Decoding Cowboy Bebop

             It’s no secret that I think Cowboy Bebop is the greatest anime of all time. There are lots of anime fans that agree. Even fans that wouldn’t agree that it’s the absolute best would say it’s in their top 10. The ones that don’t even do that are stupid and aren’t really anime fans. Anyway, as much as I love Bebop, sometimes I’m at a loss for fully understanding it. Most specifically, I’m talking about Spike’s origin. Sunrise was really good at giving us a decent amount of info on Jet, Faye, Ed, and Ein, but Spike’s complete back story has always been somewhat of a mystery, told only in the fewest of frames in flashbacks. Over the past few weeks, I’ve pulled out all of my DVDs and re-watched the series from episode 1-26 plus the movie. Finally, I think I have cracked Spike’s origin.
Before I dive too deeply into my own theories (and that’s all they are because everyone has their own theory), let me establish what is spelled out, for sure, in the episodes. We know that at some point, Spike was in some sort of gun fight where he was critically injured and Julia nurses him back to health. We know that Spike and Vicious have a huge vendetta against each other. Julia and Spike fell in love and that at some point Vicious knew Julia, probably romantically. All of this has been shown disjointedly and out of order.
Here is what I’ve pieced together. We know that Spike was in the Red Dragon syndicate before he teamed up with Jet. I think Spike and Vicious were brothers in arms during this time, based on the frames with the two fighting back to back smiling at each other in Ballad of Fallen Angles and The Real Folk Blues. I also believe that Vicious was romantically involved Julia before she was with Spike. This belief is based the flashback Spike has in The Real Folk Blues. During the flashback they show Vicious and Julia in bed before they show her in the bed with Spike. Typically, these sequences are not in any particular order, but this time, I think they did it on purpose. Throughout the series, we never see Vicious smile except for in the flashback with Spike and when he was about to kill him. Nothing makes a man so angry than another man taking his woman. Also, why else would Vicious order Julia to kill Spike? He wants revenge, and he wants her to extract it out of a sense of poetic justice.
It must be noted that I’m not sure where, in time, the huge gun battle in the church takes place (no, I’m not referring to the gun fight in Ballad of Fallen Angels). I used to believe that I happened after Julia and Spike fell in love. This really doesn’t make sense because if that was his last hoo-ra to get out for her, then how did he fall in love with her? It’s pretty well documented that he falls in love with her after she nurses him back to health when he gets shot up. I want to add as a side note here that I think Spike was jacked up on the red eye during this fight. During the flashback in Ballad and Jupiter Jazz, we see a single scene with a vile of red eye busted on a table with a red rose. Anyway, I’m pretty sure they show that scene out of chronological order. It really doesn’t have much impact other than setting up the love triangle. But, I do think that Julia is the solvent that breaks down the glue of team Bebop. I think Jet is jealous of Julia because Spike is always willing to abandon their friendship over her. Faye is jealous because without Julia, Spike could be hers. I’ve always felt she had a huge crush on him. Ed and Ein probably don’t care much.
Like I stated before, these are all my theories. If you think I’m retarded and have it all wrong, then let’s debate it on the forum. I love a good Bebop debate. And, even if I have everything right on, there are still more questions. Like, what is Spike’s connection to Mao Yin Rai? Why does Vicious want to take over the Syndicate? Who was in the Syndicate first? However, some questions should be left unanswered. Why is the Joker so cool in Batman? Because you just don’t know who he is. Wolverine used to be cool like that too. Let me leave you guys with this news; a live action Bebop movie has been green lighted. Keanu Reeves has been confirmed to play the role of Spike. I personally think he might be ok. He’s got the jeet kune do moves, but I don’t know if he will have the personality. I just hope they don’t ruin it like they did with the Dragon Ball movie.

P.S.: It’s commonly believed that Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door) fits between episodes 22 and 23 because all the characters are still alive and on the ship with Big Shots still on the air. I would like to challenge this belief. I think he fits between episode 18 and 19. At the very end of the movie, Spike’s plane is shot down by the company that engineered the nanites. In my opinion, that is probably the reason why Spike had to go to Duhan’s shop to get the Swordfish repaired. 

             

How to Choose  Foreign LanguageJacob Williams

How to choose a foreign language in 1 easy step!
I don’t need to know a foreign language because I’m never leaving the country, I thought to myself as I was registering for high school classes in the summer of ’96, and besides, everyone should know English anyway. That statement was my final thought as I chose not to take a foreign language during the best years of my life.
I grew up in Cabot, Arkansas, a northern suburb of Little Rock. My small town didn’t have any real sources of cultural diversity. That’s not to say that I lived with a bunch of stereotypical rednecks that only cared about beer, trucks, and hunting, but I was around people who had very conservative views about foreigners. Furthermore, my parents raised me with little to no encouragement to learn about other people or their languages.
After high school I felt like a wanderer lost in the woods because I had no purpose or passion in life. One day, though, I came across a river. That river was the Japanese culture. At the time I worked with a friend named Max, who I shared a mutual interest in comic books and videogames with. One night after work I went to his house to hang out. In his room he told me about this new cartoon called Dragon Ball Z. He exclaimed that I just had to see it. Since I was bored, I thought what the hell and watched a few episodes. Afterwards, I was spellbound.
The show was packed with martial arts action! Kung fu space warriors fought other kung fu space warriors with superhuman martial art moves and gigantic fireballs. It was very reminiscent of cartoons from my childhood like Voltron and Thundercats. However, the content was a little richer. I hesitate to say it was more adult, but it certainly wasn’t childish. Perhaps I should just say it was PG-13 and move on. This contact with Japanese culture was my first step into the river. My feet were wet, and the water felt good. Where once the alleviation of boredom was the primary motivating factor in trying something new, a new sense of enthusiasm for sharing would allow me to be open to new experiences. I had made the decision to wade in the river.
Weeks later while hanging out with another friend I was shown a movie called Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai. There are only two things you need to know about this movie to understand my story. First, the film is about samurai philosophy. Second, the movie’s foundation and source material is the Japanese book, Hagakure. I enjoyed Ghost Dog so much that I found myself racing to Barnes and Noble to get a copy of Hagakure. To my chagrin they didn’t have it in stock, but they ordered it for me.
When I finally got the book, I devoured every page. The bulk of the material is composed of proverbs, philosophy, and historical accountings by the author (Yamamoto Tsunetomo). Hagakure hypnotized me with romantic rhetoric about the samurai, not that samurai really needed much romanticizing. It’s at this point where I felt like I was in the middle of the river. The bank that I had stepped off from was self ordained ignorance. Ahead of me was the shore of cultural enrichment. Both shores were equidistant. I was now thirsty for anything Japanese, and crossing the river was just as easy as going back the way I came.
A month or so later I was at my local video store, in the foreign film section, searching out anime as if it were silver and gold. The selection was very limited, but the art on a particular cassette box caught my eye. This is in the spring of ’01 so DVD hasn’t completely phased out tapes yet. Anyway, the art on the box evoked a strong emotional response in me. In the foreground there was a young man with dark red hair holding a lifeless woman in his arms. The face of the man was painted in agony. His eyes drawn tightly closed with his teeth clenched in rage. A cross shaped cut bled profusely on his cheek. The woman, also covered in blood, had a huge cut deep in her right shoulder. Snow covered the barren landscape. Behind the title font was a pair of bloody swords stuck blade first in the ground. The cover art looked very Shakespearian. I couldn’t read the title (るろうに剣心), but it had a subtitle in English, Romantic Tales of the Meiji. The decision of what to rent was pretty easy to make.
When I got home I raced upstairs to my room and threw the tape into the VCR. To my dismay the film had Japanese audio with English subtitles. The subtitles made it more difficult to enjoy the gorgeous artwork and fluid animation because I had to read text. Thankfully, it didn’t affect the quality of the movie. The anime was about a swordsman who kills another samurai, and then falls in love with the dead man’s fiancé. She reciprocates his feelings, but ultimately he kills her in a duel with another fighter. It’s from that point he lays down his sword and vows never to murder again. I was speechless when it was over. With my eyes closed my feet had carried me to the other side of the river. However, I didn’t fully realize it until a few days later.
The epiphany came to me as I was driving along a short stretch of highway on my way to work. Nothing spectacular was going on that clear, cool spring night. My mind couldn’t stop thinking about the anime I had watched just a few days before. What stuck out in my mind as I was driving was the vivid scenery of feudal Japan depicted in the film. I thought about how serene it must be to stand at the foot of a snow covered path leading to a shrine buried deep inside a forest of cherry blossom trees. Or how majestic it would be to stand on a dock in Nagasaki and stare at the sun setting behind the vast Pacific. Better still, how breathtaking to walk the streets of Kyoto on a calm autumn evening admiring the unique architecture of the imperial palace. My mind was made up. One day I have to go to Japan.
My old ways of thinking were now like a derelict ship listing below the surface. The informal promise made to myself as a teenager to never leave the country had just been broken. No, not broken. Shattered. That promise was now like a house divided. It couldn’t stand. America was no longer the only valid place on the planet to live. Did this mean that English wasn’t the only valid language? Now I either had to be close minded all the way or open minded all the way. There could be no compromise because a consensus between the two positions was nowhere to be found.
A new train of thought soon hit me. If I was going to go to Japan then I was going to have to speak their language. The Japanese culture changed me. I felt the least I could do was learn its native tongue. In my new mental paradigm it was no longer good enough to say a culture was valid as long as I could enjoy it in English.
My language expedition began by looking in the rear view mirror of my life. Japanese was a foreign language offered to me in high school. With a heart full of regret, I gave myself a swift kick in the ass. Then I borrowed a Japanese/ English dictionary and began studying some vocabulary. This was followed up with visits to the Japanese chat room on Yahoo. Slowly I began to learn a new language. However, it wasn’t fast enough because I’m an impatient person. I wanted fluency overnight. So I raced to Barnes and Noble, again, where I purchased Pimsleur’s Japanese 1 on cassette. Supplemental literature, like Japanese in Manga Land and Japanese for Dummies, soon followed.
About 5 years go by with the casual study of Japanese. In the meantime my passion for anime and manga has only grown by leaps and bounds. At this point in my life I’ve married a woman who not only shares a similar passion for Japanese culture but who harasses me to get back into college. While thinking about the possibility of going back, I only entertained colleges that offered Japanese. I was living in the south suburbs of Chicago, and the local community colleges didn’t offer it.
Once I had my daughter and moved to Indianapolis, I finally made up my mind to go back to college. When I initially started the application process at IUPUI, my major was going to be Japanese. The goal was to become fluent in the language and work as a translator. Best case scenario was that I would work for the anime and manga distributors translating new product. This idea was short lived. It died after seeing the struggle my wife had getting a job with a liberal arts degree. Now I’m a math major, but every semester that I’ve been back I’ve taken a Japanese class. When I become a third year student, the plan is to participate in the exchange program with Hakuoh University north of Tokyo.
I hope that my story speaks volumes about the power of culture through language and the power of language to change lives. Looking back at myself it’s hard to believe that I was that stereotypical southern redneck that felt America was the only valid place on the planet to live. Moreover, since it was inconceivable to live anywhere but in the U.S. then it was equally inconceivable to speak any other language besides English. I’m grateful that another way of life was introduced to me, changed my ways of thinking, and gave my future focus. I hope that I can pass this experience to my daughter so that she doesn’t have to learn the hard way by hitting the brick wall.

Rumbling Hearts:                                                                             Good Anime That Just Happens To Be Shoujo

It should be fairly obvious by my name that I’m a guy. And when it comes to anime and manga I tend to like shonen and seinin. Some of my favorite works are: Cowboy Bebop, Battle Royale, Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell (the anime movie), Naruto, etc. Typically, I have no use for josei or worse yet shoujo.

This is not to say that I’ve never read either of the latter. I pride myself on being a well versed manga aficionado, and as such I’ve read and watched a few josei and shoujo. Last year while talking to a friend I was informed of an anime called Rumbling Hearts. I should rephrase. Rumbling Hearts was recommended for me to recommend to my wife, who is a huge josei/shoujo fan. My friend told me, “Look, I know this is a shoujo, but you need to watch it. It’s one of those anime that’s good and just happens to be a shoujo.”

Since I had Netflix at the time, I was willing to give it a try. With the price of anime DVDs, I’m just not willing to buy a series without have seeing it before hand, and I don’t illegally download. It’s worth noting here that Netflix has lots of great anime titles. Anyway, I was blown away.

The story at its core is about a boy who can’t decide between two girls. Adding more layers it’s about Takayuki, the main character, who’s a hapless high school student. He is romantically interested in his classmate Mitsuki, but it would seem she doesn’t return those feelings. So he then settles for her cute friend, Haruka, who has had a crush on him since junior high. The conflict of the story comes about when Mitsuki selfishly demands Takayuki buy her a birthday present while he is running late for his date with Haruka. By stopping to buy her a gift he is late to meet Haruka, who is then struck by a car at the train station. Fast forward three years. Haruka is in a coma while Mitsuki and Takayuki have begun dating. Just as they decide to move in together, Haruka wakes up not knowing of the events that have transpired.

Now, Takayuki is torn between the woman he was originally infatuated with and currently dates or the woman he fell in love with as a child. This makes for unbelievable adult drama. Young adults most especially should be able to relate to it. The voice acting is very strong, and the plot is Oscar caliber in my opinion. Most especially with the scenes that feature Mitsuki who suffers the most in the anime.

I just can’t say enough good things about the anime. Along with the amazing plot there are great moments in animation in it as well. The price can’t be beat either. You can purchase all fourteen episodes at Best Buy for about 21 dollars in a slim pack. So check it out when you get a chance! It shouldn’t disappoint!

BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL: BREAKING THE MANGA MOLD                                                                             I’m a big manga/ graphic novel format fan. There is something about individual issues, while fun and traditional, just don’t cut it for me. I like having all of a particular story in front of me so I can read it all in limited sittings. A lot of times when I’m reading individual issues of things I tend to forget main plot points in between months. Also, doesn’t it suck when you get to the end of an issue, and you just have to have the next one?

Now I know what you’re thinking. This is a manga blog. Why is this guy talking about American style individual issues? Well, back in the day before manga made a huge splash here, companies tested the waters by publishing Japanese titles in individual issues. Akira originally saw print in the US under Marvel’s Epic line. Lone Wolf and Cub also started off here in issue format, with covers done by Frank Miller no less.

All of this brings me to my topic: Blade of the Immortal (Mugen no Juunin) by Hiroaki Samura. First of all, if any of you strictly American comics only guys are reading this then you need to look at this on the self next time you are at your local comic or book store. Seriously look at it. A lot of people have this preconceived notion that all manga looks like Pokèmon. To those people, I say “Grow up!” Not all manga art looks the same, and not all manga art is, air quotes, cookie cutter.

Samura really breaks this mold. Since you have your browser open anyway go ahead and add a new type and google some artwork from Blade of the Immortal or from Hiroaki Samura. You will see that the faces sort of fit the mold of big eyes, but his figures strive for the type of anatomy seen in American books. Also, notice how he uses the pencil as his primary art tool. A lot of manga artist these days draw the main figures then hand it off to assistances to photoshop the backgrounds and tones. Samura goes that extra mile to preserve the romance of making a comic. He’s definitely one of those artist that appeal to hardcore art snob comic readers.

Anyway, getting back to the point, BotI (Blade of the Immortal try to keep up with the acronyms) was originally published by Dark Horse comics back in ’96 in issue format. Admittedly, I was not a fan of the book of the time. Moreover, I didn’t even know of its existence until I started dating my wife, who was a fellow manga aficionado. She had been a fan of the series for a while in the issue format and was seeking out all the back issues she didn’t own. As a side note, I got her issue 1 for 7 dollars at a small ashcan convention. However, we were living apart at the time, so I had to read the story in manga format. I got to On Silent Wings, one of the best arcs by the way, before moving to be with my wife. From then on I read the rest of the comic in issue format.

Dark Horse recently decided that after issue 131 it would only publish the book in manga format. By doing this there was a huge time gap created from when 131 was published, November ’07, and when volume 20 of the manga was published, December ’08. Needless, to say I was on pins and needles.

Here is where I do a slight review of volume 20, and there are spoilers. So, don’t read further if you don’t want the story to be spoiled.

Why was I on pins and needles all these months? Well, it wasn’t because the story left on a killer hook. Since the storyline, Last Blood, Manji has been stuck in this stupid cave underneath Edo castle having his body parts wantonly cut off and reattached to other people in an attempt to make other people immortal. The story line is just freaking dumb. So when volume 20 came out I was like “Finally, they are going to get out of this freaking cave!” But no, at the end of the 280 page book that I waited over a year for they are still in that retarded cave.

What’s worse is the story telling was totally rushed. There were quite a few pages where I went to turn the page, and I couldn’t help think that some panels were missing on the page. This was very detrimental to actions scenes because it felt like a low budget animation, and as for the talking head scenes it seemed like a splice edit job done by a first year “art film” student. This by far was not Samura’s best work. Everything seemed very rushed and the ending was a huge let down.

This raises the question in my mind has Samura become bored with this series? I think the answer maybe yes. Doing some research, I found out that the last story arc of BotI is being wrapped up in Japan right now. I think this a good thing. One of the reasons I prefer manga over comics is because the writers know when to say enough is enough. A lot of American books get ruined because the creators can’t come to this same conclusion.

My hope is they can get out of this retarded cave and take the fight to Anotsu where it belongs. No more of this side stuff because it’s throwing him [Samura] off. With that said, I’m looking forward to volume 21 whenever it comes out. That’s code for I couldn’t find a release date.

Be sure to come back again for my next blog!