The primary problem in Cowboy Bebop is that the characters spend far too much time standing around, looking cool, and far too little actually making the watcher interested in the plot.   Sure, I’ll agree, the graphics are beautiful.  The music is great.  The characters do a wonderful job of mouthing things that either sound really deep or sound like lines from a day time soap opera.  And the montages of images set to music are gorgeous. Of course, the montages would be interesting as well as gorgeous did the show ever explain what the images meant, but, then, that would take time away from the bad parodies of pop culture and the standing around and looking cool.

A lot goes on in Cowboy Bebop.  But most of it does nothing to enrich the show.  There are huge numbers of episodes that say absolutely nothing about either the characters or the basic plot lines in the series.  But there’s only a little time that actually goes into the plot. And even when the plot and characters are covered, they always stand aloof of the action. It’s as if they know that they’re being watched, that they are in the deep anime of the year. And they know that it would be terrible to spoil such a wonderful aloofness with a bit of warmth that might make you actually care, no wait, even cry, when something bad happened.

The cold characters seem to be even more ridiculous when you consider that the whole premise of the series is a bunch of gritty every-day joes wandering the solar system, looking for enough bounties to keep food on the table.  Of course, you later learn that this entirely admiral premise is ruined by making the characters anything but everyday. They’re involved in huge criminal organizations—and no, they’re not at the bottom, at least not the ones who become important at the end—they’re entwined in intricate plots at the top.  They’ve run up billions of dollars of medical costs.  They can defy gravity and only seem to suffer moderately from bullet wounds to the abdomen.

Of course, despite that many of these things are integral to the plot, they’re not presented particularly well.  What schemes the criminal organization is involved in isn’t told—oh, no, that would be telling—it’s just hinted that they’re doing something very cool and oh-so-secret.  Similarly, when Cowboy Bebop does attempt to go into detail about something—such as the aforementioned medical bills—it doesn’t work so well. It’s as if the directors and writers had no problem in writing philosophical sounding lines and giving lengthy pauses, but couldn’t quite figure out how to actually do things such as build characters and suspense that would make watching their show something…well, enjoyable. As Cowboy Bebop stands, it’s a lot like reading a modern literary novel.  Sure, you feel a little smarter once you’re through it, you can say, "Hah, I watched that all the way through" before discussing it with equally snobbish friends, but you can’t really enjoy it, for there’s no meat to sink your teeth into and taste.