CowBoy Bebop. The Godfather of anime?

[jboking]

It seems to me, that wherever I go Evangelion is hailed as the greatest anime ever. I haven't heard that much talk of it here and I'm curious why. I liked the original series (if you can get past the protagonist's boo hoo my daddy doesn't wuv me whining) and it obviously had its flaws, but it seems to have defined what anime is today. To quote Yahtzee, the sheer head-crushing depth is reason enough. I thought there was some amazing philosophy packed into that little cartoon, and no, it isn't the best anime ever, but it seems like Eva would be more of a Godfather because it was so incredible for its time.

I can't see Eva being considered the greatest anime of all time, or even the godfather of anime...there is a reason for that. The Godfather stands as a true cinema masterpiece that introduced some of the best things about the medium that we have come to know. Eva, on the other hand, is a culmination of every anime cliche in the book. The weak emotional lead character with family issues, the strong woman who hides her feelings for the main character through a tough shell of violence, and of course mechs. Anime's biggest cliche(there are many more cliches in Eva, but it's been a while since I've watched it). It's not necessarily bad, but their are far better animes to be chosen as the "Godfather of anime", Cowboy Bebop being one of them.

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.

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.

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.

That's what I got from it anyway. ^^'

Okay, so humans jumped into another giant human trapped inside of a suit of armors head to pilot it. -_-
Okaaaay, I'm calling power rangers on that one(it's a little more than a year older).
However, if you want to say that the Eva's are completely sentient and their pilot didn't do shit, then it brings it to giant creatures fighting, aka, bigger cliche. See: Godzilla

Either way, Eva was a culmination of overused cliches. At least up until the ending, which I will admit, was better than expected.

There was a point to talking about Eva in regards to this thread, but I seem to have forgotten what it was.

 

[Durahan2]

I don't care to debate with cowboy bebop fans(or any fanboys/girls for that matter), because it's like debating with a brickwall. But I can't help myself sometimes.

I was a fan, back when it was the only anime on AdultSwim. Then after 20-30 reruns of the entire anime. I soon found it to be bland and just plain non-entertaining. (Heck same goes for trigun, and for the majority of anime on AS.)

You remember your first time fondly, and Cowboy bebop poped a lot of little kids (non-4kids, or dbz)anime charries.

Honestly I'd go see a liveaction movie of it though(lets get Uwe Boll to do it!), just to see the fanboys and girls cry and/or go emo. It would remind me of a cult drinking poisoned punch. Oooo, then Faux news would have some silly ass report on how japan is destroying our youths.

 

[AtticusSP]

Bebop is pretty much perfect.
Alright, the movie wasn't that great. It was alright.
But the show, fantastic.

Too bad the Japanese didn't like it because it was so western. They hate anything that isn't heavily Japanese. Plus modern Sunrise is shit, and Bones owns Cowboy Bebop.
If you like Cowboy Bebop, try the more modern anime Baccano!
It's different, but has a similar style.

 

[slevin8989]

I think Outlaw Star is a great anime if you like cowboy bebop i would definately recommend it