- Ok so based off the results of the poll from last week I finally decided to sit down and watch the entirety of Cowboy Bebop for the first time in one sitting as my 500th anime “completed”, and honestly guys, let’s just get this out of the way, I didn’t really like the show to be completely honest. 😉

The reason is honestly mostly a personal thing which is that I personally do not like shows that do this sort of anthologize approach to the episodes, where each episode doesn’t necessarily have to be watched in the order they are presented in. I mean there are of course these sorts of (I guess you can call them) “Story Cap Episode” that indicate a certain place on the timeline, but the vast majority of episodes can be watched in whatever order you see fit, as long as they’re in the same “time bracket”. In this way, Cowboy Bebop has a lot of similarities with shows like Kio’s Journey, Samurai Champloo, and Michiko & Hatchin, which are other shows that took this approach to storytelling where all the episodes don’t tell a “specific story”.

Instead, they focus more on the journey with our main characters, rather than on a specific plotline, and just like those shows I didn’t really like Cowboy Bebop for that exact reason. For me, this type of storytelling doesn’t really facilitate any building of investment in what the characters do in the story. Like sure the main characters in Cowboy Bebop are interesting enough characters on their own, but I didn’t actually get invested in any of their storylines. The fact that (minor Attack on Titan spoiler here) I felt more torn up when Aaron’s mom dies in the first episode of AOT, then I did when Spike dies on the last episode of this anime, shows me that I didn’t really give any shits about his story at all. Which is why I have absolutely no problem spoiling his ending casually like that, because really this show isn't about the ending, you knowing that he dies at the end doesn't change all the other stuff that happens, it doesn't change the journey that you go on with these characters, and that is because the only way for you to actually spoil this show, is it for me to tell you about every single one of the journey these characters go on, which at that point you probably should just watch the show.

- I also don’t understand what is the message this show if trying to say is, like at first, I thought it was “your past does not define you, unless you let it, so keep moving forward” since this was evident in Jet’s and Faye’s stories, since after they understand and came to terms with their past they are now ready to move forward. But then they end with spike living in the past not moving forward. Additionally, they really try to push home the fact that Spike needs to get over his past, but they don’t spend any time developing the central figure in his past (Vicious and Julia), which just makes his storyline even more hollow for me as the audience, since I don’t understand any of his back story.

But other than this stuff, I actually did like a lot of the elements within the show, like the aesthetic of the world and certain individual characters in the story, with me ironically carrying the most about the characters that had the least amount of screen time like Ed and Ein (the dog), Because I was actually more torn up when they left the crew, then when Spike died, because I was actually invested in their stories and I understood where they were coming from. In fact, you know now that I’m starting to think about it, my real main issue with the show is Spike Spiegel as the main character since I felt much more invested in literally every other member of the crew’s story then Spike’s.

But other than him, the way that they portrayed a vivid intergalactic human society was interesting to me, because they never really explained any details before they became relevant to the story. Everything just came up organically depending on the focus of each episode which to me made the world feel more alive while watching the show. Also, I just have to mention the amazing soundtrack this show has, because every single moment in this show has the perfect background track to complement what is going on in each scene. It really just blows my mind, not only the variety of tracks, but the implementation of the tracks when watching this story unfold👏👏👏

- So there you guys go, in the end, I would personally rate Cowboy Bebop an 80/100 because it wasn’t a bad show by any means, it just wasn’t the masterpiece to me that it is to so many others. So what do you guys think of Cowboy Bebop let me know in the comments, and thank you for reading this far into the review I appreciate it😊