Thinking I would watch the live action reboot of the series, I decided to watch the original Anime. Before I finished watching all the episodes, word came that the reboot was canceled. Hmm. Maybe I won't be watching the reboot. Anyway, the original was some really good stuff.
Spike and Jett are a pair of bounty hunters in the year 2071. Bounty hunters are colloquially called 'cowboys' in the future. The pair travel the solar system on the Bebop - Jett's ship - to capture various criminals. Along the way, they recruit Ein the Corgi, Faye Valentine the femme fatale, Radical Edward the computer hacker. In their adventures, they visit Venus, Earth, Mars, the moons of Jupiter, various space stations, and asteroid colonies. Most of the time, the bounty gets away and the crew often goes hungry. Food, or more often the lack of food, is a regular facet of the show. Though they all call the Bebop home, they often work against one another, most especially Faye.
Spike Spiegel is the central character, a man with a dark past. He had been part of a crime syndicate on Mars and that history regularly rears its head. He has a talent for sleight of hand, is a skilled martial artist, and a daring pilot. He has a single-seat craft - the Swordfish - that he frequently uses in dogfights.
Jett Black is a former cop who lost an arm when he got sloppy. Though flesh and blood arm replacement was available with the future tech, he has a mechanical arm to remind him not to be careless. In contrast to Spike's lithe build and lightning speed, Jett is muscular and blunt. He is called the Black Dog for his tendency not to let go of something once he sinks his teeth into it. He is the father-figure of the crew despite only being 36.
Faye Valentine loves to gamble and usually burns through any money she has in short order. Of particular note, she was born in 1994. She was frozen in 2014 in the wake of the gate accident and not unfrozen until 2068. Therefore, she is 77 years old in one sense and 23 in another. To make matters worse, she has amnesia about anything prior to waking from cryogenesis. She wears hardly anything and lives for today.
Edward is one of the great computer hackers of the solar system and she is a thirteen year-old girl. She joined the Bebop by hacking the computer and having it come to her, much to the others dismay. She is a ray of sunshine among this gloomy group, a happy though often incomprehensible member of the crew.
Ein is a Corgi. Though outwardly a normal dog, he shows insights beyond that of a normal dog. In one episode, he managed to hack a system that had frustrated Edward. Most of the time, he's just a dog. He bonds to Edward when she joins the crew.
The show is noted for the music and style. It is very unlike the usual fare in the anime genre. It is not surprising that this anime had been selected for a live action reboot. It is also not surprising that Netflix failed to capture the magic of the original.
Highly recommended.
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