I have started and stopped this post many times in the past few months based on the justifiable reason "Who watches animation series in this thread?"
. However, I thought I'll post it anyway since I cannot keep it in my head forever.
Cowboy Bebop (TV Series 19982003)
I would liken this in some ways to 'Firefly'. They are both about crews in space playing 'space cowboys'. They both have interesting characters. And much like 'Firefly', I might watch 'Cowboy Bebop' again someday.
But there the similarities end. Why is CB interesting?
- The animation is, after all these years, still very good.
- The music is very good too. I normally never watch opening title sequences after a few episodes. But, with CB, I sat through the opening sequence for all the episodes (barring the last one, which didn't have it). The opening title song, "Tank" is among my favourites of all time. The closing credits song, "Real Folk Blues", is good too.
- Spike Spiegel is one of the coolest heroes around.
- Ed (or Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV) is the craziest eccentric genius on screen. Walter Bishop on LSD can't do such things!
- There are two aspects in which this is better than 'Firefly'. One, it does have a proper ending. I would say that it is one of the few series which ended exactly how it should have ended - definitely one of the best series finales I have come across. Secondly, no matter how much I liked 'Firefly', the overwhelming feeling I got while watching 'Serenity' was "If only they had two seasons to do this, they would have done this properly". The accompanying TV movie of CB, "Knocking on Heaven's Door" on the other hand was better than most episodes. In fact, it showed that if the writers put their mind to it, they could come up with something really, really good.
But, there are many issues that plagued CB as well. For one, assembling the crew takes a third of the series. The best episodes of the series are the ones where we come to know the backstory of a character (or) when the history of the character catches up with them. But, these episodes are far and few between. There are just too many stand-alone episodes. Sure! There is some character progression going on across the episodes, but it reserves too much of its firepower for the last few episodes. Due to this, the series' supposed 'greatness' slipped me by.
This one is a good read:
https://kotaku.com/after-thirteen-years-i-gave-cowboy-bebop-a-second-chan-1542667674
Neon Genesis Evangelion (TV Series 19951996)
This one, along with 'Bebop', played a great part in the revival of interest in anime in the US, according to some blogs I have read.
I watched this long before, but had completely forgotten it and had to watch again to see what's great about it. I have mixed feelings about this series. When the first episode starts, you are pushed smack down into the middle of something you can't make head or tail of - "Who are these Angels? Why do they attack? What the hell is NERV?" Within the first few episodes, we get some of the details, enough to keep us going, but not everything. Then the series gets into a rhythm (read: some repetitive actions with repetitive music) that puts us at ease and somewhere down the line, it once again puts us back in the same awkward position - "What the hell is this Human Instrumentality project? I thought this was about angel attack and EVA pilots warding off the attack and saving the world".
'Mecha' is just one aspect of this series. There are also a lot of religious/philosophical references thrown about, but only a few of them ever make sense. The rest are little head-scratchers (Wait! How?). It is also about depression, loneliness, finding your place in the world. The series creator, Hideaki Anno, had undergone depression and the core of the series is nothing but a cathartic output of that experience. The 'hero', Shinji is a shy, introvert loner. Rei is a mysterious loner. In fact, the only part of the series that is fast paced and fun, are the eight episodes that follow the introduction of Asuka. A lot of time is spent on thinking about consequences of action, longing for acceptance and that sort of thing. There is even one long scene in a lift where there is no movement and you are wondering whether you hit pause button by mistake. The last two episodes are nothing but a long therapy session complete with question cards. The director still says that they are good enough and I kind of agree with him from a pure psycho-analysis point of view.
But, most normal fans who were expecting 'normal' episodes were baffled by the last two episodes. What is THAT? They asked. Even the actors who dubbed it in English on the state side didn't understand what it was all about.
So, they made a fresh replacement for those two episodes by creating "Death and Rebirth" (Death = recounting of 24 episodes + some new scenes, Rebirth = a replacement 25th episode). They also went back and did a 'Director's cut' of the last few episodes (19-24) by adding the new scenes from 'Death'. They followed it up with "End of Evangelion" (using Rebirth as a starting point and creating a new #25 & #26), which gave it an (agreeable to the public) alternative ending, something that is much more in line with the rest of the series.
Even that wasn't enough. So, they went back and decided to redo the whole thing as four movies. Three movies are out and the fourth one is still expected. The first one is supposed to be a rehash of the first six episodes and the rest are all going to be a fresh take. I haven't watched the movies yet but will do so in the future just for completion sake.
Post-Watch Read:
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2002-06-11
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (TV Series 20022005) - Gig 1
If not for one
review of the new Scarlett Johnansson movie, I would have never watched this.
But for many, including this reviewer, the franchise really started to shine with the television series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. That show tells two stories in as many seasons, which are among the best in its genre.
I liked the first season of the series much more than the movie (which was too heavy on philosophy). The series scores on two aspects. The first is the opening title song, which I liked despite the fact that I don't usually like this kind of music. Is it because "Inner Universe" and "Tank" are both composed by Yoko Kanno? Or is it because the song is way cooler when sung in Russian + English? I don't know. The second part is in comparison to the movie. Because of the time available in a TV series compared to a 2-hour movie, I got to know about everybody working in Section 9. It is much easier to care about characters that are fleshed out than when they are just 'contemplating' about whether they are 'still human'. The animation style of the GITS movie was such that it felt like a 'movie made with animated actors'. This one isn't as great but is good nonetheless. The character design of Major is said to be closer to the manga and she is immensely more likable with a purple hair.
My favorite episode of the series is the 15th one, Machines Dsirantes, which involved the child-like 'think-tanks' of Section 9, Tachikomas. Nothing but 'clones' with shared memory, Tachikomas start developing individuality and discuss concepts like 'death' and 'god'. It was cute and I enjoyed it more than the 'philosophy' of the GITS movie.
Related reading: There is a really, really (super-)long post by Tim Urban on Wait But Why about
Neuralink. That near 40K word post took me the whole of last weekend to read. When thinking about 'cyberization' and 'cyber brain' in GITS universe, something like the 'wizard hat' makes sense as a starting point.