On the Rocky Road to NOAH: The Best of Budokan Hall, Disc One

Yo fuck the Corona Virus, and fuck the mentally and emotionally sapping world we live in right now. It made me not want to watch the art I love for months.

Alright, now that the sorry sap part of the blog post is out of the way, Wrestling!

So I've been sitting on this 3 disc set for a while now, but recently I purchased (Beyer help me) Best of Pro Wrestling NOAH DVDs for the years 2001-2014, because I have mania and the rum I was drinking determined that my mania was for NOAH that night.

I'm...I have imposter syndrome, I think. Like with Pro Wrestling NOAH, I feel like I haven't earned the right to be a NOAH fan, somehow. This didn't happen with New Japan, I think because I came into that company with a wave of other new fans, so it was a very mutual feeling of discovery and it made me feel comfortable coming in. But with NOAH I don't get that. It's not that the fandom hasn't been welcoming. In fact, everyone I've interacted with has been incredibly helpful and friendly when it comes to getting invested in the emerald brand. But I feel like...I dunno, I don't Deserve to be a fan somehow. Cause the company and it's fans have been through a lot the last twenty years, and here I am just kinda like a tourist with a camera around his neck and a Hawaiian shirt.

So, what to do?

Walk the King's Road up to the Ark, I guess. As I wait for the Pro Wrestling NOAH DVDs to come in, I'm gonna go through this DVD of a VHS rip, and try to...absorb? the power of 90's All Japan, so that I can be ready for a decade and change of Pro Wrestling NOAH.

Join me, won't you?

9.3.1993
Triple Crown Championship
Mitsuharu Misawa (c) vs. "Dr. Death" Steve Williams [5th Defense]
Start as you mean to go on, I guess. I really didn't want to go into this review like "KING'S ROAD IS THE SUPERIOR STYLE OF PRO WRESTLING AND MY EYES ARE OPEN" because I try not to be a hyperbolic guy (just manic). But...like I watched this match and I was blown away. It was so simple, but they got so much out of the crowd, who was WILD. Even through the background noise of this being a VHS rip, I could tell how amazingly alive the crowd was. There was one true moment of 'Heat' and it came when Dr Death pressed Misawa and dropped him sternum first into the ringpost. The crowd went nuts and it just stoked the fire. I don't wanna do a play by play, but at the same time I also really cant. It was all about momentum in this match. Doc would have control, Misawa would try and fight back, Doc would get it again. I loved it. My favorite moment of the match was when Williams went for the Oklahoma Stampede multiple times and Misawa kept slipping out each time, but never truly gaining an advantage. The match ended when, having gotten the momentum for just a moment, Misawa nailed the Tiger Driver, two massive elbows that still weren't putting the gaijin down, and hit a second Tiger Driver for the pin. I NOW GET MISAWA HYPE
****1/4

9.3.1993
All Japan Tag Team Championships
Holy Demon Army (Akira Taue and Toshiaki Kawada) vs. Stan Hansen and Ted DiBiase [3rd Defense]
So as I've said above, my experience with 90s All Japan is extremely limited. But I'd always felt a very soul bound attraction towards Toshiaki Kawada. I can't tell you why really; maybe it's his loyalty to All Japan when NOAH was formed, maybe it's the black and gold aesthetic, maybe I just really, REALLY like Taichi and that affection transfers over to his teacher. But after this match, I can tell Kawada is going to be one of my favorites on this DVD set. He's just a bottle of piss and vinegar fueled by wanting to be the best and I can appreciate the hell out of that.

There's really not much to tell about this match beyond that. Stan and Ted are big motherfucking gaijin who wanna take the tag titles. Kawada cannot abide by this insult and takes every opportunity he can to fight the two men. By all rights, Taue comes off as the level headed one in this tag team. Heat's on Kawada forever before Taue makes the tag. Taue runs wild but eventually he gets shut down, while Kawada gets thrown out of the ring. DiBiase hits Akira with an atomic drop and Stan bops him right after with a Lariat for the pin. Stan then goes outside just to fucking murder Kawada with a Lariat as well. To quote Bane, "That was Unnecessary." Not great, but it endeared Toshiaki to me.
***1/2

Joined in Progress
THAT Misawa/Kawada match
This DVD has the last twenty odd minutes of the June 3rd 1994 Misawa/Kawada Triple Crown match. I've never seen this match but I knew the legendary status of it, obviously. I'm not going to review what I saw, because I don't want to disrespect the match by reviewing part of it. But what I saw made my brain explode like I was attacked by a Scanner. I'll probably go back to this one day on this site.

7.29.1993
Triple Crown Championship
Mitsuharu Misawa (c) vs. Toshiaki Kawada [4th Defense]
I don't get why this DVD is going out of order, but I don't mind too much.
First off, Toshiaki Kawada's entrance robe/jacket

I Just want it for Around the House

You can tell this is definitely not the first time these two have fought. They each have easy counters for each other's strikes and holds; Misawa puts his guard up for every other enzugiri, Kawada has a block for the Elbow, etc. I'm gonna be honest, I didn't take many notes for this one. I think watching the end of the June 3rd match blew me up emotionally and showed me how much they can do. One thing I've written multiple times that I should bring up is that all of Misawa's finishing level moves are awesome. The Elbow can be sudden, and the Tiger Driver/Suplex can be switched around based on the opponent he's applying them too. Too heavy to hit the Tiger Driver? Tiger Suplex. Keeps slipping out of the Tiger Suplex? Tiger Driver. I love it.
What I don't love is Kawada getting donked on his neck twice on really, really scary German Suplexes. By the time Misawa brought him back up for the Tiger Suplex, he was out on his feet. Pinfall in an extremely good match that I haven't really talked all too much about. I, once again, blame the previous matches rabid excitement for the dulling of my expectations.
****1/4

Man, I hope the final match on this disc can wake me up and get my spirits high again.

8.31.1993
"Dr. Death" Steve Williams vs Kenta Kobashi
 OH MAN I NEEDED THIS. If you've never seen this match, I linked the match above. go watch it now, this post will definitely be here when you come back.
You could tell right away from the immediate hyper aggressive lockup that this match was going to be meaty. I was pumped. Surprisingly, Kenta took over early, working him over for the first stretch of the match. It was weird, mostly because I was expecting Steve Williams to at least try and steamroll Kobashi.

But then.

Kobashi was beating on Dr. Death and he starts...kinda running in place. Kenta pummels him again, Dr. Death is dancing more.
He's firing up.
You made him angry.
You. Dumb. Motherfucker.
Steve Williams is fucking done with this bullshit now. He picked up Kobashi in a press slam and dropped him outside the ring. Not slammed him outside of the ring. The mad bastard faced away from the ring ropes and just let his opponent fall from the press. I was amazed and terrified, knowing I would never want to make Steve Williams angry. I have the words "Steve, no, please stop" written twice in a row.
It was about this time, when the match boiled down to the two men trying to hit each other as hard as they could, running corner to corner, that this thought came to my mind.

This was like any New Japan NEVER Openweight title match. Two beefy men hitting each other with their beef and the crowd is going wild. This might get me in trouble with the All Japan fanbase but I don't care, I say it like it is. I'm not saying that it's inherently better than the Misawa/Kawada matches, but it's something that feels familiar, which to me makes it some shade of evergreen.

Kobashi hit a moonsault (and it was fucking beautiful by the way) for a two from the referee and this audience is screaming. He worked over Dr. Death a little more before going for a second moonsault, but this time Williams got the knees up to collapse an Orange Rib cage. Doctor Bomb attempt lead to a really weird moment of Kenta...falling back first...on Williams? He got a two count but that didn't end the match. No, there was a worse fate to suffer for young (27) Kobashi.

Earlier in the match, Kobashi had countered a football tackle by putting Steve Williams in a sleeper hold, leading to a tense period where Williams might have been choked out. Kenta tried this again, but Steve wasn't a fool, he kept his momentum from running to gloriously get in position for the first of three brutal, amazing Backdrop Drivers. It was so amazing, I had to make a gif of it.

That's horrifying. But Kobashi is healthy and well today so I'll continue to watch this on repeat.
Two more Backdrop Drivers end it. I'm gassed.I need a cigar.
*****

Well, that was the end of Disc One. I can't see how the rest of these matches can get any better, but I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised

Otaku Kohai: Failing to Summerize my Feelings for Cowboy Bebop

It's a very odd feeling, being overwhelmed with emotions from a piece of media.

Usually for me it's melancholy. It happened to me once I finished the books My Antonia and The Things They Carried. When I finished Tales of Symphonia for the first time I felt it, knowing that the story and the characters I grew to love was over (until Dawn of The New World happened, but that's for another time). I'm feeling it now, less than 48 hours after finishing Cowboy Bebop. I'm left feeling almost haunted by the ghost of this show, that was born and made it's bones when I was 5.

I watched the first handful of episodes when my friend grabbed me in my senior year of college, looked me in the eyes, and said "We're watching Bebop tonight." I knew Bebop existed, but never got around to watching it. After those few episodes that night, I went into hibernation until a few months ago, when I found the show again on Hulu. I powered through half then and finished the back half in the last week. Ever since I finished it, I've been sitting in a daze, mulling over what I just experienced. I hoped that writing put how I felt about the show would help and it did. Is it coherent? Maybe not, but I wanna share it with you anyway, in the hope that if you've never watched this show to give it a chance.

The World
Cowboy Bebop takes place on our Earth...well, sometimes our Earth, but always in our solar system. It takes place in the near future (nearer now in 2020 compared to when the show came out in 1998), across various planets and moons in the solar system. It's a dirty, wild west kind of colonization with pockets of civilized life here and there. But that's not to say that every town feels like the American West. There are several full cities we see in the show, along with the before mentioned ghost town style settlements and near rustic Asian style towns. Everything feels natural to what the future expansion of our race would look like, if a little optimistic on our advancements in space travel.

Plot
The year is 2071, and bounty hunters Spike Spiegl and Jet Black are just trying to make it through the solar system. They do the job, then they get...paid...look there's gonna be a LOT of Firefly references for this and the next two anime I'm planning to watch, so buckle up. Along the way they collect three more members for their Ragtag crew; con Artist Faye Valentine, Eccentric Tech Genius Edward Wong, and Best Boy Corgi Ein.

If you watch the first 6 episodes you'll get everything you'll need to understand the pace, tone, and important bits. One of those six is the first of five truly "important" episodes for the main story of the show, with Spike and his history in the forefront. But I'd argue that the "main story" isn't the reason you watch Cowboy Bebop. You watch for the filler episodes in between. The slice of life, quarry of the day stories that let you see a bit more of the main character's personalities. We're watching them on a journey, which is framed and presented to us as a series of quests (many of which they fail at. I think the team successfully bags 3 bounties in the entire show.) In these episodes we see how every character approaches their problems. Through this, we can see more of what makes these characters who they are, or what happened in their pasts to make them this way. Spike, Jet, and Faye don't just have skeletons in their closet, their closets are catacombs. Except for Edward; she's is the outlier in the main cast, not having a horrid past or actions or hobbies she uses to cope. In this, she easily becomes the most genuine member of the crew that isn't the dog.

The Music between Notes

I had always heard that the most memorable aspect of Cowboy Bebop was the music and the people who had told me that weren't wrong. While the music itself is great and can be listened to on it's own  (I can't stop listening to Real Folk Blues and Space Lion), the beauty comes from how the music is used. Fight scenes are set in beat to the music playing. Characters are always walking and driving in step with music. Much like Baby Driver, it feels like the show's driven by the jazz and blues that plays, as opposed to the music accenting the show. Without the music, the show is a skeleton, both aesthetically and emotionally. This was the first time that I ever intentionally let the credits of a show roll, just to listen to Real Folk Blues again. I can't understand the lyrics, but in a way I don't have to. The importance of the piece comes in the contrast from Tank!, the intro that I also let play all 26 times. Tank! promises a romp through a wacky sci-fi world, paralleling how our protagonists outwardly project their personalities. Real Folk Blues, then, is the reflection of their cores; the losses and pain they feel. Beyond being good pieces on their own, like how the music is used in the show, the intro and outro of the show reflect the overarching theme of the show, the pain and demons we feel every day (Real Folk) and what we do to compensate and carry on daily (Tank!)

Conclusion
 I can't recommend Cowboy Bebop just as an anime to anime fans. I would sincerely recommend this show to anyone who wants to watch a show with great characters, soundtrack, and action. I'm so glad that I watched it and honestly want to go back and watch it again right now, But, I need to move forward with my progress through this wacky world called anime. Next time you read an edition of Otaku Kohai, we'll still be in the 90s and still in space. Not sure which show yet, but that's where we'll end up.