Few Japanese animated works have had such a profound impact on Western culture. Cowboy Bebop And Neon Genesis Evangelion — and secret, two people always answer the same question. Along with Ghost In The Shell, Perfect Blue, and the Ghibli canon, these two were part of a wave of thoughtful, boundary-pushing anime that emerged in the 1990s. As for what fueled the popularity of jaded, world-weary protagonists like Spike Spiegel and Shinji Ikari, the answer is simpler than you might think.
What’s harder to answer is the extent to which their paths differ and the differences between their depictions. While Cowboy Bebop takes a more holistic approach focusing on boredom and societal decline, Neon Genesis Evangelion is distinctly introspective. Both are calls to action with themes of meaning, change, and the connections and bonds we build with others. This different approach is related to the circumstances that gave birth to both seriesAnd I think it really goes deeper into the heart of these works than anyone expected.
Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion Share a Common Ground
The Lost Decade is the setting for both contemplative classics.
To set the scene: Japan in the 90s was not in good shape.. During the 1980s, an economic bubble developed along with a life of extravagant conspicuous consumption. The bubble burst in the early 1990s, with huge economic and social consequences. In practical terms, this meant that for many people, daily life will become much more difficult.
Mass layoffs have been common as temporary work has become more common. In addition to the inherent instability, temporary work offers few benefits to those who can find it. Japanese companies have lost market dominance, even domestically. This period of economic turmoil became known as the Lost Decade.Although many economists believe that this situation will continue long after the 1990s.
As careers fade into thin air and households become unstable, people across Japan began to feel a strong sense of indifference and apathy.. To make matters worse, Japan has a tradition of “hiring seasons” when university graduates are hired en masse, and Japanese careers tend to last a lifetime. If a person fails to find a job during the first hiring season, he or she will be in a lot of trouble for the rest of the year – and since the initial hiring is so important, the consequences will last for years to come.
Japan's economic downturn took a huge toll. In 1999, for example, the New York Times reported a 34.7% increase in suicides. Against a backdrop of disaster, impossibility, and lives stripped of meaning, Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion both emerged with stories of meaning and happiness in the face of dire circumstances. How they approached the issue “How can I find meaning in an unbearable life?” makes for an amazing lesson.
Cowboy Bebop – The Art of Ironic Living
Cowboy Bebop says hell is other people
A great deal of 19th century philosophy debated why one should not give up and die. From thinkers like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, a theme would develop called existentialism, which was embraced and revisited by 20th century thinkers like Camus and Sartre. The core of existentialism is that “existence precedes essence.” In other words, paraphrasing Nietzsche, people (and things and words) “become what they are.”
This refracts over time: a person's past and background play a role in determining who they become, but that person also play an important role in determining their own future and the meaning of their lives.. For the existentialist, meaning must be created. This is convenient, because it also means that a person can look at their context and take control of it and what they are becoming, creating their own meaning in life.
Cowboy Bebop has a completely horrific setting. One of its most metaphorical themes is how the social structure itself determines the roles and personalities of Spike, Faye, Jet, and everyone else in which — just as Japanese audiences drifted in a sea of uncertainty during the Lost Decade. Inevitably, past moments and flashes of context in which the Cowboy Bebop cast existed always came back to haunt them.
As faces from the past return and reveal themselves to have become someone else, Cowboy Bebop constantly reminds viewers of the impermanence of ideas and faces. In the face of these circumstances, Spike and the crew try to take control and decide the meaning of their own lives. Cowboy Bebop's famously ambiguous ending may or may not represent Spike's death: this uncertainty is the point.
Spike decides create your own meaning in life by pursuing a face from his past and solving the Red Dragon Syndicate of which he was once a part. Realizing his relative insignificance in the world, he created a meaning for his life, which in itself had meaning. If Spike dies, it is because he chose to die with a meaning he created— Are not because despair lacks meaning. I think it's a more subtle point that is often overlooked.
Neon Genesis Evangelion – Loneliness is always a lie
Evangelion analyzes civilization and its discontents
Suppose my parents lost their jobs and seemed to have changed; I slogged through high school and college for a small chance at a seemingly ephemeral career; in the end, I felt like the roles I had assumed, the relationships I had always maintained, and the things I had been raised to believe were all fictions. Evangelion uses Freud and Jung to answer this disturbing premise.
Freud believed that the psyche consists of three aspects: the conscious, the unconscious (instincts and repressions), and the preconscious (internalized rules and norms). He believed that as we go through life, our upbringing shapes these psychological aspects. For Freud, Their stress plays an important role in how we perceive and act in the world..
Freud developed metaphors, including “psychological structure,” for interpretation. This division is not literal. Because all personalities are unique and psychology is essentially the study of internal processes that we cannot see, Freud thought that interpreting language was better than simply looking at a person’s actions in a laboratory. It was essentially a philosophy that was the basis for many misconceptions.
Jung, on the other hand, was a former colleague of Freud who broke away from psychoanalysis to found analytical psychology, which focuses on the relationship between humans and cultural artifacts. Jung believed that archetypes form a symbolic register in the collective unconscious that we imitate and project. From Jung comes Evangelion's emphasis on religious symbolismespecially Gnosticism.
Both theories are much more complex. Essentially, they both suggest that these unconscious forces direct us, build and are built by our relationships with others. Importantly, these effects can also be understood and often remedied.
Evangelion reflects the experiences of many viewers at the time, especially with its high school pilots. Rei is built in the image of others to fulfill the exact role assigned to her, sacrificing herself for the sake of others. Mass-produced as a clone to fight and die, she is akin to the social order. In a time when people were expected to fulfill social obligations that ultimately led to meaninglessness and instability, Rei also serves as an easily relatable metaphor for an unreal life..
Rei indirectly shows that without critical self-examination, the path one must unquestioningly follow can lead the world to disaster. In contrast, Shinji's self-acceptance in the legendary (and controversial) original ending of Evangelion shows the resolution of the process of psychoanalysis. Shinji comes to embrace and accept the way he perceives the world and other peopleaccepting that he can change and live a different, happier, less lonely life. This decision also parallels Asuka's bathtub tragedy, the implied result of unbearable psychological stress.
Bebop and Evangelion pursue beauty in disaster
In the worst of times, there is still something to love
Both Cowboy Bebop and Evangelion have become famous for their different depictions of meaning and happiness amidst chaos, but their connection to Lost Decade is often underrated. However, there's still one more buried revelation. Cowboy Bebop and EvangelionBoth use experimental methods to prove that life is still full of love..
With Bebop, it was a synthesis of jazz, noir, cyberpunk, and Western. Evangelion did the same with gnosticism, psychoanalysis, and mecha anime. I firmly believe that such fusions only happen when someone pours all their love into a single creative endeavor. Both show that, in times of terror, We can convey the parts of life we love. to create beautiful art and beautiful life – or at least create meaning that can overcome chaos.
These two iconic shows were born from the same premise: Japan's crisis during the Lost Decade and the mental disorders it created in the country. They find completely different answers because their creators loved different things in life when life was at its hardest. They show that the answer to the question “How can I find meaning in an unbearable life?” mainly based on the letter “I”. In other words, Cowboy Bebop And Neon Genesis Evangelion taught me and countless other fans that The meaning is always right before our eyes.and there are many ways to find it.
