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Disappointment in Cowboy Bebop?

The term fans of yesteryear practically requires that they are no longer fans, if you still enjoy the medium on some level then the statement doesn't apply to you anyway.

Just as well these thing are only an opinion so there is no need to take personal offense.

NegativeGate@

Yeah well, no offence but you're doing some pretty silly mental gymnastics to make excuses for him. The overriding point in his post is that a lot of older shows are in fact not up to the standards of modern shows. Obviously if you like older shows (or specifically Cowboy Bebop) then you're going to find that to be a pretty inflammatory remark.

And yeah, when you say: "Now, if only we can get these stodgy stuck-in-a-rut fans of yesteryear to finally accept times have moved on" you are explicitly saying that "fans of yesteryear" are like this. Maybe he didn't mean to say "all" of them are like this but at best he's still making a wild generalization by not specifying which is stupid in it's own right.

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The term fans of yesteryear practically requires that they are no longer fans, if you still enjoy the medium on some level then the statement doesn't apply to you anyway.

That's some phenomenally twisted logic. To be a "fan of yesteryear" you must not like anything that isn't from "yesteryear". So...to be a fan of something you must not like anything outside of that category? Uh...no. That's just...no.

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Just as well these thing are only an opinion so there is no need to take personal offense.

That's kinda the point though. He's not framing this as "just his opinion". When you say that you personally don't like a show, that's just your opinion. When you go a step further and claim that a show is actually bad or not up to today's standards, now you're making an objective claim (and that itself isn't a bad thing in a lot of contexts but it's clearly going to be kinda obnoxious to fans and certainly provoke a response). And even more so, when you go even further and specifically insult fans of older shows and suggest that they're "stuck in a rut etc" then you are quite clearly going to offend them personally.

More then defending him I was hoping to get you to realize that arguing over such a meaningless thing wasn't going to accomplish much of anything in the first place and that it should be dropped, but as it stands I have failed and will soon be put to death by the ANN hit squads.

Sebow wrote:

To me Cowboy Bebop is to anime as the blues is to music: Some hate it, some love it Few know of its legacy, many agree on its impact Some will be in a stage of life where they find it autobiographical Some will be in a stage of life where they find it distant of emotions But ignoring its place in the scheme of things will always be stupid and uninformed. So even if you didn't like it, at least pat yourself on the shoulder that you decided to finally pick it up and watch it.

What is the difference between legacy and impact in this situation?

Without shows like Cowboy Bebop, anime in the west would still mainly be geared towards children, and we wouldn't enjoy all the mature anime we do today, it became the recipe for form, substance and structure in adult anime today.

Sebow wrote:

Without shows like Cowboy Bebop, anime in the west would still mainly be geared towards children, and we wouldn't enjoy all the mature anime we do today, it became the recipe for form, substance and structure in adult anime today.

Well first, there is no "anime in the West." There is only anime made in Japan, some of which is brought over here. Second, whatever popularity Cowboy Bebop had here would have absolutely no impact on what got made in Japan afterwards. Non-Japanese reaction is never taken into account with the creation of anime, with the possible exception of Western properties that get the anime treatment like the recent examples of Iron Man, The X-men, Wolverine, etc. And maybe Hero Man which had Stan Lee's involvement.

Actually, it is kind of surprising how uninfluential Cowboy Bebop is if you consider that, really, very little like it has been made since. You can't really count something like the Ghost in the Shell TV series because the GitS movie came out in 1995, before Bebop.

eta: wait, now that I re-read your post, I realize you are talking more about how Bebop helped create an appetite for anime in the West. Yeah, fair enough, although as you yourself point out that train had already left the station with shows like NGE. Still, it can't be denied that Bebop helped popularize anime in the West.

Relax, dude, there is no need to be an obnoxious tool about this.

Relax, dude, there is no need to be an obnoxious tool about this.

Blood- wrote:

Relax, dude, there is no need to be an obnoxious tool about this.

Excuse me while I get a pen, I need to write this down . . .

NegativeGate wrote:

Sebow wrote: To me Cowboy Bebop is to anime as the blues is to music: Some hate it, some love it Few know of its legacy, many agree on its impact Some will be in a stage of life where they find it autobiographical Some will be in a stage of life where they find it distant of emotions But ignoring its place in the scheme of things will always be stupid and uninformed. So even if you didn't like it, at least pat yourself on the shoulder that you decided to finally pick it up and watch it. What is the difference between legacy and impact in this situation?

If you see legacy and impact as two contrasting words in this case you're reading it wrong, the sentence would have worked just as well with "Few know of its impact, many agree on its impact", but that has less of a ring to it, legacy is basically a stronger version of impact, consider the words "hot" and "tepid".

Regarding impact, Cowboy Bebop still routinely tops the charts on several outlets like ANN and also starred as the no. 2 greatest anime in Newtype USA by reader vote (only second to NGE) all the way back in 2004.

In terms of legacy, it was among some of the first anime to air in the west to an adult audience (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Grave of the Fireflies and GITS being others) and still amass great popularity and influence. It also gave momentum to Yoko Kanno's career as a songwriter and Cowboy Bebop's soundtrack basically became the starting ace of The Seatbelts.

Now from here on this may be an exaggeration, but this is how I view it, however let's start off with an off-topic example:

Rolling Stone Magazine lists "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan as the greatest song ever, yet I hear people complain about how Dylan's singing is abysmal and the song uninvolving, yet it was a song that essentially became the recipe for form, substance and structure on how rock and pop music should be made, and even rock and pop music nowadays employ what it did: It popularized the lyrical chorus.

And to me Cowboy Bebop (even if you don't like it) is essentially the same, it had a cast of English voice actors, who besides hitting the voice acting right on the nail, didn't make the characters sound like whiny pre-teens who had just sucked in a zeppelin-full of helium, they sounded like adults presenting adult issues. Cowboy Bebop had adults watching it, and made it okay for them to watch it.

And here's the (probably slightly exaggerated) conclusion:

Without shows like Cowboy Bebop, anime in the west would still mainly be geared towards children, and we wouldn't enjoy all the mature anime we do today, it became the recipe for form, substance and structure in adult anime today.

Blood- wrote:

Relax, dude, there is no need to be an obnoxious tool about this.

Excuse me while I get a pen, I need to write this down . . .