Interstellar Jazz Travel

Westley 2021-12-10 08:01:38

Over the years I have owed Cowboy Bebop an article to commemorate my favorite animation. CB is different from any cartoon I have ever watched. It includes all my passions and preferences, jazz blues, western movies, travel, computers, unspecified, fate, nostalgia, free and easy, lonely, gloomy, cold humor...

stories
——On the road , the animation of CB26 episodes does not have a central idea running through it. Each episode is independent, even without a theme. It is wild and witty. The story revolves around a group of the most unspecified people and dogs on a spaceship called Bebop. They traveled lively, the scenery from the Turkish mosque to the Brazilian desert, from the Italian church to the old streets of Hong Kong... They met all kinds of people, Jiang Yang thieves, androgynous soldiers, immortal children, lonely artificial satellites... …But they never stayed, the destination is always the next stop. The chicken coop head Spike, the prodigal beauty Faye, the robot Jet, the noodle-shaped Ed, and the dog Ein with the same name as the greatest scientist, they are all people/dogs with stories (laughs), but the animation is not deliberately sensational, only through some daily routines In the dialogue, their friends or enemies guessed it, and even the screenwriter did not design the origin of Spike's prosthetic eye. These solitary travelers sometimes travel together lively, and sometimes go on their own roads, and then meet or pass by in a bar and alley in a strange city. There was more emotion and tacit understanding between meeting, separating, and meeting again, and the dilapidated spaceship in the vast space became a faint worry in my heart.

Image-a tribute to Western movies
For the Japanese, Hong Kong is also the West. And CB can be said to be a large collection of Western classic movies, and every word is a Western movie. For example, the Jeet Kune Do used by Spike is Bruce Lee's martial arts; Faye's appearance is very similar to Hong Kong gambling movies; in the narration of Spike, Julia and Bisha's triangulation, the duel on the roof and the flying pigeons in the gunfight are absolutely It is the signature of Wu Yusen's movies; the spores flying in space in the blue Danube music made a joke with Stanley Kubrick's classic sci-fi film "2001 Out of Space"; Chapter 6, Chapter 20, and Chapter 23 are full of Hollywood horror and suspense movie style ; As for the seventh and seventeenth chapters, a long highway is used as the stage, and there are mostly desert scenes on both sides. It is a design with a "road movie" flavor (reminiscent of "Born Murderer"... And cigarettes, cards, bars, old-fashioned ceiling fans, heavy machinery, and other Western urban flavors appear in the background in not-so-bright tones.

Music-freely flying like jazz,
CB's soundtrack is definitely worthy of a special book, Kanno Yoko’s music production this time is completely free and random. It is mainly based on Jazz and Blues, and adds a large number of European and American music elements, including folk, classical, opera, rock, heavy metal, samba, Rap, Hiphop, Bossa Nova, Techo, but and The theme is very suitable, rich but not chaotic, and the super rare quality is very high. The 4 OSTs (including a live album) that have been published have no bad songs. It can be said that CB is an animation tailored for jazz. The name can be seen. Bebop is a jazz form created by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in early 1940. It is simply described as high-speed, gorgeous, and neurotic. It needs to maintain the beauty and organization of the melody in the super-high-speed improvisation. Therefore It is considered to be the music of geniuses.

(The following is quoted from the article "Image, Music, Jazz" by Mika Uchiyama)
"The changes in the style of the words are like the ever-changing improvisations of jazz itself. It can be Dizzy Gillespie's high-speed and neurotic trumpet, or Gerry Mulligan's elegant and quiet bass style, Lester Young's beautiful and intoxicating tenor. Scholarly style, Chet Baker's insatiable trumpet and singing, Stan Getz's Bossa Nova tenor, Meade Lux Lewis's lightning-fast, jingling piano, Bill Evans' romantic piano, Sonny Rollins A humorous tenor saxophone, Miles Davis added a mute, a trumpet like a girl whispering, Billie Holiday’s early glass-like and incredibly beautiful singing, and the movie version of "Gate to Heaven" is its turn John Coltrane's powerful Blue Train era tenor saxophone style"... Even if you can't think of these jazz masters because you are not a jazz fan, you will see the shadows of many classic music such as Waltz For Venus, Bill Evans. The classic Waltz For Debby; My Funny Valentine is simply a super-famous jazz love song; and Speak Like a Child is changed from Wayne Shorter’s representative record Speak no Evil; and Boogie Woogie Feng Shui is the title of the typical Boogie Woogie music, as well as The Real Folk Blues is a very authentic Blues (this ED itself is a very wonderful Blues) and so on. You can write a jazz story with just the subtopics of each word. It can be said with certainty that jazz and CB are absolutely inseparable.

CB I will come out and review it every year, instead of watching other cartoons. See you, cowgirl, someday somewhere. This is also the origin of my earliest screen name.

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Extended Reading
  • Darren 2022-03-25 09:01:09

    Great, the story and musicians are set, but the main plot is cliché

  • Nina 2022-03-23 09:01:57

    If "Knight of Chaos" is filled with a touch of melancholy, then "Cowboy Bebop" is saturated with deep sadness. In the vast and desolate universe, the gears of fate are quietly turning. Four people and one dog gather in a boat, but after all, they can't make the lonely soul warm. Carrying a past that cannot be abandoned, consuming his present in vain in other people's stories, and facing the long-term destined future. Cultivating both inside and outside is truly a masterpiece.

Cowboy Bebop quotes

  • bull: Do not fear death. Death is always at our side. When we show fear, it jumps at us faster than light, but if we do not show fear, it casts its eye upon us gently and then guides us into infinity...

  • Spike: [Julia is humming while reading the newspaper after taking care of Spike]

    [she doesn't know that he is conscious]

    Spike: Just like that... sing for me, please.