COWBOY BEBOP: THE MOVIE
March 12th 2009 01:05
Category: Videos, Television
Director: Shinichiro Watanabe
Screenplay by: Keiko Nobumoto & Hajime Yatate
Producers: Masahiko Minami, Minoru Takanashi & Masuo Ueda
Starring: Beau Billingslea (Jet Black), Wendee Lee (Faye Valentine), Steve Blum (Spike Spiegel), Daran Norris (Vincent Volaju), Jennifer Hale (Electra), Melissa Fahn (Ed), Dave Wittenberg (Lee Sampson) & Nicholas Guest (Rasheed)
Produced by: Sunrise, Bones & Bandai Visual
English Version produced by: Sony Pictures
Released by: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Running Time: 115 minutes Rating: R
Airing on SBS at an ungodly hour on a Monday when most sensible people are safely wrapped up in bed dreaming sweet dreams or just getting some well earned rest this is a movie based on the television series of the same name. Currently the Cowboy Bebop series is being shown on ABC 2 at; you guessed an ungodly hour when sensible people have somewhat better things to do. Still I managed to capture this anime flick, made in 2001, and gave it a bit of a perusal. It’s interesting to see Jennifer Hale and Daran Norris in the cast of this flick, these two would probably be more familiar to individuals who are fans of the KOTOR (Knights of the Old Republic) computer games. Still the joys of train spotting aside this anime flick is an interesting sojourn into the worlds of science fiction, noir and cultural cross pollination.
There is some similarity, in my mind anyway, with Samurai Champloo, as if this movie is a mixing of various elements and ingredients stirred up into the wok of Japanese anime, brought to a mouth watering simmer after deliciously frying for a time and delivered up to a much salivating audience. Shinichiro Watanabe was the director behind Samurai Champloo and so you can sense of the same elements being brought to bear in this story. As with Samurai Champloo there are three primary protagonists in this tale, Spike Spiegel, Jet Black and Faye Valentine. All three of them work as bounty hunters or Cowboys as they seem to be called and they make their way around the solar system in the spaceship Bebop. This is the other similarity with Samurai Champloo, the use of the trio; Spike, Faye and Jet serve as the drama’s primary protagonists although each of them are going about things in their own way usually in order to make ends meet.
The bulk of the drama takes place in the year 2070 AD on a partially terraformed Mars, a Mars that strangely looks a lot like New York City to my way of thinking. As far as being partially terraformed you can tell this from the fact that it’s only Alpha City, the main settlement on Mars, that has any free flowing water and atmosphere, the rest of the Red Planet is a dry red desiccated crater pocked wilderness. In fact it looks like the wild lands of Arizona and New Mexico, a place where you’d expect to find cowboys and bounty hunters. Clint Eastwood’s famous Man with No Name could fit in quite nicely amongst the mesas, buttes and sand dunes of this frontier world.
Still the whole genre of the Western is rather under utilized in this movie; we are looking more at cyber punk and noir than gun toting gunslingers facing off beneath the eternal high noon of a Martian sun. In fact it is in its plot that Cowboy Bebop seems to veer away from being a straight shooting action flick and begins to venture into the realms of existentialism and starts to resemble something more like Apocalypse Now. Vincent Volaju is a man with a mission, a mission that will affect the lives of every single living breathing person on the face of the Red Planet, which is interesting because for all intents and purposes Vincent is officially dead. To the world at large he was a Special Forces veteran from the 7th Division who ended up dying in some dirty little conflict on Titan, a world of ice yet a breathable atmosphere.
Somehow though Vincent did not die, he survived and managed to make it back to Mars. Ah it’s all about revenge I hear you say, this is a man who is keen to deal out some righteous smack down on the Man, the system and everything else that mistreated him. Fortunately it is not like that, that would be the kind of plot more suited to some B grade or Z grade Hollywood action flick, the kind that would star some bunch of people that nobody recognises or knows along with Paris Hilton. No Vincent’s return to Mars and his subsequent actions have little to do with smack down than with the fact that he has lost his grip on reality and is trying to discover just what exactly is real, is the events that he has caused to unfold a dream or reality, how can he substantively determine cause and effect and come to a concrete conclusion? Perhaps not by starting a major terrorist incident would be a good place to start, yet Vincent has no compass by which to guide himself other than the glowing butterflies that infect his waking and dreaming moments, butterflies that seem to be a symbol of death and the unconscious rather than life and renewal.
After detonating a truck load of some mysterious substance that causes a substantial portion of those on the highway where the incident occurred and living in the surrounding area to come down with an unusual ailment. Medical teams are baffled and their doesn’t look like they can cure anyone before they all shuffle off this mortal coil, the Federal authorities offer a reward of 300 million wulongs (a lot of money apparently although I’m not up on the wulong/$AU exchange rate) but it sounds like a lot. This naturally grabs the attention of the Bebop crew and before you can say Ichiraku ramen they’re hot on the case, of course there is no concerted effort to pool resources and work together as a team, the three just follow their guts and go for broke in their own unique way. And in their own unique way they manage to put together the pieces of the puzzle.
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie was a well crafted and finely tuned piece of anime, definitely worth watching and I have no doubt that it will see a repeat appearance on SBS at some stage down the track, or possibly on ABC 2 if they’re showing the television series. Apparently there is a live action version being made by Hollywood with Keanu Reeves probably appearing as Spike Spiegel, that would be my guess, as to when this might hit screens near you who can tell. My advice is check out the original, its worth the effort…
Screenplay by: Keiko Nobumoto & Hajime Yatate
Producers: Masahiko Minami, Minoru Takanashi & Masuo Ueda
Starring: Beau Billingslea (Jet Black), Wendee Lee (Faye Valentine), Steve Blum (Spike Spiegel), Daran Norris (Vincent Volaju), Jennifer Hale (Electra), Melissa Fahn (Ed), Dave Wittenberg (Lee Sampson) & Nicholas Guest (Rasheed)
Produced by: Sunrise, Bones & Bandai Visual
English Version produced by: Sony Pictures
Released by: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Running Time: 115 minutes Rating: R
Airing on SBS at an ungodly hour on a Monday when most sensible people are safely wrapped up in bed dreaming sweet dreams or just getting some well earned rest this is a movie based on the television series of the same name. Currently the Cowboy Bebop series is being shown on ABC 2 at; you guessed an ungodly hour when sensible people have somewhat better things to do. Still I managed to capture this anime flick, made in 2001, and gave it a bit of a perusal. It’s interesting to see Jennifer Hale and Daran Norris in the cast of this flick, these two would probably be more familiar to individuals who are fans of the KOTOR (Knights of the Old Republic) computer games. Still the joys of train spotting aside this anime flick is an interesting sojourn into the worlds of science fiction, noir and cultural cross pollination.
Still the whole genre of the Western is rather under utilized in this movie; we are looking more at cyber punk and noir than gun toting gunslingers facing off beneath the eternal high noon of a Martian sun. In fact it is in its plot that Cowboy Bebop seems to veer away from being a straight shooting action flick and begins to venture into the realms of existentialism and starts to resemble something more like Apocalypse Now. Vincent Volaju is a man with a mission, a mission that will affect the lives of every single living breathing person on the face of the Red Planet, which is interesting because for all intents and purposes Vincent is officially dead. To the world at large he was a Special Forces veteran from the 7th Division who ended up dying in some dirty little conflict on Titan, a world of ice yet a breathable atmosphere.
Somehow though Vincent did not die, he survived and managed to make it back to Mars. Ah it’s all about revenge I hear you say, this is a man who is keen to deal out some righteous smack down on the Man, the system and everything else that mistreated him. Fortunately it is not like that, that would be the kind of plot more suited to some B grade or Z grade Hollywood action flick, the kind that would star some bunch of people that nobody recognises or knows along with Paris Hilton. No Vincent’s return to Mars and his subsequent actions have little to do with smack down than with the fact that he has lost his grip on reality and is trying to discover just what exactly is real, is the events that he has caused to unfold a dream or reality, how can he substantively determine cause and effect and come to a concrete conclusion? Perhaps not by starting a major terrorist incident would be a good place to start, yet Vincent has no compass by which to guide himself other than the glowing butterflies that infect his waking and dreaming moments, butterflies that seem to be a symbol of death and the unconscious rather than life and renewal.
After detonating a truck load of some mysterious substance that causes a substantial portion of those on the highway where the incident occurred and living in the surrounding area to come down with an unusual ailment. Medical teams are baffled and their doesn’t look like they can cure anyone before they all shuffle off this mortal coil, the Federal authorities offer a reward of 300 million wulongs (a lot of money apparently although I’m not up on the wulong/$AU exchange rate) but it sounds like a lot. This naturally grabs the attention of the Bebop crew and before you can say Ichiraku ramen they’re hot on the case, of course there is no concerted effort to pool resources and work together as a team, the three just follow their guts and go for broke in their own unique way. And in their own unique way they manage to put together the pieces of the puzzle.
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie was a well crafted and finely tuned piece of anime, definitely worth watching and I have no doubt that it will see a repeat appearance on SBS at some stage down the track, or possibly on ABC 2 if they’re showing the television series. Apparently there is a live action version being made by Hollywood with Keanu Reeves probably appearing as Spike Spiegel, that would be my guess, as to when this might hit screens near you who can tell. My advice is check out the original, its worth the effort…
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