This animated film opens with a convenience store robbery, which is stopped, although not without incident, by Spike Spiegel and Jet Black. The initial assumption, at least by viewers like me who are unfamiliar with Cowboy Bebop, is that Spike and Jet are cops, but it quickly becomes clear that they are bounty hunters. The attitude is completely different.
Soon we are introduced to the rest of the Bebop crew. Faye Valentine is a woman who more or less holds her own with the guys, but is drawn with unrealistically large breasts. A young girl with the confusing name of Ed (short for Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV) is the computer expert of the group, but seems pretty clueless in all other areas. And Ein (short for Einstein, I think) is a dog who seems to have human-level intelligence, although this wasn't explained.
The main plot begins when Faye is going after someone who is in a hijacked chemical truck. As she closes in on him with her seriously futuristic flying vehicle (this is *not* set in the present), the truck explodes and all the people nearby die. But Faye sees someone, who does *not* look like the person she was chasing, leave the truck and walk away unhurt.
My favorite part was the opening, and the film seemed to drag a bit in the middle. The funny bits seemed to work better than the action, and the drama didn't work at all for me. This Japanese anime film is based on a television series of the same name, and it seems to me that perhaps this film was stretched out a bit longer than it should have been. But the fun parts were good enough to make me glad I saw it, and the music was good too.
Seen on 11/8/2002 at the 2002 Hawaii International Film Festival, where this showing was sold out to a very enthusiastic audience, who mostly seemed to already know all about Cowboy Bebop.
Soon we are introduced to the rest of the Bebop crew. Faye Valentine is a woman who more or less holds her own with the guys, but is drawn with unrealistically large breasts. A young girl with the confusing name of Ed (short for Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV) is the computer expert of the group, but seems pretty clueless in all other areas. And Ein (short for Einstein, I think) is a dog who seems to have human-level intelligence, although this wasn't explained.
The main plot begins when Faye is going after someone who is in a hijacked chemical truck. As she closes in on him with her seriously futuristic flying vehicle (this is *not* set in the present), the truck explodes and all the people nearby die. But Faye sees someone, who does *not* look like the person she was chasing, leave the truck and walk away unhurt.
My favorite part was the opening, and the film seemed to drag a bit in the middle. The funny bits seemed to work better than the action, and the drama didn't work at all for me. This Japanese anime film is based on a television series of the same name, and it seems to me that perhaps this film was stretched out a bit longer than it should have been. But the fun parts were good enough to make me glad I saw it, and the music was good too.
Seen on 11/8/2002 at the 2002 Hawaii International Film Festival, where this showing was sold out to a very enthusiastic audience, who mostly seemed to already know all about Cowboy Bebop.