You’ll be glad you did.
Cowboy Bebop
More than any other series of its time, Cowboy Bebop proved that anime, in addition to being a medium for storytelling and entertainment, could in fact be a work of art. Each of the 26 episodes of Cowboy Bebop exemplify a concerted effort to create artwork, music, plot, and character that best play off one another, establishing subtle but consistent series-long themes and arcs.
The series, set in 2071, follows the lives of two bounty hunters — Spike Spiegel and Jet Black — who travel through the solar system on a spaceship named Bebop (a reference to the proclivity of bebop jazz in the show's soundtrack). Both bounty hunters have murky pasts (Jet was once an Inter Solar System Police officer, while Spike was the member of a vicious criminal syndicate) that continue to creep back into their current lives, sometimes as flashbacks and, increasingly so as the show progresses, sometimes as recurring characters and conflicts.
Cowboy Bebop skillfully merges the aesthetic of several disparate genres — sci-fi, mystery, psychological thriller, comedy, noir — as well as different cultures and settings, such as the Jazz Age, modern Japan, the American Old West. The series also features what was, at the time of its airing, a revolutionary approach to soundtrack. The music of Cowboy Bebop (including its iconic theme song) was composed by Yoko Kanno, who wrote predominantly jazz and blues pieces for the series. Kanno was given unusually free reign on her compositions by the show's director, and in some instances she would compose a song that she felt was necessary for an episode, leaving the artwork and story to be built around it rather than the other way around. The decision to use music as a narrative force in anime is just one of the many reasons Cowboy Bebop broke boundaries with its launch, and is part of what makes it such a pleasure to watch.
Funimation
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Princess gets in trouble, prince saves princess, prince and princess fall in love — it's a trope many of us have seen time and time again. Revolutionary Girl Utena lives up to its title in the best way possible by taking "damsel in distress" themes and completely turning them on their head. Utena is a high school student who dresses as a boy because she wants to grow up to be the prince who saves the day. And not only does she dress as a prince, but she acts the part by dueling adversaries and rescuing a young woman from an abusive relationship.
Revolutionary Girl Utena is far from what many people think of when you say "magic girl" shojo anime. It doesn't just defy gender roles; it flips and bends them beyond recognition. At its very core, it's a story about a woman trying to save another woman. Beyond that, it's a show laden with socially and ethically conscious metaphors and darker themes. And although the dueling can get a bit repetitive, it's still pretty fun to watch fancy sword fights.
Nozomi Entertainment
Death Note
Fiction is ripe with characters claiming to be geniuses. Often, they just throw off smarmy witticisms or pound away at a keyboard and announce that they've hacked into a mainframe. Their genius is marked by obsession or social awkwardness, and less so by acts of genuine brilliance. Death Note, by contrast, is a show whose two genius protagonists actually act like geniuses.
The series follows high school student Light Yagami, a teenager of remarkable intelligence and equally vast boredom. Just as he wishes for something more exciting than tests and textbooks, fate hands him a gift: a Death Note, a black notebook and the tool of Shinigami (Japanese gods of death). The instructions within the Death Note declare that if the owner writes someone's name down on its pages, that person will die. After testing out the Death Note and confirming its power, Light quickly assigns himself the task of ridding the world of whomever he considers evil or unworthy. But the pattern of Light's actions soon catch the attention of a reclusive detective who calls himself "L," a young man of equal intelligence and obsession. Both men go head-to-head to stop each other from accomplishing their goals.
Death Note is one of the most tightly plotted anime you're likely to watch. In each episode, Light and L's tactfulness and strategy are revealed and compounded, resulting in a complicated cat-and-mouse dance and leaving the audience no choice but to watch the next six or seven episodes before going to bed. It's a fascinating show with a colorful cast of main characters, with moments both hilarious and haunting.
Viz Media
Steins;Gate
Adapted from an award-winning visual novel, Steins;Gate is nothing short of a time-travel tour de force. Rintaro Okabe, a self-described mad scientist prone to the occasional fit of maniacal laughter, and his lab mates accidentally create a time machine capable of sending text messages into the past. These minor tweaks to the past escalade into huge consequences for the future, sparking a rich and complex plot defined by tangled knots of parallel timelines.
One of the standout features of the show, besides the unpredictable directions it takes with time travel, is its endearingly eclectic cast. Each of the characters is a misfit or outcast in their own way, making it easy for viewers to become attached to them throughout the show. Steins;Gates is a must-watch series, if only to watch how it consistently pushes boundaries in the genre of science fiction. Reaching beyond the genre of anime, it is one of the most believable and intelligent time-travel sagas of the last decade.
Funimation
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