To be honest, once I got back from Japan, I stopped watching anime. And how strange that was for me. I wanted to go to Japan since I was small. I knew my life would find some sort of profound internal happiness once I ran through the orange arcs of the Fushimi-Inari Shrine, and I did. The feeling of accomplishing the journey of a childhood dream can make you feel full. In gaining a new perspective on myself, I lost interest in anime and, thereafter, I felt somewhat lost in my identity because the medium was such a large part of my life. There were a few shows here and there that would catch my interest, but it largely had felt as if I was no longer compelled to watched it. I was no longer compelled to imagine myself in that world. I had gone to my place of fantasy and realized that it was really real. And, somehow, when your dreams become tangible it gets harder to truly grasp them at the core.
The genre isn’t growing up. I’m not attracted to Ecchi or Isekai; I need mature stories. When I speak on stories with maturity, I am not solely pointing out shows full of grit and angst. There are plenty of shows that can be fun and light-heartedly sweet that resonate with older audiences because they aren’t afraid to delve into adult themes. But that’s not trending in Japan, so we continue to get the same male-centric, sci-fi-harem shows each season. It’s boring. It’s predictable. It’s stagnant. It’s a shame that stories that try to break the mold get lost in the shuffle of the 3 episode rule, low promotion, and the release of dozens of new shows every season. But it doesn’t matter to me, because I had given up on looking long ago. And so life moved on. And that emptiness was replaced with an interest in film and creative direction. But one night, after getting home from a night out, I couldn’t fall asleep and so I turned on my television and I heard “Tank” blast its symphony of horns through the darkness.
Cowboy Bebop changed everything. As a kid, I was always put it in the top five of my favorite anime lists, mostly because of the hype. And because Spike Spiegel is and will always be top-tier husbando material. But, I did like Bebop. Whenever I would catch an episode, I was completely captivated by every frame. The tone and feel of anime made during the 1990s truly blended the best from the classics era while ushering in the endless possibilities we would create and amplify in the new millennium. Bebop is a true masterclass of genre, and a quintessential example of one of the best stories the anime world could offer. And I couldn’t understand any of it.
I hadn’t lived. When I was small, I saw an edgy, slice-of-life action anime in outer space with cool music and a fun cast of misfit characters. I now see Cowboy Bebop now as an existential anthology western whose character’s often flirt with nihilism and love to run away from their past lives. I see the pain of these characters: their hopes, their faults. The story is so full, and I am in love with it. Every Saturday for the next sixteen weeks I woke up at 3:30 in the morning to watch Cowboy Bebop on Adult Swim. There are plenty of torrenting sites I could go to in order to watch this show at a decent hour. I tried a few a couple of weeks into my binge; it wasn’t the same. I liked the ritual of it all: waking up in the middle of the night, connecting the dots in lines of dialogue during the commercial breaks, falling asleep while humming “Real Folk Blues”. It gave me the feeling of watching Dragonball on Funimation before school as a teenager. It reminded me of Friday afternoons in college when my friends and I would gather around the laptop projector and dance to the Death Parade OP before each new episode. It’s at the heart of what made me fall in love with this medium in the first place: familiarity, and community, and compelling stories that not only make me want to explore the world but to discover more of myself.
I have lived in the worlds of modern anime: a fish out of water protagonist trapped in a land that is vaguely familiar yet completely foreign, trying to make a way and survive. I’d lived that plot-line in Paris and in Barcelona and in New York and in Tokyo. I’ve lived this story. Now I see that what I needed were new stories to relate to, new stories to awaken my fantasies and explore the depths of my being. I want it to make me smile again. I want to cry along with a good monologue. I miss having the feels. For now, I’m reaching back in the past to find that familiarity. So far, I’ve revisited Evangelion as well as the Bebop Crew. And I have several decades of material to scour through, but where should I start?
Comment below on some anime you think I may like. Keep in mind that I was born in the early 90s and was raised on Funimation, Aniplex and Toonami.
If you’re reading this, thank you. And good luck.
SYDSUGOI SPEAKS 