cowboy bebop
a jazz record that happens to be an anime. every episode borrows a different genre and gives it back slightly worse off.
cowboy-bebop.shrine
the trick nobody copies correctly is the pacing. bebop is mostly downtime — people eating, waiting, being broke — and the action only lands because you sat through the boredom with them.
ballad of fallen angels is where it stops pretending to be episodic. the church, the stained glass, the falling. it never fully recovers from that and it is not supposed to.