I was trying to stay away from this one, but Cowboy Bebop has been canceled and the really bad second week numbers made it pretty clear that anyone who wants to see the live action Bebop has seen it. So I can go there. I’ve already talked about two ways the series changed the story […]
Read more "Medium Matters: Cowboy Bebop II"Okay, it shouldn’t be news to anyone that there’s a live action Cowboy Bebop series on Netflix. Everyone has an opinion on the matter and the opinions are certainly mixed. Me, I kinda liked it, although the anime is better BUT … watch my lips now … That’s not what I do. I’m an analyst, […]
Read more "Medium Matters: Cowboy Bebop I"It seems like, as much as I love it, I complain about Cowboy Bebop a lot. To me, from a writing standpoint some of the characters are under-used and the ending is full of holes. But at the same time it’s brilliant and you know it’s brilliant and I know it’s brilliant. It looks and […]
Read more "Building a Beginning: Cowboy Bebop"Cowboy Bebop is one of those things that’s so unique in construction that it’s hard to see the pieces it’s built out of. That’s one of the reasons it’s brilliant. But it is built out pieces, no matter how brilliantly they’re disguised. For instance, you have to look at it a lot (a pleasure, let […]
Read more "The Power of Three: Cowboy Bebop"I have said before and will say again that Shinichiro Watanabe treats his female characters more fairly than just about any director either of us can name. Well, Amy Heckerling, maybe. But he aways tries to avoid making them tropes, or just tropes. Even when they are tropes, they aren’t SIMPLE tropes. They are complex […]
Read more "Character Analysis: Faye Valentine"Sometimes when you’re just walking around thinking about nothing you think of something. Like, I mean, think about Ed from Cowboy Bebop, right? What a great character! Why is a character that really doesn’t do anything such a great character? I mean, you know that Ed doesn’t really do anything, right? She’s not involved at […]
Read more "Character Analysis: Edward"Okay, I think Cowboy Bebop is brilliant. And I think Cowboy Bebop is flawed. Those beliefs don’t have to be inconsistent. What it says is that the strengths are so strong that they make the flaws easy to overlook. So, the facts that the ending is incomplete and some of the characters are not developed […]
Read more "Character Analysis: Spike Spiegel"I write about Cowboy Bebop a lot. That’s not accident. It’s stunning to look at, routinely makes people who watch it look at cartoons generally and anime specifically in a new way. It’s literally groundbreaking. Also, a lot of people have seen it. If your perspective on anime and manga is the one I’m taking, […]
Read more "What Are All These Characters Doing Here: Cowboy Bebop"It’s been a while since I talked about meta-plot, the overall structure of a series. Partly that’s because it seems like that talking meta-plot be a case of flagellating the deceased equine; partly because it sometimes seems like meta-plot is just too simple. I mean, after all, there are supposedly only seven basic (meta-)plots: Rags […]
Read more "Hidden Plot: Cowboy Bebop"When I’m not yakking about character combinations, one of the things I yak about is the basic narrative structure: Beginning: Introduces characters and setting Middle: Conflict arising from character and/or setting plays out End: Conflict resolved It’s the writer in me. I just can’t help it. Of course, it’s a little more complex than that. […]
Read more "How Does an Ending Work: Cowboy Bebop"
Confessions of an Overage otaku 