Cowboy Bebop is the definition of understanding the assignment. It’s a space western that gets westerns. The good guys are barely scraping by and the bad guys are mostly caught in even rougher circumstances. The protagonists are deliberately flat in a way that makes them crucial actors in other people’s stories. They themselves are stuck. Each of them is trapped at what they think is the end of their own story: Jet betrayed and cut off, Spike marked for death, Faye stranded in the future. They’re alone together.

Also the music is fucking awesome. Late-90s anime benefited tremendously from budgets rising while stuck with ink-on-film production and standard-def broadcasting. Looking any better was really difficult. Sounding better was an easy choice.