling action and actual character development in about equal doses. Perhaps surprisingly given its overall integrated nature,was the result of creation by committee, in this case the vaunted Sunrise production house creative staff who banded together under the collective pseudonym Hajime Yatate. The fact that so many chefs were involved may help to explain the vast array of influences and concepts that waft through the series virtually from the first moment, but how these anime cooks managed to make such a coherent recipe out of such disparate ingredients might be more the stuff of magic, or at least Art, than something that sprang from some intentionally rational impetus. Ahas been said and written aboutin the years since it first started airing, but in essence the entire commentary stream about this series can be boiled down to a simple "is."There's a definite retro feel to much of, with the show (perhaps oddly) evoking the 1970s while at the same time reaching even further into the past to offer a kind of Wild West in space setting. The fact that Spike Spiegel tends to be a bit laconic may also remind some of Sergio Leone outings, though to be fair, Spikegive as good as he gets, especially in some of his bantering with his main buddy and compadre, Jet Black. Both Spike and Jet have rather colorful pasts, as is slowly doled out in a series of flashbacks (one of the recurring motifs of the series), but they work together now as a kind of bounty hunter team. In factpolicing in this future world has been turned over to several thousand bounty hunters, with television broadcasts likefeaturing "episodes" detailing the latest fugitive and what kind of ransom he or she will bring if brought in alive.Ultimately joining the interstellar fray with Spike and Jet are Faye Valentine and the somewhat confusingly named Edward, who is in fact a female. Faye, like Spike and Jet, has an interesting backstory and fulfills what might almost be thought of as a quasi-role in the series. She is in fact not quite as vicious as that term might imply, but she's no wilting wallflower, either. Edward (who "invented" her name) is (rather presciently, given the show's 1990s' genesis) a hacker. Interestingly, Ed is the one character seemingly swathed in a bit of mystery as to her past, but the character tends to be the show's comedy relief element quite a bit of the time, perhaps obviating the need for an overly dramatic past.It's actually a little difficult to properly describe's impact, as any mereis going to miss the series' ebullient spirit and whack-a-mole storytelling style, where elements are often jumbled together in a rapid fire way. Each episode works fairly well (and sometimes flawlessly) as a standalone entry, but it's notable that there are longer story arc at play in the series, notably with regard to the four focal characters and their various histories. (I would be remiss if I didn't mention a fifth character, the lovable and genetically enhanced Welsh Corgi named Ein whom the guys adopt in the second episode and who at times appears to be most intelligent member of the core group.)The anime opts for a nice, richly dense, animation style that may remind some of iconic works like Akira . The show employs then nascent computer imagery for several key effects like the "stargates" that open and close to let space travellers traverse large distances in the blink of an eye. Probably chief among the series' technical achievements is its fantastically cool score by Yoko Kanno. There's nothing here that I would term "true" bebop, but there's a lot of nicely jazz inflected cues, as well as a number of other styles that keep the show as aurally infectious as it is from a visual standpoint.