Rihards Unplugged

Hard science fiction is a sub category of science fiction, and as the name already implies, hard science fiction puts an emphasis on scientific or technical detail as well as the accuracy. And no, that doesn’t mean that it’s dry technical manual. Quite the contrary, some of the best books, and shows that I have seen are hard science fiction.

Planetes, is more or less the only anime that I can name that is hard science fiction. It does stray here and there from time to time, but most hard science fiction does that. Most science fiction anime has things like mecha, huge robots, technology that just seems very silly, or technology that just plain doesn’t make any sense.

Of course there is nothing wrong with that, but at some point, one wants to watch an anime that isn’t filled with fourteen year olds piloting twenty meter tall robots. And this is where Planetes comes in. Planetes takes place in the near future, and follows the story of “Space Debris Collection Section”, a unit of a large corporation.

Yes, that’s right, it’s a hard science fiction anime about space garbage men (and women). And no, it’s not boring, far from it actually. One could say that it’s a hard science fiction comedy, but that wouldn’t be quite true, as with a lot of other animes, it’s light-hearted and easy going, but it confronts many serious issues that people still have to deal with in the future. Death, terrorism, love, hate, camaraderie, betrayal, and much more.

As with all fiction, it’s the characters that make or break it. In Planetes case, the characters are one of the major things that contribute to making this anime a great anime. It’s a very interesting bunch, each with their own personalities. Their own strengths, weaknesses and history.

Another place where I think that Planetes really shines is the quality of artwork and animation. Being true to its hard science fiction setting, the technical details, like small valves, tubes, circuitry and other such things are very detailed. By far surpassing other science fiction animes that I have seen so far, even ones that are newer than Planetes.

As for the soundtrack, well, I’ll say this much, there has been better. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very good and solid, but it could be even better. Just to name a show where I think that the sound and music was handled better in a similar setting, Firefly. And just as with Firefly, Planetes deserves praise for not adding sound to space. Instead they use character dialogue (via suit speakers), and sometimes music.

Overall a very good anime, well worth watching it. If you like science fiction and animes, then Planetes is one of those must watch animes.

I actually finished watching Wolf’s Rain quite a while ago, I have been hesitating to post this review, or rather my thoughts on this anime for a while now. Why? Because I don’t know what to make of it. Or rather, so far I have pretty much reviewed only really great stuff, without any glaring bad things.

I guess I’m one of those people for whom it’s important that a show keeps its quality going at the same level. Now I know that some of you are going to say, “But you watch Stargate!” yes I do, and I know that the later seasons got worse, but they were still a lot of fun. But back to Wolf’s Rain. The anime itself is actually great, I loved every single episode of it, until the very last one that is, and that’s where shit really hit the fan for me.

Maybe it’s just me, but I really hated the end of this anime. It’s not that people died, but rather the fact of how abrup it was. Everything basically happens in the last two minutes of the last episode, and you are (or at least I was) left in the dark as to what the hell just happened. The ending really freaked me out in this one, I can’t actually think of a worse ending to a show offhand.

Other than the ending, the anime is great and I’d recommend it people who like action oriented animes.

There are quite a few things that everyone should do during their lifetime, be it having pancakes for breakfast, listening to “Symphony No. 9″ by Beethoven, or just enjoying a good chat among friends in a traditional Viennese coffee house. If there’s one anime that one should see, then in my opinion it’s Cowboy Bebop.

Because where else can you find such a great mix of action, comedy, drama, suspense and most of all music, if not in Cowboy Bebop? I’ll go even as far as to say that Cowboy Bebop is close to being the pinnacle of excellence. What makes me say that? Well there are many reasons for that, so I’ll lay them out in this review one by one.

We’ll start with the obvious I guess. Everyone hates anime. Well not everyone, but most just can’t stand it, because of how childish and alien it is. That’s the number one thing that Cowboy Bebop does differently, the quality of writing is much better than that of most western series to begin with, it’s mature and what’s more importantly it’s believable. There are no magic powers, no magic monsters, and no giant robots saving the universe every other day.

Cowboy Bebop is set in the year 2071, mankind has advanced to the level of interplanetary travel within the solar system. But it has also descended into an anarchy on some parts of planets, and even space where there’s no law, and thus enter the modern era cowboys, or as they are officially known, bounty hunters.

The story centers around a group of such bounty hunters. At first it’s only Spike Spiegel, a former member of a crime syndicate who is haunted by his past, and Jet, a former police officer and the current owner of Bebop (their spaceship). Later they are joined by Faye Valentine, who was cryogenically frozen for fifty years and only woken up to be tricked by a man into assuming a debt that was never hers. There’s Edward, an expert computer hacker, who is actually a girl, but likes to call herself Edward, and of course their dog Ein, a Welsh Corgi.

There are 26 episodes, and most of them are self contained stories, but there is an underlying plot to follow. As with other so short series, there’s very little to no room for filler episodes, which means one episode is better than the next one and it just keeps on getting better until it comes to the finale and you are completely blown away by how well it’s done, and how much fun you’ve had watching the series.

One of my favourite things about Cowboy Bebop is the music. It’s one of the most notable elements about Cowboy Bebop. The music is performed by Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts, a band that was assembled just for the purpose of the series. You don’t see that happening that often. The music is almost exclusively free form Jazz and Blues tracks. Now you may think that Jazz and Blues is weird for anime, or any series for that matter, but once you have seen and heard it in action you can’t imagine it being any other way.

My recommendation? If you are only ever going to watch one series of anime, make it Cowboy Bebop. There is just no other anime that really compares to Cowboy Bebop. Cowboy Bebop could be even used as a grading tool to decide how good other anime’s are, if it’s even half as good as Cowboy Bebop then it’s already pretty good. If I had to give the series a rating out of five stars, I’d give it six.

It’s that time again, I have just finished two different anime series, Cowboy Bebop and Trigun. First I’ll review Trigun, and then at some later point Cowboy Bebop (I’m saving the best for later).

Trigun is about a man named Vash the Stampede, also known as the Humanoid Typhoon. Who later in the show is declared as the first act of God. Why is that so? Well as the story unravels, we find out that he has destroyed a whole city(luckily killing no one) by himself, and thus gets a $$60 billion(double dollar, the currency in Trigun universe) bounty placed on his head. And as one would guess, such a huge bounty goes a long way to make Vash’s life very unpleasant. Not to mention the fact that he remembers nothing of the city destroying incident.

The show is mostly a comedy action western, though it gets much darker near the end. The really cool thing about Trigun, apart from some really ungodly good comedy bits, is the way it deals with death and killing other people and beings. You see in most anime’s the characters kill left and right, not really thinking about what they are doing, as if it’s their second nature to do so. Whereas in Trigun, death is treated like something that has(or can lead to) grave consequences. But it’s not an anti gun or anti war propaganda show, far from it.

Trigun is 26 episodes long, so there’s very little room for filler episodes unlike in most other longer shows, and that’s what I really like about these 22 to 26 episode long series. Every episode has something to say in one way or another, and you aren’t just fed some mindless filler. The characters in Trigun are very interesting, though sadly there isn’t much in the way of character development. But that’s not something that stops Trigun from being a very enjoyable show to watch.

Music is quite nice, a mix of Jazz, Rock and even some Electronica thrown in for the baddies. The quality of artwork is overall very good as well, it’s not mind blowing, but there are no bad eye-sores, or distracting things.

So would I recommend Trigun for my readers, especially the anime fans of you? I most certainly would, it’s very funny when it’s being funny, and very smart or dramatic when it needs to be, and it tells a great story of a man who is trying to save everyone on his planet, even if it may seem futile.