"Satellite from days of old, lead me to your access code!"
Look up the word `cool' in any dictionary and it says "see Cowboy Bebop"...well, not really...but it should, because Cowboy Bebop is the quintessence of coolness. If you don't already know, Bebop is a stylish 26-session masterpiece chronicling the thrilling triumphs and tribulations of those space-sailing, chain-smoking, bounty-hunting buddies, Jet Black and Spike Spiegel. Jet is a bald and burly bonsai tree collector with an artificial left arm and a comma-shaped piece of metal under his scarred right eye. A former ISSP officer--known on his home satellite, Ganymede, as the tenacious "Black Dog"--Jet is now the owner/pilot/mechanic of the spaceship Bebop. The wiry gunfighter and martial arts master, Spike, has fuzzy green hair, mismatched eyes and a checkered past. These two intrepid space "cowboys" hop from one astral gate to another to hunt down wanted criminals all across the galaxy, hoping to earn enough woolongs to enable Jet to finally add some actual beef to his famous...
I don't like anime
I really don't like anime. It's true. Growing up in the '80s and seeing the reruns of '70s imports (like Speed Racer), not to mention the whole Pokémon thing that hit while I was in high school, I know some people out there like those things but I find them repulsive and annoying. Silly caricatures with gigantic eyes and frame rates of about 2 per minute, almost like watching a slide show with really bad narration.
Then a friend pressured me to watch Cowboy Bebop on Cartoon Network. He knew my reservations about Japanese cartoons, but pushed me into it anyway (it was a Saturday night, I wasn't doing anything anyway...) and I haven't stopped thanking him.
This series is good. Not good, great. This is the program that anyone who says "cartoons are for kids" should watch. The first thing that I noticed was that the episodes were each standalone. Most of the popular animations of today are very series-oriented, if you miss one the next one probably won't make...
Quality and affordability in one Set
Instead of giving some hack review of the story, I'll skip it and assume you either know the story already or know how to google for it.
This box set of a solid anime is finally released in its newest form (improved and cleaned-up picture and 5.1 surround mix) at a very affordable price. Honestly, $40 is a steal considering what you had to pay for all of the discs individually. All 6 discs are in a clamshell case, similar to that of the Back to the Future. No insert inside, just the DVDs.
What I think of the improved picture:
It's not bad. Not perfect but not bad. You'll notice the picture is cleaned up a lot if you compare it with pre-improved releases. Scenes that are brighter or more colorful really come through. But I did notice something that kinda bothered me some. Scenes where there is a lot of black (which are many; the story is mostly in space. who knew?) seem off. What I mean by that is, the black areas aren't a consistent black. This could be a...
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