Cowboy Bebop Forum

 Is that a heron on his shoulder?

Anybody else feel like there was some serious black comedy in the first scene with Jet and Spike? There they are, having a drink at that bar and then, with the timing of a punchline… DANGER! The bullets are flying! The scenery’s blowing apart! The blood’s squirting! And these two guys are so unimpressed with it all.  And then, Lin shows up (hopping the fence from FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST?), but no… it’s really Shin. Whoops. Of course. Such an easy mistake to make, right?

I was seriously dreading the re-appearance of Vicious because all his appearances prior to this have led to boring, confusing episodes. It’s almost like we had a six-episode long, really dreary mini-series (or OVA, to keep it in the anime parlance) that was chopped up and distributed over a 26 episode run of fun. Sort of like having pieces of broccoli floating in your bowl of Frosted Flakes. This had the added, dread-inducing ingredient of a dog fight in space - - and  I’m always a little leery of those, here. I might have to update my formula for a good BEBOP episode, because the space combat's usually a sign that thing's are going to get confusing in a hurry to tie everything up.

It’s odd, this is the penultimate episode, but I’m not feeling the kind of tension I’d normally get from a final cliffhanger. Chalk it up to the more episodice nature of this series. It’s not like when the final angel had arrived in EVA or the mechas got universe-sized in GURREN LAGANN or even when Near and Kira started their warehouse stand-off in DEATH NOTE. It's reaching something of  a crescendo, but on a much smaller scale.

In the odd reminders department, that scene with Lisa driving Faye reminded me of something similar in THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. "Oh, so you just happen to know my friend, Spike?" Neither of them were being totally honest.   And yeah, if the  shinigami in BLEACH reminded me of the Green Lantern Corps, then Vicious' bosses - -  the pasty old triplets - -  reminded of an evil, Asia Guardians of the Universe.

Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of    HYBRID BASTARDS!  &   UNIMAGINABLE . Order them on Amazon   here   &     here .

I am assuming he is talking about Julia. The last episode is great if you like tons of action. Gun vs sword makes for a pretty cool and interesting fight.  
 
As for next anime's for Tom to pick up I just finished Wolf's Rain and absolutely loved it.

Who's Lisa? Did you mean Julia? You know, women hate it when you're talking with them and you call them by a different name. More so under certain context. lol "

 Remember Spikes first meal in the series? Plot point. "

" This is one of the reasons why I didn't want to see a Cowboy Bebop watch and learn. It's a cool show, but nothing really to talk about. To me Bebop is like the serialized cop shows on TV (some of which I enjoy ie. Law and Order SVU).   There was really no overwhelming feeling I got while watching Bebop. Every episode was either, "that was kinda cool" or "meh", so when these last couple episodes tried to make me care about Vicious, I just couldn't. 

" It weird how negative most of these comments are. Cowboy Bebop is one of my all time favourites, and I can't really remember many bad episodes. The mood of the anime throughout and the excellent music to go with it just made it such an great experience.