Cowboy Bebop
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Darkness
Hand and Eye of Piratecat [Moderator]
One of the best anime series ever.Turanil said:Can someone tell me what Cowboy Bebop is??!!
Bounty hunters. In space. Very cool characters. Very cool music.
I'd like to give you a better summary than that but I'm not feeling too well right now. Sorry.
ScottDM
First Post
I am a huge fan of Cowboy Bebop, and I had the luck to get the soundtracks on e-bay for about the cost of one CD for the Three main CDs and a remix disk, God, that was worth every penny. Cowboy Bebop is one of the best Sci-Fi Anime to come around in a while.
I was actually going to run it using D20 Modern, borrowing some from Spycraft and starwars. What do you think? Spike as a Fast Hero, Jet as a Tough, Fey as a Charismatic, and everyones favorite Ed as a Fast/Smart hero? well, I would use original characters but, those were just my opinion. The Movie actually is good for running events on Mars, as it has a lot of flavor added to the background.
The setting is excellent for roleplaying as it is open ended. I mean what happens to the syndicate after the final episode???
I was actually going to run it using D20 Modern, borrowing some from Spycraft and starwars. What do you think? Spike as a Fast Hero, Jet as a Tough, Fey as a Charismatic, and everyones favorite Ed as a Fast/Smart hero? well, I would use original characters but, those were just my opinion. The Movie actually is good for running events on Mars, as it has a lot of flavor added to the background.
The setting is excellent for roleplaying as it is open ended. I mean what happens to the syndicate after the final episode???
rbingham2000
Explorer
As mentioned above, Cowboy Bebop is one of the best anime shows on the planet. While "bounty hunters in space" is definitely a nutshell description of it, it doesn't really do the show justice.Turanil said:Can someone tell me what Cowboy Bebop is??!!
Spike, the main character of the show, spends most of the series as the essence of cool, though there are those moments when he loses it with comic effect (like when Ed is accepted on board the Bebop). His personal story involves a vicious interplanetary crime syndicate he was once a part of, a lost love that he's still trying to find, and a psychopath with a bird and a samurai sword who wants him dead, dead, dead.
Jet is the captain of the Bebop, with a love for bonsai and cooking. Money in the Cowboy Bebop universe buys a lot less than our money today, and the property damage and personal injury costs that Spike racks up on the job often means they have to eat beef-with-bell-peppers without the beef, apart from pissing Jet off to no end. Jet was once a cop, a member of the ISSP, but he quit for reasons he will not discuss. He also won't discuss how he lost his left arm, which has been replaced with a cyberarm.
Faye is the loose cannon of the crew. She's about as dishonest as gamblers come, and her habit of doing rash and impulsive things, like stealing the crew's money and spending it on herself, pisses off Spike and Jet to no end. She is very cool and sexy, but like Spike, she sometimes loses that cool with comic effect. Her personal story is kinda sad, and involves a search for memories that were lost with the "Gate Incident" that made Earth a hostile planet to live on.
Ed...well, what can I say about her? Ed is Ed. She's this wacky kid hacker who's just totally insane. Her wild and crazy antics make for some of the funniest moments in the anime, though more serious-minded people (Spike, for instance) usually find her quite annoying.
Ein is the illegally-developed "data dog" that Spike and Jet rescue in the second episode of the anime, which means that he's endowed with some serious brainpower that's not really apparent to the human members of the Bebop crew. Though Spike is not thrilled with the idea of keeping pets, Ed's the one who really takes a shine to the dog.
Throw all five of these crazy characters together with an assortment of more crazy characters, exotic locales, space battles, and some kickass kung-fu and gun-fu action on the side and you have Cowboy Bebop.
True, as a genre peice, Bebop is more of a western than sci-fi (as is Firefly for that matter -- I am now very curious about this mystery d20F book ). Folks love CB for its quality animation, stories, characters, minimal annoying anime cliche's, and most of all, a super-killer soundtrack. The sci-fi elements are just okay, but do provide opportunities for some nice visuals.
Speaking of Firefly, that show has Traveller written all over it (obvious to anyone familiar with both subjects). I have T20 already, and I do like a lot of it, but I'd also be interested in seeing a d20F genre book focusing on a Traveller style of play.
). Folks love CB for its quality animation, stories, characters, minimal annoying anime cliche's, and most of all, a super-killer soundtrack. The sci-fi elements are just okay, but do provide opportunities for some nice visuals.Speaking of Firefly, that show has Traveller written all over it (obvious to anyone familiar with both subjects). I have T20 already, and I do like a lot of it, but I'd also be interested in seeing a d20F genre book focusing on a Traveller style of play.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Cowboy Bebop is something of an essence of a future dystopia.
Mankind has conquerored the stars. We've got homes on moons of Jupiter, a dome on Mars, a prison outpost on Pluto, and the Earth is largely abandoned. What made this possible was a system of "gates," basically portals between distant locations in space-time.
But what has it brought us? Wars were faught on desert moons. Mars is corrupted with drugs and organized crime. The gates are targets for terrorists. Where the night sky was filled with stars once, it is now cluttered with floating ads to catch the attention of those in space, hoping to give them the next fix with bright and shiny letters, when they are seeking what their life is missing.
Enter four characters who are missing something in their life. Jet Black, former cop, whose mechanical arm is a constant reminder of a deep betrayal. He took up a life of bounty hunting afterwards, to find some direction late in his life. He met Spike Spiegel, a smooth-talking ex-syndicate member who is missing the only part of his soul that made him feel alive (he's pretty much the main character, but they tell everyone's story). Together they traveled the universe, hunting bounty heads for paltry sums, each directionless, wandering.
Enter Faye Valentine, a woman without a past whose present is a mounting debt and a knack for 'womanly wiles'. Enter "Radical Edward," a hacker child without a family, who forces her way onto the Bebop (Jet's ship), and proves somewhat useful.
As the series progresses, they pick up Faye, Ed, and a hyper-intelligent pooch, have a few adventures, discover a bit about their pasts, and then loose them, telling the story of four people missing something deep, who managed to find it amongst the stars, and the glittering ads.
The series oozes style, complete with music by Yokko Kanno that jumps genres and is often set to emotionally charged scenes in unique ways. Directed by Shinricho Wantanabe (he's done some other fantastic stuff), it captures a lost society, four people lost within it, and how finding yourself in life is something of a constant, even if you fly badass spaceships or travel between Mars and Callisto in an interstellar gateway.
More specifically, it's four characters who are always poor, and who hunt bounties to make ends meet, and their trials and travails. It's the perfect D&D setup -- Four characters in space, with a motive to hunt down targets, have adenture capturing them (without killing them), and live day to day.
Mankind has conquerored the stars. We've got homes on moons of Jupiter, a dome on Mars, a prison outpost on Pluto, and the Earth is largely abandoned. What made this possible was a system of "gates," basically portals between distant locations in space-time.
But what has it brought us? Wars were faught on desert moons. Mars is corrupted with drugs and organized crime. The gates are targets for terrorists. Where the night sky was filled with stars once, it is now cluttered with floating ads to catch the attention of those in space, hoping to give them the next fix with bright and shiny letters, when they are seeking what their life is missing.
Enter four characters who are missing something in their life. Jet Black, former cop, whose mechanical arm is a constant reminder of a deep betrayal. He took up a life of bounty hunting afterwards, to find some direction late in his life. He met Spike Spiegel, a smooth-talking ex-syndicate member who is missing the only part of his soul that made him feel alive (he's pretty much the main character, but they tell everyone's story). Together they traveled the universe, hunting bounty heads for paltry sums, each directionless, wandering.
Enter Faye Valentine, a woman without a past whose present is a mounting debt and a knack for 'womanly wiles'. Enter "Radical Edward," a hacker child without a family, who forces her way onto the Bebop (Jet's ship), and proves somewhat useful.
As the series progresses, they pick up Faye, Ed, and a hyper-intelligent pooch, have a few adventures, discover a bit about their pasts, and then loose them, telling the story of four people missing something deep, who managed to find it amongst the stars, and the glittering ads.
The series oozes style, complete with music by Yokko Kanno that jumps genres and is often set to emotionally charged scenes in unique ways. Directed by Shinricho Wantanabe (he's done some other fantastic stuff), it captures a lost society, four people lost within it, and how finding yourself in life is something of a constant, even if you fly badass spaceships or travel between Mars and Callisto in an interstellar gateway.
More specifically, it's four characters who are always poor, and who hunt bounties to make ends meet, and their trials and travails. It's the perfect D&D setup -- Four characters in space, with a motive to hunt down targets, have adenture capturing them (without killing them), and live day to day.
DonaldRumsfeldsTofu
First Post
A Cowboy Bebop game would be like Cowboy Bebop...except without the original characters, beautiful visuals, brilliant soundtrack, and profound dialogue. What would be the point of that?
And Cowboy Bebop never really struck me as a western. There's an episode that has an homage to spaghetti westerns, and a Desperado homage episode, but the series itself is more film noir/dark comedy sort of thing. But it really changes from episode to episode, and each episode has it's own feel.
And Cowboy Bebop never really struck me as a western. There's an episode that has an homage to spaghetti westerns, and a Desperado homage episode, but the series itself is more film noir/dark comedy sort of thing. But it really changes from episode to episode, and each episode has it's own feel.
Jürgen Hubert
First Post
Kamikaze Midget said:Cowboy Bebop is something of an essence of a future dystopia.
Mankind has conquerored the stars. We've got homes on moons of Jupiter, a dome on Mars, a prison outpost on Pluto, and the Earth is largely abandoned. What made this possible was a system of "gates," basically portals between distant locations in space-time.
But what has it brought us? Wars were faught on desert moons. Mars is corrupted with drugs and organized crime. The gates are targets for terrorists. Where the night sky was filled with stars once, it is now cluttered with floating ads to catch the attention of those in space, hoping to give them the next fix with bright and shiny letters, when they are seeking what their life is missing.
I dunno. Maybe I'm a sucker for manned space travel, but I don't see the Cowboy Bebop universe as all that dark. Yes, it's a shame about Earth, but mankind has proven to be highly adaptable, and managed to settle and terraform some originally highly inhospitable worlds in an amazingly short time (I think that the anime is supposed to take place in the year 2073 or so) - which is quite a testament to human endurance and ingenuity.
Remember that the main characters move in some rather unsavory circles merely thanks to their profession. Yes, there are violent criminals and criminal syndicates, as well as crooked cops and corrupt politicians out there - but most people seem to just get on with their lives, same as today.
If you need some background information on the worlds of the solar system, you might take a look at Transhuman Space (by Steve Jackson Games) and Jovian Chronicles (by Dream Pod Nine) - the latter even has d20 stats...
RodneyThompson
Explorer
Cowboy Bebop fits the western mold way better than most people give it credit for. Now, someone above used the phrase film noir which is an excellent description for some episodes, but the rest of the episodes fit the western movie genre quite well thematically. One of the key elements of the western is that individuals are frequently placed in a position of power outside the law, and that little stock is placed in organizations, especially the government. In fact, in most Westerns, the normal authorities often more of an obstruction than an aid, and this is seen many times in Cowboy Bebop.
I could go on all day about thematic similarities, but let's just say it works.
I could go on all day about thematic similarities, but let's just say it works.
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