It takes remarkable audacity to boast, "There will be a new work which shall be a new genre in itself and be known only as Cowboy Bebop," on the title card right from the very first episode. It takes even more remarkable talent to deliver on that boast in spades.

It's hard to be a critic when there's nothing to criticize. What can I say?

Even background characters like the hosts of Big Shot and a dying Syndicate agent develop personalities and storylines.

If it isn't enough that Bebop blends CG and drawn art more seamlessly than "Blue Sub," and goes 26 episodes without a scarcely a flaw in any facet of the visuals, Bebop continually invents new ways to excel. From the blood-tinged, point-of-view-cam sequences in the first episode to surreal illumination of Spike's descent after final battle, the artwork dazzles

The subtitles are adequate, but often don't have the appropriately colloquial flavor, or comic timing of the English script used for the dub. For instance the subtitle, "Do you have knowledge of where he is?" is read, "Where is he?" in the dub. With the exception of a pair of stories Jet and Spike exchange in "Real Folk Blues" wherein the prose gets a mite purple, the dub translation is outstanding.

Unshou Ishizuka's rendition of Jet, which sounds like a combination of blues-singing legend Gatemouth Brown and formal Kabuki acting (or alternately sounds like a man whose been eating sandpaper and drinking whiskey for the better part of a lifetime) highlights a fine Japanese cast. Although the American Jet can't quite live up to that, the English version as a whole may actually be better than the Japanese. David Lucas is as cool as can be, Wendy Lee negotiates the shifts from mercurial and sarcastic to anguished to affectionate effortlessly, Melissa Charles manages to perform a wacky child character without ever becoming irritating (a truly rare achievement, the supporting cast excels; and god bless her, unlike far too many anime babes, Julia sounds like a real woman, not a girl).

The soundtrack, which could be a best-of collection by a dozen or more diversely talented bands, is actually entirely the work of the prodigiously talented Yoko Kanno. Her work is so integral to every facet of the series she honestly deserves part credit for the script, the performances, and the directing. She and Watanabe have outdone every video on MTV for innovatively and affectively integrating visual and musical storytelling. Her contribution to Bebop deserves an entire review of its own.

A tasteful evisceration is still an evisceration.

Decorative format sometimes makes it difficult to navigate. Though the producers of the DVD left in the opening and closing credits for each episode and the teasers for the following episode, which they've turned into a little attraction all their own.

A particularly dramatic moment during a gunfight is rendered with a slow motion shot full of doves (a Woo fetish) taking wing.

Jet says, "Men only think about their pasts right before their deaths," immediately after Spike admits he's thinking about his past. Way to jinx your own pal Jet.

By definition this category can't exist because all noir serves a purpose - noir is just cool.

Love it? Hate it? Buy it.