Cowboy Bebop - See You Space Cowboy

This'll be a short review, not because there's little to say, but because everything there is to say is extraordinarily similar.

Cowboy Bebop is absolutely extraordinary. It's stylish enough to cruise by on that alone, a surprisingly elegant mix of film noir, western and science fiction that is the closest thing to visual music one can experience. Every single scene drips with atmosphere and with feeling. It's got a broad range, too, naming its episodes appropriately, going everywhere from the head-bumping energy and power of Heavy Metal Queen to the frantic energy of Mushroom Samba and its downbeat, moody and utterly brilliant finale The Real Folk Blues. The animation is consistently gorgeous and elegant. As cliche as it may sound, every frame could be hung up on a wall and admired, but seeing Cowboy Bebop in motion is something else. On its style alone, Cowboy Bebop manages to more than earn its name as the classic it's considered today.

Yet infuriatingly, effortlessly, almost as though showing off, that's not where Cowboy Bebop stops. It's got some of the most brilliant writing I have ever seen: subtle and nuanced, to the point where you won't realize it's there until the build-up that has been accumulating through the entire series finally pays off. Every character, whilst firmly set within the broad archetype they're in, is unique and, most importantly, three-dimensional. Everyone evolves in this show, so slowly it's practically impossible to notice. A ragtag bunch of weirdos slowly form a team, and become inseparable friends. This is done simply. There's no turning point. There's no big scenes where someone gives a speech about how they're friends and they belong together. They simply slowly become this way through spending time together, and we know they have. It's beautiful, and it's far more naturalistic than basically any other film or television I've ever seen.

It's frankly upsetting how great Cowboy Bebop is. It's practically faultless as a show. Yes, there are a couple episodes that don't work that well, and a few character moments that seem out of place. There's bounds to be worse and better bits. The important thing here is that there's nothing that hurts the entire experience. Even its lowest points are better than anything in entire other shows I've watched. Some of the individual pieces may have some flaws, but as the sum of its parts, I wouldn't hesitate to say Cowboy Bebop is flawless.

10/10

Not only my new favourite anime, but my new favourite TV show of all time.

K-On! Appreciation Piece

I don't typically write reviews that are strongly based on the context in which I watch a show. I also don't like ignoring things about a show, whether it be something I like or dislike, when I'm writing a review. However, K-On! has affected me deeply enough, and I can tell that effect is here to stay, that it'd be an injustice not to write something about it, be it to the show itself or to myself in some time, when I'm reminiscing about it. It's currently 0:40 on 10/01/2017, I just finished watching the extra episodes of the second season of K-On!, and am incredibly worried about and tired out from studying for my end of first semester exams for my third and final year of university.

The above is important for two reasons: I want to remember this moment as clearly as possible in future, and I think it's key to understanding how I currently feel about K-On!. Here's a seemingly strange opinion: Right now is the absolute best time for me to have watched K-On!. I say this because the show is not only the exact right tone for my current state of mind, but I also thing I'm uniquely well equipped to identify with the characters.

Before I move on, let me make this clear: This is not a review. I love this show, and I'm going to explain why it had a particularly strong effect on me. Some of this will involve explaining ways in which it's good. That said, basically everything about K-On! is great. It's brilliantly written, features fantastic characters with fantastic voice performances behind them, is really pleasant to look at and has an absolutely rocking soundtrack. I believe it's a great show even without the personal context that lead me to like it so much more. It works and is incredibly clever on so many more levels than what I'm focusing on here. That said, it did hit me particularly hard for personal reasons, so I don't guarantee it'll hit anyone else as hard (though judging from the Internet, it most certainly seems to do so pretty often). I'm not really going to explain what I'm on about, and there are light to medium spoilers for pretty late on in the show. I do believe these spoilers to be inconsequential to one's enjoyment of it though.

Let me clarify what I said two paragraphs ago when I mentioned that I'm in the exact best state of mind to watch K-On!. I had a pretty awful Christmas holiday, and really needed something to cheer me up throughout. K-On!'s relentless energy and feel-good cheer was right up my alley, and it provided a much-needed respite. It helped me get through one of the darkest times in my life, and for that I'll be forever grateful to it. As I mentioned, I'm also incredibly nervous about exams, and something this relaxing is certainly helpful.

However, more important is where I'm at with my life right now. I'm doing the mid-year exams for my last year of university. This thing is about to be properly over. The training wheels are soon going to come off forever. Considering the pretty big stumble I had when they came off at the end of school, the idea of even the unforgiving protection of university being gone is frankly terrifying.

This means two things: Fear at the future, and reminiscing about the same experience three years ago, when school ended and I made the biggest leap I've made in my life thus far. Of course, this also means a lot of nostalgia for my school life. It might be strange for me to say that I'm advantaged when it comes to identifying with the characters: I'm not Japanese, I'm not school-aged anymore, I'm not particularly into "light music", I never went to an all-girls high school by virtue of, well, not being a girl, and I'm not similar enough in personality to any of the characters for them to really act as a good self-insert for me.

What I am is in an age when school seems particularly magical. I was a fantastic student at school, effortlessly getting brilliant grades. Life was nicer back then, and that's all the easier to understand when the threat of being plunged into the real adult world is growing closer and closer.

K-On! is a show about the experience of high school. What's more, it's a show that understands that this is what it's about, and uses its own form to better achieve its own goal. It starts off insecure and stumbly, eventually gets into a stride and grows confident then spends a lot of time having fun before realizing it's almost done and getting emotional. All of this is meticulously planned and pulled off nearly flawlessly. Every single episode is as much about what's happening in universe as what place the episode occupies within the narrative arc of the show: The first episode leaves us uncertain of whether this is something we like and want to get into, just like Yui's uncertain of whether she wants to stay in the light music club. By the end of the first season, we've grown to really love this show, and the characters in it are also enjoying their school life to the fullest. As we approach the end and the realization that we're running out of K-On! dawns on the audience, so do the characters finally start realizing they're running out of school to be happy in. The show ends on a nostalgic and confident note, inviting us to think of the show warmly and cherish our time with it, whilst boldly moving on to explore new horizons.

All of this, along with the completely spot-on depiction of the dynamics within a group of high-school friends (seriously, no one in my group of friends was that similar to any of the characters, but the interactions that end up happening as well as everyone's individual insecurities were basically just taken out of my real life), means K-On! was like a miniature return to high school for me. It reminded me of some of the aspects of it that I'd forgotten, and was a godsend in a time of reminiscence. If I wasn't already in love with all the characters (platonic love, you creep), the show would've ingratiated itself to me simply by being such a powerful nostalgia piece.

The second half of the second season in particular, which is where the show shined the most (It made me cry three times in the course of four episodes. That's a record), is about leaving behind simpler times, a moment in life where I currently am. I've done this once, which is an advantage the girls in K-On! don't have, and the struggle that came with it has made me forget how exciting what I'm doing is. I'm out here, in a different country, living without my parents and relying on myself to organize my life. I'm studying something that most people will never learn, and even through my struggle (and failure) to live up to my own academic standards I've managed to make knowledge most people will never even imagine exists become second nature to me. I've made incredible new friends and had incredible new experiences. I've grown up.

I'm not a fan of the "pausing my own train of thought in the middle of a paragraph to snidely praise my own writing" technique, but writing those four words just legit made me stop and shiver for like 10 seconds straight. Jeez.

I've grown up, and the girls in K-On! are looking forward to doing the same. This doesn't mean it isn't hard, or sad, or that they actually want to do it. Just as they'd give anything to stay forever in high school, drinking tea in the music room and rocking at concerts, I would've given anything at their age to be able to keep hanging out in "Dave's crib", pretending to study when teachers peeked in and trying to prove to each other that we were the biggest nerd in the room. The same way I'd give anything to remain here in university, barely scrapping by in my studies, spending afternoons watching obscure films and playing Overwatch, making immature jokes in the Fountain Canteen and thinking entirely too much about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

K-On! not only reminded me how great high school was, and how great my friends are, but it also reminded me that growing up, for how hard it is and how we'll all inevitably kick and scream and do our best to prevent it from happening, is also kind of exciting and fun in its own right. It's reminded me how much I loved where I've been, reinvigorated my energy where I am, and has made me excited for where I may be going. It's truly magical, and might be the most powerful experience I've had with a piece of media since Katawa Shoujo changed me in 2014.

I don't like ending on a negative note, but I just have to say this: people taking stuff this powerful to be meaningless because of it's artstyle and attitude is a big part of why I think people are stupid, as well as of why I distrust critics. This is twice now that I'm going to have to not talk about pieces of art that are incredibly important to me because it's about cute anime girls. Or maybe I should stop liking art about cute anime girls.