Cowboy Bebop #2 Bandai 125 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 06/06/2000

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So I missed my weekly update, I'm real sorry guys. However, as I was saying to Skabs last night, I missed my first weekly update, he's missed about... the last 375 times. Yes, I'm well aware that this would make the site over seven years old, long before I had an even an inkling of a clue about what the internet was. But I guess that's just the way things go. Mostly it's my way to try and browbeat him into drawing some things. You want to know the best way to get Skabs to do some work? Yell at him for not doing anything. Eventually he'll pick up on it and do something for like an hour and a half. He's a good guy. And so's whoever saw it fit to put together the wondrous collection known as Cowboy Bebop. Solid animation, good plot, and a great dub. If there's anything wrong with this show it's probably the fact that it wasn't longer than 26 episodes. But I suppose there's only so much cool stuntwork and whacky hijinks you can show a person before they're clamoring for something more. And those hijinks are what this show does the very best.

That is, when they're not penciling in scary bull dyke characters that haunt my dreams for six or seven months after every time I watch this disk. Now, I'm not trying to put the hate on anyone... I'm just saying I can do without a woman who could probably free lift me twice over without breaking a sweat. While I commend the creators for including a woman who's not impossibly thin and leggy, the opposite direction doesn't work much for me either. I'm not much for the ladies with shoulders wider than me, something about that just strikes as odd. I don't know, maybe I was just raised differently. I'll be quite honest with you, Heavy Metal Queen is my least favorite episode in all of Cowboy Bebop. It's not exactly BAD, but something about it makes me very uncomfortable. I don't think anything in this universe could really be considered -bad-. Even the worst of this stuff is eons ahead of anything coming out of some undersexed writer's head. The Woody Allen bad guy is pretty funny, and the stunt work (as much as you can call cartoon character's actions "stunts") comes out of left field and is both ridiculous and awe inspiring.

Awe inspiring is a pretty suitable term for the show in general too. And when I'm not too busy obsessing over the fact that there's a Jet-centric episode on this disk that gives us a glimpse of the sweet, sweet action Jet was dipping into back on his home planet, one of Jupiter's moons. Let me tell you, I didn't realize this the first time, but my simpatico with Jet is even deeper than I would've thought. We both have the same taste in ladies, although his is 2D and painted on a piece of transparent plastic. Other than that, we're like 'this'.** Jet is my absolute hero, and the fact that there's only two episodes specifically about him in the entire show makes me sadder than any of you could ever comprehend. But I'm back in the swing of things with just a little Cowboy Bebop injected into my veins. This show, literally, has everything. Evil little kids, dirty space Mexicans, and a healthy dose of the blues to keep it going. It's things like this that made me sad I don't have a first born child to trade away to the people that bring such joy into my life.

In all honesty I think a first born would be a small price to pay for a creation such as this. Even when it's down, Cowboy Bebop is still very, very up. With the introduction of Ed, Joel's predictions came true. Jet takes up the role of mechanic as soon as the ambiguously gendered hacker steps onto the deck of the Bebop, though not exactly by the choice of the crew. Our quadrumvrate of interstellar bounty hunters is complete and honestly, I'm a bit surprised it took them ten episodes to introduce a character who's featured in the opening credit. That takes some balls. Do they have them? Well, Cowboy Bebop isn't exactly breaking any new ground or sending out powerful statements, but what it does it does extremely well, and with a talented cast of English actors to boot. Neither of these things will ever find complaint from me, and when you put them together it's just icing on the delicious cake that is Cowboy Bebop. And if those show is a cake, then I just grabbed me a spoon.

**When I say that, I need you to imagine me crossing my fingers together while I do it.