No matter how many times Cartoon Network plays it......

[anti_shrub]

I never get tired of the last two episodes of "Cowboy Bebop".

The last 10 minutes of Real Folk Blues Pt 2 makes it simply the best ending to the best animated show ever.

*makes gun with finger and thumb*

Bang.



Never seen a blue sky
Yeah I can feel it reaching out
And moving closer
There's something about blue
Asked myself what it's all for
You know the funny thing about it
I couldn't answer
No I couldn't answer

Things have turned a deeper shade of blue
And images that might be real
May be illusion
Keep flashing off and on
Free
Wanna be free
Gonna be free
And move among the stars
You know they really aren't so far
Feels so free
Gotta know free
Please
Don't wake me from the dream
It's really everything it seemed
I'm so free
No black and white in the blue

Everything is clearer now
Life is just a dream you know
That's never ending
I'm ascending

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

1. I love Cowboy Bebop

My favorite episode is the one with the magic mushrooms .

[anti_shrub]

2. It's definately one of the best

Funny how much they overprice the DVDs when you consider anyone who watches Cartoon Network has seen the entire series at least ten times.

I actually bought the whole series for like $30 from a site before I realized how much they overprice the offical DVDs and the set I got was a bootleg.

[Chovexani]

3. Those DVDs aren't overpriced.

In fact if you're going by cost/episode count the CB DVDs are actually a bargain, as most series tend to go 4 to a disc while CB average 5 eps on a disc (the worst offender I ever saw were the Magic User's Club OVAs, which offered a paltry 3 eps per disc for $30). People don't understand the main reason why anime DVDs cost so much more than regular ones is because the American companies often need to price them like that just to break even. The Japanese companies usually charge an arm and a leg for licensing fees and this gets passed on to the consumer.

I'm not much into mecha so I don't know the details, but IIRC there is one Macross series/movie that never got licensed because the Japanese company demanded a separate, obscenely expensive licensing fee for the music.

Box sets are usually much better deals than buying a series on a per-disc basis. It usually comes out 20-30 bucks cheaper in my experience. As for bootlegs? UGH! Normally I am not one of those self-righteous people that goes on and on about copyrights (I still have my ancient Sailor Moon S fansubs), but anime bootlegs are the worst pieces of crap ever. Seriously, you really do get what you pay for with them...they're crap no matter what kind of fan you are. If you're a dub fan (um, whatever floats your boat), 90% of the time there's no English track on it. If you're a purist and only like subs you are totally SOL because you basically have native Cantonese speakers translating Japanese to Cantonese to English, and not only are the translations highly questionable but the spelling and grammar are poor. My best friends, bless them, are some of the cheapest bastards ever and swear by these shitty Hong Kong bootlegs. They got me a bootleg of Yami no Matsuei ages ago before it was licensed, for my birthday, and I literally have NO IDEA what happened in the last episode because the subs were the worst I ever saw, it looked like they just threw up random misspelled English words without any punctuation and hoped it made sense. And don't get me started on the video quality of those things--folks, it doesn't take an AV nerd to understand that when you're cramming a 26 episode series onto 3 discs, you're going to get some serious video degredation. My same friends have a Kimagure Orange Road set that literally hurts my eyes there's so much rainbowing and shakiness in the video.

Bottom line is, even ignoring the moral arguments against bootlegs, they are just totally bad buys from a consumer point of view. I've yet to see any that were worth the cheap cost.

[anti_shrub]

4. I hear ya

But as far as I can tell, the set I got is pretty good for a bootleg. I'm sure the offical releases are better but what I have seems to be as good quality as the TV airings.

I'm not a hardcore anime fan, so I have no shame in admitting I prefer dubs, but what I have has an english track and it's the same as the Cartoon Network version.

In fact the only thing cheesy about the set I have is the DVD menus are pretty godawful, but I don't care about stuff like that.

[Chovexani]

5. It could be a rip of the official ones

My friends have a bootleg of the Ranma OVAs that look like they're a rip of the official Viz ones it has the same dub on it.

The thing I find funny about bootleg DVD menus is in the language selector, "English" is always written in Chinese. :crazy:

[anti_shrub]

6. Could be...

I'm not completely naive, but I didn't think the site I bought them from trafficked in bootlegs. They had a bunch of stuff on sale and I thought "hey, $35 bucks for the complete Bebop, that's a good deal!"

:silly:

BTW, I just read on a fansite that there's plans for a re-release of CB in 5.1 sound.

[Chovexani]

7. Ooh!

I just got a 5.1 system on the cheap and I never got the CB DVDs (never bothered 'cuz everyone I know has 'em and I just borrow them, hehe).

Thanks for the tip. :)