
a review by Terajima

a review by Terajima
Great details, music, rhythm, some creativity, but it is not something general but specific moments. Among its virtues that slow pace and silence / sound design, like one of those anime for midnight.
The first ten chapters are not at the level of many of the following (like 11, 13, 18, 20, 23-25 which are my favorites); If they had served to introduce plots, the characters, the general tone or whatever, well, ok, but it's not the case, wasted time in which it seems that the style of the second part of the series is being calibrated.
A little forced, pretentious, too referential, something like the Tarantino of anime, it seems all very original and unique but mainly it is a work inspired by others with a greater creative genius than itself like it happens with Pulp Fiction.
Like a mix of many films from Hong Kong action cinema, spaghetti western, french nouvelle vague (especially Godard who must be Watanabe's idol with those games of rhythm, montage, typography).
Cowboy Bebop in many moments is pure Hong Kong cinema, but if these films have something it is that they label themselves or pretend to be an entertainment (and many become much more than that from that perspective), not to be a before and after, or to be the one who discovered fire with that thing that appears in the opening about Cowboy Bebop being a genre in its own, the work that will be used as a reference of this style, blahblah.

I'm not talking about the fact that nothing has to remind other things, but about that in Cowboy Bebop you don't find the best version of the things it shows / tries. For example, there are 800 things similar to Berserk, but Berserk is probably the best at that, I don't care if they say such thing remembers Berserk, yeah ok, but is it as good as Berserk? (Let's put Macbeth aside). Many of the things that Cowboy Bebop looks like are better than Cowboy Bebop, chapter 11 compared to Alien, Godard's movies, certain Hong Kong movies or Italian Westerns are a better version of that style than this anime. You watch a movie like I don't know My heart is that eternal rose and it shoots right in the forehead of the last two chapters of Cowboy Bebop, music, shootings, flowers, emotional love stories of the past, etc. And this is a good example of what I say, Cowboy Bebop usually it's not that it is an exact copy of anything, it's not that I can quote you such or such thing that it is exactly that, but the style, the mood, what it does, that's where it has a lot of comparable things. It's an anime with the usual codes of cinema, the type of rhythm, transitions, montage, narrative.
The other anime I'm watching right now is Jojo's Bizarre Adventure who also refers to many other things but in an honest, humble way and without pretending to be the father of everything (and it is of many and will be, just like CB), but if Cowboy Bebop was a person it would be quite an arrogant guy, like me in this review, and that's what could be said of both, maybe I can be right in what I say here but I am behaving like a conceited smartass, the same with Cowboy Bebop, it's very good but it's too full of itself, brilliant at times, but don't say and act as you are, because for that you need to be really brilliant almost everytime and you are not.
Imagine each volume of Berserk with the motto: the best manga ever made, #1 everywhere, just search for it you will see, past and present of the medium, Miura the mastermind #FACTS. It would be like relax Miura, what about your fairys and bullshit? You are putting yourself to a harsher test than what you deserve with so many virtues you have shown.

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