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Cowboy
Bebop
Vol.1
March/2002
Publisher: Tokyopop
Writer: Hajime Yatate
Artwork: Yutaka Nanten
Translation: Amy Forsyth
Price: $9.99 US/R145.00 SA
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Based on the wildly popular anime series and subsequent movie, Cowboy
Bebop: Knocking’ on Heavens Door, the wacky crew
of bounty hunters hits the bookshelves in this first collection
of stories which continues their misadventures in search of the
ultimate bounty.
This volume is made up of four entertaining short stories.
The first handles the crew fighting each other over who will get
the largest bounty. The second takes Spike undercover into a floating
prison. Thirdly we find the focus shift towards Faye as she tracks
down a strange ‘Ladies only’ bounty.
Lastly Jet takes on his old friends in the Police force as a bounty
is put out on the entire Bebop crew!
If you haven’t watched the anime before reading this manga
then it’s hard to see you really enjoying it all that much.
There is little explanation as to the characters roles or histories
and due to some annoying art techniques this book will probably
frustrate more casual readers.
On to the hardcore Bebop fans, whom this book is obviously focused
towards, you will be pleased to find out that the manga series of
Bebop is not just a direct translation of the anime but rather it
adds to it. The main upside is that this volume collects all
new stories and as a fan it’s great to rejoin my
favourite characters once again. I loved the anime series and especially
the movie, so if you enjoyed those then be sure to check this manga
out as well. All the humour and quirkiness that is Bebop
is carried over perfectly to the printed page.
The lettering seems to be oversized especially in the speech balloons,
and the fact that the balloons seem to just float around aimlessly
unconnected to any particular character caused me an enormous amount
of frustration. The font used for dialogue is just way too big and
thus gives the pages a somewhat empty and hollow feel with all this
white space floating around unused. The endless annoyance
of trying to figure out who said what, due to the directionless
speech ballooning, also really dragged this book down.
A nice cinematic anime flavour is brought into
this book via the larger than life visual style of Yutaka
Nanten. His use of large panels and some great angles and
profiles gives the book a similar feel to the anime version of the
property.
A fan focused manga that continues the adventures of the Bebop crew
with four all-new stories. Some annoying lettering brings the overall
enjoyment down, but the art still manages to maintain a nice anime
quality. Highly enjoyable for fans of the anime
series but probably won’t be anything special for the casual
manga reader.
Score 6/10
Reviewed By:Iain Duncan
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