Written by The Curmudgeon T here’s this fantastic video by the YouTube essayist “ Channel Criswell ” which dissects the episodic nature of Shinichiro Watanabe's 1998 series  Cowboy Bebop (check it out here ). The piece satisfyingly interrogates the narrative distance that forms between the protagonists and the stories which they inhabit, from which the episodic structure stems. While I think everything in the video is pretty spot-on, it got the gears in my brain turning, and I guess I'd quite like to try my hand at discussing the existential angst of Cowboy Bebop . In as few words as possible, I would go on to suggest that the most important effect that the episodic structure has on Cowboy Bebop is an everlasting sense of ephemerality. This ephemeral tone (although not exclusively symptomatic of episodism) is what I intend to unpack. In case anyone reading this is unfamiliar with Cowboy Bebop , it essentially revolves around a group of space bounty hunters in th...