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Recently I was introduced into the world of Cowboy Bebop, the amazingly original series, which chronicles a team of intergalactic 
bounty hunters who travel through space on their ship, The Bebop, hooked me right in. As is often true for any series with a back-story, the viewer hungers for more information. I was curious and wanted to learn more about the characters, the world they lived in, and the background of the series. In this respect, I expected to find the Cowboy Bebop Anime Guides to be very helpful; instead, I ended up being surprisingly disappointed.
Volumes 1 and 2 of the Anime Guides contained installment guides for episodes 1-10 of the series, as well as posters of the main characters. The Anime Guides featured full color episode guides complete with screen captures, and contains a character guide that goes into a bit of detail on all of the main characters. Also included are details special info on a particular topic of interest concerning the series, as well as a bevy of conceptual sketches directly from the artist. With such a list of included pieces one may expect the Anime Guides to be tiny pocket book sized fonts of information. This is where one would be wrong.
While the episode guides full color screen-shots are great to look at and attract much attention, the information is why the reader would want a book like this as they can always just re-watch the episode itself if all they want is pretty colors. The information in the episode guide is lacking. It's pretty much a step-by-step recap of the episode, used as captions for the screen-caps, and then told again at the bottom of the page in a full paragraph. Telling the story twice was a waste of space, and to make it worse, both of the summaries are extremely detailed. Once again, I found myself asking why I didn't just watch the episode again?
The guide is infused with tiny bits of useful information though. One is found in the form of small boxes within the guide that explain the history of the Cowboy Bebop Universe, such as one particular box that explained the Phase Gate Accident that destroyed the moon. This gives us a better understanding of why people can't live on the Earth anymore and have now begun to migrate. The other useful tidbit is found in Interlude boxes. They usually give little bits of pop-culture information such as what music is used in the background, or where the title of the episode came from.
Reports that come after the episode guide explain the use of weapons and spacecrafts in the Cowboy Bebop series. The only trouble with these guides is that they are often repetitive, going into each aircraft used throughout the series when most of them are fairly minor to the story. The same problem can be found in the Conceptual Sketch section where again, we see every minor character we never cared to hear about.
In the end, this guide is thorough in its facts, but it doesn't get deeper than the surface. There are no discussions about where the idea came from or why certain things were done. Watching the episodes could have easily taught the reader everything in the Cowboy Bebop Anime Guides. If I knew that was going to be the case, I wouldn't have even bothered to read.
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