Cowboy Bebop (1st Session)

Episodes:
Asteroid Blues
Stray Dog Strut
Honky Tonk Woman
Gateway Shuffle
Ballad of Fallen Angels

Darth Buzz

SCORE: 9

This is almost all I could ask for in a serial or episodic anime.  Cowboy Bebop covers all the bases with humor, drama, action, and a ton of style.  All the characters, while not too deep at first, are interesting in their own way, and you do learn a lot more about their background as the series continues.  The show unfolds itself in it's own rambling sort of way.  One episode will be super serious and the next will be lighter than air, there seems to be no natural flow, but that seems to fit the show the more you get into the series.  The music is cool and has a jazz flavor to it, and the improvisational nature of jazz fits in the improvisational style of the show.  The animation in Bebop is very good too.  The computer animation that is used is mixed into the traditional animation in a way that the computer stuff doesn't look out of place and blends in nicely.  When I watch Cowboy Bebop I watch with the English Dub and the voice acting is fantastic for anime.  Sometimes the Dub absolutely kills a show but not in this case.  They are excellent.  The editing or the way the show was storyboarded makes the show even more stylistic.  Overall the production values of the show are very good.

The first disc in the series has 5 episodes and they are very representative of the series as a whole.  (Except one of the main characters (Edward) hasn't been introduced.  Ed adds a lot of the humor element to Bebop.)  The first episode "Asteroid Blues" introduces two of the main characters, Spike and Jet (a pair of bounty hunters), and exposes us to some good action and violence right off.  The second episode "Stray Dog Strut" introduces another of the core characters of the Bebop (the name of their ship) crew, Ein.  Ein is a dog and in this episode we find out that he is a "datadog" but we don't find out what that means until late in the series.  "Honky Tonk Woman" introduces the 4th member of the Bebop crew Faye Valentine.  The best thing about Faye is that she is good to look at.  She's the male eye candy for the whole series.  The 4th episode, "Gateway Shuffle" is fairly funny with some enviro-terrorist who wear goofy costumes and their ringleader is known as Mom.  The 5th and final episode on the first disc is "Ballad of Fallen Angels" and this is the first episode the gets serious and gives us a glimpse of Spike's past and really creates more questions than it answers.  Stylistically this is the coolest episode on the first disc.

If you like animation, and like Anime in particular, then it would be hard to go wrong with Cowboy Bebop.  The series as a whole is great and this first disc gives you a good taste of what's to come.