Cowboy Bebop (also known as Knocking on Heaven’s Door) is an unexpected anime delight. Director Shinichiro Watanabe gracefully avoids the numbingly stupid pitfalls that ruin so many similar anime, and gives us a solidly entertaining feature film. By the time the movie’s over, Watanabe has treated us to a superior American-style espionage thriller, and left us wanting more.
Although set on Mars in the near future, the world of Cowboy Bebop looks uncannily like New York City did in the early 1990s. Watanabe’s world is just barely futuristic, as is the world of many modestly-budgeted Hollywood thrillers. Unlike other anime thrillers taking place in the United States (such as Gunsmith Cats and Golgo 13), Cowboy Bebop is utterly convincing. Perhaps this is due to Watanabe’s close involvement with American filmmakers during the making of The Animatrix? Or is this due to Yoko Kanno’s creative and propelling jazz-fusion soundtrack? Regardless, the almost complete lack of cyberpunk motifs set Cowboy Bebop apart from most anime feature films.
Throughout most of Cowboy Bebop, a team of bounty hunters chases a pair of bioterrorists, unaware that the terrorist leader has an even more destructive plan in mind. The bounty hunters include a wisecracking gunslinger named Spike, a stoical former cop named Jet, a hard-boiled female detective named Faye, and a bizarre computer whiz named Ed. Spike is the best-defined of the four characters, and if this were a live-action film would probably be played by either Denzel Washington or Keanu Reeves. He even gets to have what passes for a romantic subplot in this sort of film. Unfortunately, Spike doesn’t have much of an interesting adversary; the terrorist leader is a standard one-dimensional shadowy villain, and this detracts from an otherwise original screenplay.
The look of the film, as mentioned before, is based on New York City, and the painted backgrounds are among the richest and most evocative I have ever seen. However, the actual animation is jerky, stiff, and stylized. This takes a bit of getting used to, and most anime fans won’t have a difficult time adjusting, but the character animation is likely to turn away those unfamiliar with anime. This is a shame because Cowboy Bebop is one of the most Westernized anime ever created, and could likely find a huge audience in the United States. As it is, the lack of dazzling animation will probably prevent Cowboy Bebop from finding the large audience that Akira and Ghost in the Shell did almost a decade ago.
With a stronger villain and better animation, Cowboy Bebop could have been propelled from a solidly entertaining film into a movie likely to break into the American mainstream. Still, if you’ve already been converted to anime (and most visitors to this website are), you’ll find a lot to enjoy in Cowboy Bebop.
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Other Anime Reviews Metropolis Review* Macross II Review Serial Experiments Lain Review * Digimon - the Movie Review Animatrix Review* |
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