Looking at my article on the live action Cowboy Bebop (Please: Do not watch Netflix’s ‘Cowboy Bebop!’) that, at the time of writing this, was written nearly a year ago. I never noticed how unpassionate I sounded about the original show. To the naked eye, I seemed like I knew exactly what I wanted and what annoyed me, but I think it would have been crucial to point out how much I TRULY loved this show. So I’m going to do exactly that! 

   Cowboy Bebop is an action/adventure animated show, or “anime,” noting its release from Japan. It made its grand debut back in 1998, where it would continue to keep growing more and more as days became months, years, and decades. The article about the Netflix adaptation strongly advised against watching it, but also on Netflix resides the original, to which I encourage anyone with free time to check out. I’ve never heard anyone I show it to say they didn’t like it.

   I don’t feel it’s necessary to review the title considering thousands of people have probably already beat me to it, but I’d like to share my personal experience/connection with it and why.

   I’m a little 2005 baby, so I grew up in the era of when children’s toy companies didn’t quite understand that not all boys wanted their action figures to be puking or farting or just gross in general, or that not all girls wanted to be smothered in beautiful ideologies and pretty shades of pink; it was a hard time! Your grandpa fought in a terrible and trauma-inducing war, I didn’t like the toys I grew up with. Tell me who suffered the most.

   The fact of the matter is that I didn’t understand who the audience for those things were, and I sure as hell was not one of them. I never had many toys because I always gravitated towards video games. I wasn’t really a TV kid and still remain as such, but I was a TV kid for a few years when I was around eight or nine-ish. 

   The year is 2013. I am scrolling through TV channels one chilly Saturday night. I come across a show title that made me laugh so hard that my mom had to come into the other room and tell me to shut up: Cowboy Bebop. I remember almost nothing about the experience beyond that, but clearly it had a big impact on me because I still adore it to this day. 

   Now that you know I grew up with it, you might be wondering what makes this show so great. Well, I can list a few things, one of them being my favorite thing to talk about when the topic of Cowboy Bebop comes up; its soundtrack. The music in this show is just 15 chefs kisses and a first place award trophy. I’ve never been a fan of jazz, (I don’t dislike it, I’m just indifferent to it) but for some reason this mostly jazz composed soundtrack has this spell on me. I recently bought the special “Ein Edition” soundtrack on vinyl that has all of the songs you hear in the show divided up on two LP discs, both of them being colored as white and brown to resemble the corgi in the show, A.K.A Ein. I’m very scared to play them because of the risk of scratching, but it’s fun to put it on once in a while. My favorite tracks on the soundtrack are probably “What Planet Is This.,”  “Cats on Mars,” “Tank!,” “Space Lion,” “Bad Dog No Biscuits,”and “The Real Folk Blues.” I highly recommend listening through it.

   That was the soundtrack, but what about the show itself? Well, it’s uh… pretty alright! Yeah I guess you could say I’m kind of a fan (Obvious sarcasm is obvious). Everything from the animation to the voice acting is just phenomenal. This show made me have such a great appreciation for animation and art in general that I feel like I’ll never be able to be completely against a piece of animation ever again. This show is quite literally the most incredible thing I have watched. I have such a personal connection with it that I could probably recite every single word through every episode.

   In conclusion to a giant rambling about this show, I genuinely think that anyone who watches it will at the very least enjoy their time with it. It’s great fun, super action packed and if the show doesn’t win you over, the soundtrack very much will. Adieu.