Cowboy Bebop’s idiosyncratic story-telling and cool style impressed me enough that I went looking for other well-regarded anime to watch. Neon Genesis Evangelion was widely praised, so I picked up the Blu-ray set.

I had thought Faye Valentine’s outfit in Cowboy Bebop was crass but it’s got nothing on the obsession with boobs and general sexism in Evangelion. Yes, the protagonist, Shinji, is a fourteen-year-old boy, but there is no reason the show itself needs to follow his pubescent gaze so slavishly. This mistake is part of the wider problem of the series: following his teenage desires and angst is just not that compelling after a while. By the latter half of the series I had had enough of Shinji and wanted him and the series to grow up; watching him to continue to yell and sob time after time became irritating rather than profound.

The original TV series ending (not the one in End of Evangelion) weren’t great episodes, feeling like heavy-handed psychoanalysis, but they made sense for a show that was ostensibly about giant mechs but really about the mental struggles of their teenage pilots. The film ending added bombs and bombast but doesn’t really change the fundamental direction of the story. It does have more of Shinji yelling and sobbing, if that is your thing.

On the more positive side, the visual designs of the Angels and the Evas are wonderfully weird, and the music is memorable (the “Decisive Battle” drum theme tribute to John Barry’s 007 scores being my favourite). ★★★☆☆

I haven’t watched much anime (bar Akira in the 90s and various Miyazaki) so never tried to get hold of Cowboy Bebop. Its name has kept popping up through the years, though, so I thought I should make the effort to go beyond my natural inclinations and pick up the boxset of the series (together with the slightly later film).

The bad: Faye Valentine’s physical appearance and outfit are stupidly sexist. Child-genius Ed can be annoying (but did grow on me as the series progressed).

The good: it’s stylish through and through in design, animation, and editing. The music–jazzy with a hint of Vangelis at moments–is superb. The stories are a delightfully weird fusion of elements from different genres (science-fiction, noir, gangster) and are never predictable. The characters’ backstories are gradually revealed as we go, and deepen our understanding of why they have become the oddities they are. The show even has ending that completes the narrative in satisfying way.

If you haven’t seen this, put your prejudices about anime to the side and watch a few episodes. It’s a treasure. ★★★★★

(created by Hou Hongliang 侯鸿亮) This time-loop TV series was based on an online novel by Qidaojun 祈祷君. The gradual reveal of the mystery has some suprises, but the lead characters (played by Zhao Jinmai 赵今麦 and Bai Jingting 白敬亭) frustrate with many of their poor decisions. The resolution was also somewhat of a disappointment, with the lead police officer (an otherwise excellent Liu Yijun 刘奕君) failing to show any interest in the lead pairs’ complete knowledge of the bomb plot. ★★★☆☆

(directed by Lin Chun-Yang 林君陽) This ten-part TV drama examines social, legal, and media attitudes towards mental illness in Taiwan. It won a number of prizes at Taiwan’s Golden Bell Awards, and definitely has a better script than most Chinese dramas, even if it does heavily rely on melodramatic coincidence for the first few episodes. The story was inspired by the 2016 killing of a child by a schizophrenic man in Taipei. Mostly in Mandarin, with some other Chinese languages. The Taiwanese blu-ray set has traditional Chinese and English subtitles. ★★★☆☆

(dir. Rebecca Dobbs) This BBC programme, presented by Michael Wood (who made The Story of China in 2016), does a great job explaining the life and poetry of Du Fu 杜甫. Ian McKellen reads the poems beautifully and there are also appearances from Harvard’s Stephen Owen and Oxford’s TaoTao Liu.