Cowboy Bebop

Let me paint you a picture of my experience with Cowboy Bebop.

Back in the days when I had an incredibly narrow view of the anime I liked, which was pretty much anything that was like Naruto, I was looking around for another show to watch. I saw the title of this show and was curious enough to check it out. Hated it. Didn’t even get through the first episode. Sad right! I started watching it without reading anything about it and went in with the title as my only clue to what this show might be about. Cowboys (so I was trying to branch out a little haha). Or so my mind was thinking. Instead I get this jazzy sounding theme song which I hated the sound of, an old animation style which I wasn’t digging, and then the whole thing was in space with a bunch of randoms that I chose not to like right from the start.

Wow I was so… I don’t even know the word to describe that. I guess I was at the time looking for something quite specific and this clearly wasn’t it, but I didn’t even give the show a chance. I was just so narrow-minded and so focused of one thing that I was clearly failing to see the other great shows out there. Bear in mind though I was new to this whole anime thing, didn’t like trying new things, and was fairly young. So I fumbled along on my own with no other friends who liked anime or group I had joined to guide or tell me why a show might be great and why I should watch it.

Fast forward to sadly to say only earlier this year when I accidentally started re-watching it. I had forgotten the name of that terrible anime all those years ago and proceeded to find an anime to watch with my brother. He had said he’d kept hearing good things about an older anime from 1998 called Cowboy Bebop and so I said, “right, I’ve heard of it too, let’s give it a go”. As we started watching though things are coming back to me and I realize this was the same show I had rejected so quickly. We really enjoyed it for being different to other things and we loved the jazzy feel. The characters were all different and interesting and the animation was great. Weird how tastes can change like that, but if they didn’t I think that would be tragic in some ways.

The story revolves around a group of bounty hunters who seem to be struggling to make ends meet as they go about their lives. We begin the series with just Spike and his friend and pilot Jet with their dog Ein. Over the course of a few episodes they add to their number and include Faye, who has a bounty on her head and is wanted for grand theft, and Ed, the child hacker prodigy from Earth that they pick up. They anime simply follows them along as they find criminals to get the bounty’s for, but also they seem to be running from their own pasts as well, or rather simply trying to ignore them for the most part.

Cowboy Bebop is weird in the sense that there IS an overarching plot happening but it’s broken up by so many episodes. I wouldn’t consider them fillers as such but are definitely their own little stories and don’t really progress any plot elements really. The overall story isn’t one I really want to talk about because it seems the show wants to feed you information as you watch so telling you too much would ruin the experience for you I feel.

With character development and the development of the plot though I had wished they would have done more. When a few of the episodes touched on the pasts of the crew members I really wished they had gone into things more, or continued the information giving over more episodes. I felt that the overall plot definitely needed more to it. I wasn’t as gripped by it as I wanted to be, which was a shame since I felt that they were drip-feeding you information that makes you feel that the big reveal will be something gasp worthy. I saw some comments and reviews from some people that said the show was annoying how it would jump between serious to silly from episode to episode (and it does) or that the show was just boring and they didn’t get why a lot of people loved it (which I get). This probably just comes down to personal taste for what you love in a show really and that’s totally cool; if we were all the same conversations would be pretty boring to be honest.

Even though it may have been lacking in some areas for me I liked the show for being different to anything else I’d seen. I loved all the main characters distinct personalities which is not usual for me but was nice for a change, and I loved the animation, attention to detail, and the fact that whilst it was set in the future, everything was so rundown and battered, it intrigued me, I liked the look, it was visually pleasing. I love how one expression can sum up a feeling without the bother of words and this show has some awesome expressions.

 

 

My favourite characters were definitely Ed and Ein’s relationship. Ed is just such a wacko character and was definitely entertaining all on her own I just couldn’t get enough of her antics which just don’t make sense sometimes haha.

So if you would like to give Cowboy Bebop a go. You’ll be following a group of bounty hunters through some wacky adventures and some serious moments too. I found this to be an enjoyable watch and loved many things about it despite what I wanted to see more of.

Enjoy