Okay, there’s no dobut that Whedon was inspired by Japanese Anime when he wrote the pilot for Firefly.
Somehow, not being a devotee of anime, I missed * Outlaw Star* and while it and Cowboy Bebop bear many outward similarities to Firefly/Serenity I’m willing to bet in terms of characters and character development they are entirely different worlds.
So, who knows? Apparently* Outlaw Star* even has a naked frozen female weapon in a crate – just like River Tam in terms of the find, but the working out of the character, how different is that?
So, a few questions for those who know:
How deep do the similarities go?
Are the potential fans of Serenity, who are also rabid Anime fans, so put off by the similarities that they have some kind of imagined rivalry between the different shows or just aren’t interested in something they feel is “watered down?”
(And this is the big one): What defines the difference between inspired by and stolen from? What are some examples (other than Serenity/Firefly) and where does Serenity/Firefly fall on the scale?
I’m curious about the zeitgeist here on the board.
The ‘naked frozen female weapons in a crate’ for instance.
Melfina is an artificial being, created to be a ship’s navigational computer. River is a regular human being tortured and surgically altered into an assassin.
Melfina was stolen because she was valuable. River was rescued by her brother.
Melfina can’t fight for beans, that I remember - she’s the series Damsel in Distress. River…is the Damsel in Distress often enough, but she kicks ass when something starts her going.
The only real similarity between the characters is that the first time they’re seen on the screen, they’re naked in a box.
There are a few other superficial similarities - China ended up as a major power in OS, too…Both crews are involved in legally very iffy things…OK, those are the only major similiarities… There’s no magic or aliens in Firefly, and both are major points in OS. None of the characters really match at all.
There are more minor similarities between Firefly and Bebop (Earth is uninhabitable, the crew’s always strapped for cash, one or more characters have a mysterious past), but the details of the plot and characters are very different. Spike and Mal can be shoehorned into similar roles with little effort, but of the others, only River and Ed (young, insane prodigies) can even make an ill-fitting match (and ill-fitting it is). The crew of the Bebop mostly stick within the law, whereas the Serenity crew mostly stick to extra-legal jobs. So on.
Yes. Obviously, I think they’re being dumbasses, but they exist.
Honestly, if Joss Whedon and Tim Minear said that they’d never watched an episode of Cowboy Bebop or Outlaw Star in their lives, I’d believe them.
It’s not like “a crew of cash-strapped outlaws struggle onboard their ratty ships” is such an original or outre premise that three crews couldn’t come up with it independently.
Now Star Wars… Whedon was ripping that off left and right. It’s forgiveable since he did it so well, often better than Lucas.
Ed is good at Hacking(and she’s very good at this), but River is apparently good at everything.
Also, Ed is merely silly and very playful, very much the free spirit. The most disturbing thing about her is that she eats bizarre things(Remember the “Sweet Bean Roll”?). River, however, is insane, erratic and dangerous. Slicing Jayne across the chest for no good reason(and Jayne being Jayne is not sufficent reason), and freaking out the cattle in one of the early episodes. In one of the later ones, Mal and Wash mention River either rubbing soup in her hair or blowing up the ship when she goes nuts.
I doubt Ed would ever attack Jayne with a knife or try to “fix” a bible for that matter.
So to clear up, Ed =Silly Master Hacker. River=Insane unstable pyshic asassin.
I think the “rag-tag band of outlaws who are basically good hearted even though their jobs skirt the edges of the law and they all have eccentric personalities and some have mysterious pasts and some are comic relief while others carry deep psychic wounds from a long ago war” is older than all the shows mentioned in the OP. Firefly has as much in common with The Outlaw Josey Wales as it does with Cowboy Bebop
Outlaw Star also had wicked cool magic-shooting guns (which, of course, jammed whenever the plot called for them to). Call me shallow, but wicked cool magic-shooting guns = teh win.
A minor hijack: Was Outlaw Star the one with the red-haired protagonist whose guns took a certain type of numbered shells? And where the higher-numbered ones shot, like, black holes at people?
I think the similarities between Bebop and Firefly are mostly in setting, culture and approach. Story wise and character wise, they’re quite different. Both take place within one solar system, with misfit outlaws living on a ramshackle spaceship. The ships are both castoff working vessels (the Bebop is a fishing boat, while Serenity is a former cattle hauler, IIRC) and they even kind of look alike, IMHO. Culturally, the two socieites are a mix of Western and Asian influences. The two shows also mix science fiction and other genres by using unvarnished visual elements instead of just setting traditional genre stories in a science fiction environment. (there are still 20th century cars in use in Bebop, for example.) Bebop uses a wider range of influences (hardboiled detective noir, samurai and kung fu movies, other anime conventions, etc.), while Firefly concentrates on the western.
