There are quite a few things that everyone should do during their lifetime, be it having pancakes for breakfast, listening to “Symphony No. 9″ by Beethoven, or just enjoying a good chat among friends in a traditional Viennese coffee house. If there’s one anime that one should see, then in my opinion it’s Cowboy Bebop.
Because where else can you find such a great mix of action, comedy, drama, suspense and most of all music, if not in Cowboy Bebop? I’ll go even as far as to say that Cowboy Bebop is close to being the pinnacle of excellence. What makes me say that? Well there are many reasons for that, so I’ll lay them out in this review one by one.
We’ll start with the obvious I guess. Everyone hates anime. Well not everyone, but most just can’t stand it, because of how childish and alien it is. That’s the number one thing that Cowboy Bebop does differently, the quality of writing is much better than that of most western series to begin with, it’s mature and what’s more importantly it’s believable. There are no magic powers, no magic monsters, and no giant robots saving the universe every other day.
Cowboy Bebop is set in the year 2071, mankind has advanced to the level of interplanetary travel within the solar system. But it has also descended into an anarchy on some parts of planets, and even space where there’s no law, and thus enter the modern era cowboys, or as they are officially known, bounty hunters.
The story centers around a group of such bounty hunters. At first it’s only Spike Spiegel, a former member of a crime syndicate who is haunted by his past, and Jet, a former police officer and the current owner of Bebop (their spaceship). Later they are joined by Faye Valentine, who was cryogenically frozen for fifty years and only woken up to be tricked by a man into assuming a debt that was never hers. There’s Edward, an expert computer hacker, who is actually a girl, but likes to call herself Edward, and of course their dog Ein, a Welsh Corgi.
There are 26 episodes, and most of them are self contained stories, but there is an underlying plot to follow. As with other so short series, there’s very little to no room for filler episodes, which means one episode is better than the next one and it just keeps on getting better until it comes to the finale and you are completely blown away by how well it’s done, and how much fun you’ve had watching the series.
One of my favourite things about Cowboy Bebop is the music. It’s one of the most notable elements about Cowboy Bebop. The music is performed by Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts, a band that was assembled just for the purpose of the series. You don’t see that happening that often. The music is almost exclusively free form Jazz and Blues tracks. Now you may think that Jazz and Blues is weird for anime, or any series for that matter, but once you have seen and heard it in action you can’t imagine it being any other way.
My recommendation? If you are only ever going to watch one series of anime, make it Cowboy Bebop. There is just no other anime that really compares to Cowboy Bebop. Cowboy Bebop could be even used as a grading tool to decide how good other anime’s are, if it’s even half as good as Cowboy Bebop then it’s already pretty good. If I had to give the series a rating out of five stars, I’d give it six.
