I just saw this last Friday, and man, was I ever impressed. I’ve seen the show a few times on Adult Swim, liked it enough to buy one of the DVDs.
The movie is just… wow. Looks beautiful. Seeing it on the big screen was impressive (I think this is the first anime I’ve seen in the theater). The animation is definetly a step up from the TV show. Spike has some amazing fight scenes, particularly the one where he’s armed with a push-broom. But equally impressive is the story, which is tightly written, convoluted, yet perfectly easy to follow. This is in direct opposition to virtually every cartoon I’ve ever seen come out of Japan, which are usually so poorly written/translated that it makes The Usual Suspects look like Dick and Jane. It’s also funny. Humor almost never seems to translate at all, but the entire theater was regularly laughing out loud.
What I really liked was that the story kept a pretty tight focus. The action takes place all on one planet (Mars) instead of spreading the action over several planets to make the story seem more “epic”, like most other spacefaring SF. It felt very much like an episode of the TV show, without feeling padded or stretched too thin.
My only real complaint is that Jett seemed a little under-used. Being at least passingly familiar with the TV show, I didn’t mind so much. He certainly couldn’t have been left out entirely, and his role here was consistent with his character on the show. But I image that someone who hasn’t seen the show might wonder what the point of the character was. Also, I wasn’t sure when Elektra and Vincent had hooked up. It seems like it must have been before he “died” on Titan, because he was supposed to have gone batshit crazy while there. But if their relationship predated the Titan War, how did Elektra get infected with the nano-antidote?
The nanites transferred much like an STD from what I remember. He kissed Faye, saliva was exchanged and the nanites began the replication process.
I watched the subtitled version, Dubbed not available at the time, and my first thought was she got exposed during the fight on the train. But the story also told of a relationship between the two, so it could have been anything from an innocent kiss to a blood transfusion. One of those things you just file away under maybe before it ruins the movie for you.
And Jett’s always been more of a “I’ll go use my contacts and see what I can find” kinda guy. I imagine he spent most of the time with his bonsai trees not giving a care.
But if there’s anything the movie needed, it was more Ein. Have you seen the stuffed one on sale? Too cool.
I’ll leave this with a quote from one of my friends upon their first viewing of the movie: “Good God! That’s what Ed sees?!”
I saw a fansub a while ago, and haven’t seen it on the “big” screen yet.
[rant]“Big” is in quotes because here in the SF Bay Area, arguably one of the largest audiences for anime outside of Japan, it’s still only playing in Landmark theaters, which have tiny screens, not at big theaters like the Metreon. Seeing a Cowboy Bebop movie (or even an episode) on the big screens of the Metreon would be such a rapturous experience I’m not sure I’d survive it.[/rant]
The movie comes across as a slightly longer, slightly higher-budget episode of the show. I don’t remember much about it; what I do remember is mostly from the soundtrack that I’ve been listening to non-stop since it was released. The funny thing is that there have been single 30-minute episodes that were more moving or intense than the movie itself. But it’s great that it finally got a release; hopefully it’ll turn even more people onto the show than Cartoon Network has been able to so far. Is the release subtitled or dubbed?
Miller: by all means, buy, borrow, or rent the rest of the series! It’s by far my favorite anime series, and one of my favorite television series, period. I can’t think of any other series that has made me laugh, cry, get scared, or have as many “damn, that’s cool!” moments as Bebop. Also: Yoko Kanno (the composer) is a genius. It’s hard to believe all her music is from only one person.
The print I saw was dubbed, using the same voice actors who dubbed the TV show. It sounded great to me: don’t recall anything in the movie that made me aware that it was dubbed, but that sort of thing has to be pretty egregious to catch my notice.
And I’m already sold on getting the rest of the DVDs as soon as I have the money. And the soundtrack!
So, does Spike remind anyone else of John Cusack, or is that just me?
I got to see it at the HIFF last year and then last night I took my mother to go see it. I loved it both times and my mom really enjoyed it too.
Spike’s dogfight was absolutely positively the best dogfight I’ve ever seen.
I kinda had suspicions that the bullets in Vincent’s gun were the delivery method for the antidote to the original spread of nanos but whether that’s even possible I don’t know. And it doesn’t really matter to me. I’m not going to make a flow chart to try and find any obscure errors in a film’s plot.
Yeah, the movie was cool, but the series is better.
I have been taping them off Cartoon Network for a friend who doesn’t have cable and I just finished taping the series. Even though I’ve seen it before, I had to sit and watch the last two eps.
Wow. I love that show. I so need a t-shirt with Spike on it… I saw one for the movie with Spike and Vicious. Eeeexcellent.
I just got this CD from a friend and it friggin rules. I have never seen the series, though. Is this the same CD or will there be a different one as the soundtrack to the series?
Excuse my cluelessness, I know nothing about this series.
The CD you link to is the soundtrack to the movie, plus a bonus CD that has remixes of soundtrack songs plus additional tracks by “Seatbelts.” (The name of Yoko Kanno’s band when she’s doing Cowboy Bebop music). And yes, it friggin rules.
There are several other soundtrack CDs for the video series, and they’re all pretty good. My favorite is the first one. They’re also available in an expensive box set.
And note that there are plenty of places online to get them for cheaper than amazon.com. But also be careful, since pirated versions are all over the place – if the price is the same as or lower than an American CD there’s a good chance it’s one of the “Ever Anime” knock-offs. I ordered several of them through an anime store I thought was legitimate, but they turned out to be black market copies – they look identical to the real ones except for a tiny “Ever Anime” logo. I ended up having to spend more money on legitimate copies in Japantown and in Tokyo.
P.S. mouthbreather I just noticed you’re from Atlanta. Try “House of Anime” in Gwinett County if you’re ever in the area; they have a decent set of anime soundtracks. It’s on Pleasant Hill Rd. not far from the Gwinett Mall and Best Buy.
I never got that. He just reminds me of Lupin III, which I believe was intentional. (Especially the shoes). I think that Jet was loosely based on Lupin’s bearded sidekick whose name I always forget.
Lupin III? Don’t see that at all. Lupin is a useless, loud-mouth jerk with a permanent hard-on. Spike is quiet, almost monkish, and unbelievably deadly.
I thought the movie was pretty bloody good. The fight scenes are among the best fight scene’s ive ever seen, not just animated ones. Probably the best aspect of it was that it kept the same feel as the series: I didn’t once think I was watching a movie of a series, but rather a continuation of the series. If that makes sense.
The “serious” dialogue bits were atrocious. The actress who does the English Ed missed the ace original voice by so wide a margin it was painful.
Give this one a miss until you’ve seen the TV series. It isn’t worth the money until you’re desperate for more Cowboy Bebop and willing to settle for mediocre instead of great.
Here in LA the show I saw was sold-out and my friends tell me that its a packed house every show, every night.
Yet, its only running for one week.
How in the world do they expect anime movies to ever take off, if one like Cowboy Bebop with a built-in audience only gets one week.
The fight scenes were great, nice timing of the sequences and they felt real, it really felt like blows were landing and people were being hit. I’m really glad I got the chance to see it in the theaters, some of the sets were faily epic.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Most movies based on TV shows either try to justify the jump to the big screen by being “epic” and lose the feel of the source material, or feel like a regular episode of the show padded out to ninety minutes. This felt like it could have been an episode of the TV show that just took three times as long to tell as usual.
I blew twenty bucks ($8.00 admission + $7.00 popcorn chicken + $3.75 for water) to see Cowboy Bebop at the Angelika last night. It was almost worth it. Good, but there were episodes of the TV show I liked better.
A-hah!
Y’know, my friend Charles, who is a huge anime fan and pretty much my best source, said pretty much the same thing. Spike is Lupin, Jet is Jigen Daisuke, and if you can’t see the similarities between Faye Valentine and Fujiko Mine (“Mountain Peaks”), you’re blind. That’s why he was never able to get “into” Bebop.
Still, I find both sets of characters lovable in their own special ways.