"I Wouldn't Miss It for the World"

My Journey With Shinichiro Watanabe’s Work

With the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine, I want to dedicate this forward to the charities helping support those suffering under such painful occupation and oppression. Please consider donating to the UNRWA or WAQFOREVER to help the vital aid for Palestinians to continue, or visit https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/ to donate for free.

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I love following the works and careers of creative minds who’ve made huge impacts on my life, and Shinichiro Watanabe’s hand has sculpted a staggering percentage of my experiences with, and outlook on, storytelling. I’m not alone in singing Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo’s praises, but they’re far from being the only stars in his sky of works, and I wanted to just let my own journey with these stories be uttered aloud here. I think I’ll do more in-depth pieces on each series in the future, as I tried to avoid spoilers as much as possible with this article! Regardless: I had fun recounting this journey as I typed this article, and I hope it’ll be fun to follow!

Cowboy Bebop

Cowboy Bebop was the first anime I watched to completion. Prior to that I’d read Death Note when I was 12, but didn’t bother with watching its adaption as a result. For the longest time, it all just seemed like too much for me to dive into, so I never thought much about making a start with the medium.

It all changed on a really late night/early morning in the summer of 2017. I’d been up all night preparing for an upcoming aptitude test as part of university admissions (the UCAT is not fun. At all.), and my brain was way too tired to make another attempt at identifying patterns between randomly placed shapes. I recalled seeing a thumbnail advertisement for the anime on my PlayStation’s streaming section a few weeks earlier, its sullen mood embedding itself in my memory right from that very moment, and curiosity led me to look it up in hopes of escaping boredom.

I don’t know exactly what it was that made me suspend my initial wariness of anime, but in that moment it felt like the natural next step was to watch an episode.

Looking back, I think what gripped me from the first second was the distinct Western influence Cowboy Bebop had. After all those years I’d spent thinking that anime would be a mostly inaccessible world that I wouldn’t understand well due to not being the target audience (which was very much a naive opinion held solely by my teenage self), I was pleasantly surprised and interested to find a story that had immediately recognisable overtones in its presentation. Everyone remembers the first time they heard ‘Tank!’, and for me it was an enjoyably jarring contrast to hear in the opening compared to the in-your-face, sorrow-soaked introduction scene that preceded it.

Something that deeply spoke to me about the world and characters was how jaded everyone, and everything, was. At a time in my life when I began to feel exhausted with the acceleration everything was hurtling towards the future at, it was cathartic to see those feelings reflected back to me, suddenly making Cowboy Bebop a personal refuge and reflection.  

I loved the pacing and story beats, specifically how most episodes had their own standalone stories with definitive conclusions at the end. I was never one for stretched-out story arcs, and Cowboy Bebop demonstrated a story-telling efficiency so robust that most people end up dismissing it as “mostly filler”, which is grossly inaccurate to the extent of being incomprehensible. Being introduced to new characters uninvolved with a series’ overarching plot does not make them unimportant to the story in the slightest: ‘Ganymede Elegy’ and ‘Waltz For Venus’ focus entirely on events that have no bearing on the series’ finale, yet they are beating hearts of both the narrative and the main characters themselves. There is beauty in ephemerality, both narratively and literally in this case, and I love Cowboy Bebop for helping me understand exactly why. I wouldn’t ever trade the experience of watching ‘Waltz for Venus’ for the first time, not even for a thousand more episodes of Cowboy Bebop, because no amount of dopamine could come close to my memory of the characters introduced in that episode. Those 22 minutes have stuck with me longer and stronger than even the lengthiest of action pieces.

In the span of the remaining few weeks of summer, I shot through 13 episodes of Cowboy Bebop, and then…… an entire year went by before I returned to the story. My final year of secondary school (UK equivalent of high school) brought me so much busyness that I never got around to ever continuing onto the 14^th episode, because it never felt like the ‘right moment’ when assignments and revision material were constantly raining down upon me. By the time the next summer rolled around, too much time had passed for me to comfortably resume from where I left off, so I started right back again from the beginning. I didn’t find this tedious in the slightest thanks to interpreting it as a means of extending my stay with the cast I’d cherished for an entire year already. Throughout all that time, Cowboy Bebop remained vivid in my mind, particularly thanks to the outro theme and credits sequence that brought a close to every episode. It only took 13 episodes for it to dwell upon my mind all throughout the academic year.

There’s a comfort I find in stories with a set length. Cowboy Bebop’s story concluding at the end of its 26 episode run firmly brings about an incontestable finality, an artistic decision that still nourishes my love of storytelling to this day. I finished the series in the summer of 2018, but it was a few months later in December when I finally watched the Cowboy Bebop film. Released 3 years after the anime and subtitled “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” in Japan (I never tire of saying that name out loud), the film takes place chronologically sometime between the 22^nd and 23^rd episodes of the anime. Of course, its events have no bearing on the overarching narrative’s conclusion, but being invited back to spend just a little more time with the Bebop cast was like getting to spend just a little longer in a warm dream, away from reality (ironic, given the themes of the film itself).

SPACE DANDY

2018-2021 were three years of refrain from academia that oftentimes felt like an insurmountable block in my life that I struggled to see past, let alone push out the way. Amidst all the difficult challenges the time period posed, moments of escapism helped me take a break from it all, either allowing me to lighten my spirits or make a little more sense of my circumstances and environment. A huge factor that helped me during this time was the enduring memory of finishing Cowboy Bebop’s series in the summer of 2018, just before ‘it’ all started, and the eventual watching of Shinichiro Watanabe’s other works in the summer of 2020. While Cowboy Bebop acted mainly as a comfortably secluded mental space that pushed my less-than-happy sentiments as far as they could go until they were expended, Space Dandy became an optimistic ray of hyperactivity and awe that led me to a brighter headspace.

Every element of Space Dandy’s production, release, and existence is special. It’s well documented how its English dub aired simultaneously in the West as it did in Japan (with the Western release on Toonami often even preceding the Japanese air date by an entire day), requiring the translation of the script and recording of English lines to be conducted at impressively blistering speed. It was part of an effort to capitalise on Western interest in anime which was starting to be noticed during this timeframe, which I think definitely deserves commendation in its own right, but there’s so much more to what makes Space Dandy so special.

Dandy, on paper, seems like a character I’d never have found myself loving. He’s introduced as a vain buffoon whose main obsession is visiting the intergalactic equivalent of Hooters, and one of his first lines in the show is of him discussing, in great detail, the body of his ideal woman. It’s crude, childish, and I was never one to really enjoy comedy in that vein. But I still appreciate how he’s introduced in this way because the entire first episode is essentially there to establish a funny sense of ‘normality’ which exists only to be broken by every one of the subsequent 25 episodes. You’re always led to *think* you know what kind of person Dandy is, only for the next episode to show a new side to his character you didn’t even consider the existence of. The slow unravelling of Dandy is never contradictory to what we’ve been show prior, and that’s what makes me love him as a character so much. Does he have stupid priorities? Yes. Does he have a strong moral compass and sense of responsibility? Of course. Does he demonstrate intelligence and maturity? Definitely. Is he an idiot? Absolutely.

Showcasing the many dimensions of Dandy is achieved through the creative construction of each episode; the anime is a towering visual and audial collaborative achievement. Across 26 episodes, various powerhouses of animation are brought on to direct, produce, and write, with the final result being a myriad of ideas that truly does justice to Space Dandy’s theme of never-ending possibility. One of my favourite episodes, number 9, is directed by Eunyoung Choi: the current head of Science Saru. Masaaki Yuasa himself also wrote and directed episode 16, with even the episode’s animation style itself changing to something unmistakably synonymous with his artistic personality.

And yet: as much joy as it brings me to bask in the diverse visual and narrative glow of the series, my favourite component of Space Dandy, and of my entire experience with the animation medium in general, is its soundtrack.

Space Dandy is a one-of-a-kind musical wonder. Across its two soundtrack albums, a medley of musicians are gathered whose collective talents are staggering even to list, let alone hear.

The anime’s introduction sequence is set to ‘Viva Namida’, by Yasuyuki Okamura. A beloved one-man show whose name has endured since the 80’s, and his opening song for the anime constituted as a comeback of sorts, as it was his first single in six years. His staggering name wasn’t the only factor that defined Space Dandy for me two years before I even watched the anime: the song really is just that perfect in dramatically presenting a hyper-detailed glimpse into the story’s world, as well as Dandy’s core traits of naively defiant, and defiantly naive, optimism.

I’ve yet to mention it on my blog so far because I’ve been hoping to discuss it in an extensive post (which has been underway for a few months now), but for the purpose of this article it’s necessary to mention: Soutaiseiriron are one of my favourite bands ever, arguably *the* most important band to me when I look at my life events in the past decade. So: imagine my happiness when I find out that the soundtrack features two of the band’s members on multiple different songs!

As stellar as Yasuyuki Okamura’s introduction is, it can’t top just how special the ending sequence is to me. ‘Welcome to Dimension X’, written and performed by Etsuko Yakushimaru of Soutaiseiriron and arranged by Yoko Kanno, is more than just a song: it’s a phenomenon I cannot believe came to fruition in the first place. Etsuko Yakushimaru is *the* most inspiring musician and visionary I’ve ever come across in my entire life, and it feels like fate that she became a voice I associate so strongly with Space Dandy. Hearing her collaboration with the composer of Cowboy Bebop is such an elegant way to end each episode, especially when it always follows the most bizarre, heart-wrenching, or joy-affirming story conclusions imaginable. What blows my mind the most, however, is the fact that the entire ending is drawn in her incomparable, iconic art style. I’ve loved her innocent, carefree depictions of characters and animals ever since I first laid eyes upon them, and to see that same art style animated with such a high budget for such an important body of work makes me grateful that something so personally profound was brought into existence in the first place.

Of the 26 episodes, 3 focus specifically on music. The first story’s clearly meant to be a parody of High School Musical, eventually culminating in the breakout of a song that celebrates the irreplaceability of life and everything it contains. It’s simple, yet charmingly to the point.

The second music episode revolves around Dandy engaging in a dance-off with a mythical disco legend named ‘Ton Jravolta’, It features one of the songs contributed to the anime by Taku Takahashi, which is incredibly nostalgic for me because of how clearly I remember the downtrodden tone of the heavily filtered vocals, which contrasts with the hyper-nonsensical nature of the episode it belongs to. This episode is also one of few that has its own end credits animation, featuring a track by ZEN-LA-ROCK that captures the essence of this disco driven episode’s escapades to a T.

Episode 20, the third music-themed episode which is my favourite episode of the entire series, sees Dandy striking up a friendship with a newly introduced character (voiced by Jonny Yong Bosch in the English dub, whose performances I always really enjoy) and form a band together. The main song from the episode, ‘Lonely Nights’, was written by SHUTOKU MUKAI FROM NUMBER GIRL, and he even performs his own version of the song on a separate single release!!

Episode 23 features the track ‘Seaside Driving’ by Seichii Nagai, the guitarist of Soutaiseiriron, which I’ve replayed countless times over the reminiscence of, and longing for, summer skies beyond the timeframe of lockdown. The episode itself has a really cute romantic plot featuring Dandy and Scarlet, one of the recurring members throughout the series. There’s an emotional gut punch of a sequence towards the end set to sound of ‘I’m Losing You’ by BTB, and I love this scene and song for the way they leave a bittersweet taste at the end of such a cute episode.

Tragic romance comes up more than once in the story, with one of my other favourite episodes featuring Dandy’s robotic vacuum cleaner companion fall in love with a coffee maker and eventually ending with one of the saddest themes I’ve heard from an anime: ‘The Real Folk Blues’ from Cowboy Bebop makes embracing sorrow sound so easy in comparison. It’s funny to me how regarding Space Dandy as the ‘happier’ story led me to enjoying even the deepest of reflective thought marathons whilst listening to this track. Listening back to it right now, I think it’s because it has a shimmer of hope right at the end, and it stuck with me long after I finished the series because listening to it always creates a space for me to come to terms with the fallout of sorrow.

Two other episodes I remember fondly are episode 5 and 9. Episode 5 features a song by Izumi Makura (whose work I fell in love with after first hearing her in Space Dandy) in a really sweet montage segment. The entire episode highlights Dandy’s considerate and conscientious nature in a really unique way, which is reinforced further in the final action sequence of the episode set to the sound of my most-played song from the entire soundtrack: ‘Word Pack’. Its baseline oozes effortless cool whilst the synths speak of tales of heroism, and I can’t help but get pumped up with motivation every time I reminisce on its sound'; I’ve lost count of the number of times I’d have this song loop as I just stared up at the ceiling in the early AM.

Episode 9 is memorable for its story above all else. It takes a break from the usual wacky shenanigans to instead deliver a profound commentary on what it means to be sentient. It features one of my favourite characters of the series, Dr H, and I think it’s thanks to Eunyong Choi that the episode’s story hit as hard as it did, thanks to her direction with animation making it one of the most visually stunning parts of the entire series.

On the anime’s 9th anniversary last year, information was shared by the co-creator of Toonami that Shinichiro Watanabe often mentions that he considers Space Dandy to be “a failure”. He’s not wrong, from a commercial perspective, given how Space Dandy barely has a fraction of the popularity that Cowboy Bebop enjoys. All that effort made to push its international popularity may not have reaped the recognition intended for it, and it’s unlikely it ever will, but on a personal level it outshines so many works purely by the merit of its creative sincerity.

I watched Space Dandy in the summer of 2020, right in the middle of the Covid pandemic lockdown. With the TV in the living room pretty much in use every single day, the only time I was ever able to watch an episode was in the dead of night. Because of the scarcity of the opportunity to watch, I never tired from watching as many episodes as possible, regardless of how long I sat in the same spot for. I remember one day being extremely happy that I was able to watch S I X episodes the night prior without waking anyone in the house up (my parents somehow have supersonic hearing that lets them pick up even the whirring of a PlayStation disk drive). It’s partly because of my innate compulsion to refuse sleeping at normal times that I enjoy watching at night instead of the day, and darkened rooms illuminated by screens are, to me, a simple, perfect haven that I find even on the most meandering, uphill paths of life. The insidious loom of uncertainty amidst a worldwide lockdown was, oftentimes, enough to completely discourage me from looking to the future but, in hindsight, finding joy in bizarrely unpredictable escapades is a blessing in itself: as funny as it is to say, Space Dandy was a blessing at the time, as is its memory and continued presence in my life.

Samurai Champloo

If any of Shinichiro Watanabe’s works have come close to surpassing Cowboy Bebop in popularity, it’s definitely Samurai Champloo. I had a faint recognition of it before I’d even heard of Cowboy Bebop, so I had a moment of dumbfounded surprise when I found out the two works were connected in such a way. I think I watched Samurai Champloo third, instead of second as per release order, because my excitement to explore another corner of the Bebop galaxy to the backing of Etsuko Yakushimaru’s voice overrode my affinity for sequential order.

It felt natural to go back to a grounded story after the dizzying heights of Space Dandy. Samurai Champloo works with a much smaller core cast compared to Space Dandy, yet it treats its core cast as three equal protagonists similar to what Cowboy Bebop does. Fun, Mugen, and Jin are all protagonists who embody their philosophies of life through their actions and individual subplots, and the interactions between all three establish a constant contrast that elevates them all in memorability.

I love the way new plot points are presented through each character’s personal history continuing to have bearing on their present, with us oftentimes only learning something new about Fun, Mugen, or Jin when their past comes back to haunt them. It makes it so much easier to empathise and sympathise with them when we get to know them better through moments of adversity, and this style of character development is upheld strongly all the way to the story’s final moments. There’s so much focus on conflict between people and parties in the story, both physical and ideological: it’s beautiful how the story utilises this friction as a propellant of the characters towards their goals as they help shape the world around them, and are shaped themselves in turn. At the same time, ‘Longing’ is one of the first words I’d use to describe the message of Samurai Champloo. There’s a serenity, oftentimes tragic yet sometimes joyous, that’s formulated by the end of most episodes after witnessing where the personal struggles of the main cast lead them, and it’s in that consistent struggle throughout the story that presents the main cast more as dreamers than fighters.

There’s a pattern amongst Watanabe’s works of implementing a single, unpredictable horror-themed episode into the story. Cowboy Bebop had ‘Toys in the Attic’ which borrowed heavy inspiration from Alien, Space Dandy had ‘There’s Music in the Darkness, Baby’, but the horror episode which scared me the most belongs to Samurai Champloo, which fully unnerved me by the time the episode’s credits had finished rolling. Many consider it to be a weak episode that doesn’t fit into the overarching narrative, but it’s a worthwhile momentary detour that’s true to the spirit of the horror episode trend: it needn’t have a grand message, it only needs to surprise.

I don’t think it’s unknown to anyone just how important Nujabe’s work on Samurai Champloo is. As somehow who’s main exposure to his work is through this anime, his work *is* the identity of Samurai Champloo through how it defines the spaces between the dialogue and story beats. Mystery is a big part of Samurai Champloo’s presentation to me, with many episode endings offering glimpses at future stories beyond what the viewer gets to see, and I love how the soundtrack adds so much to this aura as opposed to giving away answers. It emphasises the importance of ‘feeling’ what’s just beyond the screen, oftentimes helping imagination conclude one’s own outcome of events with the help of what the screen hints at. The ending theme, ‘Shiki no Uta’ performed by Minmi and produced by Nujabes, demonstrates this perfectly as it always brings attention to the same snapshots Fuu’s memories that, while initially cryptic, are the driving force of her motivations in the story, letting on much more about her personality than what the early episodes show. Minmi’s performance also galvanises the song with a palpable pathos that permeated out of the screen and into my life, serving as a reminder of how even the feeling of being lost can be its own kind of solace.

As much as I love the fights in this story, and the way Mugen and Jin have their personalities shine through their differing technique and styles, my favourite episodes are the ones that depict solutions to conflict that doesn’t involve swords. ‘War of the Words’ features Mugen being berated for his illiteracy, so he resolves to learn how to read and write Hiragana, and eventually uses this new skill to end hostilities between two warring gangs. It’s one of the funniest and most endearing episodes in the series!

Samurai Champloo has a clear sense of direction established from the start, which makes it feel much more like an adventure with a clear goal, compared to Bebop or Dandy which prefer to showcase their worlds at their own pace. By the time it came to the final episode, it felt like I’d witnessed an epic that brought my attention to my own personal journey, and while it was still difficult to engage with reality, I’d found strength in learning to embrace adversity and dictate how I’d fight for myself, instead of just doing what I can to get by.

After finishing Samurai Champloo, I entered the final year of this awkward three-year period of my life, and these three works came together to form a spring of reassurance when I reflected on the past, came to terms with the present, and started to dream again for the future. In a weird way, these stories make me look back upon this tumultuous time of adversity with fond nostalgia: even though it felt like the sky was falling on most days, those lows made the sporadic moments of joy soar even higher, and I saw depths of my self I'd have otherwise never realised.

Kids on the Slope

During my gap years, I’d managed to find s Blu-Ray copy of Kids on the Slope on eBay for a mostly reasonable price (£40 for a series, at the time, was justified by the fact that it’d been long out of print). A year after the summer I watched Space Dandy/Samurai Champloo, in the first semester of my first year at uni. I finally got around to watching this series that seemed so different to the Watanabe works I’d already seen. I knew to expect something different, as the setting of Nagasaki in the 1960s was much more ordinary compared to the settings of space or a fictionalised Japan in the Edo period, and the original story was written by Yuki Kodama in manga format instead of being written specifically for the anime presentation.

I love how faith is portrayed in Kids on the Slope. Two of the main supporting cast members are Catholic, and the role their faith plays in their lives is depicted consistently throughout the story in such a meaningful way. As a Muslim, I know not to expect Islam to appear in an anime anytime soon, yet Christianity’s presence in this story still really spoke to me because of the similarities I perceive between the two religions, and it made me relate to Sentarou (the drummer) even more as a result.

The cast of Kids on the Slope radiates warmth, and the bonds they forge through the music they play together are the beating heart of the story. Even characters uninvolved with the musical performances are woven so naturally into the plot and they all play hugely important roles in not only pushing the story forward, but also with the development of Kaoru, Sentarō, and Ritsuko. A romantic slice-of-life story will of course have love within the locus of the main cast, and Kids on the Slope accentuates character development through the way these feelings develop between the characters in question, and also how others react to these changes as a result. Witnessing people grow individually and together so organically felt like being in close proximity to a group of friends growing closer in real-time, and growing alongside them as a result.

Another testament to the strength of Kids on the Slope’s narrative is how a particular character in the story (who I’ll avoid mentioning to prevent spoilers) went from being someone I perceived as selfish and stubborn at the start, to one of my favourite characters by the end. All it took was a single scene, right at the end of her story, for me to realise I’d judged them far too soon, and I don’t think it was an accident that Yuki Kodama wrote her in this way.

These characters exist at the heart of Kids on the Slope, right next to an uncompromising love for jazz and a will to represent it wholeheartedly. Real-life performances of every song in the story were recorded, and subsequently drawn over during the animation phase to ensure every note of music was shown accurately, the painstaking efforts of which make every musical performance in the anime carry that much more artistic weight as they were spectacles for the eyes as much as they were for the ears and the heart.

Kids on the Slope was amongst two other anime I watched for the first time in my first year of university, (the others being Carole and Tuesday, and FLCL). Moving to a new city is usually jarring, and that was definitely one of the impressions I had moving to a much quieter part of the country, but Kids on the Slope greatly mitigated any difficulty I encountered adjusting to this new chapter of life. When I think back to that first semester, I recall that familiar nocturnal screen glow, this time drawing my attention away from the perceived awkwardness of my unfamiliar surroundings, helping me establish roots of comfort in the time and place I found myself calling my new home for the year.

“This melody sounds like love”

Carole and Tuesday

The most recently released work directed by Shinichiro Watanabe is an outlier in that there’s barely anything that I like about it. On paper it seems like a story tailor-made to cater towards me: two friends decide to form a band together shortly after meeting for the first time. Carole and Tuesday was marketed, and is still described, as a story about music, but I think this demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what music is.

I describe Carole and Tuesday as a story about chasing fame through the music industry. The priority, established from the first episode, is to ‘make it big’, but the story’s definition of musical success ends up being winning talent shows, signing legendary record deals, winning Grammys, and becoming recognised by as many people as possible. These goals are representative of a career journey that represents only a slither of all the kinds of musicians in the world, and it’s easily the image of music that I hate the most. I understand that these metrics of success are easy to grasp by almost everyone, but they’re the reality of only the biggest stars/celebrities, and their experience with music is fundamentally completely different to the other 99.9% of musicians in the world. Carole and Tuesday defines music as being a stepping stone to fame, and I believe this completely disrespects what music truly stands for. There’s so much more to creating and listening to music than just a connection between the listener and a famous pop star, yet the story hardly depicts any interpersonal relationships with realistic depth at all, let alone a genuine appreciation for the power of music.

On paper, the protagonists themselves have so much they could bring to the story through the reasons they have to create together, yet their characters don’t manifest in their music or journeys at all. Tuesday, a girl from a rich family who runs away from home, rarely says or does anything outside of making obvious observations about the situation at hand, and her personality is nothing more than a softly-spoken girl whose only role in scenes is to make the most inoffensive, mild-mannered statements possible. Carole has a more interesting background as someone who’s been living on her own for most of her life and surviving as a street performer, but even this attribute doesn’t show at all in the music they make or the ambitions they have. There’s so much room for there to be dialogue and development between two protagonists with completely different backgrounds, yet their dynamic remains as “we’re friends who want to become famous” throughout the entire story.

Every musician depicted in the story is either someone also chasing that fame who comes into competition with C+T as a result, or they’re a famous star who C+T see as someone to aspire to. Even with this idea of aspiring to be like other famous musicians, there’s room to include interactions like musical influence or even taking on some advice from them, but things just slump at “Wow, that’s *famous musician*???!”. For a story that aims to highlight the bonds made through music, it does an incredibly poor job and can only muster depicting the blandest of connections between all the members of the cast. In this regard, Kids on the Slope achieves everything that C+T fails to even get close to.

There are so many subplots dotted around the place which never amount to anything. An entire episode is dedicated to Tuesday having a crush on another character, only for it to have zero bearing on either of their development and never be acknowledged again. The second half of the story integrates commentary on topics such as prejudice against immigrants and government bodies swaying public opinion ahead of elections, but they’re handled in such a way that they pop up out of nowhere and feel strangely out of place compared to the other events of the story. A story about music could work so well alongside plots revolving around such themes, but Carole and Tuesday’s execution feels like there was a distinct lack of care to tie these ideas into the main story, so there ends up being scene changes that feel like you’ve switched to a completely different anime.

Shinichiro Watanabe worked as a music producer before becoming a director, and this shows so clearly in how he demonstrates understanding and respect for music’s powerful role in his works, yet C+T is completely devoid of that same respect. Multiple different musicians from around the world were brought on to work on Carole and Tuesday, with many being of diverse musical styles and career journeys, yet none of that manifests in the final presentation.

Different performers were hired for the dialogue and singing voices of both Carole and Tuesday. Nai Br.XX and Celine Ann, the singers who perform as Carole and Tuesday respectively, are unquestionably incredibly talented and I like some of the songs they perform for their characters in the story, but they’re few and far between across the entire story, and many of the other musical performances by other characters just completely lack the charm to be entertaining or memorable. The story would’ve benefited so much by focusing more on the chemistry between Nai Br.XX and Celine Ann, but this essence is diluted when so many other characters and performances are thrown into the mix.

I really wanted to like C+T, but the moment that confirmed to me without shadow of doubt that it was a work I actively *disliked* was towards the end when there’s an entire segment dedicated to Carole and Tuesday being invited to the Grammys. This is the penultimate end goal at the end of the story: receiving acknowledgement from an awarding body that only ever serves to recognise the most popular musical releases of the year.

Some may consider my perception of the Grammys to be reductive, but the truth is that I genuinely have no respect for a ceremony that’s upheld the distorted view of musical success in the public eye for so long. Music is to move and be moved, to share part of oneself even if nobody’s listening, to honour and respect the ties that manifest and bind us through listening to each other, to actualise the poetry of life from both the musician and listener through the audio channel between them, and to be washed over by the never-ending waves of intention and emotion that each and every single song has the capacity to convey. I will never believe that music is anything less, after I’ve spent hours across days across months across years feeling the weight of all it carries. Hence, I honestly don’t believe that fame has any place in the journey of an artist. It may be something musicians can achieve which in turn has ramifications on their circumstances, but I see it as being a possible by-product of the artistic journey, instead of an integral stepping stone. So in my eyes, Carole and Tuesday is about chasing a husk of a dream without regard, care, or even acknowledgement of the actual beauty of music, and I don’t believe that a story about wanting to get closer to fame can even be defined as a story about music in the first place.

I don’t know exactly what led to Carole and Tuesday taking on this form upon release, but the intention behind the project is commendable even if the final form left a lot to be desired. I like the idea of bringing various different artists together for this project, even if many in the end seemed to mainly have been invited due to their star power (I mean, why on Earth is Steve Aoki on this list??), and each of their contributions were usually limited to only a single song.

Something I think is really special about this list, however, is the inclusion of Maisa Tsuno from Akai Ko-en, for who and whose work I have immeasurable respect.

Maisa sadly passed away in 2020, leaving behind a breathtaking musical legacy tragically cut short, and one piece of the titan that is her discography is the song she wrote, composed, and arranged for Carole and Tuesday: ‘Round and Laundry’. Even if the song’s implementation into the story isn’t the most interesting or inspired, I still consider it to be of importance because of how different it sounds to the rest of Maisa’s works. While I overall dislike the anime, I’m still glad I watched it for this one small piece that, in the end, means so much more than what the production itself gives it credit for.

And even with my many problems with the series, I can’t deny that I really like the outro theme and sequence. It’s catchy and animated really well, so there was still something in every episode that I was able to enjoy!

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There are still works of Watanabe’s that I haven’t gotten around to watching yet, the main one being Terror in Resonance alongside Masaaki Yuasa’s Mind Game which Watanabe worked as music producer on. Even though I really didn’t enjoy his latest work, I’m still incredibly excited for his upcoming series, Lazarus, because its presentation looks to lean much more into his strengths as seen in his previous works!

If it weren’t for that first episode of Cowboy Bebop on that one forlorn night in 2017, I have no idea what my life would look like right now. Of course, there’s a whole host of creative minds who helped make all these projects as special as they are, but throughout all that time I looked to Watanabe’s name for the promise of exploring exciting new worlds, with each domain eventually becoming a cornerstone of my own, and now felt as right a time as any to express my gratitude for that in the form of this article.

-Mustafa