Cowboy Bebop
a review by paradigm
a review by paradigm
You find yourself at a zebra crossing, waiting for the light to turn green so that you can continue to your destination. You're surrounded by all sorts of people with all sorts of social, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Frankly, none of that matters, as you are all connected by fact that you are waiting for the green light in order to advance. In front of you there are 2 men that seem to argue about whether or not the penalty from last night's game should have been given. You get distracted by a group of kids to your left discussing about what card is best against fire type in that game that suddenly got real popular. You try to ignore the music blasting from someone's headphones since you have heard that song a billion times now, so you shift your gaze back to those arguing men, one of whom seems to have given up arguing any further, and you look between the small space that separates them. On the other side of the crossing, you see another crowd of people waiting for the same thing as you. You remember your teacher talking about some old guy's poem, but before you could remember the details, you notice the persons in front of you have started crossing the road. It's green light. Suddenly, you find yourself in the middle of a human wave that's marching towards an equally tremendous wave. Your eyes make contact with a person who you think looks cute, as they too reciprocate the gaze, but you quickly readjust your vision. A woman on a bicycle passes you, headed to the direction from where you came from. As you make your final steps, you reach the other side of the crossing, and are ready to continue to your destination, while completely forgetting each and every single individual that took part in meeting of those two waves, just as none of those individuals will probably remember you for more than three minutes. You take out your phone to check the time and you notice that you'll arrive at your destination with extra time to spare, so you let your mind wonder a bit until a thought comes to you: "What is Cowboy Bebop?"
There are a plethora of reasons for which you can love Cowboy Bebop. The fluid animation that intertwines with the refined art style in order to give the show a more real undertone. The brilliant OST by Yoko Kanno that breaths life into the action on the screen. The lovable cast of characters that will stick in your memory thanks to each and every single one's unique, but easy to recognzie designs. The absolute stellar work of the English voice actors who perfectly captured the characters with their perfectly delivered lines.
There also are a couple of reasons for which you could hate Cowboy Bebop. Perhaps the episodic nature of the anime is not your cup of tea, or it makes you think that nothing of importance happens, thus leading you to believe that they were mostly filler episodes, especially since the characters never quite sit down and discuss what they've gone through. But that would miss the point of the series as a whole and of its' episodic structure. The show uses this structure in order to snapshot moments in our characters' lives, without suggesting how much time has passed between those events, as it could be days, weeks, or even months between the events of each episode. But think about it this way: can you really remember every single day of your life, down to the tinniest of details? I know that I sometimes forget important days, or things that I have done. Furthermore, in a dystopian future where our characters are constantly fighting their pasts, how would it help them if they were to remember any of the journeys they've been through, especially when most of them are tragic. Wouldn't it be better to have some footing in the present, and focus on yourself in that regard?
The other part of the show that can be annoying to sit through is Edward herself. I won't lie, I, too, disliked Ed, as she was merely an annoying comic-relief. But that was me missing the importance of her character to the story. In a world where everyone tries to distract themselves from their struggles, Ed comes in as a beam of hope, as her idiosyncratic way of carrying herself relieves the adult characters of the show, as they connect to their inner child that always views the world with rose-tinted glasses.The jarring contrasts between the tragically violent fates of Cowboy Bebop, and Ed's annoying actions fits perfectly in a world that is so brimming with all sorts of noises and colours. You need a jarring contrast in order to realise that life is not always that terrible.
Cowboy Bebop is a story about people always running away from their past, but never truly escaping it. In order to cope, they fill their minds with distractions, so as to not completely go insane. Faye loves her gambling, Ed is a super hacker, Jet tends to his bonsai trees, and Spike… Spike tries to fill the hole in his chest by eating. They do so because they all have been through so many tragic, terrifying, or hopeless situations that if they were to pay attention to other such situations, they would completely lose it. They try and forget about all the nonsense that they come across in their journey, and instead focus on their own lives, because it comes a point in time that they will get tired of helping another old lady being held hostage. Tired of witnessing love ending in tragedy. Tired of the past.
Theft, gun violence, assassinations, corporate pawns, bio-terrorism, space-warping, coups, cults, money laundering, surviving psychotic killers, going to the restroom in the middle of a robbery. All these, and more, come together to form a symphony of noises which reverb throughout the deep silence of space. Whether it's running after a dog on the loose, engaging in high-speed chases, or wrecking havoc in a bar, Cowboy Bebop offers little to no silence in its runtime. The always loud, never stopping noises that the characters stumble across serve to mimic the always-in-motion life that we, the viewers, live every single day. To further illustrate this, think about the scene where a group of people is watching a knock-off version of Tom and Jerry as Spike walks on seemingly uninterested in their viewing experience. The show explores all faucets of life, plays every sound that can be played, and by doing so, it brims with life that goes past any world-building or characterisation that the authors could have written.
Everyone runs away from their past in Cowboy Bebop, as it begins with a couple wanting to leave their current planet and hope for a better future on another planet. As Spike tries to catch them, their spacecraft gets shot to pieces by police, and their dream of a brighter future ends abruptly. So, when Spike returns to the Bebop, all he’s met with are bell peppers and beef, something to plug the hole, something to take his mind away from it all, because ignorance is bliss. Towards the end of the series, there is this very haunting scene that makes me tear up whenever I see how helpless Spike and Jets’ actions are. It’s right after Faye and Ed left the Bebop, and in order to cope with the loneliness, they go back to eating, as they always have. But this time, it doesn’t seem to work. As they gulp down egg, after egg, after egg, in a desperate attempt to take their minds from the lifeless ship, their desperate eating frenzy seems to be a futile struggle to preserve the girls's existence with them. They grew attached, even though they didn’t intend to, so now, the reality of the situation is a hard egg to swallow.
I would say that the story taking place in space is not just because it is cool, but instead it serves to act as an ontological device that speaks to the character's feelings of meaninglessness. After the Earth became a harsh world to live in, Cowboy Bebop's humans set out to colonize and settle out on other planets or moons. As such, space, "the final frontier", no longer consists an obstacle for humanity which is able to start anew on other planets. For example, the couple that wanted to escape the current planet, and head to a new one, where they could start from zero in the vastness of space. Yet, their journey gets cut short as they get shot and killed by the police ships. You can escape to anywhere you want in the vastness of space, yet, in a contradicting fashion, at the same time it still feels that you have no real place to go. The characters are left to aimlessly roam the infinity of space, driven by something that feels right to them, and which more often than not leaves them incapable of reaching their destination. A brother dying as he cares for his blind sister. A frightened kid who forms a fake cult where the members' soul would merge with the internet, all so that he wouldn't be lonely as he wastes his remaining days unable to wake up, in a hospital bed. An assassination attempt that seeks to silence a potential information leak to the public, and many, many other rollercoaster of events. Everyone tries to go about their lives as best they can, but they never succeed, as their plans get thrown in disarray by the same life that they try to make sense of. By that, I mean that Cowboy Bebop doesn't have a definitive answer to question of life. No choice is correct, yet no choice is inherently wrong, the overall message being that you just have to go along with things in life as they come. You may struggle all you want to map out each and every single detail, but there will always be something to mess them up. And that someone is life itself. Therefore, the best thing you could do is to approach life with a stoic, yet open-minded view. Or, as Spike puts it: "Whatever happens, happens."
When one life ends, there will always be someone to mourn it, and most importantly, there will always be someone to carry the memory of that life, to acknowledge their existence. The same rule applies to Cowboy Bebop as Spike dies and the show ends. You went on adventures with him for 26 episodes, so you've grown attached to his snarky comments, martial arts prowess, gun skills, and cool aura, so when it's finally time to say goodbye, you can't help but dread that final gunshot. His death marks the end of his journey in the anime, and yet, simultaneously, his life lives on through each and every single one of us who have watched the anime. We learn about his story, we get hints about his past, things he likes, things he hates, but we never fully get an insight in to his life. In Kantian terminology, we get shown the phenomenon, the thing that we can see, but we never get to experience the noumenon of the idea of "Spike Spiegel", or of "Cowboy Bebop". We get glimpses of his existence, and glimpses of every other character's life, but we never get to understand them. By the end of it all, we are left to carry the memory of everything that happened in these 26 episodes, the memory of each and every single individual we have come across in this journey, the memory of life itself, from the most mundane sides of it, to the most violent, destructive, or lovely aspects of it.
Cowboy Bebop was a bet. A bet that Shinichiro Watanabe made with me, in 1998, almost 23 years before I would even watch the show. Watanabe created a universe full of all sorts of noises, colours, and emotions, and then he let it sit there like a time capsule, waiting for someone - at some time - to open it. The bet consisted of me waiting for the green light at the zebra crossing, where I'm a part of that wave, and thinking about Cowboy Bebop as I head to my destination. I'm not sure that he won, but when I crossed that street, surrounded by all sorts of noises,I felt that he was right about one thing:
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