Cowboy Bebop newbie questions

Cafe Society
1

Ok, it took me a while to get to sleep last night, and I saw my first ever episode of Cowboy Bebop on the Cartoon Network last night.

I was impressed, especially since I’d watched Inushaya right before Cowboy Bebop. It was ok, but the artwork was much more static and less interesting than the panels in C.B.

So can anybody clue me in on the basic Cowboy Bebop story/characters? I may have to set the VCR up to tape these episodes in the future.

2

I heartily recommend The Jazz Messengers as an all-around Bebop website. They have episode synopses and such.

The main characters are:
Spike (the green-haired guy)
Jet (the big guy with the mechanical arm)
Faye (the woman)
Ed (the kid…a girl, actually)
Ein (the dog - an intelligence-enhanced Welsh Corgi)

The episodes are fairly self-contained with a few 2-episode arcs. You just need to know that the main characters are bounty hunters in space. Most episodes are about their times spent trying to catch criminals, but a few dive into the pasts of each character (such long, sordid tales).

I’ll leave the character descriptions for someone else, though I can make an attempt if it’s desperately wanted.

3

Spike has green hair? One of us needs to adjust their tint control.

4

I just got up and stared at the picture of Spike I cut out of an issue of Animerica. His hair looks green to me. Well, one picture looks green. The other two are inconclusive, being rather small and currently taped to a shadowy section of wall.

But I’m fairly sure it’s green. Dark green.

5

The Cowboy Bebop MOVIE!!!

Kickass!

Oh, and Archergal, tape 'em. Believe me. Tape 'em.

6

Well, here are the results from a Google image search on “cowboy bebop spike.”

Looks brown to me.

Beeblebrox: It is, indeed, kickass.

7

Thanks for the links!

Spike’s hair looked green to me too. Not Joker green, but greenish-black. And I noticed the Welsh Corgi in the episode I saw last night. Dogs in shows are always a plus for me.:smiley:

8

This site has everything you’ll ever want to know:
http://rfblues.aaanime.net/

To expand on JessEnigma’s synapsis a little
The main characters are:
Spike - Used to belong to some kind of organized crime syndicate, Hates kids, dogs and women with attitude.
Jet - Former cop turned bountyhunter
Faye (the woman) - Lost her memory when she was frozen for 50? ish years and has a gambling problem.
Ed (the kid…a girl, actually) - A hacker.
Ein (the dog - an intelligence-enhanced Welsh Corgi) - I saw one of these out and about the other day!!
Pretty good show if you like anime that DOESN"T contain screeching 15 year old girls and giant robots.

9

What about Ed?

10

She’s younger than 15. Besides, how can you not like someone named Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusy IV?

Oh, and Spike’s hair definitely seems to have little bit of a green tint to it, at least from what I’ve seen.

11

I here second the opinion that Spike has green tinted brown hair. And of course, Edward rules.

12

Spike Spike Spike Spike

Enough about Spike, let’s talk about ED. She has got to be the best anime character ever. Best. Anime. Character. Ever. (I really like her :P)

Normally, I find little kids in animes annoying and obnoxious but Ed is just done so well by the creators. In every episode, she does something I find hilarious. Just check her out in the episode “Mushroom Samba” and you’ll see what I mean.

Yes, Ed IS a she. That would explain the perpetual blush marks on her cheeks. It doesn’t, however, explain why she has no nose. :slight_smile:

13

Spikes hair: Dark brown, maybe picking up a hint of ‘reflected’ green off of his jacket.

Background: Actually, if the second episode you saw was the Ein intro, you may have started at the beginning of the series by sheer luck. Ein is episode 2. :slight_smile: The first had the drug dealer named Asamov and the pregnant woman.

Failing that, Bebop is pretty episodic. (for an anime series, it’s VERY episodic) Really the only backstory you might need is:

  1. The main characters are all bounty hunters.
  2. Spike and Jet are the ‘real’ partners, anyone with them is mooching off them, at least in their opinion
  3. Spike was once in a crime syndicate. Like everyone else who left a crime syndicate, ever, he left behind some unfinished business, both professionally and romantically.
  4. Jet used to be a cop, but quit due to corruption. Actually, you don’t need to know this, as it’s constantly repeated. :slight_smile:
  5. (Ignore if Ed hasn’t shown up yet) Ed is not just a little freak, she’s a brilliant hacker little freak.
    And even that you can probably pick up as you go.
    On Ed: Ed? Nah. Any more Ed and the joke would have run down. Lack of JET was the real problem. The only character who’s not an emotional adolescent or has more than two personality traits, so of COURSE he gets the least screen time. Or any kind of resolution at the end, for that matter. Now, in 40’s movies, guys like Jet got some respect . . .

Also unfortuanly, one of his two ‘backstory’ episodes was pretty damn violent, so it got cut pretty bad for CN. And weirdly enough, his OTHER backstory episode, which isn’t particularly violent, isn’t being shown at all. Along with two others. (One for terrorism, one for -spoiler-) To be fair, CN’s edits were generally barely noticeable, and usually reasonable. Still two of the missing episodes are VERY good, one serious, one funny, so there’s still reason to buy, or at least rent them.

Microspoiler: I should be grateful. This is one of the rare instances where the character I liked best wasn’t the only one in the series to die.
If you MUST have more Ed, you can always check out Love Hina, which contains a palate-swapped version of Ed. According to the manga writer, she was originally supposed to be an ‘exotic beauty,’ but turned into Ed more or less by accident. Whether you want to believe that or not, is up to you. :slight_smile: (For the record, LH’s manga was notably better than the anime. Which wasn’t bad, just not as good)

–
‘Ah. Bimbo Noir.’

14

Which episodes is CN not showing?

15

The only missing episodes I know of (6 Sympathy for the Devil, 8 Waltz for Venus, and 22 Cowboy Funk) have all turned up in subsequent runs of the series. Yes, even Cowboy Funk.

Here’s a great website about all of Cartoon Network’s edits: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/columns/edit-list.php

16

This fan art shows Spike’s hair as being dark green.

Google turns up a few biography pages that insist his hair is brown, but the majority say it’s dark green.

I’ve only seen it as dark green, so I’m gonna have to say it’s dark green. But then again, I’ve seen screenshots of him with dark green, brown, reddish, and grayish-black hair, so I’m not even sure the animators know what color his hair’s supposed to be.

17

Maybe he likes to change it on a daily basis?

18

Who cares about Spike?

Fae is the bomb! She’s the woman your Mother warned you about, & you’ve searched high & low to find.

19

um…yeah…I guess your right…can’t have anime without screeching teenage girls. I was thinking more along the lines that it’s a show with an actual story, not just a repetitive 20 minute pit fight between 2 robots/Pokedigimorphoballs/teams of scantily clad teenage girls.
Gr8Kat-great link. CN didn’t seem to hack up CB too much. I couldn’t really tell from watching and I’m not surprised they added things like bikinis or replaced the “shits” with “damns”.

I was surprised they bleeped out "God"s but left in the "damn son of a bitch"s.

I’m pretty sure every episode has made it to CN. Including the hijacking episode, the building bomber episode, the episode with Vicious’ ambiguously gay she-man friend, and the finale.

20

"replaced the “shits” with “damns” "
I was curious about this. Both of them are mild profanities and I wasn’t aware that one was considered more acceptable than the other.

BTW I also found Ed rather irritating and one of the weak points of an excellent series. Still they had the good sense to not give her too much time.