Cowboys and Alchemists

Unrelated you say? I think not. Two animes I set my sights on this summer were Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Both of them are fantastic and really have failed to disappoint. FMA ended here in the States on July 23^rd, and Cowboy Bebop reruns should end in the next couple weeks. Both of them had good pacing and provided lots of laughs and fantastic characters. My new favorite anime character (and one of my new favorite characters period) is Spike off Cowboy Bebop.

If you haven't seen/heard of these series, never fear, I don't intend to post huge spoilers.

Cowboy Bebop I think I like because it’s just a good ol’ classic anime. It was new in 1998 and just looks older, which is nice in a quaint way. I’ve been meaning to watch it for years, but whenever I caught it on TV it was already mid way through the season. It’s also got a great soundtrack, my favorite song off of it is Rain by Steve Conte. The rest of the soundtrack sounds nothing like it, but is great regardless, blending country sounds with jazzy music.

The basic story is about a group of bounty hunters running through space trying to make a buck. I like that it’s something of a futuristic western…IN SPACE, and it’s not idiotic. It does have more than a few episodes that are essentially filler, however the episodes that focus on the specific characters and provide us with some back story are really good. The characters seem real. Not only are they funny, quirky, mellow, etc. for the majority of the time, but they can also kick it into high gear in the blink of an eye when faced with each of their pasts. And the English voices don’t bother me! They’re fantastic, actually, except for those episodes where we meet Spike’s old nemesis where I swear half the characters are voiced by the same guy. I’m looking forward to the end to see what happens with all of the character development.

A good example of the scenery: a spaceship paired with a desert railroad. Old and new technology collide!

Generally, after half the episodes I run off to go write afterwards because I love the characters and want to fashion some of my own as unique and as annoyingly, perhaps stubbornly loveable. The world built for the show is pretty neat too, set in the 2070’s where we’ve colonized the entire solar system and each planet has its own people and so on and so forth. It’s familiar enough but also delightfully futuristic and plays to our fantasies of what the world(s) might come to look like. It’s likely due to the far off future aspect and the fact that so many people like it that it’s stood the test of time. Adult Swim plays the whole thing (all 26 episodes) at least once or twice a year.

Psst. Also this movie based on the series was not bad either. You really don’t need much knowledge on the series to enjoy it.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood…my first real exposure to FMA at all. I realize now it was a good place to start. Following much closer to the manga than the first anime series, Brotherhood…in one word was epic. I said so on many the occasion and was often left screaming at my computer when the episodes cut off after 24 minutes. Not enough, Funimation, not enough!

Emotionally charged but not over the top nor uncomfortably dramatic, Brotherhood is in essence the story of two brothers who are budding alchemists (more or less magicians who rely on science to back their skills. Yay science!) who suffer a great loss early on which sets them on a quest to get their “bodies” back when they don’t obey the laws of alchemy. The plot gets much more complicated from there when Philospher’s stones and demons called homunculi come into play. The brothers’ journey gets tangled with the very fate of the state and it results in…epicness.

The story examines the value of friends and family, allies and enemies, and I’m certain there’s not an episode that fails to remind us of the value and preciousness of life itself. It does reference religion a few times and refers to God quite a bit, but not in a manner that is preachy per say, but to reference power over man and the potential terror a god-like being on earth could instill in humans. (Because if there’s one thing that will really irk me, it’s religion in my entertainment. I have nothing against religion, I have my own beliefs and anyone else is free to have theirs, but I’d rather not have them thrown in my face as the key to the plot while I’m trying to enjoy a film/etc.)

This one has a great array of characters as well, each with their own temperaments, desires, and weaknesses. By far my utmost favorites are (predictably) Mustang and Edward. This of course is due to my love of people with power who have a lot to lose. Can we tell I enjoy tragedy? But really, the rest of the main cast is only a half step away from favoritism. I think TV Tropes explains just why the best with the term ‘iron woobie.’

“A Woobie is a character who you like to feel sorry for. … An Iron Woobie is a character who has something noble about his Woobie nature. Maybe they became a Woobie of their own free will from a Heroic Sacrifice for the sake of The Power of Friendship. Maybe just their passive powers of endurance show a Heroic Spirit. …”

It’s like they all friggin’ fall under it, though the term still sounds silly.

Brotherhood is inspiring in like X-ty trillion ways. It’s been a massive inspiration on my latest work because I love the relationships between these people who have been brought together to fight the big bad evil thing at the end of the road. Brotherhood was the right blend of magicky stuff and science and big arching questions that just did the trick for my little geeky mind. Its characters really inspired me, each of them having a back story worth hearing and each of them turning out to be people you really cared about, likely because they were all put down so bad that come the end you want them to not only win but kick ass (of course that’s how it goes, stupid. It sounded better in my head)! Overall it was like an epic, but not so totally spread out as a Lord of the Rings-esque epic. It doesn’t mean to tire the viewer out. I will admit that some of the explanations were so…six feet over my head that I kind of just went with it, and I’m not sure if it’s because the logic was just utter bullshit that it sounded like it would work or if it was because I didn’t pay close enough attention or what. I like the show enough that I don’t want to tear it down. One real qualm? There was so much bloody violence in this! I mean, even when they’re being humorous…

(It's not that it offends me, but there is a ton of blood shed in this series.)

Oh, and let’s not forget about the music! Brotherhood had so many beautiful openers and closing credit sequences. My favorites were the final opener, “Rain”, because it really gets me every time, the desperateness of the situation and the tears and the…yes. You get it. And then the “Shunkan Sentimental” closer, because this was when the characters still had hope that things were going to be okay and the song just fit the feeling so well. But dear God, I cannot stand the English voices after I started watching this in Japanese. They are all wrong in my honest opinion.

Heyy…so I talked about FMA more because it’s done. And Cowboy Bebop’s (reruns are) not. And because there was, like, three times as much material for Brotherhood. …I love them both. So. Much.

On a side note: fuuuuuuu… I really want to do a post about Inception but it’s been a while since I’ve seen it and I’d really like to see it again before doing an analysis or review or whatever the heck you want to call it. Blargg.