Cowboy Bebop #5

Bandai

100 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
09/05/2000

You know, I spent a good amount of this disc watching Cowboy Bebop in Japanese and frankly, I'm a bit underwhelmed. I've never been a raving Megumi Hayashibara fan, but I think her work here is among some of her less sterling performance. Can you say miscast? Because I sure as hell can! As Jerry refutes, pretty much every Japanese woman has a high pitched whiney voice, but I just can't stand listening to someone with a voice akin to a twelve year old girl performing for a character who's supposed to be all smart and sultry. Megumi Hayashibara, you can be all the Lina Inverses and Saber Marionettes you want, but I sure as hell don't think you deserve to be anywhere near a role like this.

And if that upsets you, fair reader, then I'm very sorry, but it's not in my style to watch Japanese tracks anyway and through the long run of Bebop I've become very fond of fellows the like of John Billingslea and David Lucas, Wendee Lee and even Melissa Fahn, who I usually cannot stand. So forgive me if I think that a woman over twenty should have a bit of class to her, and forgive me that I can bear only one squeaky voiced character per show but I guess that's just how it goes. Religious sub watchers can eat me.

This disc feels like kind of a slow point in the series and I think I know where the blame lies. Boogie Woogie Feng Shui is the cause of much of it. It's not that this episode is entirely bad, I just don't feel it lives up to a lot of the standards that Bebop sets for itself. The humor in the area of Jett's possible pedophilic relationship with the daughter of a deceased companion eventually just got to be too much for someone like me to handle. "Hot dog bun, not too young" is a line that's going to haunt me in my dreams.
So I'm quite sorry for exposing you to it too, but I had no desire to wallow in my suffering all alone. Fair enough the rest of the disc is pretty excellent, but it's just such a surprise to me when an episode of people doesn't come through. Sure we've had foibles in the past. I'm never gonna forget watching Heavy Metal Queen and maybe even Toys in the Attic but overall the show is so overwhelmingly good that it just makes me uncomfortable to see something like Boogie Woogie Feng Shui which is so undeniably... plain. Though Jett does hit a bunch of people in fedoras with a bottle, so that makes me feel a little better about things.

Look at the rest of the disc though. Certainly it's got nothing on any episode involving Space Muslims, but these are still some episodes cast in sterling silver. Chock full of stories about computer hackers and crazy science experiments and a lovable cowboy named Andy. Now when I say cowboy, you probably think bounty hunter but what I'm talking about is an honest to god cowboy. Without seeing this, you probably don't get it but it's freaking -hilarious-. Normally when anime tries to be funny I kind of just shrug it off, because I am not Japanese and I don't get Japanese humor in the slightest. But on the rare occasion when said humor doesn't involve panties or a chick hitting a guy and calling him a pervert, I'm all over it.
Cowboy Andy also opens the door for the best song ever made, Go Go Cactus Man. As Joel said to me so long ago, the mouth harp is an instrument chronically underused in modern musical endeavors. He couldn't have been more right, and I would've told him so if we hadn't immediately picked up a pair of Nintendo bran lightguns and started shooting at each other with them. This might seem like an incredibly inane and childish thing for one to do, but Yoko Kanno's skillful renditions buried themselves deep in my loins and I was powerless to resist. That woman's got something going for her, I'll tell you that much.

Cowboys and mad bombers in teddy bear costumes aside though, it's more of the same. By the same, I mean totally awesome in every way. The fact that there's little changes here and there in the animation makes me feel really good about the creators, that they actually cared enough to switch it up once in awhile. That's just nice, you know? Especially when it's not just for the sake of prettying up one of the female character's assets. I hate you Japan.
But I love you Señor Watanabe. I booted up Devil May Cry awhile ago and Andrew remarked on how some games just feel 'finished' and I think it's the same with Cowboy Bebop. The characters don't feel like pointless sketches, their actions are a bit more natural and sue me, I'm just a sucker for anything to do with space and bounty hunters. If a show wants to kick it into high gear with some badass music over action while an antique spaceship prepares for blast off, well then... that's perfectly alright with me.