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Cowboy Bebop on TV This Fall
da3dAlus writes: "Anime Tourist has a confirmation about the fall programming on Cartoon Network, as mentioned at the San Diego Comic Con. Of greatest note is the mention of Cowboy Bebop: "It was disclosed that Cowboy Bebop will air this fall in the Adult Swim block on sunday nights. The source was unsure as to how much editing would be needed and admitted that it was 'something of a stretch for them.'" The 'Adult Swim' block begins September 2nd, and is geared towards the older Cartoon Network audience." If this is true, this is great news. Cowboy Bebop is one of the best science fiction tales that has been animated ever. I just can't explain it, but I hope they don't have to butcher it to put it on U.S. TV. Also worth noting is that a trailer for the Bebop movie is online if you can watch quicktime.
See this billboard spotted along the 710 freeway in Los Angeles. Yep. That's Rio from Burn Up W.
Is anyone else scared about how much they'll alter the story of the episodes? Especially that episode about that guy with crazy hormone problems? Experience shows that they'll do crazy things to cover up nudity. Remember that horrible episode in Tenchi Muyo that was supposed to show the tattoo on evil washu's butt? Even though it was essential to the storyline, they covered it up, and the episode was one huge mess. Oh what fun.
Even the regular cartoons are butchered. Remember Wile E. Coyote drinking the entire bottle of "earthquake pills"? Your kids won't. How about the fish in "Horton hears a who": "Now I've seen everything *blam*". Not there. At least not the *blam*.
Sad state of affairs.
On the good side, I have seen some anime on cinemax, and "Ghost in the shell" is on frequent circulation on one of the Starz channels.
Am I the only one who would really like to see their respective production companies get together and have Ed meet Lain?
Thankfully, the dubbing on CB is actually passable.
But I'm still afraid of massive cuts that'll leave the show a bleeding gutter carcass. The first episode features drug trade, and a seemingly pregnant woman shooting her own husband (fiancee? boyfriend?) in the head before being killed herself.
Redeye, toxic mushrooms, crossdressers, hermaphrodites, blood, little boys (I know, I know, he's not a little boy dammit) that kill, death, organized crime syndicates, sword+throat and sword+eyes action, cigarettes. And they're gonna fuck up the ending I BET, I mean, how can the hero not live happily ever after?!?!
It's low on the explicit sex factor, so that may tender it some goodwill from Toonami.
But remember people: Cowboy Bebop has violence where people end up getting hurt, and where several people die.
North American media only tolerates violence where no appreciable consequence comes of it. A million bullets are fired, a thousand bombs set off, but everyone comes out alive in the end (and really, isn't that the way Jesus would want it?).
-Laxitive
I am hoping that since they are relegating it to a "more adult" time slot, that they'll do it late enough on Sundays that they won't have to chop it too badly. But of course if it gets more explicit then what can you do? Bah. Good news/Bad news.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
That's a good point, and I've thought of that at times as well. Just because it's animated doesn't mean it can't contain some amount of realism or provoke thought. My girlfriend isn't a big anime fan, and can't see why I enjoy DBZ. But when Cartoon Network aired the Tenchi Muyo series, not only was I hooked, but she took a liking to it as well. I ended up purchasing all 3 movies and the OVA boxed set. She watched the movies with me and even enjoyed them, but hasn't seen the uncut OVA yet. As a note, she's 3 years older than me ^_^
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Honestly, as far as exposure is concerned, what does it matter if a series is censored? It's nice to see more diverse anime series on TV than just the kid-friendly type (ie Pokemon). Yeah, CB may be a more mature series, but if it needs to be formatted to American TV standards, then it's fine with me. For example, Sci-Fi channel aired Fatal Fury and Armitage III a few weeks ago. I had thought about picking up the Armitage DVD on several occasions, but I wasn't sure if I'd like it or not. After seeing it (edited of course), I decided that I liked enough to get the DVD afterall. As for Fatal Fury, I deemed it not worth my money. It too was severely edited for nudity, but Sci-Fi just blurred out those specific body areas on the characters on several scenes, instead of deleting them altogether. However, the Card Captor series has gotten a severe re-edit, which completely changed the story and plot of the series--that's taking things too far.
I think my point is that as long as it's just censored and not re-edited, it's still good to see it on American TV. Pardon my rabling, but that's my $0.02.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Just as a note, I didn't include that link to AnimeFu. I think that's CmdrTaco's own brand of 'smart tags', added pre-posting to the homepage of course...
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
I started watching the Dubed version of Cowboy Bebop, and I was still blown away. Japanese with subtitles is great, but the English versions Aren't that bad. The acting was good, and the words actually 'fit' English pretty well
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I'm no anime freak like a few of my friends are, but I borrowed all 6 of my friend's DVDs of this and really got into it. The redtail ship is very cool looking. The hammer head ship? Eh. I'd rather fly Spike's ship.
.MR as the top level domain. I'll let you figure it out where it leads to.
Interestingly enough, in one of the episodes, a Betamax VCR was featured that looked like exactly the one my family had 20 years ago(a Zenith top loading model).
The hacker kid "Edward" is interesting since she talks in riddles not unlike "Wheelie" from The Transformers, but less annoying.
Look for crazy Internet references, including, but not limited to a website url that features
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Obviously CN is a kid's channel based mostly on "classic" and kid cartoons on a perpetual loop. Great to plant a 4 year old in front of, but not exactly a killer formula for adults.
Sci-Fi on the other hand comes with every basic cable package and has still to figure out that anime, preferably uncut, would be great programming for their viewers. Imagine how much money could have been translated into bringing anime to the states instead of producing that horrendous Dune remake. Yes Sci-Fi, you put David Lynch in his place.
I'm sure they're too busy coming up with another great Outer Limits episode to bother with something as trivial as cartoons. "Okay, check it out: this alien comes down and infects this dude..." Or even better getting the rights to air the Knight Rider movie last night.
Yeah i know they used to play some anime during the day but I don't think it was very consistant and way too early in the day for me.
Something has frozen over because I would have bet real money that although COWBOY BEBOP is probably one of the most influential Anime to have been released in the last 5 years, there was no possible way that it could get released on the ever popular Toonami!!!
The reason is that its just to "adult" for Toonami to handle. The Big 3(sex, drugs, and violence) are all in full force in COWBOY BEBOP which would make any one who censors squirm.
Cartoon Network/Toonami has chopped up shows that have had far less of the Big 3 than Coboy Bebop to make them presentable on their network. There are some episodes that have so much "questionable material" how much is going to be left to air?
I can't recommend COWBOY BEBOP to enough people whether they are Anime fans or not. On the other hand I'm not sure if I can recommend watching a very heavily modified verson that is more concerned with being presentable than persenting what was originally intended.
Actually it being in Japanese is more of a plus than a minus in my book. A constant fresh source of Japanese would be a big help in my efforts to learn the language :-)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
On a side note, remember all those Warner Brothers cartoons that you don't see anymore because they're not politically correct? You can still find that lot on Cartoon Network UK. For what it's worth.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The trailer should be on this page:t ml
http://www.cowboybebop.com/door/news/010709/mvs.h
Link to trailer in quicktime format.
The hint on the page is the big ole Quicktime word ;)
Bottom left. Wave your cursor around until one of the graphics gives you a "QUICKTIME MOVIE" alt tag. (Or just look at the source, or whatever.)
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
A couple of people posted corrections to my original post... and since they haven't been modded up or anything, I thought I'd quote them here so more people see them. :)
:D
"Only 12 episodes of Bebop aired on TV Tokyo in Japan, and the episodes that did air were lightly edited. Bebop was later picked up by WOWOW (satellite network in Japan) and aired in it's entirety.
-and-
"Um, it wasn't just the first episode that was cut. Almost half of the entire series was omitted when first broadcast on TV. Later on, they played an uncut version on a satellite channel which had less restrictions than broadcast"
OK you can mod this post down as redundant or whatever, I wanted people to see the corrections. Thx all
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
With all the talk about censoring Bebop, it's interesting to note that Bebop was censored in Japan, too! At Otakon in 1999, the director of the series was there, and it turns out that the very first episode of the series was considered too bloody to be shown on TV by the network. Apparently, Japanese fans didn't get to see episode #1 until much later, possibly until the home video release.
Of course, only episode #1 was blocked, and as far as I know there weren't any cuts made from the rest of the series. Which is kind of odd, since I didn't really think episode 1 was much bloodier than anything else in the series.
I've watched a lot anime, and I'd have to say Bebop is in the top five of all anime series of all time, IMHO. I also have to say that it has the best animation, hands-down, of any anime television series ever, by a wide margin. I don't even think that's a matter of opinion. The animation is as good as many theatrical and direct-to-video (OVA) anime releases I've seen.
God damn, I hate censorship. I also hate the English dub of Cowboy Bebop. Spike is one of the coolest characters ever, but the English dub actor sounds like he's trying really hard to sound cool. Sorry. If you have to try to be cool, then you're a thousand miles away from cool.
So what American audiences are going to see is one of the greatest series ever, hacked to bits, with a shitty dub that makes the characters sound retarded. And non-anime fans are gonna say, "what the hell is the big deal with anime? This is supposed to be one of the greatest series ever, and it's pretty lame. Anime is so over-rated, guess it must have some hidden appeal for geeks".
So I'd just as soon not see Bebop on TV under those circumstances. Ideally, I'd like to see HBO or something pick it up, then at least it would only have the shitty dub to drag it down, not the censoring. God, I hope I'm wrong, and they don't censor it too badly. I really want to be wrong.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
is the editing that will probably be done, even in the 'adult swim' block.. For those who have not seen it, Bebop is disturbingly violent at points. Especially eps 5(Ballad of Fallen Angels),16(Black Dog Serenade) and 20(Pierrot le Fou). But as long as they can avoid editing them, and keep the voice acting intact(the Bebop dub was surprisingly good), I'll be happy
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
Pop in a tape/dvd/whatever of Cowboy Bebop, and when the opening credits are going by, listen to the music and think "dah dweeee dah dah dah dweee dow." It fits!
If Cartoon Network decides to run this as a "mature" block, I expect the worst they'd do would be to edit out nudity and foul language. It would be insane to edit a show for content and call it "mature". Not to mention obscenely hypocriti-- oh.
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