How Cowboy Bebop Rekindled My Love For Anime

Anime has always been something that keeps me interested in art. From it's animation, art style, storytelling, character writing, music, and experimentation, I would always find something in the shows I watched fascinating and would often try to incorporate a lot of it's aesthetics into my own artwork. However, at some point in time once I graduated from high school, something changed and at the time I couldn't really explain why, but, I no longer found any kind of joy from the medium of animation that I had loved for most of my life.

It was around early 2015 where I just got this feeling that I was done with anime. For various reasons. If it wasn't the fact that so many shows were starting to be released that it was getting harder to keep up every season, or the fact that the bad side of the community was starting to garner a lot of negative attention on the internet and in the media, then it was most likely the simple truth that I was simply starting to get annoyed with seeing plenty of shows that all had the same cookie cutter characters, art styles, premises, settings, and writing.

Now keep in mind that I am not bashing modern anime here since my high school years mostly revolved around seasonal viewing, but, after experiencing too much of the same thing, I thought it was time to leave anime behind and for about an entire year, right up until early 2016, I exclusively invested my time in movies, video games, live action and Western animated tv series, and most of all, music.

So, it was only after talking with my buddy and fellow YouTuber, Claudio Oyarzo, that I jumped right back into anime and started to truly appreciate the medium and it was all because he recommended that I watch a series which, unfortunately, I was denied the privelage of watching back when I was six years old due to it's violence and mature themes of  existentialism, existential ennui, and loneliness which I wouldn't have understood at that age. The series I am referring to, is none other than the critically acclaimed, Cowboy Bebop.
Cowboy Bebop, for those of you who don't know, is a series that was created and directed by the legendary Shinichiro Watanabe which takes place in the year 2071 where most of humanity now live in cities located on the various planets and moons that inhabit our solar system. This was a result of a stargate accident that blew up a portion of the moon thus rendering the Earth near uninhabitable thanks to constant meteor showers. The story follows a rag tag crew of bounty hunters and their dog who traverse the solar system catching criminals and outlaws for a living each with their own unique pasts and personalities. The show is widely known for it's ability to blend a variety of film and television genres such as noir, sci fi, spaghetti western, and others when it comes to storytelling and has become the blueprint for every space western show that has followed since it first aired on Adult Swim in the West.

So, before I watched this series, I wasn't exactly a fan of 'old' anime. The only anime that came out before the year 2000 that I had ever watched was Neon Genesis Evangelion and even though it is one of my favourite shows of all time, the bad quality of the files that were given to me back then didn't really help in prompting me to watch more older shows, because I'm sure a lot of us younger anime fans have all had a phase when we start getting into anime where if the art and animation isn't the same as what's airing now or fairly recently, we wouldn't actually bother checking it out. Also throw in the fact that old anime has unfortunately garnered this negative reputation of being too weird, abstract, esoteric, or even disturbing and you'll find that merely showing a clip out of context is enough to put most modern anime fans off from watching older shows.
However, from the moment I qued the first episode up for streaming on my computer, I was completely astonished, captivated, and entranced at not only how well the visuals of this show hold up by even today's standards, but, by how maturely the shows plot and character writing was handled which just seemed to reignite that sense of excitement I used to get when watching anime and reminded me of the feelings of wonder and amazement I had experienced when watching shows such as Steins; Gate, Evangelion, Fate/Zero, FMA: Brotherhood, and various other favourites of mine.
Now, when I say I was surprised at how maturely the show was handled, I mean that it was one of those few shows that I had watched, in quite some time, that not only didn't involve some kind of school setting with generic characters, art, plots, and settings, but, was the only show I had watched at the time where the characters were already developed from the start of the show and focused on them trying to escape or forget about their pasts, only for it to catch up to them in some shape or form. That and the fact that I had now been out of school for almost two years meant that me dealing with the responsibilities of being an adult is vastly different to having to only worry about things like a cool self-image and homework. It just made the characters all the more relatable and added to my attachment with the members of the Bebop crew.

This would all be reflected in the characters' different and individual archetypes.
We have Jet, a typical noir hero and a former detective for the ISSP who quit the force after being set up and not wanting to be part of a corrupt system any longer.
Spike, a standard crime drama hero who was once a dangerous hitman for a notorious crime syndicate and is now dealing with past decisions and relationships that still haunt him.
Faye, the dangerous femme fatale, also a common character archetype in most action stories, who has a knack for getting into trouble. She feels out of place and out of time thanks to being cryogenically frozen after an accident left her in a critical condition only to be reawakened years later with no memory of her past and being in a mountain of debt.
Finally we have Ed aka Radical Edward, a standard computer geek character, who likes to act eccentrically and loses herself in the world of cyberspace to forget the fact that she has been left abandoned for most of her life and has wandered from place to place looking for a sense of belonging.
All these characters are your typical protagonists from different genres of movies and tv shows, but, what makes them stand out and feel special is the fact that they have all been placed in the same setting and react differently when presented with a specific situation which really makes the chemistry between them feel all the more special and adds a unique quality to their believeability.
Watching these characters go about their daily routine with Spike and Jet slowly becoming attached to Faye, Ed, and Ein really took me back to when I first watched Steins; Gate and the scenes where Okabe and his friends are just hanging out in the tiny apartment he rented as a lab where they would continue with their daily business, buffoonery and research. Just seeing the characters hang out together and do the activities that they do regularly on a daily basis in between all the adventures always makes me feel like I'm hanging out with these characters as though they were my real life friends and learning more about them through their habits and dialogue. Even though Cowboy Bebop doesn't have the same kind of plot or writing structure as Steins; Gate, the episodic nature of the show only made it feel all the more real for me so that whenever those moments would be interrupted with the episodes that dealt with the characters' pasts, I would get worried that even if they do survive the ordeal, something about their usual adventures would be missing something. Like a puzzle that is missing it's most important piece.
So, whenever I revisit the opening scene in the first episode of Spike and Jet arguing about the lack of beef in their bell peppers and beef. Or those scenes in most episodes where the crew of the Bebop gather to watch a wacky tv show hosted by two presenters announcing the bounties for the day in the lounge area of the ship, it always puts a smile on my face and gives me a warm feeling in my heart. It was these kinds of scene that left me having this deeper appreciation for not only the shows that lack over the top action and drama, but, the more casual scenes in any form of storytelling media which truly flesh out the characters and really helped me in paying closer attention to dialogue in anime more than what I used to.

The main cast of the Bebop crew, according to an interview Watanabe did back in 2003 with the Los Angeles Times, were all meant to either reflect an aspect of his personality or be the complete opposite of himself. They were also designed and written with the intent of paying  homage to the artists or characters that they take influence from and some characters, such as Ed, were based on people who worked on the show which, in this case, was none other than series score composer Yoko Kanno. Watanabe is also a huge movie buff and the way he was able incorporate his inspirations which come from completely different artistic mediums to anime is something that after viewing the show helped me to not only understand why Cowboy Bebop is still viewed and celebrated 20 years after it's original airing, but, made me start to pay more attention to why other shows that are considered classics in the anime community were still popular long after their release and, most importantly, helped me to determine my taste in anime genres.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the main reasons I dropped anime in 2015 was the fact that there were just too many shows airing each season to keep up and I had no time to sit and watch all of them only to either be disappointed or get bored with seeing the same thing.
So, when I realized that Cowboy Bebop was actually the first show I had seen in quite some time that didn't involve teenage high school protagonists or adult characters who followed the sometimes exaggerated and sometime edgy personality tropes of your standard anime, I was immediately reminded of when I watched Ergo Proxy. A show where the characters were written to have real life behavioural traits and habits.

So, all the while I sat watching and absorbing what Cowboy Bebop had to offer, I actually thought to myself 'How could I have forgotten that storytelling in anime could have this ability to make me forget the fact that I was watching an anime?' I don't know how I could have forgotten that good writing in an animated medium such as anime could do that with it's suspension of disbelief, but, it had honestly been quite some time since I saw an anime that was able to convince me that it wasn't anime, that I started to feel confident again when it came to recommending anime to my friends.
The voice acting for this show was something I especially loved since it brought me back to the amazing talent that made my experience with shows such as Death Note and Black Lagoon so memorable and enjoyable. Of course I am referring to the dubs for these shows, but, since Cowboy Bebop is often hailed as the anime with one of the greatest dubs of all time, I can honestly say that when watching the show. I found that a pretty hard claim to argue against.
Like with Black Lagoon and Death Note, I found that each voice actor managed to add a real sense of depth a believeability to their specific character roles and the real highlight had to be Steve Blum as Spike Spiegel.
Blum's deep and buttery voice literally makes Spike's already bad ass persona all the more awesome and is just perfect for this type of character. His performance in this show is definitely one of his best and he really managed to add so many layers to Spike's personality with only subtle, yet, noteable changes to his voice without making his character come off as goofy or out of sorts.
The rest of the cast, especially Melissa Fahn as Ed, were just as great and it was always gratifying to hear how much fun they seemed to be having with their roles.

Before I get on to the next point, I would like to briefly say that whenever the action scenes started taking place, I felt a sense of familiarity about them. It was only much later that I would discover the YouTube channel, The Canipa Effect, who you should totally check out by the way, where I discovered who the man behind the animation of these fight scenes was and that man is none other than the legendary and prolific Yutaka Nakamura. While I still have a lot to learn and research about most animators in the industry, it was after watching Canipa's video that I recognized most of his work in other shows that I had seen prior to Bebop and this prompted me to be a lot more invested in following the people who bring these shows to life as much as I would follow my favourite Western comic book artists and writers back when I was really into Marvel and DC. So, while I won't be breaking down the animation in this particular segment, I will be leaving a link to Canipa's video in the description box below if you are interested in learning more about Nakamura. However, I would like to end this little segment that the fact that most of the animation in Bebop looks as good if not better than most digitally animated shows today in my opinion was not only something that really surprised me, but, really peaked my interest in checking out more anime from the 90s and even the 80s.

Now, what would a video about Cowboy Bebop be without a quick talk about the score. I know there might be some folks in the anime community will think that Kanno is very much overrated at this point in time, but, after hearing her work in the show and on a near daily basis as background music whenever I am working on a project, I could see why so many critics and fans cite this score as the one that not only solidified her as a legendary composer, but, showcased just how flexible she was when it came to her musical range and skill. One just needs to listen to her work on Macross Plus, The Vision Of Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop, and Ghost In The Shell: SAC to see that not only can she compose memorable songs in each genre and style, but, how she is able to somehow make each piece of music she writes convey a certain mood, tone, emotion, and aesthetic.
Now, when I started watching this show, my dad had recently purchased a bunch of Jimmy Smith CDs at a second hand record store, and would play one album every night for at least two whole weeks and for those of you who are unaware, Jimmy Smith was a prolific American jazz musician whose albums would often appear on the Billboard music charts. So, you can almost say that after hearing Kanno's work, it got me a lot more interested in jazz music and I was able to notice a lot more of the unique elements that she brought to the genre and to the blues as well.
According to Kanno, the music was actually the first aspect of the show to be worked on during the show's development and even though she has stated that she was surprised with the way her music was used in certain scenes and would rather have seen them used in other ways, she also stated that she felt that none of them were used 'inappropriately'. All I can say is that despite her statements, I personally believe she still managed to produce a truly epic and emotional masterpiece of composition as do many other fans of this series.

When the final moments of the last episode came to a close and the words 'You're Gonna Carry That Weight' came up, I sat back in my chair for a good ten to fifteen minutes afterwards feeling as though I had just bid farewell to good friends and had come to the end of an exciting journey. One with many ups and downs and one that had me reflecting on my own past and the decisions I had made that had brought me to where I was at that moment. I remember sitting there, saying to myself 'Man, it's been a long time since anime last made me feel this way.' I then recall feeling pumped up and excited to watch anime again. So, low and behold, a day or so after finishing the show, I started binging anime as I used to once again and now that I have dedicated most of my time to talking about anime on the channel, I now always get excited at the prospect that if a show really manages to impress me, I always look forward to having another project to work on. That, my friends, is how Cowboy Bebop rekindled my love for anime.