Tag Archives: cowboy bebop

Anime Recommendations

I promised some people to remind them about some anime recommendations I made, so I figure I may as well make these recommendations to everyone. Some of these are classics, some are new. I’ve added (legal) links to some of these telling you where you can buy it or watch it.

I started this list in April and still haven’t finished fleshing it out. Maybe I will at some point, but for now, I think the titles may stand on their own for further research.

Outlaw Star

Some people have said that Joss Whedon drew inspiration from Outlaw Star when writing Firefly but I’ve not seen any real sources on the matter. That should tell you something about the anime though: a group of ragtag outlaws on a ship trying to make enough money to keep going while making a name for themselves who find themselves on a quest to find the Celestial Leyline. Throw in some ancient magic and ships fighting with arms instead of guns and I was sold. I originally bought this on eBay from China when I was at university and I’ve been hooked ever since – I don’t know how many times I’ve watched it and I can’t describe how it feels to find someone else who’s seen it as they appear to be somewhat rare. You can get it on Amazon.

Cowboy Bebop

Much like Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop centers around a group of people taking on what jobs they can to make enough money to feed themselves and refuel the ship. I think Cowboy Bebop is actually closer to Firefly than Outlaw Star is in a lot of ways, and it’s certainly more of a cult classic than Outlaw Star is. The focus of Cowboy Bebop is around chasing bounties and the character arcs tend to give people the feels. Too soon. You can get it on Amazon (and can currently watch it on Netflix).

Gundam

Okay, so I’m a Gundam head – I like most Gundam shows I’ve watched and I now watch them religiously as new seasons come out (for the most part). My favourites (in no particular order) are noted below, but you can find some of these on YouTube for free on the official GundamInfo channel.

Gundam 00

Written in a similar vein to Gundam Wing, Gundam 00 centers around Celestial Being, an organisation dedicated to eradicating war. They’ve been preparing for two centuries, building the Gundams in secret and now they’ve announced themselves to the world in a series of interventions. The Gundams, beyond any mobile suit the warring super-nations have produced, are meant to help unify the world and eradicate war. Obviously things don’t always go to plan and there are a series of upsets as things go awry. It’s an excellent series that I much prefer to Wing at least in part due to Setsuna being less annoying than Heero.

Gundam Build Fighters

Written by the same writer as Gundam 00, Gundam Build Fighters is obviously a technique to sell more Gunpla[1] but the plot is strong and engaging – as is the action. In some ways, Gundam Build Fighters is an avenue for people to ask “which would win in a fight? Wing Gundam or Strike Gundam?” It’s been described as “Gundam Valhalla” due to the number of “cameos” where characters in GBF bear a striking familiarity to those in other Gundam shows. The basic premise is that a company called PPSE has developed a particle that can be used to move the plastic that Gunpla are made from and have then further developed this to create battle systems that allow people to fight with the custom Gunpla they’ve built. The series covers the journey of Sei Iori and Reiji as they go from local tournaments all the way to the world stage. You can watch it for free on YouTube.

Gundam: IRON-BLOODED ORPHANS

Humanity colonised Mars then there were a bunch of wars between nations and a group now known as Gjallarhorn created the Gundams and other technological advantages to enforce peace and stabilise space. Many year later, the Gundams have been mothballed and Gjallarhorn has become corrupt. The story follows a group of Martian orphans who have been implanted with Alaya-Vijnana technology allowing them to operate mobile weapons as if they were their own body – this is what gets them employment and allows them to keep eating. They take over the group, rename it, and strike out on their own with not much more than the old Gundam suit they used to use as a power generator and tank-like mobile weapons. As they travel to Earth escorting Kudelia Aina Bernstein, they start making a name for themselves and stirring change for the better. You can watch it for free on Daisuki.

Gundam SEED

Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny, its sequel series are the classic Gundam story. The Gundam series has many universes but the one that seems most classic to me is the Cosmic Era[2]. You have the Earth Alliance on one side (most Earth nations under one banner) and ZAFT on the other (an alliance of space colonies). The colonies are largely populated by Coordinators (humans with enhanced abilities), while Earth is largely baseline human – this forms one of the core conflicts between the two. The story follows Kira Yamato, a Coordinator who ends up fighting with the Earth Alliance while trying to find a path to peace without killing. There are Gundams on both sides of the conflict (though what GUNDAM stands for does depend on who made the suit[3]). SEED Destiny changes the primary characters but has similar arcs and continues the story as a whole. You can get it on Amazon.

Other Gundam series

I’m not going to go other all of these in depth as they’re not so much on my favourites lists and I’ve already talked about a lot of Gundam stuff at length so here’s some short stuff:

  • Gundam Wing: The first Gundam series I saw (on Toonami of all places), it’s what got me hooked. I’d still recommend people watch it, and I still love the Deathscythe, but it’s been displaced from my favourites.
  • Gundam Unicorn: An OVA in the Universal Century timeline, it’s an interesting take on Gundams and how they should be used. You can watch it for free on Daisuki.
  • Gundam AGE: Featuring an evolving Gundam, I liked watching Gundam AGE but I find I don’t care to rewatch it as much. I especially like the second arc of the story which tells the story of three generations of Gundam pilots.
  • Gundam Build Fighters Try: The sequel series to Gundam Build Fighters follows a team of students competing in a similar tournament. I like it, but I don’t rewatch it as much as I do GBF. You can watch it for free on YouTube.

The Asterisk War

Humanity has evolved and people are now capable of harnessing prana to do magic/magic-like effects often channeled through weapons known as Lux. There are six major schools dedicated to teaching people to use their abilities, and they regularly host tournaments between each other. The winner of the tournament gets to ask for whatever they most desire as a prize. It’s a pretty typical shonen anime in that there’s one male protagonist who has a bunch of pretty girls fawning over him, but it’s got a good story and some nice swordfighting. Found it by accident on Daisuki and the first season is mid-release at time of writing. You can join me in watching it for free at Daisuki.

Cross Ange

People have discovered the ability to manipulate mana to enhance their lives and technology. It’s become an everyday part of life, and those who can’t use it (and in fact destroy it when they touch it) are considered vile inhuman people and are taken away as soon as they’re discovered. The assumption was that they were killed, but they’re actually taken to a remote island as Princess Angelika discovers when it becomes apparent that she (unknown to herself) is one of them. On the island, they’re trained to use jet-bikes that can turn into mecha and fight dragons from an alternate reality while dressed in the most revealing flight suits imaginable. It’s pretty amazing.

Full Metal Alchemist

The Seven Deadly Sins

Currently on Netflix.

Fairy Tail

Currently on Netflix.

Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic

Currently on Netflix.

Code Geass

Currently on Netflix.

Death Note

Currently on Netflix.

Footnotes   [ + ]

1. Gundam plastic model kits
2. The actual classic timeline is Universal Century, and Cosmic Era is noted for its similarities
3. Technically in CE, GUNDAM refers to the operating system used to control the suit and most of the advanced features of the suits could be applied to other mobile suits if they could be easily mass-produced or controlled – hence the need for an advanced and specialised OS

Future LRP Ideas

As I’ve intimated in various places at various times, I’m kinda working on a LRP project separate from No Rest for the Wicked, Inquisition Chronicles and indeed the entire Warhammer 40,000 franchise. I have a partner-in-crime on this, but we’ve not been able to sit down and discuss what we want to do with it due to running the last No Rest event, and other things getting in the way. So that’s on the back burner for now. It might be the awesome collision of Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, and Firefly in one new IP, or it might not. We haven’t even gotten that far, though I do love the idea of making an Outlaw Star LRP.

Something else that’s come up is the idea of a new parlour LRP[1]. This game would be something different from any other LRP (or LARP)[2] I’ve run: rather than putting people into a situation and then either having them work with the situation or go off on linears (or both), the idea would be that the live part of the game would be social with missions happening outside of game-time. Let me explain.

For this concept, we’d be looking at something like SLA Industries, Shadowrun, Orpheus, Demon Hunters, or Bounty Hunter Bebop – a game where you gather a team and go run missions for prestige, money, some other prize, or all three. The pub part would be a gathering of people able to go on these missions – bounty hunters, shadowrunners, mercenaries, etc – who grab a mission off the board, put together a team for it, then go back to drinking to “prepare”. Missions would then be run between games as tabletop sessions, and there’d be a leaderboard of some kind indicating which characters were top-ranked. The general idea would be that you’d have to weigh up the balance between taking the A-listers on your missions (which makes them more likely to succeed) versus increasing your own lead on them (as if they’re with you, they gain the same rank boost you do from the mission). There’d be some kind of meta-plot behind some of the missions, and we’d generally try to make the scene interesting, but the general obvious part of the game would be about the rankings and taking missions to get money, fame, and glory.

There wouldn’t be any downtime system – just up-time politics and the missions between games.

Curious as to what people think of the idea. I’ve probably not explained it well, but I think it has legs.

Footnotes   [ + ]

1. also known as pub LRP, pub LARP, parlour LARP, or just LARP – usually while associated with World of Darkness games
2. the difference between the terms is a whole different post

So, I want to run a game

As I’ve posted elsewhere, I’m looking to run a game. What I want to do is be able to run it as and when both my players and I are available/up for it. So some weeks we could play three sessions, and other weeks just the one (or not at all); I want to be able to run without some players and potentially with a completely different group session to session, so I want it to be the sort of game where you can complete things in a session while still having the potential for an overarching campaign. I also want to play it online, without a lot of rules getting in the way of online RP.

Along those lines, I’ve picked out three settings that I like and would like to run a game in.

orpheusThe first is Orpheus, a game I’ve loved for over a decade – one of the first tabletop games I played. In Orpheus, a cryogenic research company called The Orpheus Group was developing cryogenic technology for medical research, and have developed the first cryogenic process that allows for a stable freeze and thawing of living beings. In their tests of this process, they discovered that their human test subjects reported back having dreams while they slept – dreams that they were watching the Orpheus staff at work. This wasn’t considered particularly noteworthy until one of them recounted incidents that had happened in the lab in perfect detail – incidents they had no way to know about without having been there or being told. Further research was done, and it was established that the cryogenically frozen subjects experienced astral projection and could perceive events around them. Experimentation continued and revealed that post-life entities (PLEs, or ghosts) were also present in the astral state that the sleepers found themselves in. Not only this, but PLEs and the astral projections could wield supernatural power. In a stroke, The Orpheus Group had proven ghosts were real, and that they could affect the world in unknown ways. Studies continued, but this discovery explained every story of supernatural happenings throughout history, and a paranormal investigation division was set up. Orpheus became a paranormal service organisation, investigating and dealing with hauntings for a sizable fee. You, as players, are members of the investigation teams who are either projectors (living people who project their consciousness from their body) or PLEs (ghosts) working for fantastic sums of cash and dealing with the supernatural on a regular basis.

Demon HuntersThe second is Demon Hunters. I’m never going to explain it better than the guys who made it, so here’s the Brotherhood of the Celestial Torch Orientation Video which came with the field operative training manual (RPG).[1] Basically, you’re a bunch of misfits who fight the agents of Hell (the Order of the Infernal Sceptre). All the monsters and dark things from your favourite films and TV shows are real, and it’s the job of the Brotherhood to take them down before they get to humanity. On the bright side, you have access to a Warehouse 13/Ark of the Covenant-style warehouse of infinite size that might just have the tools you need for the job – if you can find them. It’s a comedy-action-investigation game, and I have both the original RPG and the playtest version of the new edition (the new edition still being finalised).

Cowboy BebopThe third setting I’m contemplating is essentially Cowboy Bebop/Outlaw Star. Bounty hunters/freelancers roaming human-colonised spaaaaaace in search of enough money to buy fuel, food, and ammunition while they try for the big score that’ll set them up for life (assuming they don’t blow it on an act of charity/abandon it to save someone/give up the treasure for love/die in the process.

System-wise, I’m looking at FATE-based solutions. I’ve got a homebrew conversion for Orpheus to FATE Accelerated, the new Demon Hunters edition is based on FATE Accelerated, and the Bebop-style setting can either be run with FATE or something else. FATE Accelerated should be pretty easy for people to pick up, without getting in the way of the story, and it should also allow people to create characters pretty quickly so they can get involved without a length character creation process.

As I said, I’m looking to run things online. Thoughts are to use Google Hangouts for communication, and maybe use Roll20 as well (this will involve me learning Roll20).

I’ve had a few people express interest, but I’ve not had any indication of a setting preference. If you’re interested, and have a preferred setting out of these three (or have an alternate idea I might be interested in), let me know.


Featured image choice is solely because Outlaw Star kicks ass, and I have to watch it again.

Footnotes   [ + ]

1. The orientation video along with the original films are now available to everyone on the Dead Gentlemen YouTube channel. Incidentally, go watch everything they and Zombie Orpheus Entertainment do.