Back to Ovyda's Profile Ovyda's Profile

"And the work which has become a genre unto itself shall be called: Cowboy Bebop"

^ This sentence was showed several times during the episodes and it is already giving away about the uniqueness Cowboy Bebop carries. There are many unique anime in our anime world, but most of them fail to execute it well. However, fortunately that is not the case with Cowboy Bebop. It is a truly classic anime with incredibly awesome soundtrack and brilliant character development.

Cowboy Bebop centers around a group of bounty hunters in a futuristic, space-western setting. The year is 2071 and the place is our Solar System, where various ... planets and moons have been terraformed for human settlement. Bebop is a spaceship where two bounty hunters Spike Spiegel and Jet Black are travelling around the space and hunting down their preys to earn money. Along the way their duo (2) becomes a quintet (5) when the engineered dog Ein, beautiful yet very complicated women Faye Valentine, and computer genius teenage girl Edward (yes a girl) joins their group, or I should say forced themselves in.

This newly formed bounty hunter group is ridiculously unlucky since the day their duo became a quintet. However, this is exactly what brings the comedy. Their unlucky hunt probably is due to the lack of teamwork and recognition of each other skills. Even though they are all highly skilled in certain areas, they all usually go alone on the job which is what makes the series even more entertaining.

Yes, the plot is not the main engine of Cowboy Bebop series. Every episode is a new story and rarely has any relevance to the past episodes. Sometimes they are dramatic, sometimes comedic and sometimes very serious. When the episode starts, you simply have no clue what theme and mood this time it will be and will they capture their prey or not, or maybe it will be one of those rare episodes when they follow the main story of Cowboy Bebop? In any case, all episodes are very enjoyable and unpredictable.

Since the plot is not the main engine, then what exactly makes Cowboy Bebop series so amazing that it is usually listed in most anime top lists? Well that probably is characters and OST. Every one of the main character's have some really harsh past that they do not want to share with anyone at all. It is something they treasure a lot. All of this does not stop them from some really amusing interaction.

As I mentioned already, they have some really harsh pasts. This "past" thing is what gives a lot of room for the character development. Their past is not revealed in one short episode and what is most important - the way their past is revealed. Usually past is revealed by jumping into flashbacks, however that is not the case with Cowbow Bebop. To see how it is done, you will have to watch it yourself, but I can reassure you that their growth as individual and as a team member is definitely executed extremely well and in entertaining way.

Music is the other major factor why this series is so brilliant. Whole soundtrack is simply superb. This whole jazz music is fitting the story perfectly. I have never seen another anime that could go so perfectly in sync with its soundtrack. The last two episodes is kinda a showdown of the beauty that jazz can actually offer in combination with great story.

What is really surprising that animation is rather good considering in what year Cowboy Bebop aired. Usually I am very picky on the old anime because I cannot withstand crappy animation and just because of this I avoided Cowboy Bebop too. Well now I can certainly say that either the series were so entertaining that I did not notice animation flaws or the animation was just simply good enough considering it was released in 1998.

Overall, Cowboy Bebop is in the anime top tier list definitely for a reason. With its great amusing characters, beautiful and very fitting jazz music it also gives many short yet brilliant stories. I am not afraid to use this word to describe Cowboy Bebop at all - MASTERPIECE.

P.S. I must praise the voice actors who dubbed it amazingly well. I do not know how was the Japanese dubs, but English were great.

Usually 2nd season is worse than the 1st one. However, this does not apply to Vampire Knight Guilty. Almost in every category VKG was better than VK. The only thing I liked more in 1st season was OST. Music was good in VKG too, but not as fitting the mood of the story as the VK one.

What was 1st season lacking the most, was not enough character introduction in my opinion. I was rather disappointed that only Zero's past was showed and explained while Kaname's and Yuuki's was left unknown. After watching VKG I can understand why didn't show their past in VK. It does ... make sense and it was a good decision.

So yeah, we finally got to see their pasts, which also lead to see some better character development as well. If Yuuki was rather annoying and useless in VK, then in VKG she changed almost completely. At the beginning she still wasn't very contributing and as always Zero, Kaname or other Vampires had to take care of her, but she start to grow as a character in my eyes. Of course, that sudden event changed a lot, but she was already getting stronger before it.

On the other hand, I wasn't really expecting to see Kaname's true colors, but surprisingly we did get to see that. I thought he will be used as a mysterious character till the end, but here we got his past, we know why he's so caring about Yuuki and what are his future plans. I believe it was really well done, good timing I mean to do it. It was definitely shocking... I found his past even more harsh than what Zero had. No wonder Kaname was always so distant from everyone.

Vampire Knight Guilty in my eyes were already better when introduced antagonist early in the show instead of at last episodes like in VK. Although I wish he had more screen time. He did get more than enough screen time in the flashbacks, but a bit disappointing how short we got to see him in action during the current time. Yet, I am not really complaining about this as usually fights that take long are just irritating... I am not really fond of shows who drag fights, so I was rather happy how everything happened in VKG.

As I have already mentioned, the music wasn't as good as in Vampire Knight. However, I am not gonna lie, it was still very good. I gave 9/10 and only not a 10, because I know that it could have been better (VK as example). The whole OST was playing the right mood that characters of the series contained, so that was a great addition to the series.

To sum up, the VKG has definitely exceeded my expectations. I can honestly say that it's the first shoujo anime to me that was able to include some mystery and supernatural genre's very well. Another great thing about this anime is that it was unpredictable. Till the very end wasn't sure who will Yuuki choose if she will choose that is.

Whether it was helpful or not, please do not hesitate and give me feedback ^^ I do want to improve writing reviews. Thank you for reading!

Story 7/10
The story was definitely interesting and entertaining, but it could have been executed better. During whole 13 episodes, they didn't fully explain what exactly are the differences between Pure-blooded Vampires - Aristocrat Vampires - Normal Vampires and Level E Vampires. Of course, basic knowledge was given, but I feel like they could have gone into more details. Moreover, one of the things in my opinion this show lacked was a good antagonist. The antagonist appears only at the end of the series, so until that moment you are confused so who's the bad guy? Is it Vampires or not... Nonetheless, it was obvious ... that all 3 main characters have had rather harsh past. However, only Zero's (one of the MC) past was explained further. Even though, there's still another season for VK, I am disappointed that 1st season wasn't used to introduce the characters so that I could get more into the story. On the other hand, this made the show mysterious and less predictable as you don't know what kind of persons they actually are (exception main heroine).

Art 7/10
Nothing special, but it wasn't bad either. The art in my opinion was decent and did have some unique traits. Eyes of Yuuki was really different from what I am used to see and I couldn't say I actually liked... but everything else was appealing. The Vampires as expected were showed as more beautiful than humans, however I wasn't really fond of the bishounen looks.

Sound 10/10
Now that was incredible soundtrack. Both opening and ending songs were so good that gave me chills while listening to them. Moreover, soundtracks fit very well with the rather dark mood of the series.

Character 8/10
My feelings towards the characters constantly kept changing. Sometimes they were very appealing. I loved to see how they have some inner thoughts and struggle to reach the answer they are looking for. All 3 MC's have a deep past, but none of them really feel like sharing the pain with anyone. And this is where comes the annoying/irritating part. The heroine Yuuki crosses the line, she goes too much into Zero's private life. Of course, that's rather normal for a protagonist, but that's what disappoints me the most - making a very typical heroine who always goes after the person who has some problems and ends up in some kind of trouble and getting saved by either Zero or the Pure-blooded Vampire Kaname. However, ignoring this go after-get into trouble-be saved part, the characters are very different from each other and that's what makes the story better. The ending gave me a hope that 2nd season will answer many questions about the characters and show more development of them.

Enjoyment 9/10
Even though, I wasn't really complimenting the show. I can honestly say it was still very enjoyable. The soundtrack makes up for many minor issues I have with this anime. Furthermore, I love to see when characters have some deep inner thoughts and are struggling to find the answer they are looking for. So the only real problem I have with VK is that Yuuki barely changed through whole series and was too much of a typical heroine.

Overall 8/10
I think it's a good rate for this anime. The lack of information about Vampires and MC's history + lack of character development (heroine) were the negative aspects. The OST was definitely the best part of the anime. I believe this a perfect show for teenage girls due to bishounen looks of Vampires, but as for the guys it's nothing that spectacular. Although, it is definitely interesting and worth watching.

Thank you for reading :)

I would have never watched this if my internet hadn't had some connection issues. To my huge surprise from the very first episode it already caught my interest and I ended up watching 7 episodes without a break.

I personally want to give title "Cliffhanger" to this anime. Like 90% of the episodes ended up with a cliffhanger... Don't get me wrong, I actually loved this. I kind of regret it aired before I started watching anime, because this anime had enormously huge variety of topics to discuss. Every episode was very different from the previous one and many turnarounds happened. I was sometimes even confused ... so who's right and who's wrong, who's the ally and who's the enemy... Great mind games (not as great as Code Geass and Death note tho) were played during the episodes and it was almost impossible to predict what will be their next move.

Basically this anime starts with 21st century's battle ship leaving the port for some training exercises and encountering some sort of anomaly that sends them back in time to 1942 year (60 years ago). This was the time when Japan were in a war against USA. The next 26 episodes of this anime is how the whole crew struggles to avoid any contact with the people from those years so that they wouldn't change the history.

However, can you actually avoid everyone when you are in the middle of a war? Obviously not...you need food, fuel and other things to survive... and this is were the fun begins... The battle ship from 21st century has such advanced weapons that are enough to destroy the whole USA army (it's realistic, in 60 years weapons do advance that much). Moreover, they know the whole history of this war. In other words they know every movement of both Japan's and USA's armies and what were the turning points of war and just basically they were overpowered. However, they didn't want to participate in this war at all, this was not their war, so this what makes the anime so great... Just how they try to avoid any minimal contact with anyone and what happens when they finally get spotted by both Americans and Japanese people...

The realism of this show was incredible if you don't think about this "time travelling thing". Zipang did a good job portraying the moral issues and how they were dealt with within the crew and their opponents/allies. However, those 26 episodes weren't enough to finish the series. They ended up on another big cliffhanger. Of course, there is manga, but... the disappointment of not having a sequel is huge.