Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
ihatesgsami
Imagine this show but with the soundtrack replaced with a compilation of Hannah Montana's B-side tracks and you'll realize this show is all style and no substance. The soundtrack carries it a bit but the plotline itself is incomprehensible. The characters are shallow and all seem to hate each other yet the show wants you to care about them and their relationships. It reminds me of those Family Guy episodes where the characters blabber a bunch of vitriol at each other and then MacFarlane has them smile as if to say 'it's all good, I still love you' and expects the audience to buy into it. A truly dogwater show that didn't deserve the work of Yoko Kanno.
Read at the sourceAzeew
First of all, let it be known that Cowboy Bebop is an episodic anime. This changes the whole scope of the piece, as it's goal is completely different from those of more traditional ways of storytelling. And so, it shall be interpreted and criticized as such.
To put it briefly, if you heard of Cowboy Bebop as a classic, a masterpiece, and as such you are expecting a coherent plot with well-written characters - you're in for a wave of disappointment.
As with most stories told in an episodic fashion, depth and complexity are often compromised, as the main scope of the show is to provide individual episodes with their own complete stories. But, when done right, these separate encounters can really add to the whole, creating a strong story and interesting characters, while still delivering…
Read at the sourcePlay2X
I think its quite saddening that I don't have anything better to do than writing a review. On christmas! However, this really needs to be done at some point, and while other people are eating cookies, I'll do this one: Cowboy Bebop Review Mk II. New and improved, rated by my new guidelines!
First of all, yes, I still dislike Cowboy Bebop, and even without rereading it I still remember the opening phrase from my first review. I'll refrain from it this time though, because at some point I stopped caring about whether I like that particular anime or not, I just want to give a fair rating.
Story is for me defined by its Main Plot, the setting used, as well as the execution of the storyline.
First, for the main plot. The most episodes are without any relevance to the main plot. They neither h…
Read at the sourceliteraturenerd
Overview:
Today I will look at what is probably the most universally well received anime by non-otaku and casual viewers. It is well known that "film snobs" don't have the same taste as average film goers. A film snob will say Citizen Kane or Tokyo Story is the best movie of all time whereas an average viewer will generally choose something like The Godfather or The Shawshank Redemption. With anime it is the same way. If Legend of the Galactic Heroes is the Citizen Kane of anime revered by all the elitist snobs, and all those people making a pathetic attempt to "prove" that they are intellectuals, than Cowboy Bebop is The Godfather of anime. It is THE anime of the common man.
Story: 8/10
Cowboy Bebop is largely episodic and many episodes stand alone, but it does have an overall plot tha…
Read at the sourceGonzyChan
There’s nothing quite like it when you come off an anime and realize how much it has built itself as this vital piece of art that has since transcended its ever-present influence on other mediums. This particular show, named Cowboy Bebop, definitely lived up to the legacy it deserves of being the pinnacle of late ’90s anime that would influence a wide variety of anime leading up to the new millennium. Even with that being said, that’s not to say that Cowboy Bebop has its fair share of hiccups.
But before I get into that, it is essential to distinguish the inevitable nature that director Shinichirō Watanabe constructed from the ground up to make Cowboy Bebop’s world vibrant and distinct. Since Cowboy Bebop has separate plot arcs within each episode, with some continuity within its main cas…
Read at the sourceDeusAnima
Cowboy Bebop was one of the first anime that truly impressed me.
One of the first anime that convinced me the anime genre as a whole had something going for it, that anime has qualities that separate it from other forms of entertainment.
It is a show that has withstood the test of time and is often viewed as a masterpiece by many. With such popularity and praise there is bound to be a group of the opposite extreme that dislike the show. Now I bear in my mind that although this group is a minority their points are valid. As a reviewer I look at all angles and try my best to keep bias at an all time low.
Having said that, regardless of my attempts to locate the flaws of this show my overall consensus is that Cowboy Bebop is in multiple ways a masterpiece.
Here Goes The Review (Spoilers are…
Read at the sourceOvyda
"And the work which has become a genre unto itself shall be called: Cowboy Bebop"
^ This sentence was showed several times during the episodes and it is already giving away about the uniqueness Cowboy Bebop carries. There are many unique anime in our anime world, but most of them fail to execute it well. However, fortunately that is not the case with Cowboy Bebop. It is a truly classic anime with incredibly awesome soundtrack and brilliant character development.
Cowboy Bebop centers around a group of bounty hunters in a futuristic, space-western setting. The year is 2071 and the place is our Solar System, where various planets and moons have been terraformed for human settlement. Bebop is a spaceship where two bounty hunters Spike Spiegel and Jet Black are travelling around the space an…
Read at the sourcePolyphemus
Cowboy Bebop is one of those series that is just impossible to criticize. Not because it has no flaws, but because it has rabid fans who will defend it to the death. It has obtained the mythical “classic armor,” which is an abhorrent carte blanche, bestowed upon only the most overrated of anime, that is used to automatically defend against any sort of legitimate criticism. Cowboy Bebop certainly has good qualities, and it is relevant in how it influenced western perception of anime, but it wasn't quite groundbreaking or revolutionary in and of itself. You could argue that its audiovisuals were in fact groundbreaking, but I think a work needs more than superficial qualities to be truly revolutionary or great.
Cowboy bebop borrows much from western media and pop culture in general. his sho…
Read at the sourceUnfuckwittable
I'm not one to jump on the hype train. I try to not get high hopes for anything, because usually you are going to be let down. I've heard the praise for this show so many times over the years. Google "Top Ten Anime Series" and almost every list will have Bebop in it, usually at #1. So I went in hesitantly, and I've gotta tell you...
Cowboy Bebop is a goddamn masterpiece.
Each episode is usually standalone. That right there tends to steer a lot of would-be viewers away from this series. Even I was a bit hesitant to plunge into a show with an episodic structure. But I'll tell you, this show really pulls it off. There are a few episodes that connect together, but for the most part, it's a standalone affair.
The series follows the bounty hunting crew of the good ship Bebop in the year 2071.…
Read at the sourceIbelucas
I was scared to touch this anime. Despite the reviews, despite my friend's sage advice, despite everything, I resisted for months. I didn't want to dive into something that showed only on Adult Swim at 2 in the morning on weekdays. It didn't seem like the kind of show I wanted to watch. I want to see the latest and greatest, the anime that grab the headlines, that are here and now, that are modern and are visually appealing. Cowboy Bebop didn't seem to me like it fit into any category I ever liked either. Western styled mixed with space drama? How can that even mix? Old style animation from the late 90s? Kinda makes me think of Hey Arnold and those other shows. It just didn't seem to fit the mood I currently reside in. And then I picked up the first episode. And I am a changed man.
First…
Read at the sourcetherustbelt
Cowboy Bebop has something that the anime world has seem to have forgotten in a coinpurse somewhere: balls.
I don't mean just any kind of balls. I mean huge, sweaty, hairy testicles that swing back and forth like wrecking balls at the sheer hint of thigh movement. The atom-slicing power of these balls could level Detroit in a single blow. I'm not talking about the steroid ravaged, "mom where's the protein" balls of TTGL or G Gundam either. Those are anime you put on right after you inject yourself with bull-shark testosterone and deadlift 440 lbs. No, the balls Cowboy Bebop slaps on the table are of a different caliber; a different breed entirely, than the balls other anime, good and bad, have displayed in the past. They exude confidence without devolving into double-down, Long Island gui…
Read at the sourcexm0123
Cowboy Bebop was originally an anime series created by Shinichiro Watanabe in 1998. It consists of 26 episodes, a mini-sode, and a theatrical movie. It was released in America in 2001, and is one of the few anime franchises to be more successful in North America than in its native Japan. I have seen the 26 tv episodes and the movie. I already know what a lot of you are doing right now after glancing at the numerical score I gave; you're hitting up the comment box on my profile and writing these exact words:
"Fuck you! Cowboy Bebop is a classic! You're not allowed to criticize it!"
The more astute viewers will note that I scored the series a 6, but the movie a 9. I kind of like Cowboy Bebop. It does do some things very right. It had the potential to be one of the greatest franchises ever.…
Read at the sourceblushjoy
Cowboy Bebop is, in effect, an episodic, slice of life sort of series revolving around our Space Cowboys (and girls) Spike, Jet, Faye and Ed. This review is here to tackle some points about the series I feel are worth mentioning, as I know it's all been said before.
Now Cowboy Bebop has it all; great characters with good backstories, smooth animation, amazing music and lots of humor. So why don't I love it? Quite simply, Cowboy Bebop was a frustrating experience for me! I watched the series on and off over a couple of months, far longer than it normally takes for me to finish a series this short. I found it very off-putting that, with such interesting characters, the creators chose to spend so much time doing nothing with them!
As others have mentioned, each episode is a hit or a miss.…
Read at the sourceKyokuShin
Let be the one that forces down the hammer of judgment on this Anime, because honestly it is one of the Anime (and i rarely do this) that i really do not advise you to watch, if you are the one the feels attached to the characters throughout the story-line (i hope you get me on that one).
First of all i should say that in the animation, sound fields the Anime did pretty well considering the date in which the Anime was Aired. However i should say that the story-line failed miserably. It is rare for a 26 episodes Anime, to not have develop an escalating intensity of events as the story goes on, yet Cowboy Bebop demonstrated the utmost failure a writer could achieve. At the beginning of the story till before the last two episodes the story would be running in a direction(really boring direct…
Read at the sourcekekekeKaj
"Cowboy Bebop" reeks. It really does. It reeks of originality, it reeks of attitude, but most of all, it reeks of perfection.
I'm not gonna bother writing about how cool the main protagonist Spike Spiegel is, or how colourful the rest of the cast are - those are established facts and have been discussed to death already, so I'm gonna write about what makes "Cowboy Bebop" different instead. Almost everything about it is unusual. It's a clash of a huge number of often contradicting styles that, on paper, looks like disasters waiting to happen. However, the reality is that "Cowboy Bebop" takes everything in its stride and pulls off the stunt with flying colours. It catches the attention straight away with its strikingly retro opening sequence reminiscent of a typical jazzy 70/80's TV series.…
Read at the sourceTheCriticsClub
Only a few anime series or movies could be considered true classics, and one of the most notable shows to fall into this category is iconic not just for its style, design and animation, but also for the depth of its characters and its music.
That anime is Cowboy Bebop.
Story
Cowboy Bebop is told as a series of standalone episodes, each of which is only really connected to one another by the characters, with very few of them directly following on from one another. This method of storytelling is now termed as “episodic”, and while the format is now commonplace in anime, this series set the standard in its usage, and many purists believe it to be almost flawless in its execution of this storytelling style.
Sunrise, the production company behind the show, used this format as a…
Read at the sourceTheLlama
People who know me know that I'm not a fan of episodic anime series unless they're either one season (12-14 episodes) long or a slice of life series. Why? They have a tendency to get boring, or repetitive. But all rules and preferences have exceptions. You know what? Cowboy Bebop is that exception.
The story is set in a space western setting - a genre and setting I'm loving more and more for each show I watch that falls under the genre. We follow two bounty hunters, Spike and Jet, who own a ship called the Bebop. They travel the Solar system, chasing wanted criminals to earn money. Along the way, they also pick up two women; the debt-laden Faye Valentine and the playful kid and computer genius Edward (yes, Ed’s a girl).
Each episode brings about a new bounty which they chase after…
Read at the sourceVenneh
Title: Cowboy Bebop
Manga, Anime: Cowboy Bebop has two manga incarnations to its name. The first, with the same title as the show, is a manga adaptation of the anime, with story by Hajime Yamate and art by Yutaka Nanten, and ran in Kadokawa Shoten's Asuka Fantasy DX magazine from April 1998 to April 2000. The second, titled Cowboy Bebop: Shooting Star, is a retelling of the anime, done by Cain Kuga, and also ran in Asuka Fantasy DX during 1997. Both have been licensed Stateside by Tokyopop, and the release date for the third and second and final volumes for both were August 20th, 2002, and June 10th, 2003.
The anime itself ran for twenty-six episodes, though it originally had a disrupted run on TV Tokyo from April 3rd to June 19th, 1998, before airing in full on a disrupted broadcast sch…
Read at the sourcejupiterjazz
Story, Character, and Enjoyment: 10/10 Drama Llama?
Cowboy Bebop is probably the most amazing anime I have had the privilege of watching. Even now, seven years after watching it for the first time I am having difficulty putting it into words. What is so unique about it is how the episodes don't link together, but instead mainly focus on a character or two. Director Shinichiro Watanabe did such an amazing job flushing out the characters whether the current episode shows them living their day-by-day life in the present, or delving into a certain characters unique past it really makes the Cowboy Bebop universe seem tangible. Unfortunately this is also Cowboy Bebop's downfall. Not because it's bad, but because so many people pass this by thinking it has no story. To those that think this is t…
Read at the sourceXinil
Cowboy Bebop is an episodic series. By episodic, I mean that one episode doesn't necessarily lead or follow the next one. With that being said, don't expect a lot of "plot" in this series. You watch Cowboy Bebop for the characters, plain and simple. Spike, Faye, Jet, Ed, Ein are what make this anime arguably one of the most memorable series ever produced. The music is awesome (especially if you're a fan of Jazz), the animation is top notch (considering when the series came out), and the enjoyment value is second to none.
While a lot of people want that "similar episode" feel, if you're the kind of person that enjoys a fast paced anime (with each character getting his or her own spotlight), this is for you. If you're not the type to enjoy fast paced, bounty huntin' fun, and rather you like…
Read at the source