[5.4/10] Why is Feng Shui any sillier than the other nigh-magical elements in Cowboy Bebop? I can’t tell you. We have people who’ve been frozen for decades, people who maybe can’t die, assassins who float on the air like they’re made of nothing, kids who stay kids forever, etc. etc. etc. If you can grant all of those things, you should be able to grant this.
But something about somebody using the “energies” of the heavens, earth, and humanity to maneuver people into place at key moments just comes off silly to me. I don’t buy that sort of pseudoscience, and it makes it hard for me to get into this episode, even if Jet plays the voice of skepticism at times.
This is basically doing The Da Vinci Code before the The Da Vinci Code, with a Feng Shui twist, and I’m not really into it. Mixing a noir mystery setup with a puzzle-solving scavenger hunt isn’t my jam. And the recurring bits about there being some awkward-ish romantic thing between Jet and a woman acknowledged in the show as too young for him is pretty uncomfortable.
There is a bit of juice in the warp field dogfight that ensues, but why, for the love of god, are the secondary antagonists here the syndicate version of the Blues Brothers?
More to the point, there’s something to the idea of Meifa wondering why her dad wasn’t around, and seemed to ignore her, only to find out that he was in with the bad guys and wanted to protect her. That's a solid enough turn in the narrative, and there's poignance in him setting this path so that he can say goodbye. But it’s too little too late.
Overall, a definite low light in the season thus far.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-05-14T18:01:37Z
[5.4/10] Why is Feng Shui any sillier than the other nigh-magical elements in Cowboy Bebop? I can’t tell you. We have people who’ve been frozen for decades, people who maybe can’t die, assassins who float on the air like they’re made of nothing, kids who stay kids forever, etc. etc. etc. If you can grant all of those things, you should be able to grant this.
But something about somebody using the “energies” of the heavens, earth, and humanity to maneuver people into place at key moments just comes off silly to me. I don’t buy that sort of pseudoscience, and it makes it hard for me to get into this episode, even if Jet plays the voice of skepticism at times.
This is basically doing The Da Vinci Code before the The Da Vinci Code, with a Feng Shui twist, and I’m not really into it. Mixing a noir mystery setup with a puzzle-solving scavenger hunt isn’t my jam. And the recurring bits about there being some awkward-ish romantic thing between Jet and a woman acknowledged in the show as too young for him is pretty uncomfortable.
There is a bit of juice in the warp field dogfight that ensues, but why, for the love of god, are the secondary antagonists here the syndicate version of the Blues Brothers?
More to the point, there’s something to the idea of Meifa wondering why her dad wasn’t around, and seemed to ignore her, only to find out that he was in with the bad guys and wanted to protect her. That's a solid enough turn in the narrative, and there's poignance in him setting this path so that he can say goodbye. But it’s too little too late.
Overall, a definite low light in the season thus far.