Cowboy Bebop Saved My Life
Has there ever been an anime more perfect than the Space Opera meets Western meets Jazz solo known as Cowboy Bebop ? Rhetorical question. Obviously the answer is no. I started watching circa September 2, 2001, (merely a week, or so, before Nine-Eleven destroyed my nations uniquely American sense of invincibility) on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim . It was the first anime I ever seriously watched an anime. I think it may have been the first time I ever seriously watched anything . And fuck, the show was cool, in every sense the word was ever meant to evoke and invoke. As an awkward teenage boy, the gunfights, spaceships, and frenetic saxophone, mixed with tantalizing bits of fan service captured my imagination in a way perfectly designed to tap that angst and loneliness so pervasive amongst young White men . (Though, being Jewish, I wonder if I was less predisposed to devolve more towards sappy blog posts instead of violent mass murder.) It touched just the right nerve at just t...