Cowboy Bebop

Considered to be one of the best anime series ever created, Shinichiro Watanabe’s masterpiece slammed together Westerns, samurai flicks, space opera, cyberpunk, and film noir into one transcendent mashup. The music was a big part of its success. Yoko Kanno (who also handled brilliant scores for Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Escaflowne, and Macross Plus) put together a crack unit of session musicians to tear through her ambitious compositions for the series, ranging from different eras of jazz to world music to even heavy metal. Frankly, all the collections are essential, but this first one makes for the best starting place: it focuses on the jazz and blues instrumentals, making it the most cohesive listen. Like Lalo Schifrin’s “Theme from Mission: Impossible,” opening theme “Tank!” was originally intended as background for an action sequence but proved too explosive to be contained.