Cowboy Bebop #6

Bandai

100 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
11/07/2000

You know, the good ones never seem to last as long as you want them to. But the fact of the matter is that if they didn't end at some point it'd turn into another Ranma or Inuyasha or whatever else that just refuses to die. Sorry Rumiko Takahasi, but maybe you should experiment with making a show less than a HUNDRED EPISODES. I don't know about you guys, but most of the time I feel like a full 26 can be too long, how can you take six plus years of Ranma? The sheer willpower and desire of the average anime fan to watch things long after they've gone sour never ceases to amaze me.

So maybe Cowboy Bebop was cut down before its prime, but the way I figure it, it's better to err on the side of caution. I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather have it cut off as it did and not leave me sitting here with that bad taste in my mouth. If you guys think that wouldn't have happened then you're living in a mystical land where peaches are dollars and dogs drive cars, or some approximation of such. I don't know what your personal weird fantasies involve, but one of my favorites is when a good show doesn't go further than it should.

There's one final episode involving crazy cults that want to turn people into electricity before we're thrust into the final arc. This seems oddly appropriate as just the other day we all had a very lively discussion about the wonderful work of science fiction, Battlefield : Earth. While there's no eight foot tall aliens running around calling people Rat-brains and cutting off bartender's heads, I'd like to think they have something in common. If not though, as least we've still got super hot short haired cult chicks in sweatsuits to keep us going. At least, I think she's a chick... she sounded like a chick. Err... anyway... why do all cults require the sweatsuit? Is that their uniform? On an unrelated topic, I wonder if it's inappropriate to sign on to some system of beliefs in order to get women. I'm gonna say it's a gray area.
Let's get ourselves back on track here. While I still find myself at odds with Bebop's ending even to this day, I have to say that they certainly know how to evoke emotion. It can be a little cheap, like the playing of Blue as a certain character breathes their last and the camera pans upwards to the stars. They might've done it to save money on animation because the whole pan takes like four minutes, but it's still damn effective.

You know, if you'll allow me to be frank I always thought that the ending was a little contrived at points. Certainly no worse than anything on the market, and at least it HAS an ending, but I don't feel like it really lives up to the rest of the show. You know how so many people were disappointed with the last episode of Seinfeld? Well it's hard to make something perfect on command, especially when you've got thousands and thousands of fans breathing down your neck.
So what they managed to pull off was good, but not perfect. It was good enough that I felt a little bad starting the disc up to take screenshots. Forced or not, that's some serious emotion. The end of Cowboy Bebop feels like you should take a little break for awhile and let things cool down before you give another spin. By a little break I mean like a year or two. For someone like me that's not a problem, but I know there's some people that'll be eager to jump back in. You people are weird.

I'm not, I'm still pissed off that Faye came back. Let the bitch die? Not in effect here! And all the back to back fighting (in sepiatone no less!) and hot chicks smoking in the world isn't gonna fix that. Maybe it's something in Faye's character, but it still just makes me mad. I don't like indecisive characters any more than I like the dirty Pinyos who come to my apartment and eat all my oatmeal cookies that I worked so hard to steal from my school, and I think once Faye drew that line in the dirt that was once her childhood home and made her bed, she should have very well lied in it. Those are the rules people! It's certainly not that big a deal, and some people are finally happy that the inkling of romance was acknowledged. I think it's awesome that nobody got starry eyed or begged the other to stay...though someone needs to clue the woman in that firing a gun in a metal hallway is probably not the best way to get your would-be paramour to stick around.

It's just... I don't like that they have that really cool scene with Spike and Jett eating the eggs, Faye drawing her line in the sand, Steve Conte kicking out some massive soul and the sun's setting and everything's so sad, and she comes right back ten minutes later. I should stop harping on it, I know, it's done. Here's something to tide you over in the meantime.

That's a dirty joke, I know.