The Enduring Legacy
To quote Alex Suskind of The Atlantic in an article about Cowboy Bebop and its enduring legacy, the cultural encounters in the series have influenced the last decade plus. Watanabe pulls all into space-age cowboy orbit with a Tarantino vibe. Straight but with blood, it flowed out of every wound, like a boundless geyser. The series compares critically Western cultural spaces but has inspired many of America’s subcultures and medians without borders.
Culturally, it is a legendary anime from Watanabe. The wild whiskey bender all night talked as if each character were acting as background extras in Polanski’s Chinatown. In the end, the series features so much influence across the series. Nods to other famous works are almost impossible for people to trace. Like Leone in a space suit or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in an automatic weapon, viewers around the world were quick to notice a sensitivity.
The sensibilities are characteristically from its storytelling about a bounty ship, hovering in space in the year 2071. In short, titles like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Mobile Suit Gundam Wing manage to ring the bells of American culture. If the audience doesn’t have a particular interest in futuristic Japanese animated television shows, then Cowboy Bebop is evocative in itself. It is not an awkward translation of the original title.
However, it becomes the original title hinting that the series stands out from all dimensional fortresses. Neon and clothing moving outside witnessed, for the first time in 1997, the amalgamation’s imagery of cultures from diverse territories.
The Pioneer of Anime
Behind the core of an influence, Cowboy Bebop is stories in a central theme as well as a story. The philosophical theme concerns the central character and main plot of all of the characters. In the setting, the series is one of the anime that its generation loves. Apart from being a pioneer in the anime world, the multidimensional yet unique plots, stories, and characters have captivated generations of anime lovers.
It is an example of the difference between 90s anime and modern anime. However, in the past, it serves as a reminder of how things were when anime was, ironically, still genre-specific in the realm of entertainment. The plot of the series in almost every episode has a different story in the main arc through the lens of the protagonist. The trait is cheap, cruel, but tired. The protagonist plays the role of a crime fighter.
However, he always has situations involving theft, corruption, and various other crimes in the galaxy each character inhabits. The tasks each character takes on make the heroes question their moral stance on issues. The issues related to the target that each character hunts to catch as well as the life of each character. In the next episode, the heroes will face ghosts from past complexities.
It describes a progression into such a series to help the audience deal with the elements and core of the series as a whole.
Jazz and the Core Material
Here’s the thing, Cowboy Bebop is a boring and stale series. However, it was intended to be it. The series makes it tiring but interesting at the same time for others. In consciousness, there is a gem in every layer. In the first place, it is very difficult to describe how the series tells a story whether using a non-linear narrative, a slice of life, or an anthology. Broadly speaking, the storytelling style of the series is unconventional.
Watanabe uses a jazz style, hence the title, taking inspiration from its namesake. It describes a fast tempo, complex chord progressions, and fast key changes. Improvisation and instrumental are also the main basis of the combination of harmonic structures to melodies and references to the use of scales. Like jazz music, the pattern characterizes the series, haphazardly. Each episode or session acts like a mini-movie with its plot.
It jumps from one to the next, only for a fine line to connect the narrative chain as a whole. For example, an audience can watch episode one and skip the next three episodes. It instead moves from all points, just like Tarantino’s style of storytelling where he likes to tell stories without relying on structural aspects. Simply put, the core material is the same but the glass coating is different.
For modern audiences, it is hard to follow the sequence of the series especially when modern audiences are as well accustomed to the storytelling style of modern media. On the other hand, the series encourages its audience to proceed “slowly.” It takes pauses between narrations, enjoying each one’s independence until the resolution lets it show.
You’re Gonna Carry That Weight
As the audience walks through Cowboy Bebop, it contemplates its fixation with the past. Among all philosophical concepts, the coincidence of relevance is eternal repetition. The series takes reference titles from all mediums, whether film or music. For example, at the end of each episode, the series connects a closing sentence, reading You’re Gonna Carry That Weight. It takes a reference from the song The Beatles.
In a blank interpretation, it describes each character being in solitude. Each character reflects a concept of living only once but not counting many or more. There will be no novelty in but every joy, thought, pain or lust must return to every similarity in order. Does every character want everything, both Spike and Faye, one more time and more? The character remains in the action of each role, as the greatest burden, nor yearns for nothing more than eternal matter.
In one case, Spike faces his past due to destiny. It is the opposite of correcting or trying mistakes until it finds their past. He did everything to be able to run. However, his sin always pursued him for years. At the last moment, he understands how he will end up at the point where he can’t go back. Each action determines his remaining life and has no point of no return.
Breaking the Cycle
Simply, a perpetual relapse like Spike naturally becomes the idea that the universe will happen in the same way. For an indefinite period, the repeated repetition of life exposes Spike to a situation that he cannot escape it. Therefore, that is why such points never meet, as the series does its storytelling without structure. Each episode only acts as a certain variation. Each character just goes through the same day, over and over, but escapes each character’s past with new distractions.
Each episode becomes another rehash of the character’s refusal to face the past. It traps every character in a constant sense of existential ennui. Such a pattern continues until the end of the series. Each character begins to accept each fate to take a step in breaking a cycle. The character in the last moment decides to “carry the weight.” Less than a linear path to a goal, the series turns into a presentation of life.
Beyond the fog, the sad reality of the story is that every character is lost in the cosmos without any justification. However, the world in the series from interplanetary raiders to its spaceships ambiguously has a place with no choice. Yet, it becomes a place where the audience can always revisit it.
A Narration of Reference
Overall, Cowboy Bebop remains a masterpiece of the Japanese imagination. Like many of its respectable forms, it tends to be taken seriously. While the series represents how humans find nothingness or a purpose other than survival, then the bond that is it forms a stream of existential similarities. Each character will always experience existential similarity in the first place.
It goes through a mixed style beyond cool, with jokes as well as sharp dialogue. The mix of aesthetic influences is rich, leaving fans delighted in discovering expressionism. The expression is a narration about metaphysics, how individuals overcome or examine each character, especially protracted melancholia. In the latter area, it has become a hallmark of visual presentation regardless of more than 20 years.
Of course, the audience sees the new stuff and it is very pretty. However, the audience will never complain because they have to see the series as well. Originally, it saw a reference without having to act as another artist to produce a trademark of its own.
Bibliography
- Keane, B. (2020). Cowboy Bebop: A Philosophical Interpretation. Daydreams Manifesting.
- Marshall, C. (2017). The Existential Philosophy of Cowboy Bebop, the Cult Japanese Anime Series, Explored in a Thoughtful Video Essay. Open Culture.
- Suskind, A. (2014). Asteroid Blues: The Lasting Legacy of Cowboy Bebop. The Atlantic.
