Hello everyone, welcome to the latest issue of The Pick-up Dimension.
Star Cowboy is an epoch-making Japanese science fiction anime crafted by Director Shinichiro Watanabe in the late 1990s, who has directed excellent animation works such as Chaos Samurai, Space Dandy, Apollo on Sakamichi, and Macross Plus. Star Cowboy originally premiered on TV Tokyo from April to June 1998, but tv Tokyo did not finish the anime as scheduled because it unilaterally believed that the anime had a large scale problem. Because of this incident, Shinichiro Watanabe, who was quite angry at the time, also made a special animation that re-edited the animation and used it to satirize the tv station, and the special animation of this sentence was only broadcast on the tv station once.
Later, the anime "Star Cowboy" finally aired a full 26 episodes on Japan's WOWOW TV station from October 1998 to April 1999. In 2001, Star Cowboy released a high-quality theatrical version of the anime Star Cowboy: Gates of Heaven. The TV animation of Star Cowboy is a rare work that can achieve considerable success in both artistic and commercial value. The anime "Star Cowboy" won the Award for Best Television Animation at the 3rd Kobe Animation Awards held in November 1998, and won the Nebula Award of the Japan Science Fiction Convention in 2000.
Summing up the anime in just one paragraph, Star Cowboy tells the story of a space odyssey by four people and a dog, with four main characters touching their past and waving it off in a romantic and melancholy way on their journey. The personalities of the main characters in this anime are very distinct, both flesh and blood. The main line plot is actually not complicated, just a story of revenge, and the main line does not occupy a large part of the animation story but a good thing, the setting of the unit drama makes the nostalgia contained in the whole animation and the various whimsies of the creators convey more fully and richly, and various cultural symbols from different countries are blended in this animation.
"Star Cowboy" is a work that works seamlessly from the aspects of story setting, plot, character shaping, painting and soundtrack. Shinichiro Watanabe did a great job of mobilizing the production staff in all aspects of the animation production. In "Star Cowboy", the audience can deeply feel the beauty of the daily interaction of all the members of the Bebop from the acting skills of the voice actors, their daily lives are quite interesting and harmonious, but there is no strong constraint between them, their lives are quite free, if they want to leave the team, they can freely continue to go their own way. Also, Ed's voice is really cute.
The fight scenes in "Star Cowboy" and the various scenes of chasing explosions can make the audience very enjoyable, and the painting team of "Star Cowboy" brings together a large number of original artists who are excellent at that time, and these original artists are also well-known figures in the Japanese animation industry to this day. The fight scene that impressed the audience the most was probably the 5th episode "The Lyrics of the Fallen Angels", and the scene of Spike falling through the stained glass window of the church was really poignant and classic.
In terms of soundtrack, Shinichiro Watanabe was very relieved to entrust the task to his good partner Yoko Kanno to play the game, so Yoko Kanno lived up to expectations and created many soundtracks for the animation that impressed the audience, just as the animation of the entire "Star Cowboy" is to organically blend the cultural symbols of many countries, in terms of the soundtrack of the animation, Ms. Yoko Kanno presents a variety of musical styles, including jazz, pop, rock, folk and blues. For Yoko Kanno's soundtrack, it comes together in one sentence: Too godly. Shinichiro Watanabe's taste for music is outstanding.