Cowboy Bebop: Knocking On Heaven's Door

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It's bound to happen... a Cowboy Bebop post!!!

Cowboy Bebop: Tengoku no Tobira or Knocking on Heaven's Door. Also known as Cowboy Bebop: The Movie in the States. They are showing it on HBO (the Astro one lah!) for this month. What? You mean they made a live action version of the anime? No lah, it's just an anime movie. First, a short intro of the anime series.

What is Cowboy Bebop the anime series about? It's set in the future. In the future, humans have colonised space and other planets. Crime is on the rise again. The bounty hunter system is reintroduced. Bounty hunters are referred to as "cowboys". The anime focus on the lives of Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine, Ed.... and Ein the dog. They are a group of bounty hunters who tries to make ends meet and lives in the spaceship called the "Bebop". Besides being an anime that shows how one make ends meet, it is also a philosophy on how one leads his or her life.

Ok, enough about the series. I"ll save that for my procastinated homepage :P. Let's get on with the movie. Oh, you don't have to watch the series to understand what's going on or who are the characters. It's done excellently with a scene with Spike and Jet playing Japanese chess. Just by one scene, shows the type of characters that they are.

The story: Halloween's around the corner. Some messed up lunatic released a bio-terrorism weapon by blowing up a big tanker truck filled with the deadly stuff. A bounty is placed on him. Faye was at the scene. She manages to catch a glimpse of the psycho. With that, the Bebop crew decided to hunt him down and recover the bounty. Or, they could just continue eating expired instant noodles for at least the rest of the movie. :D

The movie doesn't take place after the series (you'll know why if you have seen it). It's set between episodes (or referred to as "Sessions") 22 and 23. It's written like a Session in the series, only it's longer (120 minutes). And, it has everything: cool fights, gun fights, fan service (courtesy of Faye), aerial dog fight, and ass kicking soundtrack. No big ass robots though. In my humble opinion, one of the best session in the series. And, one of the best anime movie. What's a "Fan Service"? I"ll explain it in one of my future post.

Unfortunately, they are showing the dubbed version. No bilingual with sub-titles where you can switch it to the Japanese dialogue and enjoy it's original glory.

How was the dub? One of the best actually. All of the English speaking voice actors actually try to sound like their Japanese counterparts. Kudos to Ed's voice actress. Although Spike's dubbed voice sounds cool, but Yamadera Kouichi's voice acting is still "Spike".

I've also noticed that they have changed a bit of the lines into a totally different meaning. Only a few lines. How I know ah? I've seen it on VCD a couple of years ago. Chinese sub-titled.

Give the movie a try. It's only two hours of your life, that you will never get back if you think it sucked. If you like the movie, try the series. It's the only anime that my mom can sit and watch with me. Oh, and my dad was watching it with me yesterday. Heh! Maybe it was because of Faye's boobs :P . My dad must never ever read this post.

Here's some screen caps from my vcd:


!!!


Spike Spiegel


"I love a woman who can kick my ass."


Electra


Vincent Volaju


Dog Fight!


Showdown!


Yay, Fan Service!

Ok, that's about it. Go check your Astro guide and go watch it!

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