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.