Easily my favorite anime series, with Trigun coming in a fairly distant second. Everything about Bebop was just done right. The writing was top notch. The standalone episodes were great little individual stories; sometimes cute, sometimes sad. The overall story arc was absolutely brilliant as well. It managed to feel epic, while only actually being centered around seven or so people. The characters were absolutely perfect. Each on fit into an archetype, but didn't feel confined by their role in it. Every one of them had separate stories and motivations which occasionally intersected, but it never felt like one character was being ignored in favor of another. Then there's the music. Bebop, to me, was all about the music. Every episode was named after either a song or a style of music, and the composition by Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts was absolutely divine.
