Few anime have the critical acclaim of Cowboy Bebop. The series earned a legion of dedicated fans due to its atmosphere, deep story, and undeniable cool factor. While praise for the series has generally fallen on its music and story, it can be easy for fans to miss the real reason the end product works so well.
Cowboy Bebop may have been released in 1998, but 27 years later, it’s more clear than ever that there’s one secret to understanding the series and what it’s trying to say. More than just the music, story, and atmosphere separately making the series such a masterpiece, it’s how they work together and inform each other that’s Cowboy Bebop’s true secret to unparalleled success.
Every Element Of Cowboy Bebop Works Together
Cowboy Bebop’s Spike smoking and putting his head back in his ship at night.
Set in the year 2071, Cowboy Bebop has a decidedly retro feel to it. The music, while eclectic, prominently features jazz, blues, and other types of music that weren’t exactly at the forefront of popular culture when Cowboy Bebop released in 1998. The end result ranks among the best anime soundtracks of all time.
Even the series’ intro, the iconic Tank!, is the kind of lyricless big band song that one would associate more with the early 20th century than the latter half of it.
More than just the music, however, the atmosphere and tone of Bebop all feel anachronistic. While Bebop is set in the 2070s and features advanced technologies such as spaceships and warp gates, much of what is featured is grungy and either feels outdated or just canonically is outdated.
Individually, all of these elements would make Cowboy Bebop stand out, but when put together alongside the story, they convey a great deal of information about the series’ world.
Cowboy Bebop Uses Every Element At Its Disposal To Convey Its Themes
Cowboy Bebop is a series about people being incapable of escaping from their past. Spike, Jet, and Faye are all haunted by events that took place long before the series, and much of their arcs derive tension from the trio’s ability to move beyond what happened to them before the series began.
More than just a problem for Spike, Jet, and Faye, however, the atmosphere and music of Bebop show this is a problem much bigger than the protagonists. Crime syndicates that would have looked outdated by 90s standards run rampant throughout the solar system, and the noir feel to everything makes each planet feel like there are tragedies around every corner.
Ironically enough, series creator Shinichiro Watanabe would go with the opposite approach for his Bebop follow-up. Samurai Champloo is all about blowing up tradition and looking forward, as opposed to Bebop’s retrospective attitude. Still, both use similar methods of combining music and anachronism to help convey important themes.
Cowboy Bebop’s thematic cohesion is an invaluable piece of what makes the series so genius and is why it will be remembered for decades to come.
Release Date
1998 – 1999
Network
TV Tokyo, WOWOW Prime
Directors
Yoshiyuki Takei, Ikuro Sato, Hirokazu Yamada
Writers
Keiko Nobumoto, Michiko Yokote, Dai Sato, Sadayuki Murai, Akihiko Inari
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Koichi Yamadera
Spike Spiegel / Ein (voice)
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Unsho Ishizuka
Jet Black (voice)
