B!squick
Smash Master
Link to original post: [drupal=3984]The Opening Scene of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie and Why It Makes No Sense[/drupal]
Here's a link to a video containing the scene I'll be referencing. It's right in the beginning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll81cnfFVR8
I know it's called Knockin' on Heaven's Door in the part of the world it came from. You know, the "real" name of the film, but a few things I'd like to point out about that. 1) The director of the show and the movie, Shinichiro Watanabe, has personally admitted that the English voice actors did a better job. I'm inclined to agree and not just because this show was my first time watching "real" anime several years ago on [adult swim] (I don't count Sailor Moon or Card Captors). 2) The English title is shorter.
Anyway, I've seen this movie several times and the other night I randomly realized somethings just don't add up.
Why did they need so many dudes to rob a convenience store? See, generally, or actually, everytime you see video footage of someone robbing a small store, it's almost always one guy. This is a fact because of several reasons. Small stores, knowing even with security cameras and in the case of the one in the movie, a silent alarm, some desperate individual may still try to rob the place. To make sure robbers know it isn't worth their time they clearly post on the door how little money the register has. While this may or may not be 100% accurate since you can never know for sure how much money is in a register without counting it, it's probably not going to be more than $500 dollars if you get really lucky and catch them between shifts. And in this scene we have a grand total of four hoodlums and one laid off security guy. Robbing a small convenience store. For, at best, $500 or so.
Now, while there is obviously a bounty out for these guys, indicating they've hit more than one store, they aren't doing anything as a group that the ring leader with the knowledge on the security could be doing on his own. This is the other reason why you almost never see more than one guy rob a small store. You only NEED one guy. The guy standing outside, making sure that no one interrupts the robbery can easily be replaced by the man at the counter simply turning and pointing the gun. The guys covering the hostages? Wait until the store is empty. If it's so busy that you need two guys to cover the customers and one guy outside to keep watch, it's generally not a good idea to hit that place. Places with lots of people tend to be more likely to have law enforcement than places with fewer people. Furthermore, our establishing outside shots of the store show it to be a pretty deserted part of town, at least at that time of night. So, again, why so many dudes for such a small robbery?
Here's another question: So, you know how to deactivate the silent alarms of the company that laid you off because they forgot to take away the wizardry that allows you to do that sort of thing. Okay. You know four guys who would help you steal as little as a couple hundred dollars and have at least four guns between you. Fine. Why not rob a bank? Granted, I don't how fierce the silent alarm industry is, but there can't be more than one or two other companies that make the things, so I have to presume that at least one bank in the world would happen to use a silent alarm made by the ring leader Renji's company... and they choose to rob a convenience store.
Granted, we learn nothing of anyone's criminal history in this scene, so it is possible that they ran out of banks to rob and had to settle on this convenience store. And we know that they had to have robbed at least one other place of business because our heroes the bounty hunters were after them. They generally don't put out bounties on people before they commit crimes.
But then we run into the same problem as before. If they robbed at least one other place before this one that HAD to have been a bank, why rob a little convenience store at all? Robbing a bank will get you a couple grand at least, why bother taking the risk on a small store for a couple hundred?
My next quip requires a bit of dialog from the movie:
Renji: You know what the world is like? It's like a boiling pot with a soggy stew inside. Nothing in it stands out. It's all the same. One big, pulpy, sloshy, puddle of goop. Yet there is something that's special. You see? That one ingredient that makes it a stew. And do you know what that is?
Scared store clerk: The meat?
Renji: That's what everyone says. The meat. But that same meat could be used for anything. Curry. Goulash. Same ingredients... It's the stew mix that makes it a stew.
Clerk: Stew mix is on aisle 5...
Where was he going with this? What's the point of this analogy? Who knows, because Spike and Jet have a brief exchange about the situation and their plan and when they cut back to the guy and the clerk, he's talking about something else.
Then, when Spike and Jet break up the robbery and start cuffing the bad guys, another one walks out of the bathroom and takes an old woman hostage. Spike wasn't kidding when he said that the guy "takes too long to take a ****." You'll notice that the store clerk and none of the other shoppers mentions, hey, one of the robbers is taking a dump. This can only mean that he was in there before the robbery even started. Otherwise, the people in that store are the most absent minded group of people ever.
Just wanted to get that off my chest. If you like Cowboy Bebop, which is silly because it's the greatest anime of all time, make sure you check out this site full of thoughtful essays about the series and even has a time line of the show.
http://www.absolutetrouble.com/bebopmusings/
Here's a link to a video containing the scene I'll be referencing. It's right in the beginning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll81cnfFVR8
I know it's called Knockin' on Heaven's Door in the part of the world it came from. You know, the "real" name of the film, but a few things I'd like to point out about that. 1) The director of the show and the movie, Shinichiro Watanabe, has personally admitted that the English voice actors did a better job. I'm inclined to agree and not just because this show was my first time watching "real" anime several years ago on [adult swim] (I don't count Sailor Moon or Card Captors). 2) The English title is shorter.
Anyway, I've seen this movie several times and the other night I randomly realized somethings just don't add up.
Why did they need so many dudes to rob a convenience store? See, generally, or actually, everytime you see video footage of someone robbing a small store, it's almost always one guy. This is a fact because of several reasons. Small stores, knowing even with security cameras and in the case of the one in the movie, a silent alarm, some desperate individual may still try to rob the place. To make sure robbers know it isn't worth their time they clearly post on the door how little money the register has. While this may or may not be 100% accurate since you can never know for sure how much money is in a register without counting it, it's probably not going to be more than $500 dollars if you get really lucky and catch them between shifts. And in this scene we have a grand total of four hoodlums and one laid off security guy. Robbing a small convenience store. For, at best, $500 or so.
Now, while there is obviously a bounty out for these guys, indicating they've hit more than one store, they aren't doing anything as a group that the ring leader with the knowledge on the security could be doing on his own. This is the other reason why you almost never see more than one guy rob a small store. You only NEED one guy. The guy standing outside, making sure that no one interrupts the robbery can easily be replaced by the man at the counter simply turning and pointing the gun. The guys covering the hostages? Wait until the store is empty. If it's so busy that you need two guys to cover the customers and one guy outside to keep watch, it's generally not a good idea to hit that place. Places with lots of people tend to be more likely to have law enforcement than places with fewer people. Furthermore, our establishing outside shots of the store show it to be a pretty deserted part of town, at least at that time of night. So, again, why so many dudes for such a small robbery?
Here's another question: So, you know how to deactivate the silent alarms of the company that laid you off because they forgot to take away the wizardry that allows you to do that sort of thing. Okay. You know four guys who would help you steal as little as a couple hundred dollars and have at least four guns between you. Fine. Why not rob a bank? Granted, I don't how fierce the silent alarm industry is, but there can't be more than one or two other companies that make the things, so I have to presume that at least one bank in the world would happen to use a silent alarm made by the ring leader Renji's company... and they choose to rob a convenience store.
Granted, we learn nothing of anyone's criminal history in this scene, so it is possible that they ran out of banks to rob and had to settle on this convenience store. And we know that they had to have robbed at least one other place of business because our heroes the bounty hunters were after them. They generally don't put out bounties on people before they commit crimes.
But then we run into the same problem as before. If they robbed at least one other place before this one that HAD to have been a bank, why rob a little convenience store at all? Robbing a bank will get you a couple grand at least, why bother taking the risk on a small store for a couple hundred?
My next quip requires a bit of dialog from the movie:
Renji: You know what the world is like? It's like a boiling pot with a soggy stew inside. Nothing in it stands out. It's all the same. One big, pulpy, sloshy, puddle of goop. Yet there is something that's special. You see? That one ingredient that makes it a stew. And do you know what that is?
Scared store clerk: The meat?
Renji: That's what everyone says. The meat. But that same meat could be used for anything. Curry. Goulash. Same ingredients... It's the stew mix that makes it a stew.
Clerk: Stew mix is on aisle 5...
Where was he going with this? What's the point of this analogy? Who knows, because Spike and Jet have a brief exchange about the situation and their plan and when they cut back to the guy and the clerk, he's talking about something else.
Then, when Spike and Jet break up the robbery and start cuffing the bad guys, another one walks out of the bathroom and takes an old woman hostage. Spike wasn't kidding when he said that the guy "takes too long to take a ****." You'll notice that the store clerk and none of the other shoppers mentions, hey, one of the robbers is taking a dump. This can only mean that he was in there before the robbery even started. Otherwise, the people in that store are the most absent minded group of people ever.
Just wanted to get that off my chest. If you like Cowboy Bebop, which is silly because it's the greatest anime of all time, make sure you check out this site full of thoughtful essays about the series and even has a time line of the show.
http://www.absolutetrouble.com/bebopmusings/
