“August 6 - sky day! Today, Ed goes looking for the spooky mysterious horrible alien. Lesson, lesson... if you see a stranger, follow him.”
Radical Edward Quotes
2 quotes from Cowboy Bebop, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
The only person aboard the Bebop not carrying a past, which is a structural necessity rather than a quirk: four traumatised adults in a small ship would be unwatchable. Keeps time in invented holidays.
“All right! Bonsai, bok choy, wise guy, water boy! Lights shine bright in the old town tonight!”
The fair objection is that this is noise, and half of it is. The other half is a roll call: bonsai for Jet, who is asked to water it two lines later, and the rhyme keeps going because nobody on the Bebop is willing to say goodbye in a form that could be answered. Ed's nonsense is where this crew puts the sentiment it will not otherwise admit to.
Read Radical Edward's story from the start
Every line above is a fragment. The manga is where the fragments come from, and the print edition is the one this site checks its quotes against.
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A diary entry read aloud, in the third person, with a moral attached that inverts the one every child is taught. The show needs someone aboard who is not carrying a past, because four traumatised adults in a small ship would be unwatchable, and the solution is a character whose relationship to time is a list of invented holidays. The comedy is doing structural work.