So for discussion of the first 2 episodes (anything after marked with spoilers):
Cowboy Bebop has become fairly prototypical of the space sci-fi genre, as was mentioned in the previous thread. What other popular sci-fi has been influenced or borrowed from CB?
For next week: I suggest we look at another piece of watchable media, but throw out any suggestions. There are various independent sci-fi shorts on youtube/vimeo/etc., does anyone have one they'd recommend watching?
Shoutouts:
Trombone kleinbl00 JakobVirgil mhr OftenBen plewemt elizabeth blackbootz flagamuffin Meriadoc minimum_wage Tiger_the_Lion _thoracic johnnyFive tehstone rthomas6 War Dala OftenBen bhrgunatha kantos francopoli anatomygeek Purple_Ruby
Random thoughts, cause I have a short lunch today. Loved the hints of John Woo feel of the first episode. Loved that Spike does Jeet Kun Do and that Hakim was a not so subtle nod to Kareem Abdul Jabar. Hate the whole "woe are the heroes for they are broke." Fuckers fly a ship that's larger than a mansion, have two smaller ships that are amazing as balls (I love Spike's fighter), and can afford an astronomical one way toll. Yeah, their debt might be deep, but I doubt they're hurting. Non-related but semi-related. Loving my side trip into re watching both Trigun and Samurai Jack.
Found out last week that we associate corned beef with the Irish 'cuz back in ireland, not only were cows pretty much holy and only eaten at the end of their useful life but the English drove all the Irish off decent land anyway so they pretty much never got to eat cow. But when they got to NY there were all these Jewish delis selling pastrami for peanuts so the Irish Americans gorged themselves. It's like that whole lobster thing - serve it to prison inmates in Maine and they revolt because they're being forced to eat garbage fish. Put it in a reefer car and ship it across the continental divide and suddenly it's a luxury.
Except, it has been shown time and again that as technology advances, food gets cheaper and cheaper due to developments in agriculture, storage and preservation, and transportation. If they have the technology to colonize mars and jump between stars, they have the technology to harvest, preserve, and transport beef with ease. Thinking towards kleinbl00's idea that maybe beef is a rarity due to some unknown factor or another, I'd have to kabosh that idea as well. For one, beef is a staple meat for many, many cultures. If they're able to colonize mars and travel between the stars, chances are they wouldn't have any trouble making sure that the both the genetic stock and the environment needed for raising beef stays viable. Additionally, since their first mission was in Mexico of all places, they were in close proximity to earth so transportation wasn't an issue. Lastly, the way they non-nonchalantly talk about beef like it's an easily expected every day meal, which means it's common and affordable for two space goons like them, instead of some rare delicacy where they have to go to some clandestine restaurant and pay the future equivalent of $10,000 for a plate of forbidden bush meat. Easiest explanation? They're bad budgeters and their misery is their own doing.
Beef is expensive. If you don't have refrigeration, then you milk cows and make butter because butter lasts longer and you can cook with it. Milk you have to use asap, and when you don't have Pasteurization it goes south even faster. And when you need to farm all the grain you can to pay taxes, you are left with the shit at the sides, root veggies, chicken, pork on rare occasions, and tons of butter. Coq-a-vin is another example. This used to be poor people food; the old chickens that were nothing but tough meat and gristle needed long cook times to make edible. Throw some cheap root veggies in that and you get a good soup that has a decent nutritional base. The, admittedly racist, stereotype of Black southerners eating watermelon and fried chicken? same thing. Chickens are cheap to raise and breed, you can eat the eggs, feed them kitchen waste, and then when they are no longer productive, eat them. Frying chicken parts in oil is an efficient way to get the most out of the food when every dollar counts. Watermelon was cheap to grow as a side project and many slaves grew it to sell for extra cash. Hamburger was poverty food, now a staple. Sausage was a way to get edible food out of the offal and slaughterhouse waste with the added benefit that you can store it for weeks/months. Same with Haggis and Shepard's Pie. The cycle is fairly standard.
The easiest explanation is that the writers and the designers and the animators probably never met each other, let alone talked much (as is usually the case). So when it was written, they were in some super-shitty place that the designer's all "fuck that" and drew up something like this And nobody thought it would matter that much because the likelihood of "do they use Quickbooks" coming up as a contention among fans was remote. FWIW, I was walking on the docks with a buddy of mine back in '03 or so. he discovered that you could buy a 175' fishing trawler for $150k and decided the economics of the world were upside down as that's as much as a 35mm Panavision cost at the time (they're much cheaper now). Never mind that $150k is a used Lamborghini, a new Patek Philippe or a 3-bedroom home in Kentucky. When I broke it to him that moorage fees were also on the order of $18k a month and the bunker fuel necessary to get it to Alaska where it could fish was around $50k he grew more annoyed, not less. Your point is well taken and I agree. however, I can also imagine a Millenium Falcon with a quarter tank of dilithium crystals or whatever and nothing in petty cash left for a drink at the Mos Eisley spaceport.
Suddenly, resorting to piracy makes a whole mess of sense.When I broke it to him that moorage fees were also on the order of $18k a month and the bunker fuel necessary to get it to Alaska where it could fish was around $50k he grew more annoyed, not less.
The troupe is pretty prevalent in almost every mainstream anime of the starving protagonist. I personally don't enjoy it, but at least there is enough in this anime for it to kind of make sense. They have a massive ship, two smaller ships, and literally no other crew piloting the ship. I just don't know what it takes maintaining a ship of that size from the salary of two bounty hunters (which isn't really two as they hunt the same bounties), and just not knowing enough about bounty hunting. Now I say this in comparison to other anime I've watched before, this is so far the most plausible scenario I've seen created.
It's more fair to say that CB prototypes the "space western" - if most sci fi after Star Wars followed the royalty and their armadas, CB followed Han and Chewie as if they never got involved with the girl with honeybuns on her head. CB, in my opinion, also spends more capital on an elaborate world surrounding the characters. I think that's one reason it's lasted - the storyworld is pretty rich.
I agree wholeheartedly. I only lasted about ten episodes in my last time around, but I remember being pretty much unsympathetic towards any of the main characters. I did however very much enjoyed many of the extras, the various locales, the vehicle design, etc.CB, in my opinion, also spends more capital on an elaborate world surrounding the characters. I think that's one reason it's lasted - the storyworld is pretty rich.
In hindsight, this was my original line of thought. I only finished the series to finish it and return the borrowed DVD set. Ultimately, the characters themselves weren't outstanding, but all that surrounded them did. I found myself raving at my music geek of a brother of why he'll love each and every episode: describing the art, soundtrack for fight scenes, hell, even chase scenes. I remember being pretty much unsympathetic towards any of the main characters.
Another thing I've noticed (and I'm not 100% sure this is a thing) is the intro style. Cowboy Bebop has a particularly iconic one, but other shows (Archer e.g.) have something very similar. What's the progenitor of this? Are these both homages to some previous intro I'm not aware of?
It's a faux-nostalgia pastiche. It probably spread to Archer et. al. through the Incredibles: Brad Bird, for his part, has said that his whole intention with The Incredibles was to fulfill his childhood dream of making a Johnny Quest feature so it's definitely the same cultural reference.
Surprisingly I cannot find anything on TVTropes, other than Animated Credits Opening which led me to the iconic intro for Catch Me If You Can; I'd argue this would fall in with the same themes, if not a bit slower paced.
I've only ever watched the first few episodes of Cowboy Bebop, although every person I know that indulges in anime has told me to finish it. I never do, but hopefully with the organization of all of this I can see it until the end. I'm definitely going to agree with klein that the world they've created is definitely an interesting one. I think it's an interesting take on the expansion into space being something like the wild west almost uncontrollable by sheer space alone. I'm also curious if this anime will clash at all with Japanese culture, and their perceived notions of what the future looks like. From the first two episodes I get a very westernized vibe from the whole thing.
Neither am I to be honest, I don't know enough about Japanese culture to answer the question really. I only know that perspective can inextricably change how we view everything, future included. To give an example we've talked about before in a previous thread unrelated to sci-fi. Godzilla and the entire structure of the kaiju culture pretty much arose from the fear of nuclear warfare. That is a perspective Japanese culture holds almost on their own, being the only nation a nuke has been used on in a war-time capacity. While it's definitely apparent that Japan over the years has developed a strong westernized culture, its hard to say if their science fiction looks like our own. What they fear in their day-to-day lives, or see as worthy of development varies.
War, zebra2 if you have not watched Space Brothers you absolutely should, it's a beautiful slice-of-life near-future realistic sci-fi that is very applicable even now. I understand it was a Manga before being made into an anime, but I never read that and I don't know how it holds up.
I really wanted to like the expanse. It started coming apart at the seams about three episodes in. It's a continuing problem with sci fi - producers tend to hire consultants who know their shit for the pilot, and then run out of money to keep them on staff and it all becomes mystic airduct bullshit by episode 6.