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Cowboy Bebop
Yes, the infamous Cowboy Bebop, my personal favorite anime. What a great series, it never fails to "wow" me with its execution and character development. This has one of the best soundtracks of all time, successfully combining Jazz, Swing, Classical/Opera, Electronic, and even Metal. This series is all about the style, every episode/story is completly different, but it all fits into the overarching style of the series. This is not one to compare to other anime series folks. "The work which will become a new genre itself will be called Cowboy Bebop" that about sums it up...
This show is very episodic and some episodes may seem like throwaway or filler to skeptics, but the show does have a lot of story hidden in its episodic exterior.
Spike Speigel: A young bounty hunter who used to work for the infamous Red Dragon syndacate. He is a master of melee combat.
Jet Black: A former cop and owner of the Bebop, his past often comes back to haunt him producing some of the better episodes in the series.
Faye Valentine: A beautiful woman with a lost past and a huge monetary debt, she often goes overboard with her hobby, gambling.
Ed: A young hacker girl who spends most of her time in front of her computer. When she does get away from the machine she is generally high strung and full of energy producing some of the funnier moments in the series.
Ein: A very smart canine who is mainly there for comic relief, an excellent mascot character.
The Animation is superb, the best in the business as far as a TV show/OVA is concerned. The DVDs are a must for this series, if you don't have a DVD player then don't bother downloading this show, its totally different.
This is one of the rare cases where both the Japanese and the English casts have achieved near-perfection. Faye's English voice actress even surpasses her Japanese counterpart. There are some noticeable differences in the scripts themselves, but the same meaning is conveyed, although the Japanese version sometimes gets it across a little better.
The style, the music, the characters, the animation, even each character's respective stories are wonderful. There are plenty of episodes that deal with Spike, Faye, and Jet's past. Spike's episodes are the best of the three, all having production values higher than that of an OVA or sometimes even a movie due to the diverse music and beautiful animation used. I also like how the show successfully combines so many genres (Comedy/Action/Drama/Sci-fi) successfully, with none of the four mentioned above being predominant. There are so many things to appreaciate about this series considering it succesfully combined so many genres of film and music. I believe achieving something like that along with the amazing character designs makes it tough not to put this series among the best in Anime.
Some will dislike the episodic nature of the series, others will just not "click" with the show. I see three main kinds of opinions on Cowboy Bebop: "Its one of the greatest animes ever" "It was good but nothing special" and "I hated it, it really wasn't that good". This show will captivate some, interest others, and disgust a few that fail to see that there is plenty of substance behind the style of the show.
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