Outlaw Star 01-04

Eps:

1-4

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Writer:

Katsuhiko Chiba

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Directors:

Takeshi Ashizawa, Naoyoshi Kusaka, Takahiko Hoshiai

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Air Date:

08-Jan-1998 - 29-Jan-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the first four episodes of Outlaw Star!

I was only planning to write about one episode, but then I discovered how serialised the series is and long I'd have to keep writing about it just to reach the bit with the spaceship in. I've got other series I need to write about, I can't keep posting about Outlaw Star every week, so I've decided to get all four episodes out of the way in the same article. It's a giant-sized super-fast paced extra-value review!

This isn't actually my first time watching the series, I just haven't seen much of it and what I have seen I don't remember much of. That's not necessarily a sign that it's bad, as I'm easily distracted and my memory isn't always great. It might be a really good series for all I know! It'd definitely had a good studio behind it, as it was made by Sunrise, the people who made Cowboy Bebop. Outlaw Star had a more typical origin however, as unlike Bebop it was adapted from a manga.

Okay I'll be going through each of the episodes, summarising what I see and sharing my thoughts, so there will be huge SPOILERS here.

Cowboy Bebop 01: Asteroid Blues

Episode:

1

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Writer:

Keiko Nobumoto

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Director:

Yoshiyuki Takei

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Air Date:

24-Oct-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Asteroid Blues, the first episode session of legendary anime series Cowboy Bebop. Look, they've given me an actual title card to use, it's awesome! My understanding of Japanese is fairly pathetic, but I recognise enough of that katakana to know that it's just saying the words "Asteroid Blues".

I've covered cartoons like Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League and Duck Dodgers before, but this is the first time I've ever written about an anime. Well, unless you count Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which was actually the first article ever published on Sci-Fi Adventures. I have a feeling this is going to be better.

A lot of anime series are based off a manga, like Sunrise's previous space series Outlaw Star, but this one was original. In fact creator Shinichirō Watanabe gave it the tagline "And the work which has become a genre unto itself shall be called: Cowboy Bebop" which would've been incredibly pretentious if the show hadn't then gone and backed it up. This is one of the most well-regarded and important series in anime history, but you don't need me to tell you how famous it is, because... well, it's famous.

The first episode first aired in Japan on 24th October 1998, which is kind of weird as the series started airing back in April. The initial run on TV Tokyo missed out the pilot and half the other episodes, and I have no idea why. The first English airing on Adult Swim missed out three episodes as well, but that was due to it airing during September 2001 and people being a bit cautious about the kinds of destruction they were showing on screen at the time.

The series only lasted 26 episodes and a movie (it was only ever meant to), and I've seen all of them. In fact I've seen this first episode twice! It's been a long while though, so I'm sure it'll have some surprises for me. There'll be no surprises left for you if you keeping reading past this point however, as I'm going to share SPOILERS for the entire episode scene by scene, with screencaps. I'll not say a word about anything that happens in later episodes though.