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Cowboy Bebop Film's American Premiere Announced
From the Big Apple Anime Site "The Big Apple Anime Fest 2002 (BAAF 2002) is proud to announce that the festival will premiere the theatrical English dub version of "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie" on August 30th, 8:00pm at Loews State Theater (Virgin Megastore) in New York City's Times Square. At the premiere, Cowboy Bebop director, Shinichiro Watanabe, score composer, Yoko Kanno and character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto will be on hand to meet their legions of fans." That's a show worth seeing.
Bebop on cartoon network rather sucks. Edited and such. A lot of it is very funny, and needs to be watched in Japanese with english subs. Much better that way. The japanese voice acting is better, and the translations to english too. The English dubbing just irritates me to where I cant watch it.
The movie is good, seems like an abnormally long episode, but funny and interesting like almost all the bebop episodes. I think its supposed to take place between eps 22 and 23, but I'm not sure exactly.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Anime are cartoon dramas. In America you have a strict dichotomy between adult content (NYPD Blue, General Hospital) and child content (Spongebob Squarepants). In Japan, everyone watches anime--each show has elements that appeal to all age groups. Thay are cartoons and feature cartoon violence and expressions, which kids can relate to, on top of which is stacked teen angst and sexual innuendo (to capture the adolescent market), and if you're really lucky, you'll occasionally get a show with some kind of unrequieted love that appeals to a more mature audience.
To really enjoy it you have to allow yourself to indulge in slapstick humor and sexual comedy. Sure, we like to imagine that we are a cultured, civilized poeople who don't appreciate that sort of thing, but if you take the stick out of your ass and allow yourself to be entertained it's usually worth it.
I am not a huge anime fan. In fact, I think most of it is crap (Sturgeon's Law?), but having said that, I really like Cowboy Bebop. Why? Well...
- The characters are distinct and have real personalities. Each one has a sad past that you gradually learn about through the series. By the end, I actually felt bad for Faye.
- The premise is a little different as the series isn't about 1) mecha, 2) big-eyed teenage girls or 3) tentacle pr0n.
- There are only 26 episodes, so it doesn't go on forever like some series I could mention *cough*DBZ*cough*.
- While there is an underlying plot to the series, each episode is more-or-less self-contained; so if you miss an episode, you're not completely lost.
- I don't speak Japanese and I don't really want to watch subtitles, so it's fortunate that the English dubbing really is quite good.
- The music is very good. 'Waltz for Zizi', for example, is a very pretty song.
- It is very artistic. The very first scene in the first episode and the very last scene of the last episode (to take two at random
:)) are well done. There are some episodes as a whole that were very well done. 'Pierrot Le Fou' comes to mind. And finally... - It had Ein.
:)
I could go on, but these are the biggest reasons I can think of right now.I will subscribe when:
A) Users can moderate stories, decide which ones get posted. No more tyranny of the minority (the moderators)
B) Changes to the Slashdot system are documented (the recent change to the karma system for example) and there is a story posted about such chnages so I can voice my objections and be ON TOPIC (unlike this post, which is off-topic, since there is no on-topic place to post it)
C) Stories that are rejected are accomplined with an explaination (seriously, use a drop-down menu. Pick the top 20 reasons, put them in said drop down menu. Pick one. Easy enough. Total coding time: less than one hour.
D) Stories are spell/grammar checked by the editors, and links are checked. When a story is ready to be posted, no less than 3 minutes is spent trying to find out if it is a duplicate.
When all that happens, I will pay. Not a second before.
Please don't mod me as off topic. It is relevant to the sig of the parent, plus there really isn't an ontopic place to post it.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
Probably the best American parallel is the Horror Movie. As a genre they are at best misunderstood. You have the generic serials (with the decline in quality as they extend into the double digits... Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween), the pure exploitive trash (Sleepaway Camp, the joyous (almost avant garde) cult/underground films (Evil Dead, Troma Films), and the amazing masterworks (Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Shining, John Carpenter's the Thing).
A lot of people think Horror Movies are crap. And a lot of people just go to get their willies off at seeing B,G,T&A (blood, gore, tits and ass). And then there is a large loyal underground composed of fanatics and fanzines.
And no matter how hard the genre tries it still can't overcome the lowest common denominator.
Of course I think the best works of Horror movies far exceed anything done in anime. Personal opinion? Yes. But a movie like Dawn of the Dead seems to reverberate with zeitgeist fears: Nuclear Annihilation, slow death from radiation poisoning, the Cold War, isolation of the self in modern consumer civilization... The best Akira did was: fear technology, stuff blows up real good.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Back in the early 90's there was to be a off broadway musical of "Mai the Psychic Girl". Sparks was doing the music for it.
Last i heard the project was still dead partway through production.
First, it falls in to the usual US cultural trap of labeling all animation as "cartoons for kids". While there is more than ample evidence of "kids cartoons" from the likes of Hanna Barbarra, there is plenty of adult content in other animated works. Disney's classics are wonderful artworks. And many of the unedited Warner Bros. classics are full of humor and cultural references that only an adult (with some idea of history) will likely catch. Even some of the later cartoons such as Animaniacs packed in adult references. Of course, that completely ignores animation that is entirely of an adult nature - such as Heavy Metal.
Of course - when I was a kid, I hated Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Thundercats. I wasn't overly fond of Battle of the Planets. But I loved Robotech (especially the feeling of depth during space combat scenes). I find anime interesting because of its style, concepts, and because it doesn't fall in to the trap of being "just for kids" all the time.
One final comment - nostalgia exists. I fall in to it myself. I occasionally catch The A-Team and CHiPs on TV. Sometimes I'll catch some cartoon I remember from childhood. I think I probably enjoy Space Ghost Coast to Coast partly because of its mocking 70s-era cartoons (or at least the Space Ghost series). But I've always appreciated animation and have no illusion that any current appreciation is induced by a desire to revisit my childhood.
Have you ever watched a soap like 'young and the restless' or 'guiding light'? I had to endure summer vacations watching that drivel as a kid. Somehow though, occasionaly, I'd find myself interested in the show. Only it would take forever for the plot to advance in soaps. They'll have the same conversation for a week sometimes. That and some of the plots are silly/corney. Deamon Possesed Housewives, Cloned Housewives, Alien Abducted Housewives...who could sit and watch that?
Anyway, DBZ is a lot like that. It is a developing story, not a planned one. If you don't have patience, don't watch it.
The DVD sets of Bebop have both the English and the Japanese dubs (it's a cartoon, it's always "dubbed").
:-P).
Personally, I prefer the English version. The voices fit the characters, settings, and tone of the series much better. The Japanese dubs seem flat and out of character.
Yes, Spike is a super cool badass, Faye is hot and tough, Jet is a disgruntled ex-cop, and Ed is insane. But to the English speaking ear, the English voices convey those same senses of character much better in the English dub.
Put it like this: If you watch lots of Japanese dubbed animation, then you'll get the feel for Japanese voices and will be able to tell flavor and character of the voices. But, to the average non super-anime-fan, it's a bunch of gibberish with no variation in tone or pitch. Flat. Uninteresting.
To me, who can ear the variation in both, I'd say that while they both convey the same feeling of character and flavor, you're more likely to hear it better in the language you understand (unless you watch so much anime that your eyes bleed
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Things I like about Cowboy Bebop:
It's a "modern" Anime with a "retro" look. The sets, vehicles, design, etc. all is super-detailed, nicely drafted, but the characters follow the more cartoony approach of 70's-era anime like "Speed Racer" and "Star Blazer", "Battle of the Planets" (um Gachaman, Space Cruiser Yamato, and Go Go Go, IIRC). Or even Lupin.
Not that there's anything wrong with the Shirow-ites of the 90's. The more realistic approach is cool too - but it lacks a little bit of that light-hearted "life" of the older style.
The main characters are extremely likeable, the stories are about as deep as you can go within a half-hour framework. There's an arc, that comes to a tragic end in the last episode.
The action, is typical edge-of-your-seat anime.
There's good music too.
In fact, I think pretty much everything that I like about CB, I also like about Lupin.
(btw - Steven Speilberg was quoted back in the 80's as saying that Lupin III: Castle Cagliostro was the greatest action/adventure movie of all time, I happen to agree).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.