bkev said:

Bebop transcends the label of anime. It's just good TV. It manages to be a space western without relying only on tropes belonging to those kinds of shows, and I might even say it does at least one episode for each possible genre classification. That's what happens when a show is character-based, they can go outside of your average barriers.

I just got the CB blu-rays and am re-watching it for the first time since 2000-ish. The only thing I can think of now is: was Joss influenced by this when he cooked up Firefly? The similarities and overlapping themes are striking, but CB was pretty new and somewhat obscure when Firefly was in development.