I have been following Cowboy Bebop on Netflix (the anime, not the spinoff TV series). The opening is a visual and musical marvel; I’m enthralled by it.
The show’s soundtrack is a unique blend of jazz (big band hard bop, mainly), blues, and a bit of rock, which I’ve never seen before in anime and probably in movies. Even episode titles pay tribute to jazz, blues and rock tracks. We have “Valtz for Venus,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “My Funny Valentine,” and stuff like that. Adorable. Episodes may appear rambling and superficial at first glance, but they are far from that. They strike a perfect balance between comedy and thought-provoking, often philosophical themes.
Last night’s episode, “Jamming with Edward”, struck me as prescient. In 2071, Earth is surrounded by a mountain of scrap metal (mostly decommissioned satellites and wreckage from missiles, probes, and spaceships). Space junk was not a theme in 1998 when the anime was conceived, or was it? And there’s this AI, a clear tribute to HAL 9000, left active on a derelict satellite, feeling lonely, misunderstood, and abandoned. It is tremendously timely, resonating with the issues we face today.
I bought the whole Space Cowboy soundtrack. It’s the bomb.