one of the reasons i still love Cowboy Bebop so much is because it takes the “used future” look to such an extreme. There’s scenes on Mars that you’d assume were in some lonely southwestern town if you didn’t know otherwise, spaceship interiors that are stained and worn and feel more like the deck of an old fishing boat, space “truckers” whose cockpits are overloaded with gewgaws and souvenirs. Colonies still look very Earthly, because Earthlings didn’t abandon their heritage just because there was new technology available. There are places where brick and mortar buildings are practical and cheap, so you see stone and stucco rather than gleaming arcologies. For the most part, it’s a very industrial, blue collar future; even Spike’s bright red Swordfish II personal fightercraft has more of the feel of something a backwoods tinkerer might occasionally pull out of storage—a former racing vehicle repurposed in ways that probably aren’t wholly legal. Jet’s Hammer Head is alien and strange, yet at the same time calls to mind both older automobiles (with its prominent forward section) and more industrial vehicles with its large towing arm, all brought together by its thoroughly scuffed surface.
some other settings do a bit of this, but none so totally as Bebop. We don’t see things that are fancy and futuristic for the sake of being impressive, but because they make sense in context. The Bebop itself isn’t some super-spacious vessel with room to spare (thinking of a lot of the interior shots of the Serenity in Firefly, here), it’s kind of cramped and uncomfortable, dingy and dark, with a few small personal spaces. It feels small, in contrast to the vastness of space.
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