Seconded. This is a marvelous show and my one regret is that it wasn’t longer.
It’s slow and political and the tactical aspects are great, reminiscent of Code Geass. You know from the first episode that you’re in for a great space opera.
I found Tytania’s politics pretty superior to Code Geass’s (which started promising but descended into predictable mecha show nonsense by the end of the first season). While it does slow the pace of the show, faction interactions are handled in an unusually believable fashion and it’s always clear what the major motivations are.
Actually, the non-LoGH show that Tytania reminded me of was Irresponsible Captain Tyler. Fan Hyulick really comes across to me as a “realistic” Tyler who’s essentially wandered into an LoGH-like world. So he has the ability to have drastic effects on what’s happening around him-- but since he’s a more naturally-written character, he knows that attempting to do so is likely to get him martyred for his efforts. It’s interesting stuff.
There’s even an opera as the opening :P.
Munin
1643
I finished Cowboy Bebop today. What an amazing series. Makes everything else I’ve watched before seem so…immature and dull in comparison.
Is there anything…even remotely comparable? Not so much with the setting, but rather with the tone and execution.
Your best bet is probably Samurai Champloo, the series that reunited [most of] that original creative team. A lot of fans find Champloo inferior and it is a really different show in a lot of ways, but I find it does reflect Bebop’s unusual willingness to entertain adults. I find Champloo a little more interesting than Bebop, personally, but in large part that’s because Champloo hits a lot of my history nerd buttons.
I was just watching the new (well, quite old now, 2005) Area 88 remake.
It’s just as dumb a story as ever, but I’m a sucker for fighters, no matter how unrealistically they may be depicted. I also like the opening “fugue” for some reason, probably it recalls the very early electronica of my youth.
I’d just like to point out that, for those who may be interested, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is being re-aired in chronological order with new episodes interspersed. So far the only new episode has been episode 8, Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody.
Black Lagoon(isn’t the 3rd series supposed to be out soon!?!?!) is probably also a good option for someone who liked Cowboy Bebop.
I enjoy Black Lagoon, but I think it’s only somewhat similar to Cowboy Bebop. It does focus on grownup characters, not teenagers, which is a bit of a departure for most anime, though of course you can think of lots of other examples.
BL has pretty decent production values with good but not great graphic design. But it hasn’t got nearly as strong characters, and considerably less, well, art, went into making it, I think. Not as much distinctive style to it, either.
What do you think of the idea that Noir is closer to CB than BL? I admit Noir is quite a bit different in sensibility, but I think it was more concerned with style and art than Black Lagoon, and so may be closer to Cowboy Bebop in some respects.
I can’t quite picture a Bebop fan getting into Noir or its successors if what they liked about Bebop was its more mature story structure. What makes Bebop very distinct is that it is one of the few anime that isn’t essentially about how an adolescent grows up and assumes a place in the world.
Bebop is the story of a grown adult dealing with consequences of his actions, in broad terms. Noir is, in broad terms, about… a teenager with exotic and superhuman skills trying to come to grips with her place in the world. In short, it’s more likely to come off as more of the same.
(Noir’s also a lot more poorly-animated than Bebop, but that’s not so much the show’s “fault”-- Noir was one of the first major productions to show how the budget crash had changed directorial styles, while Bebop was in many ways the last gasp of the early 90’s budget boom. Still, the result is that I feel Bebop has aged much more gracefully than Noir.)
Is Noir the one with the female (french?) assassin who lost her memories?
I think i remember dropping it on like episode 10 or something. It might have been the poor animation. Not really sure to be honest but it just didn’t give me the “aaahhhh…this is cool” vibe.
Well, I liked Noir a lot, but I haven’t watched it in the last few years. I actually prefer the Noir soundtrack. I agree the animation and design is better in Cowboy Bebop, and the story is more profound (and more depressing). While Noir and Cowboy Bebop may be worlds apart in many ways, I think that Black Lagoon is even more distant.
As an aside, the CB characters are, you have to admit, more or less superhuman, themselves. I mean, they aren’t well-nigh invulnerable or anything, but there can’t be more than a couple of people in the entire solar system who are better martial artists or fighter pilots than Spike… and the other characters are also extraordinary.
But I guess Cowboy Bebop really stands alone as a combined package of values – great art, design and animation, great music, and a much more grown-up sensibility than most.
I believe Noir was actually from the generation of anime where the directors began to rely on the impressive soundtracks so much they would frequently mix BGM louder than dialog during original broadcast.
I want to say some R1 editions of these shows actually tried to “fix” the sound mix in dubbing so dialog and BGM would be at more typical levels. I’ve noticed people who watched the Noir fansubs and Noir R1 release tend to have very different impressions of the series as a result.
As an aside, the CB characters are, you have to admit, more or less superhuman, themselves.
Certainly, but at no point was the plot of Cowboy Bebop an exploration of superhuman-ness as metaphor for adolescent emotional changes. The characters were casually superhuman in the way of your Lupin and City Hunter type action shows, where it’s all part of the genre stylization and used mainly in service of cool action scenes or maybe a plot twist.
Actually, damn, you know a show a Cowboy Bebop fan would like if he could ever lay hands on it? Cat’s Eye. I have no idea where you go to get translated Cat’s Eye, but it’s the only show I can think of where watching it captures some of the “written-for-adults” feeling of Bebop.
I love, love, love Black Lagoon but the Cowboy Bebop comparison seems superficial at best, particularly once you get past the first episode or two.
In addition to checking out Samurai Champloo, you might try some of Studio Bones works since they were formed out of the studio at Sunrise that made Bebop. I think the Bones team that did RahXephon and Wolf’s Rain was the same team that worked on Bebop, so maybe give those a whirl.
Michiko to Hatchin. It’ll make you laugh, sad, angry, etc, and overall, it felt to me the closest thing to Bebop in terms of execution I’ve seen since.
Watanabe of Bebop fame also had a huge influence on the show.
edit: and yes, almost all serious-minded Studio Bones series are worth watching. They’ve done some spectacular stuff.
While a strange show and probably not for those faint of heart, I’m a huge fan of Kara no Kyoukai myself.
Bebop: I’m pretty sure I’ve sang Bebop’s praises upthread. I shelved Champloo after watching three or four episodes, back when the fansubs first came out. In a nutshell, Spike was a lovable rogue but Mugen was a brutal killer.
Tytania: I saw half the series months and months ago - up to 12, I think - took a break while waiting for the next episode to come out, and never really got back into it. I have the same issue with Tytania that I did with LOGH - I love the politics on the Imperial side in each series, even if none of the Tytania clan is quite as compelling as Reinhard, but the Alliance/Hyulick and friends don’t really interest me. My suspension of disbelief wasn’t helped by the crossdressing baron… That said, I like a bunch of the ideas in Tytania: IIRC, Hyulick observes that overthrowing the Tytania clan would leave a dangerous vacuum, and I also like his being the reluctant hero, constantly fleeing the various “freedom fighters’” attempts to shanghai him into their cause. You could almost imagine the series redone as Flashman In Spaaaaace…
I don’t see the resemblance between Lagoon and Bebop going more than skin-deep. Lynxara, above, gave a great thematic summation of Bebop. Bebop’s tone is also very different - an emphasis on snappy dialogue and character growth, limited but stylish violence (they don’t get paid for corpses!), etc. Lagoon, in contrast, was about embracing the ridiculousness inherent in action flicks/anime with UNSTOPPABLE CHAMBERMAIDS and ROANAPUR FREAKSHOW CIRCUSES (a wizard, a pyromaniac, a cowboy, and a kukri-throwing woman walk into a bar…)
I think Champloo took time to get its feet under it. I wasn’t that impressed for the first part of the series either, but it finished very strong.
Still, it’s hard to find a series that really compares. Ghost in the Shell: SAC is pretty adult, but just isn’t as charming. Fullmetal Alchemist is, I think, brilliant but it is about kids. Neither is a musical showcase the way Bebop was. I don’t know… Maybe Macross Plus?
Munin
1658
Thanks for the awesome recommendation! Watched the first episode of Michiko to Hatchin and it seems pretty promising.
That being said, I did originally watch many of the shows mentioned here - the Bones stuff, Wolf’s Rain etc., as well as Black Lagoon. However I eventually dropped them all after a while. Only Bebop truly kept me going. I have these strange, regularly happening “anime phases” where I watch lots of anime every few months only to be disappointed with it, drop all series and move on.
Maybe I should just force myself to finish a few.
Something to remember with Champloo is that the film genre it’s riffing on is going to be a lot less familiar to your average American audience than the noirish detective stuff that Bebop riffed on. Likewise, what it’s doing with music isn’t as influenced by American styles, either-- it seems to really take its roots in European interpretations of hip-hop, at least to my jaundiced ear.
Champloo is riffing on chanbara films, where the default protagonist is usually a stone badass of a killer who got that way because guys who couldn’t kill people didn’t live long back then. In most of the chanbara stuff I’ve seen there’s a handful of scenes that suggest, “If this guy had been born when you were, he’d be an okay dude.” But inevitably what a lot of chanbara films are about is how the guy isn’t an okay dude and can’t be an okay dude.
Likewise, the pacing of the first half of the series is really reflective of the kind of slow and ambling pace you get for the first half of most chanbara flicks. If anything I felt like Champloo really handled this a lot better than the chanbara stuff I’ve seen, because it threw in some actual fights to help alleviate the tension of the slow build and random horrible poverty scenes.
Quaro
1660
Seirei No Moribito is unusual in that the main character is mature adult woman. Really enjoyed that series.
Planates and GITS:SAC are reasonably mature too, if a little less charming.
