Japanese animation has great works every year, but there are very few works that can withstand the erosion of time and are still remembered more than a decade later.
As of 2018, there is a work that has undergone a full 20 years of precipitation. But today, twenty years later, time has not diluted our love for it, and this memorable work is "Interstellar Cowboy".
In 1998, the Japanese animation industry was in the transition period from celluloid to digitalization, and classics such as eva, Girl Revolution, Perfect Blue, and Langke Sword Heart Were born around 1998, and Interstellar Cowboy was born in 1998. Although computer technology has begun to be used in Star Cowboy, it is still a celluloid-based animation, and together with many contemporaries, it represents the last glory of Japanese celluloid animation.
Supervised by Shinichiro Watanabe, the anime tells the story of Spike, Jet, Faye, Edward, and the corgi dog Ein who work together to capture a bounty wanted man in the universe on an old spaceship named bebop.
spike
Spike, who was once a member of the underworld organization "Red Dragon", lost his right eye due to an accident and used a prosthetic eye. On weekdays, I always have a free and relaxed attitude towards life, but I am agile and can always overcome dangers. He does not forget the love of the lovers in the past organization, saying that he has been having a dream that he does not want to wake up, and chooses to face his past at the end of the story.
jet
Jet, who used to be an ISSP police officer, chose to give up being a police officer because he was betrayed by his companions while on a mission. As the owner of the bebop, he is also responsible for the food of the members of the ship, and also plants many potted plants on the ship. Jet is a very family-oriented and delicate good man, he always thinks about the safety of the members, and therefore always makes trouble with the "problem children" spike and faye, but will soon forgive them, is the most reliable backing for everyone.
faye
Faye, a beautiful girl born in 1994, is also 24 years old this year. He was 77 years old and told he owed huge medical bills because he was frozen and 54 years later when he was awakened and lost his memory. Faye is hot and beautiful, but he is addicted to gambling, fleeing the hospital and living on gambling and fraud, and has been looking for his past since entering bebop.
edward
The little girl Edward made her home from an early age because her father was obsessed with recording meteorites. Because he is a computer genius, he plays a hacking role in bebop. He has a naïve and lively personality, is not afraid of heaven, and has a close relationship with the highly intelligent data dog ein on the spaceship. Edward's active personality coupled with soft and slender limbs, he can always make a lot of exaggerated movements.
Free and casual spike, shrewd and delicate faye, calm and arrogant jet, eccentric edward, so these four people even twenty years later we still miss so much, miss their romance walking in the universe.
Diversity makes a legend
"Interstellar Cowboy" adopts the mode of unit drama and then interspersed with the main plot, and it is precisely because of this approach that the diversification of this film has led to the fact that many single episodes of content can independently form a complete story. The diversity of content and themes of "Interstellar Cowboy" is rare in TV animation. And these unit dramas produced many classic single episodes, which are still vividly remembered today.
In the sixth episode with a strong Hong Kong flavor of cop movies, a part is in danger in the lavish Baroque theater, and the handsome spike in the giant Gothic stained glass window is set against the backdrop, and the two protagonists bloom with obsessive charm. Especially when spike fell out of the window, the soundtrack "Green Bird" sounded, coupled with the god's slow-motion flashback, rendering the romantic atmosphere of the film to the extreme, this moment can only be subservient to the combination of Yoko Kanno and Shinichiro Watanabe.
Like the eleventh episode of "Alien", the use of sound effects and lenses to create an atmosphere where terrifying creatures are around, in which the sliding zoom lens that imitates the wide-angle pushed to the far horizon in the live-action movie in order to achieve the horror effect is a rare practice in the animation of that year, which is impressive.
Although in the end the audience and the characters in the play still do not know what the mysterious creature is, the excellent performance and the final round dance music make this episode a little shocking and very funny, worthy of the name of neurotic back.
In the twentieth episode of the particularly thrilling and crazy, the dark lights in the middle of the night, the crazy clown killer, and the chilling amusement park, the performance of this episode, Takei Yoshiyuki, presents the audience with the perfect aesthetic of violence. And the final murderous clown's ending is so sad, the desolation after the madness and the light and shadow that render the horror atmosphere intersect to form the most heterogeneous episode of "Interstellar Cowboy".
In addition to these three episodes, there are still many single episodes that are watched today twenty years later, or can't stand the applause of clapping. For example, the twenty-third episode, which explores the soul and the body, appears as the main line of the most romantic twelfth, third and final three episodes of the whole film. In addition to Shinichiro Watanabe's other animation, "Space Dandy", it is difficult to find an animation that can bring together so many stories without dragging mud and water, and it can only be said that Watanabe Shinichiro is really a god.
Comparable to the production lineup of the national team
With the emergence of so many classics, there must be a large number of geniuses among the creators behind them, because only geniuses can create genius-like images. Although many of the main players involved in the production of this film at that time were still just newcomers, but today after 20 decades, they have long become the leaders in the industry, looking back at the list of production personnel of that year, not only sighing, it is really lucky for the audience to see so many genius cooperation.
The series of works such as "Hilarious Life in the Rainforest" and "White Box" by veteran scripters who are good at funny themes constitute Yokote Michiko, who has not done any anime series composition when making "Interstellar Cowboy", but the eleventh episode of the mysterious creature she is in charge of the script is the funniest episode of this film.
Okamura Tensai, the main storyboarder in charge of the sixth, twelfth, and thirteenth main line episodes, became the supervisor of "darker than black - Black Contractor-" and "Wolf Rain", and the death of each capable person in the black contract will have a star disappear, which is particularly similar to the thirteenth episode of the star symbolizing the tears of the warrior.
The main original artist of this film, Ito Ka, later became the director and chief supervisor of famous works such as "Fullmetal Alchemist" 03 and "Shining Tacot", and another original artist, Taihiro Irie, also went to the performance road after "Interstellar Cowboy" and became the supervisor of the 09 version of the classic animation "Fullmetal Alchemist".
There is also nakamura Toyo, the original artist Nakamura, who was responsible for the street fight between spike and Mao Enlai and others in episode 12 in "Star Cowboy", and the 22nd episode in the building rooftop spike and cowboy fight scene, has now become one of the business cards of Japanese painting, and its gorgeous fight scenes are deeply loved by painting enthusiasts, even many animation fans who do not pay attention to painting will often hear this name.
If "Darling in the franxx" is an animation with a national team lineup, then such a star-studded "Star Cowboy" production team should also be called national team-level animation today.
Speaking of staff, the soundtrack of this film, Yoko Kanno and the band Seatbelts are definitely people who have to be mentioned. The legendary Japanese music producer has worked with Shinichiro Watanabe, the most musically savvy supervisor in Japanese animation, and this film is the masterpiece of their collaboration. Shinichiro Watanabe is a man who "dies without music", listening to music all the time when he works, and when he draws storyboards, he will have all kinds of music in his mind to cooperate with the camera.
In the author's opinion, the role of the soundtrack in film and television works can be roughly divided into two points, elaborating on the inner state of the characters and the creator's interpretation of the work, "Interstellar Cowboy" obviously belongs to the latter. Watanabe supervisor told Yoko Sugano to compose the soundtrack of the film in the style of improvising free jazz, and also asked Kanno to deviate the music slightly from the emotions of the characters.
It is this requirement that makes the soundtrack deviate from the animated scene, and this deviation also represents what the creator wants to express for the scene. For example, in episode 26, when Spike is determined to die alone, the soundtrack is the romantic "See You Space Cowboys", which Watanabe seems to use to tell the audience that although Spike's behavior is stupid, he likes the silly romance of men very much.
The use of the soundtrack in this way is bold, and if the theme of the work is not accurate, there will be a very strong sense of contradiction between the music and the image. However, this kind of scoring method is also free, and it is indeed the most suitable style freedom of "Star Cowboy", which makes the content carried by the animation continue to expand.
Look for the past in the present moment
Twenty years ago, through the animation "Interstellar Cowboy", we watched four people and a dog wander through the universe, their past like flowers in the fog, and their future is also uncertain. What I care most about in "Star Cowboy" is the attitude of the characters to the "past" in the play.
In the tenth episode, Jet says that "time is always flowing" after letting go of his past feelings, and freely throws his pocket watch into the river. Every time Spike and Faye do something stupid, the most angry person is always Jet, because Jet is the first to let go of the past, so he cares a lot about the time with Spike, Faye and others.
And our protagonist Spike, until the last episode, is in a story called a unit drama to look at the people and things he experiences with a deep eye, and the deep expression will always turn into a cynical smile in the next episode. But in the last episode, Face, lying in a desolate open space in his house and finding his past, says, "I can only go back here, and you have to fight there?" While putting down his self-esteem and praying for the words that Spike left behind, Spike firmly chose to face the heavy past.
Shinichiro Watanabe says that Spike likes Faye, and that the arrogant Faye opens his tenderness to Spike at the end, but the deep man chooses to wake up from his dream. Sure enough, as Faye said, men are all kinds of idiots who like romance, and Spike is such an idiot.
It took more than twenty episodes to establish a free and free style of work, but it was pushed down in the last two episodes, which was too sudden. So much so that I couldn't believe that Spike would fall, thinking that he would want to turn the danger back to Faye and Jet like the previous twenty-five episodes, continue to be the debauched man, continue their journey. When Spike made a shooting gesture at everyone in front of the screen, he said his last line, "Bang! After falling, the author suddenly realized that he was playing really!
He is still handsome to death
Is Spike dead? We don't know, even Watanabe Shinichiro said he didn't know, what a cunning guy. At the end of the story, Spike wakes up from his dream and breaks his past, but I never want to leave their story. The story ended like this, and people couldn't help but think about it. So much so that ten years later, twenty years later, we are still missing them and worrying about them, and perhaps we are still missing them when humanity really goes to the universe.
"Facing the past, even the gloomy, negative and even desperate past must be faced", this is the resonance I got from "Interstellar Cowboy". It seems like a very common truth to go forward in the past, but this film interprets this truth so romantically. I never thought my interpretation was correct, but the animation really resonated with my emotions in this regard.
This is also the most attractive place of "Star Cowboy", the diverse themes, characters, and music allow each audience to find their own unique emotional resonance. But one thing I think is the emotion that fans who love this film share, that is—
Spike, faye, jet, edward, and ein, I love you guys!
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