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Post by raikenclw on Nov 26, 2021 21:59:38 GMT -5
I'm on the fourth episode and really like the show. The characters are very much PCs; forever squabbling but coming together when it counts, preferring to shoot their way out of trouble (even when that isn't the optimal solution), somehow never *quite* managing to snag the big score, etc. The background is an eclectic mix of high-tech (intrasystem jump gates, artificial gravity, force-field encapsulated artificial environments, etc) and mid-tech (1950s-60s classic automobiles, revolvers and lever action longarms, LP record players, spaceships using Firefly-like mechanical technojunk parts, etc). It's a bit jarring at first, but I quickly got used to it and I'm considering using elements of it for the next game I run. One significant thing which I didn't know going in: "cowboy" is in-universe slang for "bounty hunter," which makes the whole concept much more PC-friendly. I should note that I have heard about Cowboy Bebop for years, but was always leery of it because anime in general has never much interested me. It's generally just too "out there". So I don't know how this current incarnation compares to the original comics and animated series. One thing that this show definitely puts me in mind of - particularly the outcomes of the episodes I've watched so far - it that it feels like a lower-tech version of original-edition Shadowrun, only without the magic. If you aren't familiar, every single published adventure for Shadowrun 1E ended with the PCs getting screwed out of their promised payment . . .
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Post by simrion on Nov 28, 2021 6:46:24 GMT -5
Like you I am not a big fan of Anime. This however is in my queue to watch. It appeals to my sense of the absurd, I like the actor that played Sulu in the Trek reboot and what's not to love about cheesy martial arts? I suspect the anime fans may poo-poo this simply because it's not their beloved anime.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 28, 2021 11:51:48 GMT -5
Visually I just cannot handle anime, it hurts my eyes to look at it.
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Post by simrion on Nov 28, 2021 16:23:16 GMT -5
Visually I just cannot handle anime, it hurts my eyes to look at it. I am with you there! Having watched the first episode I can honestly say I "WILL" watch the second
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Post by The Semi-Retired Gamer on Nov 29, 2021 5:53:20 GMT -5
I really need to check this out. Sounds interesting.
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Post by El Borak on Dec 2, 2021 0:13:21 GMT -5
Cowboy Bebop is about as far from anime as a name could get.
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Post by ironnerd on Dec 2, 2021 16:47:20 GMT -5
There has been a spat of Live Action remakes of Anime series. Most of them are less than great. I'll give Bebop a try, but I was not a huge fan of the Anime, so I doubt I'll be doing handsprings.
There was a live action Space Battleship Yamato and it was actually REALLY good.
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Post by raikenclw on Dec 3, 2021 17:34:22 GMT -5
Cowboy Bebop is about as far from anime as a name could get. The name comes from the fact that (in-universe) "cowboy" is slang for "bounty hunter," while the owner of the ship in which the characters fly (Jet Black) is a *serious* jazz fan and thus named his ship "Bebop."
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Post by raikenclw on Dec 3, 2021 17:49:24 GMT -5
Like you I am not a big fan of Anime. This however is in my queue to watch. It appeals to my sense of the absurd, I like the actor that played Sulu in the Trek reboot and what's not to love about cheesy martial arts? I suspect the anime fans may poo-poo this simply because it's not their beloved anime. Yeah. I made a FB post about this and a number of the replies were from such dissatified anime fans. I'm not sure about "cheesy" as a descriptive term, but the fights ARE definitely bloody. Personally, I think the stunts owe somewhat more to the recent John Wick films than they do to classic martial arts movies. Especially given that a lot of the action involves fancy moves with guns. BTW: I learned a while back that Keanu Reeves actually can use pistols, shotguns and rifles at (or at least close to) the John Wick level. Not only does he do almost all of his own stunt work, but Keanu also regularly competes in multi-gun [e.g. "3-gun"] shooting competitions. He scores well enough in these that observers have commented that if Keanu was able to dedicate more time to the sport he could easily achieve high rank in it.
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Post by El Borak on Dec 4, 2021 12:01:20 GMT -5
Cowboy Bebop is about as far from anime as a name could get. The name comes from the fact that (in-universe) "cowboy" is slang for "bounty hunter," while the owner of the ship in which the characters fly (Jet Black) is a *serious* jazz fan and thus named his ship "Bebop." I like this "*serious* jazz fan" as when bebop was created a lot of jazz fans hated it because you could not dance to it, it was played way too fast for that. I hope the ship was fast enough to live up to the name.
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Post by El Borak on Dec 4, 2021 12:02:02 GMT -5
BTW: I learned a while back that Keanu Reeves actually can use pistols, shotguns and rifles at (or at least close to) the John Wick level. Not only does he do almost all of his own stunt work, but Keanu also regularly competes in multi-gun [e.g. "3-gun"] shooting competitions. He scores well enough in these that observers have commented that if Keanu was able to dedicate more time to the sport he could easily achieve high rank in it. That is really cool to know.
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Post by El Borak on Dec 4, 2021 12:07:04 GMT -5
There has been a spat of Live Action remakes of Anime series. Most of them are less than great. I'll give Bebop a try, but I was not a huge fan of the Anime, so I doubt I'll be doing handsprings. There was a live action Space Battleship Yamato and it was actually REALLY good. As one of the seasoned citizens on here, I find anime really hard to look at, IMO it is a really bad form of art. To me there is just something off about it that makes my skin crawl. YMMV.
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Post by raikenclw on Dec 4, 2021 20:24:41 GMT -5
As one of the seasoned citizens on here, I find anime really hard to look at, IMO it is a really bad form of art. To me there is just something off about it that makes my skin crawl. YMMV. I think this may be related to the apparent Japanese fascination with attempts to create humanlike robots. They don't seem to mind - in fact, positively enjoy - that these creations mostly fall into the "uncanny valley," which term refers to the perceptional space in which an artificial creation ALMOST but not QUITE successfully mimics human appearance/behavior.
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Post by El Borak on Dec 4, 2021 21:30:25 GMT -5
As one of the seasoned citizens on here, I find anime really hard to look at, IMO it is a really bad form of art. To me there is just something off about it that makes my skin crawl. YMMV. I think this may be related to the apparent Japanese fascination with attempts to create humanlike robots. They don't seem to mind - in fact, positively enjoy - that these creations mostly fall into the "uncanny valley," which term refers to the perceptional space in which an artificial creation ALMOST but not QUITE successfully mimics human appearance/behavior. I have not seen any robots that I thought gave off any "uncanny valley" effect at all. I think the thing that bothers me about anime is that they simultaneously over-sexualize the females with exaggerated bodies and try to make their faces look like young teens at the same time and the other thing is that they feminize the males.
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Post by hengest on Dec 4, 2021 22:03:53 GMT -5
I think this may be related to the apparent Japanese fascination with attempts to create humanlike robots. They don't seem to mind - in fact, positively enjoy - that these creations mostly fall into the "uncanny valley," which term refers to the perceptional space in which an artificial creation ALMOST but not QUITE successfully mimics human appearance/behavior. I have not seen any robots that I thought gave off any "uncanny valley" effect at all. I think the thing that bothers me about anime is that they simultaneously over-sexualize the females with exaggerated bodies and try to make their faces look like young teens at the same time and the other thing is that they feminize the males. I have never been able to get into anime, and the post above by El Borak seems to me to be a very likely explanation of why.
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Post by raikenclw on Dec 8, 2021 2:35:48 GMT -5
I have not seen any robots that I thought gave off any "uncanny valley" effect at all. Give this video a try: The Uncanny Valley: Why Some Robots Seem A Little CreepyI think the thing that bothers me about anime is that they simultaneously over-sexualize the females with exaggerated bodies and try to make their faces look like young teens at the same time and the other thing is that they feminize the males. Japanese popular culture DOES have a strange fixation with females who present simultaneously as very young and very sexualized: Lolicon: The Reality of 'Virtual Child Pornography In Japan' Maybe it's a lingering artifact of getting defeated so thoroughly in WW2?
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Post by The Semi-Retired Gamer on Dec 10, 2021 16:36:03 GMT -5
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Post by raikenclw on Dec 10, 2021 19:43:36 GMT -5
Yeah. Serious bummer, dude.
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Post by oldskolgmr on Dec 12, 2021 11:36:43 GMT -5
Just watching part of the video explaining the Uncanny Valley Effect gave me a very visceral Horrified response!
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Dec 12, 2021 20:30:08 GMT -5
Just watching part of the video explaining the Uncanny Valley Effect gave me a very visceral Horrified response! The more human looking robots don't bother me at all, the ones I don't like are the metallic ones, i.e. I don't like either of the two Stars Wars robots and I don't like the non-human examples in the video. For me, I have yet to see anything that provokes an Uncanny Valley Effect. The closest they have gotten so far is kind of cartoony to me and I hope they can get closer.
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Post by simrion on Dec 15, 2021 19:02:30 GMT -5
I'm sad they cancelled BeeBop. It's a really fun watch!
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Post by ironnerd on Dec 17, 2021 9:31:51 GMT -5
There has been a spat of Live Action remakes of Anime series. Most of them are less than great. I'll give Bebop a try, but I was not a huge fan of the Anime, so I doubt I'll be doing handsprings. There was a live action Space Battleship Yamato and it was actually REALLY good. As one of the seasoned citizens on here, I find anime really hard to look at, IMO it is a really bad form of art. To me there is just something off about it that makes my skin crawl. YMMV. I have been a fan of Anime since 1973 (Speed Racer), and still enjoy some of the newer titles. I understand, however, that anime is not for everyone. I am not one of those fans who feels the need to explain that you are wrong for not liking everything I like; that's just insane.
What seems to be happening with the live-action "renaissance" we are experiencing is that people take something you already don't like (and are therefore not less to watch) and turn it into something existing fans won't like. So the target audience was too small for the thing to make a profit.
Unfortunately, when these re-imagined properties flop, the cast and crew blame the fans. The problem, however, is that the new property has no fans. It failed to pull in the old fans (because it is so different from what they originally liked), and it failed to pull in new fans (because it is based in something that has limited appeal in the first place).
Blaming the fans really makes a statement that they were relying upon fans of the original work to watch whatever they made and called "Star Trek", "Star Wars", "Cowboy Bebop", etc... It strongly indicates they had no intention of pulling in new fans, they just figured that a Star Wars fan would dutifully watch anything with Star Wars in the title, and be grateful for it. To make matters worse, they "re-imagine" these cool old properties and "subvert expectations", which is guaranteed to reduce the number of older fans who watch your show because they liked the original concept.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Dec 17, 2021 13:39:41 GMT -5
As one of the seasoned citizens on here, I find anime really hard to look at, IMO it is a really bad form of art. To me there is just something off about it that makes my skin crawl. YMMV. I have been a fan of Anime since 1973 (Speed Racer), and still enjoy some of the newer titles. I understand, however, that anime is not for everyone. I am not one of those fans who feels the need to explain that you are wrong for not liking everything I like; that's just insane.
What seems to be happening with the live-action "renaissance" we are experiencing is that people take something you already don't like (and are therefore not less to watch) and turn it into something existing fans won't like. So the target audience was too small for the thing to make a profit.
Unfortunately, when these re-imagined properties flop, the cast and crew blame the fans. The problem, however, is that the new property has no fans. It failed to pull in the old fans (because it is so different from what they originally liked), and it failed to pull in new fans (because it is based in something that has limited appeal in the first place).
Blaming the fans really makes a statement that they were relying upon fans of the original work to watch whatever they made and called "Star Trek", "Star Wars", "Cowboy Bebop", etc... It strongly indicates they had no intention of pulling in new fans, they just figured that a Star Wars fan would dutifully watch anything with Star Wars in the title, and be grateful for it. To make matters worse, they "re-imagine" these cool old properties and "subvert expectations", which is guaranteed to reduce the number of older fans who watch your show because they liked the original concept.
I would call that a failure to "read the room." I wash my hands of all kinds of things that are taken in directions that I don't like or appreciate. IMO you stay true to the original or you create something new with a new name and don't try to pretend you are part of the original.
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Post by The Semi-Retired Gamer on Dec 18, 2021 9:32:56 GMT -5
I have been a fan of Anime since 1973 (Speed Racer), and still enjoy some of the newer titles. I understand, however, that anime is not for everyone. I am not one of those fans who feels the need to explain that you are wrong for not liking everything I like; that's just insane.
What seems to be happening with the live-action "renaissance" we are experiencing is that people take something you already don't like (and are therefore not less to watch) and turn it into something existing fans won't like. So the target audience was too small for the thing to make a profit.
Unfortunately, when these re-imagined properties flop, the cast and crew blame the fans. The problem, however, is that the new property has no fans. It failed to pull in the old fans (because it is so different from what they originally liked), and it failed to pull in new fans (because it is based in something that has limited appeal in the first place).
Blaming the fans really makes a statement that they were relying upon fans of the original work to watch whatever they made and called "Star Trek", "Star Wars", "Cowboy Bebop", etc... It strongly indicates they had no intention of pulling in new fans, they just figured that a Star Wars fan would dutifully watch anything with Star Wars in the title, and be grateful for it. To make matters worse, they "re-imagine" these cool old properties and "subvert expectations", which is guaranteed to reduce the number of older fans who watch your show because they liked the original concept.
I would call that a failure to "read the room." I wash my hands of all kinds of things that are taken in directions that I don't like or appreciate. IMO you stay true to the original or you create something new with a new name and don't try to pretend you are part of the original. Doctor Who has done this. I was a huge fan of Classic Who and I enjoyed the revival at first. It seems the longer the show continues the more they want to deviate from what grabbed my attention. I'll just leave it at that. Basically, change just for the sake of change isn't necessarily a good thing.
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Post by raikenclw on Dec 18, 2021 20:28:55 GMT -5
I have high hopes for the reimagined Babylon 5, as J. Michael Straczynski (creator of the original) is in charge.
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Post by ironnerd on Dec 18, 2021 20:31:34 GMT -5
I have high hopes for the reimagined Babylon 5, as J. Michael Straczynski (creator of the original) is in charge. As do I. I really enjoyed B5.
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Post by ironnerd on Dec 18, 2021 20:41:41 GMT -5
I have been a fan of Anime since 1973 (Speed Racer), and still enjoy some of the newer titles. I understand, however, that anime is not for everyone. I am not one of those fans who feels the need to explain that you are wrong for not liking everything I like; that's just insane.
What seems to be happening with the live-action "renaissance" we are experiencing is that people take something you already don't like (and are therefore not less to watch) and turn it into something existing fans won't like. So the target audience was too small for the thing to make a profit.
Unfortunately, when these re-imagined properties flop, the cast and crew blame the fans. The problem, however, is that the new property has no fans. It failed to pull in the old fans (because it is so different from what they originally liked), and it failed to pull in new fans (because it is based in something that has limited appeal in the first place).
Blaming the fans really makes a statement that they were relying upon fans of the original work to watch whatever they made and called "Star Trek", "Star Wars", "Cowboy Bebop", etc... It strongly indicates they had no intention of pulling in new fans, they just figured that a Star Wars fan would dutifully watch anything with Star Wars in the title, and be grateful for it. To make matters worse, they "re-imagine" these cool old properties and "subvert expectations", which is guaranteed to reduce the number of older fans who watch your show because they liked the original concept.
I would call that a failure to "read the room." I wash my hands of all kinds of things that are taken in directions that I don't like or appreciate. IMO you stay true to the original or you create something new with a new name and don't try to pretend you are part of the original. That's a pretty darn good assessment, and I agree. They seemed to have convinced themselves that they could not go wrong, and no one had the heart to tell them they were "misreading the room". I think it was actually a nice try, but it was beyond the reach of the production team, and even the actors. It's actually a bad subject for a remake anyway. I also found myself thinking "Firefly did this better".
I watched "Session 1" of the Live action Bebop, and rewatched Session 1 of the anime. I'm not really a big fan of either, but the animated version told the story better.
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Post by The Semi-Retired Gamer on Dec 19, 2021 9:01:28 GMT -5
I have high hopes for the reimagined Babylon 5, as J. Michael Straczynski (creator of the original) is in charge. I'm on board for this on as well!
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Post by raikenclw on Dec 21, 2021 2:48:32 GMT -5
I also found myself thinking "Firefly did this better". Well . . . while I am definitely a big fan of Firefly, there are a couple of things that Cowboy Bebop [at least the live action version and at least IMHO] did a bit better: 1) Space Drive Tech: The spaceships in Bebop (at least the ones we see being used) are all essentially short-range shuttles. These get literally thrown between planetary destinations by an external gate apparatus, which appears to accelerate/decelerate them through a dimension where the distance covered is shortened. Distances which would require months of real space travel are thus crossed in mere minutes. This makes more sense than the "hard burn" drives of Firefly, which required a substantial amount of handwavium to justify when discussed in the roleplaying game rules. Of course, both ship drive methods are very much plot devices: Cowboy Bebop's drives are fast because little of each story takes place aboard ship, whereas Firefly's drives are slow because a substantial amount of story *does* take place aboard ship. 2) Terraforming Tech: In both shows, each colony world visited has been terraformed into a copy of Earth. In Firefly, entire planets have been transformed, even to the extent of providing very small worlds full normal gravity through the use of artificial gravity generators. Given how insanely expensive that would have to be, the fact that most of these worlds are then turned into impoverished subsistence-agriculture colonies is a *mite* puzzling. In Cowboy Bebop, each colony appears to cover only portions of various planetary bodies, with said colonies covered by force domes for retention of the atmosphere [and presumably also the consequent gravity] that make living there possible. This "only fix as much as you need" approach makes a bit better economic sense, although it does sort of beg the question of how at least part of each colony appears to have ended up as "the poor neighborhood." Maybe the subtext is that the rich always need to bring along the poor, so as to have a population to exploit?* *EDIT: This just occurred to me - like Firefly, Cowboy Bebop assumes some sort of disaster forced the evacuation of Earth. In Bebop, it is implied that it was mostly only the wealthy who were able to evacuate or at least were able to do so in style. Maybe the poor neighborhoods house those less fortunate souls that guilt (or government mandate?) forced the rich to take along?
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Post by El Borak on Dec 24, 2021 21:26:41 GMT -5
I have not seen any robots that I thought gave off any "uncanny valley" effect at all. Give this video a try: The Uncanny Valley: Why Some Robots Seem A Little CreepyI think the thing that bothers me about anime is that they simultaneously over-sexualize the females with exaggerated bodies and try to make their faces look like young teens at the same time and the other thing is that they feminize the males. Japanese popular culture DOES have a strange fixation with females who present simultaneously as very young and very sexualized: Lolicon: The Reality of 'Virtual Child Pornography In Japan' Maybe it's a lingering artifact of getting defeated so thoroughly in WW2? Oddly enough the only thing that gives me the "uncanny valley" effect are the shiny metal robots, none of the fakes bother me except I don't like the open metal skull with gears one, but if they put a wig on her then it would be fine. All (most) of Hollywood is also into "Virtual Child Pornography". IMO any form of CP should be a 1st degree felony, no exemption for cartoons or written material or robots. I am not sure it has anything (for Asians) to do with WW2, I think it has more to do with the high estrogen analogues in their food (high soy content).
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