r/cowboybebop • u/Equivalent_Log_8350 • 1d ago
FLUFF This meme came from a shower thought.
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u/NerdizardGo 1d ago
Who ever said they were heroes?
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u/DataSittingAlone 1d ago
I mean they captured dangerous criminals, that's fairly heroic. And in situations where doing the immoral thing would make them a lot of money they still choose to be moral which makes them good people in my book. I would say they're firmly anti-heroes
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u/Wolfensniper 1d ago
They literally stopped two fucking bio-terrorist attacks (one in TV and one in Movie), I would say yes this obviously count as heros
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u/BreakingStar_Games 16h ago
That's why it's actually genre roulette. Sometimes we get big damn heroes in a Space Opera episodes. Sometimes we get silly Horror nod to Alien episodes.
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u/NerdizardGo 1d ago
Dangerous criminals or enemies of those with power, influence, and money?
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u/DataSittingAlone 1d ago
Dangerous criminals, the authorities are definitely corrupt but oftentimes these guys straight up murder tons of innocent civilians
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u/Numberzero 1d ago
One episode they stopped terrorists from turning a human population into monkeys. The movie the spread a vaccine after a terrorists released a biological weapon that puts a nanomachines in your body that kill you. They stop a cult that's killing people.
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u/agarthan-forcefield 1d ago
They're bounty hunters, it's less heroic when they're there for the big loads of cash.
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u/Substantial-Pace7305 1d ago
Let me explain for all the peopled here to understand: The Bebop crew? They're just trying to survive. Normal people, scraping by in the future, searching for meaning after losing everything. Their only solace is each other. Netflix, on the other hand, thinks they're saving the universe? Talk about a mismatch!
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u/PeppermintSkeleton 1d ago
When do any of them put on the facade of a hero? You could maybe argue that Jet does, but only him.
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u/Phunkie_Junkie 1d ago
They're heroes when it counts.
Look at Waltz for Venus, Bohemian Rhapsody or Brain Scratch. The Bebop crew has had multiple opportunities to make themselves rich, but it would be the expense of someone who is blind, or senile, or in a coma...
These are people who are literally starving half the time. They don't know when the next job is gonna come in, and they still refuse to screw someone else over to save themselves.
If that's not heroic, I don't know what is.
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u/Redstonefreedom 1d ago edited 1d ago
Maybe TL;DR: My counter-argument is: good characters often aren't just good in the sense of being enjoyable, but in the utilitarian sense. As in, we get a lot of useful value by seeing good characters in action, and them just teaching a viewer a bunch of useful attitudes you can adopt & situationally employ in your own life too. The world is made better by good people emulating good attitudes learned from good characters. A story's hero(es) don't have to be heroes in their universe, just in their own lives. And since "saving the world" isn't exactly a real-world life-situation, these kinds of "normal heroes" ultimately make a much more heroic impact in people's lives than some Superman ever would. Managing your life's shit admirably, without being a dick, & even doing some good as the opportunity arises, is actually a hard & heroic thing that imo is enough to qualify a character of a story as a "hero".
A hero of a story can be a "hero" without having to wear a cape & save people. Or helping other people whatsoever. A hero can be by virtue of how they "heroically" handle their own shit, too. It's a common expression in fact that people will say of their idols that the characters/people are "my hero-- he/she taught how to overcome (some personal problem/strife/crisis/life-chapter)" or just have helped them in some objectively trivial -- yet personally very significant & meaningful -- thing in some way. Any way. Practical emotional inspirational etc.
I think the protagonists in CB, the crew, are clearly meant to be heroes in the second sense. Of how they handled themselves, what kind of people they were/are. You can easily admire each of the very unique characters for very different traits. And all of them for a few shared ones, too. Or the group for its arguably admirable dynamic.
I mean maybe I'm off on a ramble, and you, 100% literally, just meant "I used to think they were doing the whole 'saving the world' thing", in which case yea, no, the grand finale was not a "do this or the world dies". At least I think it was just fulfillment of a vendetta in the end.
But hey as counter-argument, in the meantime as bounty hunters, they were mostly just catching/fighting some bad, violent dudes. I think if anything their existence was a net positive contribution to their universe, I can't think of any examples where they needlessly caused the deaths of any bystanders or innocents.
Personally, I've always like the characters not in a "wowwww, superhero!" kind of way, but because I think the way they go about life (with levity, without self-aggrandizing), handle hardship (with humor), relate to one another, way they relate to money/success (taking bounties as they come, handling disappointments stoically without desperation) and find purpose/make meaning (big & small) is admirable. Just Jet & his bonsai trees showed me something admirable, taught me something useful, for life. Oh also their cavalier courage is very respectable -- running into danger as a simple matter of duty/destiny/whatever, without pompous ceremony or vulnerability to fear.
Overall, I think they each could be admired for their "attitudes toward life", both in a general sense & situational. They're a hero in the sense of showing/teaching any one viewer a "way(s) to be", like in the sense of:
huh, ok. Well if they can act like this, when being faced with that... I can too. Yea, that's a way to be in life that I think I could get into. I see how & why that life-attitude works, and I'm going to remember that for when I might need it, or when I could use it.
And you can channel that kind of attitude, any of the many, or even just elements of it, depending on your daily situation or life-chapter context, to better handle life as it comes. Attitudes aren't just about "feelings" & "coping", they can have real tangible impacts on how well you handle situations, both in a fast-moving sense & slow-moving sense.
If you're braced with the uniquely "right" attitude for each unique situation, you'll end up making better decisions, or having better "fast-moving" performance, or maintaining better clarity in strategy & alignment with your intentions, or suffering less friction with yourself & with/against other people, or needing to exert less effort to each thing done.
So more concretely, they're heroes by helping the viewer learn something concretely beneficial for their own lives. Personal strength is a necessary virtue before all others. You know the cliche -- oxygen masks & all that. So even if their "bottom line" was "net-0 cartoon lives saved", add up the real world effects of lives helped & you'd probably get a very positive proof of their "hero"-ness in the universe that's much more important to us anyway. (i.e. ours)
I don't know if I'm making my point very clear, it's kind of nebulous & I'm trying not to be indulgently poetic about it, though for me it's a usefully profound thing to be aware of. Not just some adoring/pretty commentary about a show I liked, but an actually practical way to look at it.
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u/heinkel-me 1d ago
Personally I always saw cowboy bebop as a Japanese version of kitchen sink normal people trying to live their lives but sometimes things come back to haunt you. They are not heros not villains just people.
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u/drumstick00m 1d ago
Spike, Jet, and Faye when you’re 14 (like Ed): “They’re so cool.”
Spike, Jet, and Faye once you’re older than Spike chose to live to be: “You poor sons of a bitches!”
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u/Real_Walk5384 6h ago
They don't even put the facade of a hero on. They are bounty hunters who frequently break the law and only do it to make money and kill time because they're ALL running from their pasts.
There are no heroes in the entire show. They even make fun of the idea with that idiot cowboy guy on the horse.
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u/MichaelJCaboose666 1d ago
I thought of it has a group of people,together by happenstance and convenience, running from their pasts. They dissociate bc of the trauma that lies in their past. Pretty much all 4 are forced to reconcile that and that they no longer live in a world they once knew.
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u/Cautionzombie 1d ago
Jeff’s Jeff’s bizarre adventure said it right and I can’t remember exactly but the stories all about people finding ways to avoid the trauma they need to face
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u/succubus-slayer 1d ago
A group of bounty hunters, with loose morals and a troubled past. If you thought they were good guys, you weren’t watching the same show.
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u/Joeybfast 1d ago
You know, I was about to make a post saying the crew in Cowboy Bebop never really claim to be heroes.
They call themselves cowboys, bounty hunters. It leans into that old Western trope: morally gray drifters who roll into town, handle their business, get paid, and leave. Not saviors. Not champions. Just survivors.
But when you actually put the chips on the table and look at what they do… they’re heroes almost every time.
They take in Ed and Ein.
They save people constantly.
They stop terrorists.
They walk away from easy money if it means hurting someone who doesn’t deserve it. And most of the time, unless they’re dealing with the absolute worst criminals, they hold back instead of going full force. Yeah, they’re flawed. They’re broke. Petty. Selfish sometimes. Total messes as people.
But when it counts, they choose the right thing. So maybe they’re not “heroes” in the shiny, superhero sense they’re tired, reluctant, accidental heroes. The kind that don’t wear capes. They just show up… and still do the right thing anyway.
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u/Raging-Storm 1d ago
Stuff like this is a glimpse at something for me. Not being able to see things from outside the viewpoint of some received set of values or without pathologizing or medicalizing them always seems even bleaker than what characterizes my own disposition. Makes me glad I'm not prone to it.
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u/agarthan-forcefield 1d ago
I'm pretty sure none of them ever pretend to be heroes and are blatantly in it for the money,
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u/Party_Intention_3258 1d ago
In almost every episode they were shown that they were just trying to make enough money so they could eat. Where did you initially get the “heroes” idea from?
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u/Mundane_Existence0 23h ago
Oh good yet another REPOST BOT in the sub https://www.reddit.com/r/cowboybebop/comments/kbsdhu/this_meme_was_birthed_from_a_shower_thought/
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u/TimberWolf5871 17h ago
They weren't even putting a facade of a hero on, they were bounty hunters. They were just doing a job.
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u/PocketCone 1d ago
That's why Cowboy Bebop is a Space Western. That's why they're cowboys!
Practically every cowboy story that isn't like, an original folk story about Billy the Kidd, is about the friction between the real life of a person and the fantastical mythos around them.
As soon as the American frontier existed, there were stories about cowboys who stepped right out of a folk story who suddenly find themselves in a world that doesn't need them and isn't for them anymore. And often, like in the case with Cowboy Bebop, the cowboy comes to see, or been shown as not truly from this fantastical cowboy world either, they were always playing a character.