CowBoy Bebop. The Godfather of anime?
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...Aaaaaand Maison Ikkoku would be the first manga I've ever read. No, really. Volume 10. I've always really liked Maison Ikkoku, UY and Mermaid Saga, and feel that Takahashi's popular stuff nowadays just really isn't any good. I think she's forgotten how to end a series well. Admittedly, like you said, Maison Ikkoku is pretty much the only thing she's ever ended well. I still really like that final line ("This is where...") of the ending. I don't typically like romance stories, but Maison Ikkoku is so genuine it's hard to dislike it.GloatingSwine said:
Because it's good at pretending to be deep, with all it's Christian symbolism and stuff, even though the director admitted that it was all just there because it sounded cool.OtherAlex said:
I disagree. Cowboy Bebop is better than the godfather. Godfather series is overrated. Not even that good imho.
Really? I admit Cowboy Bebop has excellent musical direction, and better art and writing than most of the crap you see on Adult Swim (although the character designs look copied straight out of some Big Book of Anime Archetypes), but "the Godfather of anime"? Spike is your standard Han Solo "rakish cad" cliche, Faye the sassy girl. Neither has shown more than two dimensions in the episodes I have seen. (Just because Spike has some lost-love thing going on doesn't make him three-dimensional, as it doesn't seem to inform his actions except in episodes that are specifically about said tragic past.) It's an entertaining show, but to compare it to the Godfather is both insulting to that movie and demeaning to anime, as it implies it can't get any better.
I think you may be going a bit too far by saying that it is insulting to the movie. Are you yourself saying that no movie can ever be better than the Godfather? In all honesty, there are a few that rival it these days.
I wouldnt take it as a direct comparison, but I would argue that Bebop has definately set the bar high for animes that follow it. Like Godfather.
If you read the previous posts, you will see that everyone on the thread has a very different idea about what qualifies as a good anime.
Further more, the Godfather is a big boy, it can stand to be compared to something else. Also, it is not in a derogatory sense as you seem to have taken it, it was purely to put into perspective how much stature bebop has within the world of anime, in my opinion.
I wouldnt take it as a direct comparison, but I would argue that Bebop has definately set the bar high for animes that follow it. Like Godfather.
If you read the previous posts, you will see that everyone on the thread has a very different idea about what qualifies as a good anime.
Further more, the Godfather is a big boy, it can stand to be compared to something else. Also, it is not in a derogatory sense as you seem to have taken it, it was purely to put into perspective how much stature bebop has within the world of anime, in my opinion.
Are you sure that the anime cliches didn't actually come from Eva and have since filtered down into other animes since? For instance, Macross and Zeta Gundam which both came before Eva were mecha animes and neither had a weak lead character with family issues as far as I can remember. I'm not saying you are wrong, I just wonder if it wasn't Eva that actually started these types of cliches which are now easily recognizable in other shows.jboking said:
Eva was honestly pretty late in the anime game as far as Japan goes, so I gurantee there is plenty of old animes out there with very similar character types. The big anime cliche of Eva was the use of giant robot fighting, and unless Eva can beat April 7, 1979 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Suit_Gundam] then I would say it was far from the one to create that cliche. Giant Robots are the same reason I don't consider Gundam SEED or any of the other gundams after mobile suit to be anything other than unimaginative remakes. The use of Giant Robots becomes the crutch of so many animes that it is sickening...I'll stop before I start ranting. The point is the story was blah and lacked any real imagination, well, at least not until the ending. However, having to sit through the blah that is the rest of the story kind of ruins it.Rivana said:
The character development and plot is really good up until the last 2 episodes (which got remade TWICE to try to explain wtf was going on) which were just crap. But the combat scenes are beautiful and violent, as they should be. Despite the fact that Shenji is really melancholy, you have to understand that NGE wasn't written for an American audience. He's melancholy because he's fighting for a cause he doesn't understand, and feels unloved by his father. If you like mecha but don't like NGE, I would recommend Full Metal Panic!. It's funny and violent, but also doesn't delve into the whole sociopsychological thing.OtherAlex said:
I don't really consider mecha a cliche, it is more of a genre of anime than a cliche. Granted Eva was more about the human conflict behind the mecha than about mecha fighting itself. Gundam 0083 was really well done as was Zeta Gundam neither of which I would consider remakes. Although 0083 did have a weak main character I enjoyed it because it raelly didn't spin either side as right or wrong.jboking said:
I enjoyed FMP it was pretty interesting, as was the second raid.
I also really enjoyed Martian Successor Nadesico which really was a satire of all things dealing with giant robot anime. It was quite funny imo.
I hated Akira, I thought it was an hour too long, badly animated and generally rubbishy overrated art-wank. Ghost In The Shell was also a massive dissapointment especially after how much friends raved on about it. And don't get me started on Neon-Genesis Evangelion, Noir or Battle Angel Atilla. I haven't seen a single anime outside of Miyazaki's work that has any dramatic weight or decent storytelling or interesting ideas (or even decent quality animation, actually). Would Cowboy Bebop change my mind about the genre, or should I not waste my time?
Contrary to the article, I've never found Bebop to be all that gritty. That's probably because of the shear amount of focus put on the character development. In some episodes the surroundings weren't important, the character of the Bebop crew focused on in that episode was the only thing that mattered.Simriel said:
Actually...I thought the deconstruction with regards to the 'mecha' in Evangelion was that they weren't strictly speaking giant robots at all, rather giant humans trapped in armor. Actually, the only true mecha that appears in the series is the Jet Alone. The EVAs themselves are frequently shown later on in the series to be very much alive and quite animalistic at times often violently so.jboking said:
That's what I got from it anyway. ^^'