Cowboy Bebop

Cowboy Bebop is a live adaptation of a popular anime featuring a group of space bounty hunters nicknamed 'cowboys' who roam the now-populated solar system a few centuries in the future. The tone of the series is light-hearted, featuring typical down-on-their-luck yet likeable main characters who stumble their way into victories against equally incompetent bad guys. It's basically all in good fun.

It's universe is a combination of Americana influences from the '50's up to the '70's, Japanese mafia tropes and old-skool visceral science fiction, with a film noir-detective glue that holds it together. It consist of over-the-top but well designed set pieces with characters that find themselves in absurd situations, mostly created by their own antics. Fair warning, it can get pretty bloody at times between all the sarcasm, true to anime heritage.

The music is excellent, especially the jazz pieces from all the greats that seem hand-picked to fit the scenes. It's general feel is reminiscent of comic books, with lots of different color schemes, shots from strange angels and short, witty comebacks that could've just as easily been dropped in captions. Blood doesn't drip, it flashes over the screen, that sort of thing.

My main criticism are the predictable plot-lines, with one or two nice surprises. Also, not all the jokes land because the editing can be off beat, slowing down the comedic timing of the actors. On these review pages it has been compared to the original, well-loved anime, which I didn't do. Without the comparison, the end-result is a production that could have had a sharper finish, but that doesn't take away much from this futuristic noir-detective that got stuck in the seventies.

Don't expect the world and you'll root for these cowboys.

This is not Cowboy Bebop the masterpiece animation. If you came into this expecting it to be you did yourself a huge disservice. I'll admit I was having a bit of this with Faye, but the depiction is growing on me after I shook it off.

Almost every sub 7 rating directly compares this to the original. Every so often I get exposed to a 6.4 rated show(Rating at the time of this review) and this is not a 6.4.

Hopefully after the fanboys voting on day one are done with it it'll increase to something more reasonable.

This show isn't the anime, but is definitely enjoyable all on its own. The casting is great. The sets and music really captures the spirit of the original.

Watched the anime like ages ago and went into this with no expectation and got hook.

First episode wasn't that great as a pilot but things pick up by the second episode.

The fight can look a bit slow sometimes but everything else is enjoyable. The set designs are amazing. I love the retro feel of it. Really captured the cowboy bebop mood.

And god the music... Yoko Kanno's Tank! Is that amazing that I didn't skip the intro at all. The whole jazz soundtracks feel so refreshing after watching movies with similar sounds.

John Cho is amazing too as Spike. He got the mannerism and coolness, and so is Faye Valentine. I love the witty humour and sarcasm. Jet Black also holds the team together.

Plus point for Ein. Adorable.

Good acting, the actors have swag. It's a good serie it's anything you have seen before. Right amount of humor and action. You will like this series if you like anything surrounding sci fi space movies/series. Interesting story to follow too, this will not disappoint. Usually asian actors are the bad guys in action movies/series, but not in this one.