<i> Outlaw Star </i>
Thuggish, dimwitted, unsympathetic protagonist Gene Starwind and his gang of undeveloped, unexplored cardboard cutout characters direct from Central Casting are on a quest for a Cosmic McGuffin and a quick buck, not necessarily in that order.
There's an annoying kid sidekick, a shy android girl, an exotic alien catgirl, and a cold-blooded female assassin, and we have no idea where any of them came from or how they came to be adventuring with the oddly named Gene Starwind, who is a jerk and a thug and a bit stupid, if I didn't already mention that.
The alien catgirl is voiced by Yuko Minamura, and her performance is, as always, superb. To paraphrase Paul Tatara, she is so good, and everything else is so bad, that it's a wonder that this show doesn't reject her like an incompatible skin graft.
The show is set in a science-fantasy, space-opera retro-future right out of a 1940s movie serial, complete with evil sorcerers ("Tao Magicians") and space dragons. Unfortunately, vastly more intellectual effort was put into making the background interesting and engaging than went into making any of the characters engaging or creating a plot with breadth and reach to match the universe in which it's set.
This series was released in 1998, and the comparisons with Cowboy Bebop were immediate, unavoidable, and negative. It seems very odd, as both series are exactly the same length--26 episodes--but in CB it feels like far more happened. CB has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Outlaw Star is almost completely episodic in structure, to the point that it does not much matter what order you see the episodes in.
This is not to say that Outlaw Star is completely without merit. Yuko Minamura, typecast once again as the loud, brash, boastful, reckless young warrior maiden, makes the best of an indifferently written role, and some of the comedy bits are worthy of a smirk or a chuckle. The animation is above average, if not remotely up to Cowboy Bebop's standard.
Ultimately, though, it's all a waste. The moments of genuine amusement or tension are few and far between, especially in the second half of the series, when watching each episode begins to feel like work. The hero is loathsome, most of the characters, both friendly and hostile, are ciphers, and at the end of the day you wonder why you bothered. "Future Hero Next Generation," my ass.