Cowboy Bebop: Why is the dog the smartest one on the ship?

So let's derail some more!

Candyce refreshed my memory with some suggestions to throw on here because they NEED to be thrown on here. They just DO.

I figured I'd start these MUST NOTE series with a well-known head turner that was so stupidly popular it ran on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim for years. Since 2001, it has been a primary part of Adult Swim.

It's still showing up to this day!!!

It only has 26 episodes and one feature film.

YEARS!!!!!!!!

Let's all punt a genetically super-smart Corgi and take a look back on good ol' Cowboy Bebop!


(CB's infamous opening known as TANK!, a savvy, fast jazz instrumental piece to a cool backdrop detailing the characters and their respective vehicles.)

If you haven't seen this then you should kick yourself in the face.

Do it.

Do it now.

Cowboy Bebop is basically bottled cool. It has the budget, the music and the slick style in motion that distinguish it from the rest of the herd. It especially has the TALENT, which helps a LOT. The blokes (and blokesses) behind Macross Plus came in to kick ass and take names and lordy lordy LORDY they managed to do that and then some. In a series, no less!

Nothing this awesome can ever happen again. It's just a fact. No one will reach for the stars like this again because they know they will fail. I don't exaggerate, it is that awesome.

Well... I'm going to stop gushing and break this thing down.

Spike & Jet are a martian ex-mobster and an ex-cop respectively who put aside their pasts and partnered up to take on the greener pastures of bounty hunting aboard Jet's ship, the Bebop.

During their adventures they pick up a few strays. Namely, a femme-fatale con-artist/competitor named Faye and a juvenile, nonsensical super-hacker GIRL named Edward, as well as a genius Corgi named Ein that is typically the only rational mind aboard the ship.

Spike is the series protagonist, which isn't as cool as it could be because we're stuck watching ALL of his flashbacks and each of the big plot points always manage to revolve around him. The other characters achieve closure in their lives through evolving storylines that flow with the series progression, but Spike's baggage dogs him until the end of the series and forces everyone in the Bebop to join him in the ride.

Speaking of which, Spike's biggest article of luggage is tied to his ex-girlfriend and his mafia rival. On the plus side, this leads to awesome action scenes and intriguing plot twists. Problem is Spike isn't exactly a likable or necessarily intelligent character that is pleasant to follow, while his bloodthirsty, power hungry rival is entertaining to follow for what little you are actually allowed to see of him.

In fact, most of the conflict in the show is a result of his poor decisions, particularly his piss-poor taste in amazingly stupid/crazy women.

On that note...

Let's talk about Julia.

I HATE Julia.

Spike is the dictionary definition of "Mr. Cool" until something reminds him of Julia or someone mentions Julia or he recalls the style of plumbing he familiarized himself with during his time with Julia... Anyway, his "cool" sputters and dies, his comparatively semi-rational mind instantly erodes into pure idiocy and his actions become childish and spiteful. At least more than usual.

While I can relate to a woman making me "twitterpated" and brain dead, the sheer scale of Spike's stupidity as a sprinkle of instant conflict for the plot is the primary weakness of the series. Julia's a paper tiger of a woman whose reputation doesn't do her a lick of justice when the real thing actually presents itself at the end of the series.

Who's Julia? Oh... right, I didn't really touch on her yet.

She's the woman between him and his mafia rival, Vicious, that he's following a flimsy trail after by word of mouth, hearing bartenders and street vendors sputter and gush about how she's a "real woman" or some such babble, and then she only shows up in the second to last episode and proves her worthlessness in a moment that still makes my jaw drop. The resolution of her story ties directly into Spike resolving things with Vicious, his rival who at that point has seized control of "The Syndicate" causing uprisings from within and mafia civil war across the galaxy.

Now Vicious is a fun character because he's an extremely active antagonist and a real bastard to boot. Why is he named Vicious...? Well, without embellishing his personality too much, that's his basic personality characteristic! He's vicious! And that's why we love him. He's the kind of brash asshole that compliments Spike's goofy antics in an EVIL way and he also embraces weird taboos by bringing a sword to gun fight! WOO!!!

CB balances a lot of normally difficult things like plot, action, music, style and story making a vaguely noir-ish, epic romp through a space-age gangsterland with a broad spectrum of music accompanying their dark voyage through space. You see an almost Blade Runner-esque dirty, dismal view of the bright and shining future as our Cowboys scour the stars looking to score bounties and endure moments of gorgeous scenery peppered with wanton dogfighting, bars being redecorated with bullets and colorful local eateries being smashed up in frenzied street fights.

Without putting too fine a point on it, the show is TOO GOOD for television and yet, THERE IT IS.

This is the obvious no-brainer to have in your collection. It's been printed, reprinted, re-reprinted and it still sells damn well for a show that should have otherwise been run into the ground by Cartoon Network, but they only made it more powerful.

Speaking to its unusual powers, Bandai is usually so-so in their dub quality and this is probably one of their finest adaptions ever. Spike Spiegel's actor in particular can't STOP working these days as he's become the semi-official voice of Wolverine in animation for Marvel Comics in addition to the tons of video game voiceovers and anime dubs he still participates in to this day. Hell, he seems to voice half the characters in Batman: Arkham Asylum, mind you I mean he's the voice of every other guard and criminal wandering the place.




Knockin' on Heaven's Door, The Movie

To satisfy fans hunger for more and without spoiling any of the reasons that certain characters couldn't be part of a follow-up series or movie, a film was made that detailed the efforts of a madman to murder millions of people over the course of their Halloween celebration on Mars and our heroes efforts to stop them.

They abuse the length of the film in order to wax artistically too far, but aside from that the entire thing just feels like a high budget, feature length episode of the show. Which is exactly what we wanted anyway!

It's value isn't really appreciated, but then it doesn't tie into the main story and serves as little more than a distraction to those of us who had already watched the show to its conclusion. It's worth watching, but if you pay more than $10 for it you're being swindled. Check it out used or on Netflix, but whatever you do, make a point to check it out if you enjoy the show.


If you haven't come across this series yet, make every effort to do so. It's insanely awesome and wickedly fun. Amusingly, Cowboy Bebop did brilliantly in the USA, but didn't do so well back home, which probably explains why only the movie was made to satisfy western audiences.

The TV show is is still pretty easy to find in piecemeal form on separate discs, but most commonly available are select episodes. Any way you slice it, if you're a fan of anime you should be collecting this show. Now.

DNA2: From the windooooows... To the wallllllls...

So fixing mistakes is awesome. Super Awesome. Time machines could fix all kinds of troubles like wars, plagues, Jersey Shore, etc.

Clearly messing with the genepool is more important. Or so it seems with the minds behind DNA2.

Let's chat.





(Opening for DNA2, see the romance, feel the drama and TASTE the puke. SEE IT?!? He's puking! It's... surprisingly colorful for vomit.)


So Junta is an average Japanese teen, perverted as hell and surrounded by schoolgirls begging for tentacles. There's one little issue though, he quite literally has a "girl allergy" whereupon feelings of lust, dirty thoughts, contact with any part of a woman or visual contact with any of their girly parts ends with him blowing chunks.

Really. I'm quite serious. Puke city.

You're welcome.


But life's not all bad for Junta as he's destined to become the devastating "Mega-Playboy", notorious for his super virile seed that impregnated 100 women and choked out the genepool by overpopulating the planet in the future as each woman gave birth to their own Mega-Playboy who repeated their father's footsteps, as did their children and so on.

Karin, an almost copyright infringing (intentionally) Iria/Zeiram-esque female of the future, is sent terminator style to end his sensual conquests before they even begin by taking him down a genetic peg well before his "skills" ever manifest. Naturally, something goes awry... Well, two HUGE things go awry: Karin jump-starts his Playboy-powers prematurely by shooting him in the middle of a coffee shop with the wrong ammunition right after he falls in love with her (before and surprisingly AFTER she shoots him). This happening all after she bungles her mission and makes direct contact with Junta wreaking untold havoc with both the future and her mission in the present.

While trying to conceal her failure, Junta's powers aren't stabilized yet so he goes in and out of his Mega-Playboy mode as he's bathed in twinkling lights, his soft eyes glowing with warmth and a smile that literally hits the ladies so damn hard that they fall to the ground swooning. Then they get in close and he reverts back as he starts bazooka-barfing all over the place leading to rampant confusion and misunderstanding.

The word you're looking for is AWESOME.


(First chunk of the first episode dubbed, most of the vocal talent/direction is kind of weak, but script is strong enough to support the series.)

The formula you're looking at is a Soap Opera coupled with comedic sci-fi elements. It's Back to the Future of the Days of our Lives gone full-blown retarded and as they outlined in Tropic Thunder, it's never good to go FULL retard. Well, this may be the exception. Then again...

Basic logic takes a back seat as the future's stupidest special agent tries to fix a problem that requires a scalpel's precision as she uses a trio of chainsaws in its stead, bending and twisting the future ridiculously as every effort to fix her mistake makes things worse for Junta and exponentially for the future being that he's about to start his MEGA-BREEDING way out of season.

Stand back, I'm putting my nerd hat on for a moment. Granted, it's all part of the comedy, but as far as the time travel sci-fi logic goes Karin's changing the future as she talks about it to people in the past. Boy does she talk about it... Karin spills the beans to anyone who'll listen and even when her superiors show up later in the series, they're all really casual about being noticed in their weird timeships and devastating the past with litter, explosions, spectacular instances of real estate destruction and teashop massacres. The only thing holding the logic together is magic and good intentions as making a romantic comedy, but they throw those elements out the window toward the end by turning a rival into a shape-changing, gene-eating villain as the absolutely stupidest means to provide closure to the Mega-Playboy dilemma.

The dub is so bad... The script is great, but the actors and voice direction all fall flat like bad porn. Karin is amazing and steals the show, not surprising because she's portrayed by Jessica Calvello who went off to play Excel Excel in the equally batshit Excel Saga english dub by ADV Films. It retains its humor all the same so I can't exactly piss all over it, but I stand by the fact that it could and SHOULD be better. The script isn't bad, especially since they included Junta actually SAYING "barrrrrrf" as he throws up. Again, they also got Jessica Calvello to play Karin, which is probably my favorite thing about this series which is strange because it's one of the titles from CPM's US Manga Corps! It's only strange because she came in through the "back door" in a sense because all I had heard her voice in previously were the "adult titles" distributed by CPM's Anime 18 arm.

That's right, I just unsubtly noted that she was doing cartoon porn. And that I watched it.

What can I say? I try to keep my mind open. Anyway, she's as versatile a voice actress as they come and I'm just sad she doesn't get more work because she's hilarious and brilliantly talented in her field. I don't think she's doing anything else though since Excel Saga literally put her in the hospital halfway through the series.

The first 2/3 of the show are exceptionally fun, but they clearly realized that they needed to find something to close with, so they just sort of threw out nonsense and hoped for the best. As they establish awkward teenage loveish-type feelings, they also make a point of damaging them with paranoia, vomit and severe flatulence. The pattern of randomized Junta behavior makes for great comedy and a surprisingly touching story of awkward romance that get more complicated as the only girl Junta really loves is Karin, the girl who shot him and jump-started his "Playboy powers" is the only one he fixates on and as that develops is a twisted, sad little love story as she keeps trying to push him on to his childhood friend, while it's clearly killing her inside since she falls for him more every day.

It's unusually difficult to come across these days, which is a damn shame. The whole set seems to go for about $50 or so on Amazon, which isn't bad considering how pricey a lot of lesser shows have become since the depression got its gears turning.

Find it, love it and enjoy it. Just brace yourself for an immensely stupid and unnecessarily complicated close
at the expense of the otherwise well constructed story.