cowboy bebop: a story that stands the test of time and space

by Leah Yi, Reporter

Op-Ed, Arts & Entertainment

I have always been fascinated by formative media. That is to say, I am fascinated with the media we consume in our formative years. No matter who you talk to, people always discuss the games, TV shows, books, or movies they experienced in their youth with a sense of reverence. But it can be difficult to return to such media years later. 

We experienced this media when we were arguably at our most vulnerable and least sure of our identity, and it is often something we have clung to in a world of whirling hormones and ambiguous, hard-to-grasp social norms. In this period of vulnerability, we consume media with more sensitivity than we do at any other point in our lives and thus respond more strongly to it. Ask anyone what their favorite PlayStation 1 Final Fantasy installment is, and it will most likely be the one they experienced at the earliest point in their adolescence.

It is often with a little trepidation that I revisit the games and TV shows I watched during this period because it can be a real disappointment to return to one of my favorite series, only to find out that it does not hold up in the cold reality of post-primary years. But sometimes the reverse occurs: we go back to something many years later, not only to find that it stood the test of time, but that it resonates with us even more than before.

I had this experience recently after re-watching one of my favorite anime ever, Cowboy Bebop.

The funny thing is, if you were to ask me why I liked the show three years ago, I do not think I could have explained it very well. On the surface, it is a simple story about a bunch of bounty hunters in space floating from misadventure to misadventure. I get the feeling that I would not have been able to articulate some of the more complicated themes of the show or some of the more subtle feelings I had watching it. Fortunately, however, I am a little older now, and I think I can take a better stab at it. So sit back and relax while I tell you exactly why you should watch Cowboy Bebop.

Cowboy Bebop was produced in 1997 by Studio SunRise, and directed by Shinichirō Watanabe — who was, up until this point, best known for his works on Macross Plus and Mobile Suit Gundam 0083 Stardust Memories. He was joined by his dream team: writer Keido Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, music composer Yoko Kanno, and mechanical art designer Kimitoshi Yamane. I mention each member of the team by name because each was a master in their discipline, and while watching Bebop, it is easy to make out their distinctive fingerprints. Even I, a viewer who generally doesn’t care much about mecha or machine design, have to appreciate the craft and thought that has gone into the animation of even the smallest mechanical objects. This same care can be felt in every part of Bebop, from the beautiful character designs to the moody, atmospheric backgrounds to the utterly fantastic soundtrack, which ranges from flashy, up-tempo jazz to downtrodden blues — all while maintaining a distinctive voice and atmosphere unique to Cowboy Bebop.

Everything in the show works together seamlessly. The direction, animation, and soundtrack are difficult to consider in isolation, giving the series a flow unlike any other I’ve seen. This flow makes following the story of our bounty hunter protagonists — Spike, Jet, and Faye — an utter pleasure. Despite how weighty some of the broader themes of the show are, cruising the galaxy and spending time with these three vagabonds is incredibly fun. There are lively, exciting displays of martial arts prowess; clever and engaging back and forths; and some terrific visual comedy.

Read an interview with Director Watanabe, and you will quickly learn what a total film nerd he is. This could be felt in the subtle nods to American 80s sci-fi and action sequences cinema. Some episodes feature western-infused cowboy funk, while others, like Black Dog Serenade, are hard-boiled police dramas. Whether they are sci-fi, Chinese martial arts, 80s action, or blaxploitation cinema, there is a looseness and vibrancy to each episode, and no two ever feel remotely similar. Just compare the vibrant and fun atmosphere of Mushroom Samba, where the crew spends nearly an entire episode high on mushrooms, to the nightmare-inducing neo-noir horror, Pierrot le Fou, in which Spike tries to track down a dangerous floating psychopath.

As main casts go, the crewmembers of the titular spaceship, the Bebop, are about as likable and charming as they come. Our main protagonist is Spike, a wildly skilled bounty hunter whose chill and often playful demeanor hides a man haunted by his time working as a hitman for a brutal crime syndicate. Next, there’s Jet, a man of principles and the old-fashioned way of doing things, whose commitment to doing what he thinks is right made him leave a corrupt police force to become a bounty hunter. Finally, there’s Faye, a con woman with a penchant for drinking, gambling, and mayhem, who is dealing with the fact that she is essentially alone in the universe. Faye was in a cryogenic accident, meaning she was frozen for several decades and awoke without any knowledge of her own past in a future she did not understand. You may notice a common theme around this triad of lost souls: they are all dealing with loneliness, each, in one way or another, haunted by the events of their past. This is a major theme throughout Cowboy Bebop.

While the crewmembers of the Bebop work well individually, the cast really shines through the dynamic formed between them. I can remember skimming the book Bossypants by Tina Fey, where she talks about creating the characters Jack, Liz, and Tracy from the show 30 Rock. She wanted three characters who, if presented with the same problem, would all come up with entirely different solutions. When you look at the best ensemble casts in fiction, this same pattern appears again and again. Yusuke, Kuwabara, Hiei, or Kurama (the squad in Jojo’s Part 4) would never approach any situation in a remotely similar fashion, and neither do the crewmembers of the Bebop. Positioning characters’ ideas at odds with each other means that each one is eventually forced to justify their ways of doing things, and we learn more about them without ever having to watch forced character exposition dumps. 

A lot of these moments are subtle: when Faye asks Jet why he just does not get reconstructive surgery on his robotic arm, he gets defensive to the point where we know there’s an important story behind his reaction. There is also a surprising amount of subtlety and nuance in the crew of the Bebop. I love the simple scenes of Spike working out or practicing Kung-Fu, Jet tending to his Bonsai plants, or Faye lounging and watching old videotapes in a room. While these scenes don’t directly impact the episode or overall plot, they do convey the idea that these characters lead mostly mundane lives, only briefly punctuated with flashes of excitement — they aren’t just fictional characters hopping from one flashy misadventure to the next.

The final member of the Bebop crew is Ed. I wait until now to bring her up because she contrasts so heavily with every other character in the show. A young hacker savant, Ed joins the crew of the Bebop in episode nine, and not only does she not have a past she is trying to run from, but she also is not an adult. Life has not taken its toll on her in the same way it has on Spike and the others, and she still views the world with enthusiasm and fascination. She provides a lot of comic relief for the show, but leaving her character at that would be to misunderstand her vital place within the group. While her computer skills are indeed useful, even more important is the way she becomes a replacement for what all the other crewmembers have lost: their carefree youth. Her role is crucial in a show that focuses on characters’ journeys to discover their pasts.

What strikes me most about Cowboy Bebop’s story is how it is made for older people — not in the sense that the show has gratuitous violence or large amounts of sexual content (it does not), but in the sense that Cowboy Bebop is distinctly about being an adult. Whereas a lot of other anime start at the beginning of a character’s narrative arc (a path that will lead them along the road of self-discovery), our characters here have already been through their arcs by the time episode one starts. All the members of the Bebop crew have lived significant lives up until this point. This is not a group of characters coming of age and discovering who they are, but instead three jaded adults who are all, in their own way, trying to escape those same discoverings of themselves. If you rewind just a couple of years, the story would be much simpler. The mafia hitman fell in love with the wrong person. The last clean police officer fought back against a corrupt system. A woman with amnesia tried to figure out her past. Instead, all those events are distant in the rearview mirrors of our characters’ lives, and the fact that we are introduced to our characters in this later stage reveals a lot about the themes of adulthood in Cowboy Bebop.

Another aspect of Cowboy Bebop that is hugely appealing is its unique vision of a dystopian future. Set in the year 2071, after the Earth has suffered a string of massive catastrophes (including an astral gate explosion that destroyed a large portion of the moon), humanity has scattered across the galaxy, settling on Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Ganymede. There are a lot of small touches that make this world so alive. First of all, the world has its own media. There are a number of shows within shows — for example, in one episode we see a knockoff Tom and Jerry show, and in another, we see a silly bounty series that Spike and the rest of the crew get their information from.

You can also see this in all the unusual and inventive technology. I don’t just mean the impressively drawn spaceships, but everything from the facial recognition software used by Spike and the crew to the mechanized ashtrays in casinos. Every new environment showcases some reimagining of modern technology, giving Cowboy Bebop the feeling of being set in a universe within our own, but at the same time alienated from it and unique. Further, Cowboy Bebop’s interpretation of the future lacks any strong overarching governmental system. Rather, all we see are destroyed remnants of human culture preserved in a million different galactic pockets, meaning that each person within Cowboy Bebop’s universe feels more tied to their own creed rather than a larger whole.

This results in a diverse cast of supporting characters coming from every social, racial, and religious background imaginable, expressing the idea that no one in Bebop’s world has a solid place within it. Just like Faye, Jet, and Spike, they are all drifting through the universe — and one of the core joys of the show is experiencing these different stories, as our protagonists cross paths with various unique individuals. Some are good people who have just had some extremely tough breaks, each highly memorable in their own right because of their utterly stunning character designs. The vast diversity in appearances among members of the cast is incredible. The creators of Cowboy Bebop are unafraid to include characters from every walk of life, allow characters to age, and even make characters look unattractive. Their stories run the gambit from whimsical and entertaining, like the crew’s encounter with Cowboy Andy, to utterly crushing emotionally, like when Jet realizes that the new bounty target is the lover of his ex-girlfriend Elisa, whom he never got over.

While each episode introduces a host of new faces and characters, once the episode is over we never see them again, like a ship passing by and disappearing into the night. Spike, Jet, and Faye meet all kinds of people with different stories, painting a portrait of a universe filled with countless people, each with their own unique narrative and only a fraction of which we encounter. But this variety brings a certain sadness with it as well—Spike, Jet, and Faye can only get so involved in a person’s life before they have to move on.

Not only do the characters stand out: the show itself is visually incredible in a way that is a little more subtle than most modern anime — after all, Bebop was produced in a period before digital compositing was common in the industry. Digital compositing is the process of combining character animations with their backgrounds and then adding all the lighting, atmosphere, and environmental effects that make the end product look as finished as possible. Next to the digitization of hand-drawn animation, digital compositing is probably the biggest advance in the industry in the last ten years. 

Many shows that were made before digital compositing was widespread tend to have a simpler, flatter look, at least in terms of lighting effects. Cowboy Bebop is one of these shows. This means that at first glance, it might look more basic than any modern project Ufotable has made — but judging by this metric alone can lead one to miss out on the extremely strong points of its production. The show’s true strength lies not in the number of drawings in a scene, but in the quality of each one. No one ever just stands and looks bland. Each character has a unique gesture and feeling in every scene, and more often than not, a character’s posture will tell you more about their inner emotions than their actual dialogue. I could easily see Ed being far more irritating if her animation did not do such a good job of selling her off-beat, idiosyncratic personality. Spike has a laid-back slouch; Faye carries herself differently when she is around people as opposed to when she is alone; Jet has an upright, rigid posture. Every person in the world of Bebop expresses their character through their distinct body language. This, just as much as the terrific voice acting in both English and Japanese, makes the characters believable and tangible.

The color and lighting in Cowboy Bebop are other areas worth mentioning. The members of the crew all have their own distinct color palettes inside the Bebop ship itself, and whenever they go outside there are subtle differences in how their palettes are treated. Ganymede Elegy features somber purples and pinks, while Pierrot le Fou is defined by harsh black shadows. Each location has a different color palette and feel, giving every episode a unique atmosphere, and contributing to the show’s strong overall production. If you want to see how the camera angles, the shot composition, and the music choice all work together beautifully, check out episode five, Ballad of Fallen Angels, in which Spike and his arch-nemesis Vicious face off in a ruined church for the first time. Each element comes together to create one of the most intense and memorable encounters of any show I’ve seen.

In all this time, we haven’t even touched on what many consider to be the core plot of Cowboy Bebop — the conflict between Spike and the series' major villain, Vicious. Vicious is a psychotic criminal mob boss who recently ascended to power after a bloody coup. Out of all the amazing character designs in Bebop, Vicious is perhaps the most visually striking. Tall and lean, his face is often obscured by disheveled gray hair, bathing his deep-set eyes in shadow, and giving his character a subdued but simultaneously wild and unpredictable feel. He is often seen with his unnamed pet cormorant, which, interestingly enough, is said to be the type of bird that Satan took the form of at the top of the Tree of Life to spy on Adam and Eve. This has a dark connotation if you relate this to Vicious and his relationship with Spike and their mutual love interest, Julia. Of the twenty-six episodes of the series, only five of them are dedicated to furthering the Spike-Vicious plotline. These episodes show us a different side of Spike, who disregards all sense of his well-being and runs head-long into suicidal situations to face off against Vicious one more time and finally put his past to rest. However, while these episodes are some of the best and most memorable in the entire show, considering them to be the core plot misses the point of the show as a whole.

Aside from those five episodes, there is a startling similarity with the vast majority of Bebop’s stories: our characters do not learn anything from episode to episode. There is no moral or higher message. Most of the time, our characters will end up in a very similar situation at the end of an episode to where they started. Sure, they see some weird and even tragic things, but neither they nor the plot ever really progresses. This aspect of the show seems odd when you compare it to how most other shows work, but there is a reason for it. Cowboy Bebop is not a story about character progression — it is not a story where our heroes end up better at the end than they do at the start. It is not a show where lessons are learned and victories are earned. It is about all the little scars that life leaves on you, and how in many ways we are all looking for ways to cope. This is why Spike, Jet, and Faye choose to spend time traveling from planet to planet chasing bounties. All the little misadventures, the plot lines that do not go anywhere, and the characters we never see again, are just distractions for the crew of the Bebop — distractions they need from a life that has worn each one of them down individually.

This is why if you ask the twelve-year-old me to explain Cowboy Bebop, I probably would not have been able to. I was not there yet. I had never experienced someone stealing something I bought with my own money. I had never told anyone I did not want to see them anymore. I had not lived that much, and it is only by returning to the series now that I can recognize the complexities in it.

If you have not experienced Cowboy Bebop, then I hope this essay has convinced you to do so. But if you have seen it, especially in your younger years, I want you to return to it with everything you know now and watch as the show transforms into something else entirely. 

Cowboy Bebop is a brilliantly entertaining show. It is exciting, funny, and heart-warming, but it is also a beautifully sad story of loneliness and our inability to ever really move on from our past. In other words, it is a story distinctly about balancing normalcy and adventure in the face of the tragedies we experience as we grapple with our past and future: a message that stands the test of time and maturity. 

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the various authors in this paper do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of Kamiak High School or The Gauntlet.