Bebop

Alan and I loved watching the anime work of Shinichiro Watanabe. He usually stumbled across them on adult swim on Cartoon Network, and I on the internet or through my nerdy med school friends (shout out to Linda!).  The two we bonded over were Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Both were just as much about the soundtrack as they were about the story and visuals, Bebop with its jazz and Champloo with its hip hop.

Memories include:
-- watching part of an episode in Steve and Twyla's basement on one of our solo trips to Minneapolis without Mom and Dad
-- watching Bebop sitting on the couch in the living room in Appleton, trying to explain the concept to Dad, with limited success
-- watching Champloo in Galena with the cousin when we had a mini family reunion there. That was same trip where Anna said her head looked too big in a photo because she was "more fronter," and where I won Hide and Seek by hiding in the cabinet under the counter in the kitchen.
-- Debating with Alan that Bebop was one of the few anime where the English dub was better than the original Japanese voices (which I still believe)
-- Debating which series was better. Alan originally thought Champloo, but I think he came around to my view on that one eventually.
--  Listening to the opening theme to Bebop in Alan's room in my house, reminiscing about the old times.
-- Discovering the music on his favorites playlist in preparing this blog.

Looking back at the themes of the series, Cowboy Bebop is about loneliness, betrayal and loyalty, and love gone wrong. Samurai Champloo is about quests for the unattainable, persecution, and the meaning of dignity. We watched them before these concepts would have much real-life meaning to Alan. It's almost as if they presaged the struggles in his life. Or maybe the seeds were already there, the roots starting to make their way into his heart.

Itazurana Kiss

When I started medical school, it was the first time living more than a mile from Alan. This was in the days before everyone was on facebook, so it was hard for me. He gave me a paper cutout of Kirby he had made, and I had a few other things to remember him by. We would talk occasionally (mostly on land lines -- we shared one cell phone.), and would chat on instant messenger.

Every summer, we would try to go as many times as possible to Six Flags Great America. He would come down for long weekends, and I would come up. He met my med school friends, and we would even share CDs of episodes that he or Linda had burned of anime episodes.

If you're not familiar with J-pop and K-pop, you're not missing out too much. But all these shows had  starting and ending credits with songs, oftentimes with broken English lyrics, or with silliness that totally didn't match the content of the show.

"Oh no! Kikyo just fell off a cliff into a raging river!"

[translation: playful/mischievous kiss]

When I started med school, Alan and Linda were the same height (four eleven and three quarters?). He was a little kid. When I graduated, he was still the shortest person in the family, but he had started to shoot up. The first hints of the darkness had set in, but really hadn't established themselves firmly yet. By the time I had reached residency, things were clearly different. We couldn't go to Great America because he couldn't get his sleep schedule straight. He had migraines all the time. He was missing school for them. He never really seemed excited to go.

I would never have guessed that his slide would just keep going down, deeper and deeper into this dysphoric pit. Cue the silly pop music.