The episodes in Cowboy Bebop are not driven by a central plot, but rather by character development and world building. The main thread captures the viewer’s interest and curiosity enough to keep going, but the beauty is in the characters themselves.
notes
- The jazz and blues soundtrack is so genius because it’s funky and lonely at the same time
- Found family
- Escaping from the past
- An exploration of solitude within vast and lonely space
structure
The structure as a collection of stories and moments in a non-linear format reminds me of Border State, while the central theme of Julia that constantly get teased reminds me of The Door.
quotes and thoughts
Episode 22: Cowboy Funk explores the meaningless of capitalism and colonization through the villain’s motives
23.18:00: Why do you think people believe in God? It’s because they want to. It’s not easy living in this rotten world. There is nothing certain when living on this world. Got it? God didn’t create humans. Humans created God.
23:19:15: Television controls people using information and steals their sense of reality.
Episode 23: Brain Scratch: Londes is the head of a cult focused on digitizing the soul and abandoning the human body. As the Bebop crew investigates, they find that Londes does not actually exist. He is merely a figment of a brain-dead hacker’s imagination who wishes for the world to experience reality as he does. Related: Heaven’s Gate
Like Episode 20: Pierrot le Fou, the villains turn out to be children, either mentally or physically. The Pierrot was a victim of human experimentation and regressed to the mental age of a child, while Londes is actually a child who had his life cut short by a tragedy. By creating drastic perspective shifts in these darker episodes, the writers at Sunrise Studio challenge viewer’s perceptions of good and evil, blurring the line between the two. They first create a morally disagreeable character, then turn the narrative on its head to force introspection on morality, society, and the status quo.
24:9:34: -Actually, she’s— -A ghost. Goodbye. Take care.
When Faye meets her friend from her past life, Sally Yung. The loneliness of having no identity, existing as a stranger in the memories of others. Loss of identity.
24:14:07: I finally remembered where I belong … You have someone waiting for you, too. You have somewhere you belong. You should go look for it, too. That’s the best thing, you know.
To realize that only to find it long gone. Irreversible, no going back. Loss and loneliness in the vastness of the universe. Finding meaning and purpose. Is there purpose without identity? What is home? Spike and Jet mourning the loss of their crew mates yet not being able to do anything about it.
25:15:41: Men only think about the past right before their death, as if they were searching frantically for proof they were alive.
Grasping for what was lost in the vast nothingness. They’re together but alone. An anchor, but they’re all drifting.
26:3:10: Everyone has lost sense of where they want to be, just like kites with no strings
26:13:40: I’m not going there to die. I’m going there to see if I really am alive.
Faye lost both her homes one after the other.
26:18:30: - This is… a dream… - Yeah. Just a bad dream…
Spike lives for the past, Julia is the only person keeping him alive.
One eye looking at the past, one at the future. Right eye closed at the end to symbolize closure. Doves for peace and death, liberation. A star goes out.