I’m sure that spacing is fine. It’s a silly point for me to raise, I have no will power and I tend to pig down media even when I know I’d get more out of it if I savored it.
Hello Again, I hope I didn’t come across sarcastic or pointed, “some people,” it’s really a comparison/complaint I’ve heard a lot.
Yeah, I don’t have that problem. 
Even games or shows I love and am totally hooked into, I need breaks from.
No, not at all. Not to worry! It actually made me think and go … “oh yeah…” that’s all.
In all fairness, all three series are a bit derivative of Han, Luke, Leia and the rest of the Millenium Falcon team.
I’ve only seen a few Outlaw Star episodes but…
…the female android character and River Tam from Firefly are both introduced to the audience as the contents of a large attache case. I recall reading somewhere that it wasn’t a cooincidence.
I’ve never actually seen Outlaw Star, but man, that list is incredibly tenuous. River and Melfina being female, government-created supersoldiers who arrive on the show in a box is a pretty solid similarity, but the rest? One of the arguments there is literally, “Both shows have villains,” f’christsake.
Ok, so I finished the show last night.
I was surprised to realize that while I had been thinking of Bebop as sort of candy of a show, light and fun and, I’d become deeply invested in the characters. I was really sorry to see Faye leave and find no pease, and when Ed and Ein left, I knew shit was going to go down.
And oh man did it. I’d managed to avoid most spoilers so I was genuinely surprised at the end. A very Japanese ending, on the whole. Excellent, but I admit it depressed me a little - I was really hoping for some resolution for our boy, and a way for him to go forward.
All over the web it says that Spike’s death is unconfirmed, but it sure looked like it to me. So that leaves Faye and Jet.
But the show certainly is going to stay with me for a long time, in the back of my head, and I’m glad I watched it. And yes, I did love the music, and have gained an appreciation for jazz I never had before.
Thanks again, everybody!
The ending to Evangelion is terrible. I hated it. I still hate it after all these years. I’m only buying the Rebuild movies because I’m hoping they change the ending.
What you describe, Tengu, is a sitaution that did happen to Studio Gainax as they were working on Gunbuster: Aim For The Top. The final episode is partly in black and white, and the big climactic battle between us and the aliens is shown as a series of storyboards with the music in the background.
Still, it’s one of my favourite series and has the ending to Evangelion beat by miles!
I guess I came in too late. I was going to say that if you can make it past the first three episodes, you’ll fall in love with it. It took some encouraging for me to get that far, and I picked the rest of it up after that.
Glad you liked it. You should try tracking down the soundtracks. Counting all the live stuff and remixes, there are at least a half-a-dozen.
My favorite episode is about the shrooms.
This made me get up and count. I’ve got eight including a double disc set and the 4 CD box set which has the great live concert recordings. That adds up to 12 discs total of great music.
OK, there’s:[ul][]OST 1[]OST 2 (“No Disc”)[]OST 3 (“Blue”)[]Ask DNA Single[]Limited Edition Boxed Set[]Music For Freelance[]Vitaminless[]Cowgirl Ed[/ul]Plus the movie soundtrack Future Blues (does that count?) and a “Best of” that some new tracks from the game. Wow… I guess I should’ve checked first! Does that cover it all?
Okay, what’s here is:
O.S.T. 1
O.S.T. 2 - No Disc
O.S.T. 3 - Blue
Music for Freelance (remixes)
Vitaminless
No Onagku (Yoko Kanno, but not really Cowboy Bebop)
O.S.T. Future Blues (Movie) 2 disc set
O.S.T Limited Edition Box Set - 4 disc set
So I need to grab the Cowgirl Ed and Ask DNA CDs, which I didn’t know of until now. Thanks!
Since nobody asked, I also have a Best Of compilation of my own making which includes:
NY Rush
The Real Folk Blues
Fantasie Sign
Don’t Bother None
Want it All Back
Road to the West
You Make Me Cool
Gateway
The Signing Seal
The EGG and YOU
Adieu
Ask DNA
Blue
Call Me Call Me
Space Lion (Oh man, I LOVE this one!)*
The Real Folk Blues (Live)
*Everybody should set aside 7:12 and go listen to this right now. I’ll understand if you don’t or you do and don’t love it, but man do I think it’s good. The sax, the bass, the chant…chills.
Glad you liked it. Shinichiro Watanabe has another awesome, though completely different, show called Samurai Champloo. Instead of jazz in space, it applies a hip-hop sensibility to Edo-era Japan. I really loved that show as well, in case you’re looking for more of Watanabe’s stuff.
My favorite episode was definitely the one with the alien horror on the ship.
I don’t know if the ambiguity signified much other than cultural differences. If there’s one point where Eastern storytelling and Western storytelling have major differences, it’s in how they want to end things. Westerns prefer terse “this is what happened” epilogues, with open endedness being left to things that aren’t integral to the genre/story and minor threads. Eastern storytelling LOVES ambiguity, multiple plot threads not being resolved (including introducing new plot threads not intended to be resolved at the end of the story), and incredible open endedness. It may very well be that they intended there to be more, but when I saw Bebop’s ending, I really thought it was supposed to end that way, and found it to be the perfect Japanese ending to the story. I really can’t imagine it ending any other way.
Also, I’m still in love with the full version of Spike’s poem from the last episode.
ETA: randwill – You have a best of compilation without “Tank!”? Heresy!
“Oh my God!” he thought, his head hanging in shame.