What is it?
The 2001 Japanese anime (animated) science fiction movie Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door).
What is it about?
This is how Rotten Tomatoes describes this anime (animated) movie:
The popular animé series Cowboy Bebop gets its own feature-length film with the aptly named Cowboy Bebop: The Movie.
Set in the late 21st century, it jumps into the series’ story line just prior to its conclusion, with the bounty hunting crew of the interstellar craft Bebop chasing a hacker aboard a tanker into a major city on Mars.
As crew member Faye Valentine closes in on the tanker, she witnesses its catastrophic explosion, which soon appears to be a viral terrorist attack as the death toll continues to mount in the days following.
Furthermore, Faye caught a glimpse of the person responsible for the blast and is thus the only surviving witness of the crime.
After the government puts out a large bounty for the perpetrator’s capture, the Bebop gang — slacker Spike Spiegel, former policeman Jet Black, and hacker girl genius Edward — begin their own hunt for the mass murderer, who is eventually revealed to be one Vincent Volaju.
Vincent, it turns out, was the lone survivor of a governmental medical test and now seeks revenge by unleashing the same microscopic robotic virus used in the tanker explosion on the unsuspecting city.
The Bebop crew must scramble to prevent Vincent from carrying out his plan, as well as try to locate an anti-virus to counterattack the effects of Vincent’s virus.
Released in both dubbed and subtitled cuts in the United States in 2003, Cowboy Bebop – The Movie premiered in Japan in 2001.
My Thoughts
My brother GC and I watched this again for the first time in years.
I had forgotten about the very beginning opening line of the movie which is a quote that I like and need to make a post about:
I did remember this second scene of the movie though:
Years ago back when I was at MS University I heard that this movie was going to finally be released on DVD in my country, and so I remember going out trying to find it one late night at the Walmart on H14.
Unfortunately I did not find it but I did have an interesting experience where I saw a woman with light-color skin who caught my attention so much that I came very close to stopping to talk to her, I am more of the cautious and shy-type so I did not, but I did stall to think about whether I should or not because there was just something about her that I can not describe.
I can not remember what she looked like other than having light-color skin, and I was not sure if she was married or not et cetera so that was another reason that I did not approach her.
While I did fail to find the DVD for this that night, I did keep looking online and offline until I eventually found it, and I bought it on DVD.
I remember watching this movie at The B Dorm as I used my best computer speakers that I ever had that had a small subwoofer and two small speakers and was made by Cyber Acoustics and somewhat looked like the CA-3001 but with maybe a headphone jack and a slightly different design which gave it a very balanced clear sound that still managed to have good enough bass.
I remember watching parts of this movie out-loud because the sound on my speakers was so good, and those speakers had the best sound when playing DVDs from my computer compared to any of computer speakers until this day.
While this movie had good animation and some good music at times, it still was not better than the best Cowboy Bebop episodes and its music was not better than on the series at times, and so I remember feeling slightly disappointed because I felt that this show deserved a better movie.
This movie was not bad but it felt like an average or slightly above average episode that was animated a bit better and was turned into a movie, and it just did not reach the highs that I felt that it should have.
There were some amazing and standout moments in this movie though that have stayed with me until this day and that are among some of my favorite Cowboy Bebop moments, but I just wish that overall it would have been equal to or better than the best episodes.
They still did a pretty good job though bringing this all together with elements from the TV show, good fight scenes and action, good animation, et cetera.
The end,
-John Jr
John Jr's Blog 