I’ve been looking for a successor to Cowboy Bebop for almost ten years. The show was one of the highest rated anime imports in network TV history and it’s brilliant english dub, creative characters and familiar themes helped make it easily relatable to an American audience. Coyote Ragtime Show could be a contender for that coveted spot.
The basic story revolves around a group of space pirates off to find some lost treasure. Yes, that actually does sound a lot like Outlaw Star, but this has a much more western feel to it. The main character in the series is a man known only as Mister. He’s a rough and tumble thief who breaks out of jail when he hears that a treasure he’s been after for years is on a planet set for destruction. It’s a race against time kind of ordeal. The problem is several different factions are after him or the treasure for themselves.
You have the busty and gorgeous agent Angelica Burns and her even bustier assistant Chelsea after Mister because he’s an outlaw. Ontop of that is a crime boss Madame Marciano and her group of android assassins known as The Twelve Sisters. The Twelve Sisters are each named after a month of the year, and all dress in Lolita costumes. They’re actually hilarious, each having a distinct personality and penchant for different weapons. The smallest one is a girl of about 8 or 9 years old who loves to chuck a grenade right in the face of her opponent. The series cast is rounded out by your regular anime scoundrels on Mister’s crew including a preist named Swamp.
But onto the real plot. The treasure itself is hidden in a place called Graceland (yeah I know… it doesn’t get much more western than that), and a young girl named Franca holds the key to the treasure. The treasure itself is a large sum of money stolen from the galaxies biggest bank by Franca’s father, The Pirate King: Bruce. Bruce died trying to save his daughter and Mister has taken his place as her protector, as much as he can from behind bars anyway.
What makes Coyote Ragtime Show work is that it’s clearly inspired by the look and feel of Cowboy Bebop. From the musical choices, to ship designs, to character interactions, it’s obvious the show was going for that whole “western ins space” kind of thing. It succeeds in quite a few ways as well. The characters are for the most part western inspired and the terms like Coyote and Ragtime kind of tell you that it’s trying to be like Cowboy Bebop in a way that’s almost a little too on the nose actually.
The animation here is very good, holding up to modern anime standards (as far as broadcast TV goes) and the character design is distinct and interesting. There aren’t a lot of animation flubs that many people associate with anime. The space ship designs are clean and very cool to look at especially in the more action packed moments where several crafts are dogfighting, barreling through space and trying to stay alive. The ships are also all rendered with cell shaded CGI, which has become a bit of a standard in the anime world, but it’s a nice touch and keeps the show looking clean.
The story arch over the twelve episodes is very good and comes to a nice conclusion. It wraps up well, so you don’t have to worry about that cliff hanger like you do with most American shows that never really have an ending. Here it’s definitive and a nice little journey.
All in all Coyote Ragtime Show is well made, well acted and over all a fun enjoyable watch. I give it an enthusiastic 4 out of 5 stars. Best of all Funimation has posted all 12 episodes of the American dub on Hulu for FREE (as of the time of this writing).
