One Powerful Cowboy Bebop Quote Perfectly Captures the Series' Main Themes

Cowboy Bebop is widely considered one of the best anime series of all time, and one of the reasons why is how well-structured the story is. Each character undergoes their own journey in the series, but these individual storylines are joined together by powerful themes revolving around running from your past and eventually facing it. In fact, these themes are all nicely summed up by Jet Black in the penultimate episode, with one powerful quote.

In episode 25 of Cowboy Bebop, Jet says, “Everything has a beginning and an end. Life is just a cycle of starts and stops. There are ends we don’t desire, but they’re inevitable, we have to face them. It’s what being human is all about.” The quote is an accurate assessment of life, of course; there will always be endings–to relationships, to jobs, to the good times and the bad. No matter how much one runs and tries to avoid this fact, it remains true nonetheless.

In a way, it’s aligned with the classical philosophy of Stoicism, which recommends facing both the good and bad with a level head, knowing that both will some day end.

Jet’s Words Describe Every Character on the Bebop

This quote from Jet doesn’t just sum up the themes of the series, but it applies to each and every character aboard the Bebop and their own individual journeys throughout the series. Spike, for example, is avoiding his past with Julia and Vicious. No matter how much Spike might try to put those times behind him, a confrontation with Vicious was inevitable. Spike never wanted this; he was trying to live a new life, but that old life had never ended, and some day it would have to. He avoided it for a very long time, but eventually, as Jet said, he would have to face Vicious and put an end to it once and for all.

For Faye, she is always attempting to evade her debts. She does this by staying on the move and never being in one place for too long, meaning that she’s facing a constant cycle of endings and beginnings as she tries on new identities and new lives. Faye’s desperation to avoid dealing with her debts drives her into all manner of dangerous situations, but even that doesn’t ultimately get her out of having to face them eventually. Faye also avoids her past that she knows little about, until she’s given the opportunity to learn about herself. Watching the video of young Faye was, in a way, an ending to her era of amnesia.

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Jet himself isn’t free from this, either; he faced an end to his career with the ISSP, but was still willing to utilize his connections from back then when needed. He left to avoid the corruption within the ISSP, but as it turns out, that cycle hadn’t actually ended properly yet, either. Jet eventually had to handle the truth of his time at the ISSP: that his own partner was a traitor. In order to truly put this behind him, Jet had to face his old partner and, just like Spike, accept this ending.

Even Edward falls into this, although to a lesser extent. Ed’s time on the Bebop is due to being forgotten by her father, but even that period of being forgotten came to an end when the crew encountered Ed’s father, a mapmaker for Cowboy Bebop‘s destroyed Earth, and eventually reunited the two. It was the end of Ed’s life solo, and the beginning of a new era being back with her father, proving that these endings don’t always have to be a bad thing, or even a difficult thing.

Jet Has Always Been the Bebop’s Resident Philosopher

This quote is far from the only time when Jet pontificates a bit, but it’s arguably one of the best quotes in the series, and nothing else really encapsulates the series’ themes as a whole like this one does. Jet is a character who’s in a special position to notice these themes due to being around the longest and getting to see the other three characters come aboard and go through their respective journeys from beginning to end.

It’s no coincidence that this quote comes up at the end of the series, as it’s directly based on Jet’s observations of Faye, Spike, himself, and even Ed over the course of the story. Cowboy Bebop is a show that understands itself and what it wants to say very well, and it takes some truly skilled writing to be able to incorporate such a summary of the series within the show itself.

Cowboy Bebop (1998)

Cowboy Bebop is a sci-fi/western action television series widely regarded as one of the best anime ever. The series follows a crew of four disconnected bounty hunters who all slowly come together aboard a ship known as the Bebop. The crew of the Bebop attempt to snag various bounties and embark on several misadventures to keep their pockets lined with coin and their stomachs full. The series also has a heavy musical motif, with each episode title named after various jazz “sessions.”

Cast

Koichi Yamadera , Steve Blum , Megumi Hayashibara , Wendee Lee , Unshô Ishizuka , Beau Billingslea , Aoi Tada , Melissa Fahn

Release Date

April 3, 1998

Network

Adult Swim

Franchise(s)

Cowboy Bebop

Writers

Keiko Nobumoto , Shinichirô Watanabe

Directors

Shinichirô Watanabe

Showrunner

Shinichirô Watanabe

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