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Review: Cowboy Bebop
First impressions: It's quite good, good enough to show even non-anime fans. Visually very pretty, plot is perfectly adequate, entertaining yet moderately deep, it's about all I ask for in an anime movie: it's fun.
The movie is strongly reminiscent of the animated series - if you lengthened and filled out one of the standard episodes, boom, you've got a movie. All of the Bebop crew are present, which would put it, time-wise, roughly in the middle of the series. Each of them plays a significant part in tracking their latest target, a bio-terrorist who plans to unleash an unpleasant plague on the population of Mars, but as in the series, they work side-by-side but not necessarily as a team, rather as a loose affiliation of, err, cowboys. The plot is simple but reasonably compelling. The antagonist's motivations are laid out; I didn't find them particularly sensible, but, ignoring that, the actions of the characters make sense and everything pretty much holds together.
The movie is significantly prettier than the series. Instead of the computer-generated beauty of Spirited Away, there are quite a few exquisitely drawn backgrounds. Most of the action takes place in a city on Mars which bears a strong - very strong - resemblance to modern-day New York City. Shadows are rendered with great care, leading to a number of scenes where the shadows play as much of a part in the scene as the character casting them. Although the rendering of Martian daylight is not, perhaps, very realistic (Mars is going to get a lot less light than Earth, even if it's massively terraformed...), the artists do take the opportunity to show us several beautiful sunset shots. The movie is worth watching for the art alone, IMHO.
Fans of the series will know that it's known for its jazz (or maybe jazz-like is more descriptive) numbers. The movie still has some jazz, but there's a lot more rock, leading to a more fast-paced feel. The soundtrack is quite good without being overpowering and without losing the feel that "made" the series. The voice acting is as good as the series, which is not surprising.
At least two of the showings in the movie theater I saw it in were sold out. I imagine that won't continue, since this is a bit of a niche market and the movie hasn't been advertised at all that I've seen, but perhaps it will be enough to get a wider U.S. distribution for the movie, and Spirited Away picking up an Oscar shouldn't hurt either. It's worth seeing in the theaters, I think, assuming there's one near you. If you've ever wondered what sort of beating Spike can dish out when he's really upset at someone, this movie will answer that question. :)
[LOOK OUT!!! MASSIVE SPOILER!!]
No, he didn't. That, in my opinion, is the beauty of bebop. They had the nerve to kill off the main character. They said "This is the end. No more Bebop."
I said "No he didn't" pretty finally, and all there is is symbolic proof, but I think its pretty solid. The flock of birds flies up as the camera pans; they used that a couple times to signify death, most notably when Julia died. The lyrics of the song that plays is "I'm ascending" (good news; he went to heaven). And most importantly, in the very last shot of the series, looking at the stars, there is that star that fades out, just as Old Man Bull says happens when someone dies.
I think that the series up to the last 3 or 4 sessions is good, but it is those last 3, where everything comes crashing down for everyone, that really makes Bebop great.
>> Although the rendering of Martian daylight is
>> not, perhaps, very realistic (Mars is going to
>> get a lot less light than Earth, even if it's
>> massively terraformed...),
Actually the reason for that is implied, if not
directly explained in the context of the series.
The Hyperspace gateways that were created to allow ships
to travel between the planets (and facilitate the migration
from earth after the great Gate accident) are also used
to pipe sunlight from near-earth orbit to the other colonies.
It was a convienient vehicle used to give the other planets
consistent conditions without having to nit-pick too much
on other physical differences between Earth, Mars, Venus, Ganymede
and a few other spots.
Half the fun of watching anime is trying to figure out what the
hell the creators were thinking when they came up with scenarios
like that.