Find a flaw.

The dog shouldn't have been a corgi.

No cohesive plot, nothing was explained, last 2 episodes were the only good ones.

>>151609595
no character development
shit plot
the rest was ok

>>151609595
it's gone now

>>151609749
>character development

buzzword plebs parrot

Too many Cowboys not enough Bebop

>>151609595
No black and white in blue

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>>151609595
It's not Champloo

>>151609595
Like your filename wonders about, that Edward wasn't a boy.

Faye should have worn more clothes

>>151609595
It got too many normies into anime.

I love the show, but I really hate how some episodes had absolutely nothing to do with the main plotline involving Spike and his past.


Also, there will never be an anime with a soundtrack as good as as Bebop.

>>151609595
Cast is not primarily cute girls, thus it is an anime for /v/ermin.

it wasnt 50 episodes

>plot

its about fucking bounty hunters, basically a license to be episodic in nature, which is good, because storylines ruin a show 9/10 times

No real flaws but it's just not that good. A bit overrated if you ask me.

>>151609824
>one of the most important parts of storytelling
>buzzword

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>>151609649
Hello no. The last thing this show needed is more plot. Whenever it tried to tell a coherent story, it sucked, including the ending (and the movie).
The only 10/10 episodes weren't even part of the main plot: Toys in the Attick, Mushroom Samba, Pierrot le Fou.

>>151614170
>Mushroom Samba
best episode
japan needs more drug episodes

not enough ed over all

as someone who sets a very high bar, what is actually good anime to watch? you guys are scaring me--i thought that cowboy bebop was universally revered but im getting cold feet now

>>151614311
K-ON

>>151609595
Ed is a boring mary sue joke character who doesn't belong in this anime, she breaks the mood.
A lot of episodes are fillers and plain boring even if some are godlike

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>>151614301
preach it bro

>>151614311
Nothing is universally beloved and an anonymous imageboard is a poor barometer of sincere opinions. Just watch want you want.

>>151614311
Just watch it. its also animated very well,
i was avoiding it, but i watched it this christmas and i love it

but it came out in 1998,
so everyone knows its good, but the only ones who are gonna talk about it are people who just watched it, or people who hate it

>>151614311
We don't serve first-comers.

>>151614515
But Digibro says whats special about 4chan is that it is anonymous. And b.c of it you can voice your opinion freely

>>151614311
Don't worry, Bebop is actually pretty good and has a more or less universal appeal. Some other recommendations would be some Studio Ghibli movies (Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Spirited Away), Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Monster, Samurai Champloo, Trigun, Attack on Titan, and Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Of course /a/ loves to be contrarians so I expect some other anon will be along shortly to tell me that I have shit taste in anime.

>>151609595
Too old.

>>151609649
>>151609749

It didn't need an over-arching plot. Nothing wrong with being episodic rather than a serial.

>>151609638
But then we wouldn't have had perhaps the only time a jap has ever said Welsh in an anime

>>151614311
After having put it off for a decade I finally watched it recently and it was good, but that's it. In the same vein I liked Space Dandy more, if that means anything.

I recommend you to throw all your expectations out of the window and slowly watch Bebop, aka one or two episodes a day, not more. And more than anything, don't expect any plot and don't expect anything from the ending, because both these points suck, no matter how nostalgia goggle friends like to force the SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY down your throat. Only expect a good episodic anime with a good atmosphere and soundtrack, that's all.

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>>151609749
>no character development
>all the character focus eps are about dealing with their past and personal issues
>even the annoying genius kid grows up
arguably the main theme of the show was about how you can't run from your past

I saw nothing wrong with the anime. It peaked into the lives of 4 people (originally just Spike and Jet) in a neat solar-system-vagrancy atmosphere. It didn't need to EXPLAIN HOW humanity got where it was, WHY the characters were where they were (at least, not immediately) or WHAT everyone's inner monologue was like. It was 4 interesting people being interesting in an interesting setting. It introduced "plot" when is needed it and is remained nice a short. Great anime.

>>151614311
If any show will make you fall for anime it is bebop. I could recommend it to anyone, not just weebs.

>>151609595
It's dog shit.

Honestly I don't get Cowboy Bebop and never have. I think it's becoming less controversial to say the main story outright sucks, so we're left with a handful of good episodic stories. And, as good as some of them are (the shrooms one, the alien homage with the fridge, etc) they're pretty much on par with, like, a standard Farscape episode. And I don't even like Farscape.

The animation, art and music are great, but people always seem to praise the characters and story. Just don't get it.

>>151616345
the characters are interesting and i don't see what's wrong with an episodic anime.
the main story with spike and the syndicate isn't even as bad as everyone says anyways

>>151614515
>>151614538
>>151615900

Yeah, I'm just pissed because i'd imagine most anime series have a good pilot for first few episodes before the writers just write themselves in a hole and ruin everything.

Reason I asked was because I saw KLK a month ago and was genuinely shocked at how terrible the finale was (on top of the terrible 2nd cour). I actually bothered to read the archives from when the final episode aired and it seemed like the fanboyism of the series just made people completely ignorant of all the loose ends left, and how Chekov's gun was left unfired with regards to all the dangerous characters introduced in the 1st cour.

I hear jojo is the 2nd most popular manga series of all time. But when I see it, it doesn't strike me as a particularly interesting premise. I seems like Japan values style over substance and that people just become infatuated with the image of a character rather than any actual development of a story. I really, really hope that the majority of the stuff released today isn't like that. I've seen most of studio ghibli and trigun so maybe that makes me biased towards a show that has a resolution played out.

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>>151609595
All I can say, that It was boring. I knew, that different people has different tastes, but for me, this show does not live up to its popularity.

Go watch Outlaw Star if you want Cowboy Bebop with a plot

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>>151614680
Don't listen to this troll.
Here's the official chart.

>>151612238
This

>>151609595
You missed the "Pro tip: You cant" part

>>151618668
>zany crew of space bounty hunters: check
>any other similarities: ?

>>151609595
Ed never gets naked

>>151609595
I absolutely HATED the episode(s?) with that weird invincible flying assassin guy. Mad Pierrot was his name I guess, was he only in one episode? That character and episode just didn't seem to fit the rest of the anime at all and is my only real gripe with the entire show.

>>151618721
What the fuck, Kokoro Library is good, what's it doing on there?

>>151618917
This

>>151609595

The Spike focused episodes.

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>m-muh Julia
Plot was strange

>>151613472
>Cast is not primarily cute girls

Faye and her amazing legs more than make up for it.

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>>151620904
It's the truth.

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>>151609595
Not enough banana

>>151614146
it doesn't mean shit

the only thing that is important is the message of the story

the characters are only a service to this. whether they "undergo development" does not matter

>>151623692

Name one good story that was able to get away with having one dimensional characters that never changed through the entire story.

Didn't really enjoy spikes story and Julias' death was the most contrived shit ever.
>>151612997
Unironically this, its a decent show, but every time I hear some normalfag praising it as the greatest animu of all time from the whole 20 shows they have watched just disgusts me.

>>151624045
Aguirre, The Wrath of God
The Iliad
Beowulf
Crash

from the top of my head

>>151624068

Calling it contrived is giving it too much credit. She literally stood up in the middle of a gunfight like an idiot. It was the writer having no idea how to give meaning to her death. She was just a weak symbol from the start to the end.

>>151624161
by Crash I mean the JG Ballard novel, just for clarification

>>151624045
Nearly every short story ever written.

>>151618917
I've seen an official poster where she's topless once.

>>151618995
One episode. It's probably a homage to The Penguin since Sunrise animated Batman TAS.

>>151624161

>The Iliad
Uh, the entire point of the Iliad is character growth. People being judged by their actions. A character making decisions and accepting their fate (or not accepting it in the case of Achilles) is a form of growth.

>Beowulf
I said good stories.

>>151609595
overrated as fuck
not even that good, people like it due to nostalgia
didn't age well
episodic shit

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>>151624212

>TellTale Heart
>The Raven
>A Christmas Story
>character doesn't develop in the story

You're just proving the difference between a story and a good story is the character growing over the course of it.

>>151624247
In what way does Achilles change?

Beowulf is a deceptively great piece of poetry

>>151624315
>3 cherry picked stories out of the entire style
Riiiight

There's no debate to be had here, some stories need strong characters and others don't. Turning to TV for examples, The Twilight Zone was able to tell great, poignant stories with a strong message using fairly simply characters who were only on screen for one-off 20 minute segments. Star Trek (TOS/TNG, at least) similarly managed to tell great sci fi stories with a fairly one-dimensional cast of characters, at first anyway.

Bringing it back round to Cowboy Bebop, the problem is that it has stories which focus on the characters but the characters aren't strong enough to carry the plots they're given, beyond the surface cool/badass value they all have. To me, anyway. I couldn't give a shit about Faye finding the VHS video of herself because, even by that point in the show, we don't really have much of an idea who Faye is or how she thinks and feels. Same for Spike in the ending.

>>151624500
>I couldn't give a shit about Faye finding the VHS video of herself because, even by that point in the show, we don't really have much of an idea who Faye is or how she thinks and feels
But that's the episode where you find those things out?

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>>151615200
>arguably the main theme of the show was about how you can't run from your past

No arguably about it. Each of the characters had to deal with their past in their own way. It's what all the character building in the one-off episodes was building to, and the climax in the last three episodes wrapped up their stories flawlessly.

>>151624380

>nearly every short story
>oh except the three you just cherry picked!
Are you a retard?

>>151624331

>In what way does Achilles change?
He doesn't. He gets killed because of his lack of yielding to anyone. Which builds up the other characters who do grow.

Every character except Spike sucked, some of the side characters had potential but episodic narrative meant none of them got the development they deserved. Decent music though.

I've gotten about halfway through it and every episode is a fucking slog. I managed to get through Outlaw Star and Trigun because at least those stories feel like they're progressing towards something.

Plus, Outlaw Star made me cry when the little girl and her cats died. Bebop hasn't made me do anything except cringe every time Ed does pretty much anything.

>>151624575

>Each of the characters had to deal with their past in their own way. It's what all the character building in the one-off episodes was building to
Which all of that was fine. Except...

>and the climax in the last three episodes wrapped up their stories flawlessly.
This is where you're wrong. The ending didn't resolve anything that had come before. Spike just jumps ship for the third time after hearing Julia is somewhere. Jet does nothing and Faye cries, trying to get him to stay with her. Neither of these characters had any closure except in their self contained stories. Which those stories were good.

Then Spike goes down and everyone helping him dies, including Julia. He goes on a suicidal rampage, which destroys any character he had in the previous episodes.

Its the complete opposite of a 'flawless' ending. Its fucking forced Noir symbolism.

>>151624595
Yes anon, most short stories do not have radical character growth. With a few pages, many authors will just show how characters react to the plot, than them being changed by it.

>>151624735

I like how 'no character growth' has been changed to 'radical character growth'. Because you now realize that most short stories do have some form of character growth, even if its only one thing that changes. And you have to change your argument to salvage it.

>>151624711

>forced noir symbolism

just passing by, not anyone in this thread, but could you go into more detail? I don't understand your meaning.

it's true that spike throwing his life away for "revenge" to "settle things" is out of character with his passive, morbid outlook, but if we take meeting him again as renewing his feeling of being alive, and then her death as ripping it away, self destructive behavior seems a bit more appropriate

I could see you making an argument that with all the shit they've been through together they should've tried to go in and help/rescue him, but I think they did an ok job of portraying the crime syndicates as "do not fuck with" territory throughout the series.

>>151624847
I forgot how pedantic /a/ is.
If it makes you feel better, I can delete that post, and rewrite it to make you less mad.

>>151613384
Sure it started and ended with Spike, but it was a show about all the characters.

Best anime.

>>151624045
Never changed? The whole POINT of the show was character development. Poor Spike went from nearly throwing everyone else off his ship, to stuffing his face with food when they actually did since he couldn't bear so much loneliness.

All the characters joined the Bebop with very big holes in their hearts, and by the end they all resolved, in one fashion or another, their need of they were looking for.

If you're criticizing Cowboy Bebop for its plot, you don't understand people and their motivations, and you should go back to watching SAO.

>>151624562
Going off memory here:

Faye's backstory feels, to me, like something that should be a payoff, something built towards throughout the series up until that point. The problem I have is that we're given no reason to care about Faye - or at least, about her amnesia from being frozen - up until that point, so it's difficult to really invest in her past. As far as I can remember (and I'll be the first to admit my memory of the show is patchy at best) it just sort of comes in out of basically nowhere.

I feel the same way about the scene where Ed and Ein part ways. I've spoken to people who claim it was some kind of grand emotional suckerpunch, but really, I don't remember any particularly great relationship being developed between Ed and doggy before that point, other than that they just hang around next to each other a lot.

The entire ending with Spike just blows. We hardly really know anything about Vicious, other than that he's got a really dumbass name, certainly not enough to care about Spike's (who, I still maintain, also has no real personality other than "chill guy who sometimes gets mad and hits people") desire for revenge against him and the syndicate.

And obviously, it's unfair to expect such relationships and character motivations from Cowboy Bebop. It's a largely episodic, fairly short action adventure show. But that's the reason it confuses me that the writers attempted to try and act as if the characters were much deeper than they ever actually were in the last few episodes. Lots of people, including fans of Cowboy Bebop, claim that it's an example of "style over substance", and to me that's why the character beats never ring true and never engaged me - they're the kind of things you'd expect from the climax of a story-heavy, character-driven series, but all they've got to back them up by the time they eventually come around is a bunch of episodic stories where people punch each other to jazz music and completely trip out on shrooms.

>>151624956
Changing the core of your argument in order to "win" it and being called out on it is not pedantic.

>>151624711
>Its fucking forced Noir symbolism.
Yeah, that's a pretty fair point.

Everyone but Spike comes to some sort of understanding with their past. Jet comes to understand his ex's motivations and confronts some characters from his police force days, Faye learns about her past and that it isn't everything she is, and Ed finds her dad and Ein and some sort of purpose in that. Spike... He never really resolves anything. Anytime Julia or Vicious is mentioned he goes straight back to yakuza mode.

I think that's kind of the moral of his character: He's still stuck in the past. Unlike the other crewmembers who get sad but optimistic resolutions, Spike gets a forced Noir tragedy end.

>>151625113
Isn't it also directly stated in the show that that's the whole point of his character and why he had such an unfitting, forced end? The whole thing with how one of his eyes is fake and can only see the past?

>>151625113
It just stacks on the irony of Spike's story about his one eye that can only see the past.

>>151625009
>no real personality
You mean besides the unerring sense of duty? He literally died for nothing because that's what he was "supposed" to do.

You mean besides being tied to Julia but being forced to leave? He's so into this chick that just mentioning her name sets him off.

Considering you think Spike wanted revenge against the syndicate and that Ed and Ein split up at the end, you need to rewatch the series before you try and argue about it.

>>151624915

A common thing in (bad) noir film is the entire story leads up to an ending that focuses more on symbolism instead of tying up the plot or character story. In fact, a lot of them seem to go out of their way to have an ending that does not resolve the plot. Usually with the character dying or an inconclusive 'artsy' ending.

The problem when it comes to Cowboy Bebop is that Spike, despite being seemingly passive, is actually trying to go out and help people. Many of the characters he comes into contact with, he is trying to help them, even if those characters are self destructive or evil. This makes him seem like a good neutral personality for much of the show. But the minute Julia ever gets mentioned, his entire personality changes. He suddenly gives no fucks for himself or anyone else and blindly rushes off to find her. This could be excused if him eventually finding her had a purpose. If there was good development to his eventual reunion with Julia. But instead, within minutes of finding her, she stands up in the middle of a gunfight like an idiot and dies. All for the sake of 'symbolism'. Then Spike suddenly has nothing to live for. And the audience is left wondering "so that's it? I waited 26 episodes just to see everyone die and a symbolic bang?"

This has led many fans to come up with way more meaning to the ending. From theories that Spike lived to contriving tons of extra meaning to all the symbolism that wasn't there.

>>151624996

I wasn't talking about Cowboy Bebop in the post you quoted. I was correcting someone that made a generalization about character development not being needed.

>>151609595
Ed

>>151624045
Waiting for Godot

>>151612238
I think I only prefer Champloo to be Bebop since I just like that era of Japan over sci-fi. Both shows are among my favorites.

The term I use to describe the characters in these shows is 'Their story has already happened', which I really like from a viewing perspective.

>>151614395
How the fuck us Ed a mary sue?

>>151618995
Part of the point of Pierrot was drawing attention to Spike's fake eye. Another point is the fact that it helps the viewer realize is that these missions are not par for the course for the crew - Spike seriously considers that he's going to die in that episode, as Pierrot is more than capable of killing him, and virtually anyone else.