See you, space cowboy...

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The best TV shows in the world, either for drama, history, comedy, dramatic tragedy, historical-comical-sitting-room-tragedy, are individable, multidimensional, poems unlimited. I’m paraphrasing Shakespeare, Hamlet 2.2.391-96, to be more precise. And now I’m going to talk about a Japanese animated series that is both science fiction and cowboy Western, cowboy Western and black comedy, black comedy and epic tragedy. And because of all that, not really Japanese, at all...

The show is more than a decade old and goes by the name of ‘Cowboy Bebop’. It is a truly post-modern show. But not in the tired “Scream,” or “Family Guy” sense of self-awareness, but in its playfulness to mix genres and to blur boundaries. On the most basic level, it’s a ‘Space-western. But Bebop doesn’t stop there. It also adds dashes of film noir, gothic horror, creature-feature, black comedy, screwball comedy, crime, romance, tragedy, spy action, philosophy, science, spirituality, fatalism, buddy-buddy stories, slapstick humour, parody, and, last but not least, martial arts/Martian action a la Jet Li, Jackie Chan AND The Departed...

Each episode is different from the last, and I mean really different, brilliantly, refreshingly, surprisingly, shockingly inescapably awesomely different! Were it not for the recurring characters, it would be hard to believe that the brightly-coloured blaxploitation parody “Mushroom Samba” could possibly come from the same series as the bleakly violent “Real Folk Blues”.

And then there is the music. Ah, the music! All its story-telling genius fades away into stupor, insignificance compared to the show’s soundtrack. Tribal drums and chants give way to electronic pulses that give way to jazz sax and trumpets that give way to rock guitars that give way to blues harmonicas... composer Yoko Kanno faultlessly turns her hand to an eclectc selection of genres and instruments, ably backed up by her band, “Seatbelts”. To give you a taste, here’s the show’s opening, featuring the song, ‘Tank!’:

I never was a big fan of Jazz or Blues really. My previous encounters with the genre led me to make such hasty judgments as ‘It’s all so depressing, chaotic, disoriented and musically unrefined’. Bebop re-educated me in this respect. After downloading the discography, which consists of 7 impressive albums, 89 eclectic, equally surprising songs and tunes, I had to revise my prejudice towards the entire genre. A personal favourite, though it was incredibly hard to choose:

Ah what the heck, I couldn’t decide after all...

But that's not half the score. Cowboy Bebop’s art direction centres not only around American music and counterculture, especially the beat and jazz movements of the 1940s-60s, but also the early rock era of the 1950s-70s, which Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts successfully recreate. Every episode, or ‘session’ follows a different musical theme, and the episode titles are borrowed from notable album or song names (i.e. “Sympathy for the Devil”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Honky Tonk Women”, “My Funny Valentine”) or make use of a genre name (“Mushroom Samba”, “Heavy Metal Queen”). What this boils down to? A collection of brilliant songs overflowing with musical nostalgia. Enough talk. Now for some listening.

And last but not least, a taste of my personal favourites:

That's not the full song, by the way, which you can also find on YouTube etc.

See you, space cowboy...