Cowboy Bebop #3 Bandai 100 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 07/04/2000

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While looking for something to watch tonight I came to the realization that I'm getting closer and closer to finishing my re-reviews. By closer, I mean I have like 50 or 60 left, but the run time of the DVDs are progressively getting shorter and shorter. That's not to say there aren't some killers like the Tylor series but all in all I've managed to break things down to discs with four or less episodes. This is like anime reviewing heaven for me and I'm telling you truly that soon I'll be sitting on the shore of a desert oasis being fanned by untouched virgins with giant leaves whilst a completely separate set of untouched virgins feed me honeyed cakes. It's just too bad for me that, in the anime context I'm going with here, those untouched virgins probably wouldn't be of the gender I desire. And they'd probably be pimply too, and cosplaying females from your favorite video game/anime who just so coincidentally happen to be the most scantily clad ladies around. Jesus, all of a sudden anime-heaven is starting to sound like anime-hell. But heaven or hell aside, a very special "Perturbed and off camera" lady was waiting to greet me when I threw this disc in on random chance. Watching this set of episodes I've found that I like Faye a lot more as a character than I did the first time through. It's not just because she uses a gun and looks angry all the time. Although these are two very defining traits of my very beloved Space Pirates. I think the main reason is that she's self confident and sexual in a way that doesn't feel like it cheapens the whole feminine sex.

Because, as you know, if anyone's going to cheapen the feminine sex it sure as hell is gonna be someone like me and not some loser over in Japan who thinks he's hot stuff because he can make women say whatever he wants into a microphone just as long as he writes it in a script first. Well I'm on to you and your brand of crappy comedy ain't gonna cut it no more. There's a new contender in town and its name is Cowboy Bebop. New is a relative term, as this show is about five years old now. But since I'm writing these reviews in the year 2003 then they're new to you! The reviews are anyway, the show probably isn't... I noticed I hadn't done any Cowboy Bebop reviews in awhile and to be honest they're some of the ones that need most to be replaced. I tell you, even in these short six months I can see how much I've matured. Maybe it's the nonstop stream of bad stuff I've been watching recently but Bebop has been a huge relief. Interesting animation, in depth story telling, good dubbing and quality characters. Plus in the intro song we're given Faye's awesome silhouetted dancing. It might just be three short twitches, slightly reminiscent of blaxplotation films long since past, but gentlemen, there's only one thing I can say in regards to this. And that would be that I am most certainly "Down with that". As some things are, this is just one of those clips of animation you have to see to believe. How it cues up with the music... perfect

To make it seem that I'm not totally enamored with this to the point of fanboyism I'll point out the things I didn't particularly like with this show and if there were ever a disc to rag on it'd be this one. It's literally stuffed to the rafters with hippies and girly men. That's not exactly a "true" statement but it's pretty close. The hippies play a minor part, but I refuse to let a chance to malign those pot smoking lazy bastards. Maybe if they didn't spend all their time on communes growing illegal plants under tin foil then I wouldn't have so much against them. You know what I hate the most about pot-heads? How they try to justify pot by citing all the uses of hemp. It can make a rope! We should all bless our lucky starts that these damn squatters don't appear for more than a few seconds. The girl-man, though, is a different story. I know I've used the term before but this time I urge you to take it in its most literal sense. This is a man who sports a rather impressive pair of breasts and hair that reaches down almost to his ass. For a pretty good two part episode the creators sure ruined it by throwing it something so extraneous as that. I understand that logically it makes sense, that this fellow -could've- been given experimental drugs during his prison sentence that fucked with his hormones but it's not like it plays a factor in the events that occur (besides allowing him to pretend to be a woman. Shudder.) All I can think of now is that movie where Jean Claude VanDamme is the Canadian Mountie who goes undercover to root out a drug lord.

Cowboy Bebop certainly has better choreography than that, though I wish there weren't as many tight shots. Even in animation this is a valid complaint, as it means you really can't get a grasp of what's happening. Fast cuts are a lazy way of getting through fight scenes with minimal effort. This is just nitpicking on my part, Cowboy Bebop has shown it can do cool fight scenes before and it doesn't need to prove anything to me. Besides, any nits I've picked are easily satiated by the badass fur hat that Jet's totting in that picture to the right. And while I might not understand exactly how "Toys in the Attic" with its crazy alien slime is an homage to Alien but I'm willing to take a few things at their word because I know I'm certainly not making anything this good. I'm just writing at a sixth grade level about it. I'm just fortunate that they kept a little aside for Señor Dave. There's always gonna be that perturbed girl waiting for me. If I went a little off on the Faye love this review I'm truly sorry, but it's only gonna get worse in the next review. I uncharacteristically watched the preview for the first episode on the next disc and I'll try and break it to you easy. She wears a choker.