Why You Should Watch: Cowboy Bebop

I'm always fascinated by the idea of formative media that is to say fascinated with the idea of media we consume in our formative years say from the ages of around 12 to 18 and have that period of our lives affects how we might view us whoever you talk to it's often with a sense of reverence that people discuss their favorite games TV shows and movies they experienced when they were a teenager but also I think it makes it quite difficult when returning to such media of many years later as its media we experienced when we were arguably at our most vulnerable and be sure of our own identity and something we may have clung to in a world of whirling hormones and ambiguous hard to grasp social norms I think this period of vulnerability means that we consume leave you with more sensitivity than we do at any other point in our lives and those respond more strongly to it for instance ask anyone what their favorite PlayStation 1 Final Fantasy is and it will most likely be the one they experienced at the earliest in their adolescence it's often with a little trepidation that I go back to games anime from this period for the reason that it can be a real disappointment to return to one of your favorite series only to find out that it doesn't hold up in the cold life of post adolescence but there is an inverse to this also and that is when we go back to something many years later not only defined that it stood the test of time but that it resonates with you harder than ever before and for me my most recent experience of this was upon re-watching one of my favorite anime probably ever Cowboy Bebop I first experienced bebop in a late-night block of animation on an old UK television channel called CNX where it would play between outlaw star and spawn the animated series and one of my clearest memories I have from being a teenager was sitting down each and every night and watching these three shows and while I was initially more taken with the bright and colorful world of outlaw star as well as the more violent edgy world spawn over time I grew increasingly entranced with these subtle narratives of spike GS and Fae until I got to the point where I would have happily sat re watching the same episodes of bebop night after night the funny thing is I think if you were to ask me why I liked the show at a time I don't think I really could have explained it very well on the surface it's a simple story about a bunch of jerk bounty hunters in space floating from misadventure to misadventure and I get the feeling I wouldn't really have been able to articulate some of the more complicated teams of the show or some of the more subtle feelings that set off inside me fortunately however I am a little older now and can probably take a far better stab at it and yes that my friends is exactly the purpose for Gavin here for so let's sit back relax and talk about why you should watch Cowboy Bebop cowboy bebop was produced in 1997 by studio sunrise and directed by shakira watanabe who was up until this point best known for his works on features like macros Plus and Mobile Suit Gundam double O 83 Stardust Memories he was joined by the dream team of writer Kia Kona by mojo character designer Toshiro Kawamoto music composer Yoko Kanno and mechanical art designer Kishimoto jamani and I single as each member of the team by name because each one was a heavy hitter in their own discipline and while watching bebop it's easy to make it the distinctive fingerprint of each individual person even me who generally does not give a flying [ __ ] the mecca or machine design has to appreciate the craft and thought that's gone into even the smallest mechanical on-screen objects and this same care can be felt in every part of bebop from the beautiful character designs to the moody atmospheric backgrounds to the utterly fantastic soundtrack which can go from flashy up-tempo jazz to downtrodden blues all the while maintaining a distinctive voice and atmosphere unique to Cowboy Bebop the show has a nearly seamless quality to it the direction animation and soundtrack work well enough that it often makes it difficult to consider each individual one in isolation and that's just a flow to the series simply unlike anything else and it makes following the story of our belly under protagonists like jet and a-another pleasure and despite her waiting some of the broader themes of the show are cruising the galaxy and spending time with these three vagabonds is an incredible amount of fun there's lively exciting displays of martial arts prowess clever and engaging back and forth as the characters argue in a way that only close friends can and some terrific visual comedy I'm particularly fond of any scene featuring Ed and I'm the show has this beautiful varied and mixed tone duis lead any interview with director Watanabe and you'll quickly learn what a total film nerd he is and this can be felt in be very small ways like the subtle nods to American ABC I saw in action cinema to be very large like how each episode seems to have its own specific genre like the Western infused cowboy Punk or the hard-boiled police drama of Black Dog serenade sci-fi Chinese martial arts 80s action blaxploitation cinema there's a looseness and a vibrancy in the feel of each episode and no to ever feel even remotely similar just compare these vibrant and fun atmosphere of mushroom Samba where the crew spends nearly an entire episode high on mushrooms to the nightmare inducing horror neo noir of Pierrot Lefou in which spike attempts to track down a deranged an extremely dangerous insane floating psychopath well be spending most of our time with the series with the crew of the titular bebop spaceship and as main cast go there they're as likable and charming as they come we have our main protagonist spike in wily and skilled bounty hunter who's chilled and often playful demeanor hi Damon haunted by his time spent working as a hitman for a brutal crime syndicate we have Jess a man of principles an old-fashioned way of doing things whose commitment to doing what he thinks is right forced him out of a corrupt police force and into the life of a bounty hunter and finally say a deceptive con woman with a penchant for drinking gambling and mayhem all the while dealing with the fact that she's essentially alone in the universe a cryogenics accident meaning she was frozen for several decades and awoke in a future she didn't understand her own past a mystery kind of like a really pretty fry from Futurama if you notice a theme among this triad of lost soul it's the one they're all in their own way of dealing with loneliness but seconds each one is in one way or another haunted by the events of their past and this is a major theme throughout Cowboy Bebop what strikes me most of their cowboy bebop story is how adults it is and I don't mean that in terms of having gratuitous violence or large amounts of sexual contents I mean that cowboy bebop is a show distinctly about being and adults whereas a lot of anime begin their story at the beginning of a character's narrative arc the path that will lead them on a road to self-discovery our characters here have kind of already been through their arcs by the time Episode one starts the crew of the bebop have all lived significant lives up until this point this isn't a group of characters coming of age and discovering who they really are but instead three jaded adults who are all in their own way trying to escape those exact same realizations I think it's interesting to think how if you rewind the clock a couple of years you'd have a much simpler story the mafia hitman who fell in love with the wrong person the last clean police officer fighting a corrupt system a woman with amnesia trying to figure out her past but instead all those events are distant in the rearview mirrors of our characters lives and I think it says a lot about the themes of the show that it's at this later stage that were introduced to our characters well the crew of the bebop worked well individually and there are several episodes showing this where the cast really comes into its own is in the dynamic that's formed between them I can remember reading the book Bossypants by Tina Fey and in it she talks about when creating the characters of Jack Liz and Tracy from the show 30 rock she wanted three characters who if you presented them with the same exact problem would all come up with solutions entirely different to one another and when you look at a lot of the best ensemble cast in fiction this same pattern seems to appear again and again I can't imagine a single situation that use cake or bara hiei or Kurama would ever approach in a fashion that is in any way similar same very squad of JoJo's part4 and of course the same is true of the crew of bebop positioning characters at odds with each other like this means that each one is forced to at some point justify their own way of doing things and thus it lets us learn more about them without ever feeling like forced exposition domes and a lot of these moments can be very subtle like when Faye asks Josh why he just doesn't get reconstructive surgery on his robotic arm and he's defensive to the point that it's obvious that there's probably a story there and one that is told later on in the episode black dog serenade there's also a surprising amount of subtlety and nuance in the crew of the bebop I love these simple scenes of spike working out or practicing kung-fu Jet tending to his bonsai plants or say lounging and watching old video tapes in a room while not significant scenes to either the episodic or overall plot they do convey the ideas these are characters with mundane lives only briefly punctuated by flashes of excitement and not just fictional cartoon characters hopping from one flashy misadventure to the next the other member of the crew is Edie and I wait til now to bring her up as she contra so heavily with every other character in the show a young savant hacker Edie joins the crew of the bebop later on in episode 9 and not only does she not have a past she's trying to run from she's not an adult's life hasn't taken its toll on her in the same way it has spike in the others and she still viewed the world with a level of enthusiasm and a fascination entirely unique to her she provides a lot of the comedic relief of the show but I think just boiling her down through that role is to misunderstand her place within the group while her computer skills are indeed useful it always seemed to me that the others took her in as a replacement for what each one of them has individually lost and that is they care for you and maybe I'm reading too much into it but given he'll focus literally every other character in the show is on their past I suspect that this may have been an intentional move on the creators part another huge part of the appeal of Cowboy Bebop is the unique vision of a dystopian future it takes place in said in the year 2070 1 the earth has suffered a string of massive catastrophes after an astral gate exploded and destroyed a large portion of the moon and so humanity has scattered across the galaxy settling on the different plains of Mars Jupiter Venus and ganymede there's a lot of smaller touches that make this world feel so succinct on alive the world has its own media there's all these different shows within shows like on this flight when we see some kind of knockoff Tom and Jerry show or the silly bounty series spike and Coe get their information from you can also see this in all the unusual and inventive technology and I don't even just mean the impressively designed spaceships but everything from the facial recognition software used by spike in the crew to the mechanized ashtrays that appear in a casino every new environment brings with it some reimagining of modern technology and it really gives this feeling of a universe set within our own but at the same time feeling alien and unique another interesting thing about Cowboy Bebop future is how it completely lacks any feeling of uniformity or any strong presence of an overarching governmental system rather while we get our destroyed remnants of human culture shot into a million different galactic pockets or as was not a himself versus statelessness rather than multinational ISM meaning that each person within bebop universe feels more tied to their own personal Creed rather than a larger whole this results in a highly varied cast of supporting characters coming from every social racial and religious background imaginable and it gives this sense that no one in bee-bop's world really has a solid place within it the just likes a jet and spike they're all just kind of drifting and I think one of the core joys of the show is experiencing some of these different stories as our protagonists cross paths with various different individuals some are just good people who have had some really really tough breaks and each one is highly memorable in their own right helps in no small part by some utterly donating character designs the sheer diversity in appearance amongst cast is pretty incredible it's a show not afraid to have characters from every walk of life not afraid to age characters not afraid to have them look unattractive and many of the Buffs episodes revolve around our crews life briefly intersecting with these characters and their stories run the gambit from whimsical and entertaining like the encounter with cowboy Andy to the fortunately crushing like when Jett realizes that a new Manjeet arias is the lover of his ex-girlfriend ELISA who he himself never quite got over I think it's interesting to note that while each episode brings a host of new faces and characters once their episodes over we never see them again nor are they mentioned by the crew of the bebop this really gives the impression of a ships passing in the night kind of deal like spike Jett and say meet all these different kinds of people with different stories and after a while it gives an impression of a universe filled with countless different people all of whom have their own narrative and only a tiny fraction of which we encounter and there's a certain sadness to it as its like spike Jeff and Faye can only get so involved in a person's life before moving on see did you bros video titles you're going to carry that weight for more on that the show also looks consistently incredible but I think in a way that perhaps is a little more subtle than most modern anime as bebop was produced in a period entirely before digital compositing was common in the industry digital compositing is the process of combining the character and the background and then adding all the lighting atmosphere and environmental effects in order to make the end product looks as finished as possible and next to the digitization of hand-drawn animation it's probably the biggest advance in the industry in the last 10 years and arguably the biggest visual indicator of a show's age as many shows prior to its popularization tend to have a simpler flatter look at least in terms of lighting effects and a care way view up is totally one of these shows which means that at first glance it might look more basic than something like say the Fate series but judging it by this metric can lead to you missing out on the mega strong points of its production well there's generally one or two fantastic action scenes in an episode aside from this the animation can actually be pretty limited but I think where the show is true strength lies isn't with the amount of drawings in a scene but with the quality of each individual one no one ever really just stand straight each character has a particular and feeling in any given scene and more often than not a character's posture will tell you more about how they're feeling than their actual dialogue this is a word we come back to a lot on this channel but there isn't Presonus - the way each character is posed you can particularly see this with Edie I could quite easily see this character being far more irritating if her animation didn't do such a good job of selling her offbeat idiosyncratic personality every scene she's in there's a sense that the animators are trying to move her in a way that's uniquely distinct to her and the less obvious and other characters you can see the same attention to detail whether it's spikes consistently relaxed and laid-back slouched the differences in the way Faye carries herself when she's around people as opposed to when she's not or just consistently tense upright rigid posture every character in bee-bop's world carries a distinct body language I think this just as much as the terrific voice acting or sharp dialogue goes into establishing its characters as believable and tangible the color and lighting is another area worth mentioning well the crew all have their standard color palettes inside the bebop ship itself whenever they go outside there's often subtle differences in how their palettes are treated just look at the somber purples and Pink's of episode 10 Ganymede elegy versus the harsh black shadows of Pierre Lefou each location has its own Palace and feel and this pushes the various unique atmosphere of each episode and adds to what is as a whole an incredibly strong production I could go on here the camera angles the composition the way the music is used in often contradictory ways to what's happening on-screen but if you want to see it all beautifully on display then check out episode 5 Ballad of fallen angels in which we see spike and his arch nemesis vicious face off in a ruined church for the first time each individual elements comes together to create one of the most intense and memorable encounters of this or any other show and so finally we come to the part of the video where I talk about the false and I have to say it is genuinely really difficult for me to think of much of any hell I even enjoy the to be continued sections listening to the characters back and forth over the preview and that could just be the nostalgia talking but regardless here are my super granular inconsequential criticisms of Cowboy Bebop it's highly episodic nature means that inevitably film episodes are less and and others with the odd divergence or side character who failed to live up to the rest but at the same time I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a single episode that had me anything less than thoroughly entertained okay I'm really stretching here but I feel like maybe just maybe a little potential was lost with the character of underdog and only because the plot builds him up as this hyper intelligent data dog whose intellectual capacity is meant to rival that of a human but we never really see this he just acts like a regular dog and maybe some indication of his intelligence would have helped like I don't know a pair of glasses or a pipe oh god what am I doing with my life the final criticism I have and this really is the non criticism of all non criticisms is that Cowboy Bebop ends the conclusion of episode 26 is about as definitive and final as they come and except for a pretty decent movie that takes place between episodes 22 and 23 Cowboy Bebop has never been and probably will never be heard from again of course how much of an actual fall this is is entirely dependent on your perspective I certainly don't have issue with it but I do feel that the success of bebop has cast somewhat of a long shadow over the rest of what nowadays work since Bebop he's directed samurai champloo kids on the slope at space dandy all of which have very distinctive vibe from doubt of bebop and personally I think that's a really good thing there's nothing worse than watching a creator continue a series they themselves have lost passion for and while I can't speak for kids on the slope having never watched it I do feel that samurai Champloo and space dandy have their own unique charm and should be viewed as such but inevitably people often cite their perceived failure to live up to one of the best-loved anime series in history which i think is perhaps a little unfair and we're probably going to talk about both at some point in the future so in all this time we haven't really touched on what could be considered the core plot of cowboy bebop and that is the conflict between spike and the series major villain vicious a psychotic criminal mob boss who recently ascended in power due to a bloody coup I think out of all the great character design bebop vicious is possibly one of the most striking tall and lean his face is often obscured by disheveled gray hair which often bathed his deep-set eyes and shadow giving the character this subdued but at the same time wild and unpredictable feel he's often seen with his unnamed pet bird who is a cormorant and interestingly enough a cormorant is said to be the type of bird that Satan took the form of at the top of the Tree of Life in order to spy on Adam and Eve which has some real direct connotations when he relate this back to vicious and his relationship with Spike and their mutual love interest Julia of the 26 episodes of the series only five of them are dedicated to furthering the spiked vicious plotline and it's in these episodes we really see a different side of Spike who disregards all sense of his own well-being and runs headlong into suicidal situations in order to face off against vicious one more time and finally put his past to rest however well these are some of the best and most memorable episodes in the entire show I think in considering them the core plus you can kind of miss the point of the show as a whole aside from the five episodes previously mentioned there's a startling similarity with the vast majority of bebop stories and that is that our characters don't really learn anything from episode to episode there's no moral there's no higher message in fact most of the time our characters will end up in a very similar situation at the end of an episode then when they started I'm sure they see some weird and even tragic things but neither they nor the plos ever really progress which is odd when you compare that to how most other shows work but there's a reason for this and that's because Cowboy Bebop is not a story about character progression it's not something where our heroes end up better at the end than they do with the stars it's not something where lessons are learned and victories are won what it is about is all these little scars that life leaves on you and how does certain points we're all just looking for ways to cope this is why spikes just say I choose to spend their time traveling planets planet chasing bounties all the little misadventures the plot lines that don't go anywhere the characters we never see again they're all just distractions for the crew of the bebop distractions they need from a life that has worn each one of them down individually and this is why if you ask the teenage me to explain Cowboy Bebop I probably wouldn't have been able to because I was not there yet I had never gotten fired I had never told anyone I didn't want to see them anymore I hadn't really lived that much and it's only returning to the series now that I'm able to recognize these things within it most of my videos are centered around the idea of convincing someone to watch a show they've never seen before and if you haven't experienced Cowboy Bebop then I hope this video has convinced you to do so but if you have seen us especially in your younger years then you my friend are whom I'm really speaking to here if you like me you first watch this show in a younger life then I encourage you to return to it with everything you know now and watch as the show transforms into something else entirely Cowboy Bebop is a brilliantly entertaining show something that's exciting funny and heartwarming but it's also a beautifully sad story of loneliness and our inabilities to ever really move on from our past in other words it's a story distinctly about being an adult and this friends really is why you should watch Cowboy Bebop [Music] friends thank you for joining me on the first why you should watch of 2017 and if you enjoyed this video and feeling like helping out your old buddy iPad tools then consider heading over to my patreon and kicking in a dollar or two to help out with the creation of future videos and in doing so you'll also be able to see your name listed with this amazingly charming and attractive group of people right here of whom I am insanely grateful I'd also like to give a huge shadow and thank you to the crazy talented sax dragon Karl Cutrone who took on the monumental task of providing this video with his own renditions of the Cowboy Bebop music you guys should seriously check his stuff out his rendition of tank is absolutely amazing you kind of course find me on Twitter eyepatch wolf or come hang out and des let's fight a boss cast as we discuss horror gaming it Resident Evil 7 and some awful Final Fantasy 15 revelations friends take care of yourselves and I'll see you next time [Music] [Music] you [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Super Eyepatch Wolf

Views: 1,239,848

Keywords: Cowboy Bebop, Why You Should Watch, Spike, Jet, Faye, Ed, vicious, Anime, review, analysis

Id: hvXw_5jlW3Y

Length: 25min 49sec (1549 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2017