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• 5 TOTAL HOURS OF FLASHBACKS
• meandering episodic side-quests that add nothing to the story
• characters who do nothing but have panic attacks right before an important piece of information is about to be revealed
• a villain who's adept at mind-control and getting people to kill themselves...because he has a way with words?
• all attempts to kill villain thwarted by characters that possess an inability to make actual plans and/or a (infuriatingly cliche) psychological or physical inability to kill someone
• sulking protagonist whose ultimate fate remains a point of indifference due to a lack of emotional investment...after a painstaking 74 episodes
• ladyboy anna leibert
• "let's ... postpone this highly anticipated character arc...forever."
• plot armor galore
• "They were listening to our conversation..."
"Who was?"
"They just kept listening to it..."
"Who was listening?"
"They...they wouldn't stop listening..."
"Tell me who!"
"The—the—the..."
• everyone conveniently gathering in the same place, at the same time, all the time, so if you should ever think, "this might end badly", fret not, x and y are on the way, to save the day
• didja know...there's a monster in all of us?
• could've been packed into 40 less episodes

all this to say: when it was good, it was great.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

If there’s anything I was once certain of in life, it was that Cowboy Bebop was overrated garbage. No greater than a 4/10. An episodic failure of a show.

It all began when Watanabe stole my heart with Samurai Champloo. Naturally, I moved onto Bebop afterwards. And what I saw was what I perceived to be a lacklustre, slightly corny, slightly contrived noir tale of a man with a Messiah Complex, one who remains apathetic and unchanged until his demise, with a little bit of your usual "finding family amongst strangers" cheesiness. It didn’t break my heart, it didn’t move me. Julia, Vicious, the syndicate ... — I didn’t care. The hit-or-miss filler episodes — I didn’t care.

What did manage to capture my attention, however, were the larger-than-life characters. I felt drawn to them and their allure — they'd made an indelible impression on me. It was one factor that made me want to give Bebop another chance. The other factor was when I encountered someone on twitter who met Watanabe at a Q&A in Scotland in 2013. He'd confirmed to her that Spike and Faye had been in love.

I was confused, as all I recalled about the show was some soft nihilistic fatalism and the Ghost of Julia, Spike’s star-crossed, long-lost lover that Faye, your hell-raising femme-fatale, could never hold a candle to. Mind you, what do we have, right as Faye returns? “She *was* a piece of me that I’d lost. She *is* the other half I’d always longed for. She’s back.” Dramatic music playing on, Jet and I stumped in confusion. Both eyes, past and present, working in tandem, further indicated by the foil and numerous parallels shown between Julia and Faye. Julia, who we know very little about beyond these parallels, aside from her not reciprocating Spike’s feelings and her being matronly and homely (the latter being something we later come to realize is far from the truth, a contrast to Faye’s appearance vs. inner-workings).

It’s in these sequences and these spoken-riddles that this Goethe quote from the XX Session comes to mind: “Whether it’s a human work, or a natural work, what we have to pay special attention to is its original intent.” It’s in the way, using only his eyes, Spike conveys to Julia a myriad of revelations in their final meeting that tell a comprehensive story (too little too late — i won’t outrun my fate — i can’t let my past harm anyone else).

It was due to this, that I quickly became floored at the characterizations within Bebop. Champloo had introduced a dynamic, amiable cast that one eventually felt bonded to, so I was no stranger to the feeling. Perhaps it’s Watanabe’s typical fashion of introducing us to characters who at times resemble annoying, imprudent, or even innocent children, only to juxtapose it with a cold-blooded killer laying dormant, tones seldom awkwardly clashing. Or the way he individualizes seemingly conventional characters, refusing to stick to politically correct characterizations. Female leads revealing their intrepid natures and intelligence when least expected; dangerous men displaying a strong moral aversion to corruption despite having committed unspeakable and perhaps unforgivable crimes, thereby reminding us that every person is capable of redemption.

Perhaps it was in the contempt the show held for its characters, subjecting them to demoralizing situations and debasing them until we fell in love with them all the more. Or their organic sense of chemistry, one example being the often comedic nature of the dynamic between a headstrong, impetuous Spike and disgruntled Jet. Perhaps it was brought on by the fleeting glimpses at haunting affairs of the past, offered in waves of sequences that formed an amorphous whole, leaving me to my own devices in understanding the characters. Subtextual moments and dialogue became colorful in-turn. I found scrupulous attention to detail, that which had the ability to flip the show on its head entirely.

With such masterful writing, it’s no surprise that the story itself — a tragedy of a doomed fate encountering companionship in its final moments — threatens to bring its viewer to despair. One attempt to help circumvent this is the hints of said demise sprinkled and woven into every single episode leading up to it, imploring for us to recognize the protracted dream where Spike cannot. It fails to do so. Rather, Spike realizes it before many of us are able to, possibly even very early on.

Another attempt at alleviating this despair comes in the form of the Laughing Bull, reminding us not to fear death as it “casts its eye upon us gently and guides us into infinity.” Watanabe and Keiko Nobumoto know a thing or two about spiritual undercurrents that complete the essence of a story, and this manifests graciously: a young man with no future and a distaste for women, children, and pets being given the opportunity to experience all three. A taste of the mundane life he deserved, and surely enough to provide closure?

Spike’s fate was bleak, yes. Inevitable, too. Yet he dies grinning.

“Why did you love me?” Julia asks. Like it was the wrong thing to do. It certainly wasn’t inconsequential. Judging by the way Faye empties her glock in her final scene with Spike, saving the final bullet to herself, you can tell it comes with a price. But it might have been worth it. Bebop, for me, was coming to this realization, amongst more personal ones.