Stories evolve. Not just in the sense that while you're engaged in a dynamic story it seems to come alive, but in the sense that the types of stories we engage in evolve.
In the beginning, there were simply "comedies" and "tragedies". However, that's not even true though because there have also always been expository tales with no point (news stories, basically, or historical records). History has always been my bailiwick. That which has come before and catalogued in a more or less straightforward method, is still a story. It's a history, but it's still some kind of tale. The scope for what I consider a "story" is pretty wide.
There are nearly unlimited types of stories and they take shape on many mediums. As a youth, my pap would tell me stories before bed. They were the absolute worst kind: "remember when" stories when my pap would just tell me something he remembered. The main characters in his tales were always him and my uncle Sonny and there was never a point to any of them and they all struggled with a coherent plot, but I loved them, regardless. I was just a child and my experience of good stories was slim at the time. This is the same reason children can tolerate page-turners about dogs running and children playing.
Think of it in the simplest terms. As we grow older, the types of stories we're exposed to change. I always find this hard to believe, but some folks don't really read. Like, they don't read anything. For fun, for work, for education. It boggles my mind, but it's real. It may be due to the fact that as children these people weren't exposed to the right kind of stories? I have no idea, it requires further research and it isn't the reason I'm typing today. In general, and individually, the stories that entertain or illuminate us get more complex as we grow older.
There isn't a lot of death in children's stories. Kids don't generally understand death or loss, yet. That's part of growing up and part of why adult stories generally contain some kind of loss. It isn't necessary to categorize stories between "adult" and "child", but I don't personally consider it necessary to differentiate between "comedy" and "tragedy" and yet, that's always been the case.
This notion, of the "maturity" of a story can be seen perfectly in the new Cowboy Bebop. The original was a cult classic from the late 90s that I was "forced" to watch one night freshman year of college. This story has a particularly special place in my heart for a lot of reasons, chiefest of which is this scene:
Which is obviously from the Jeet Kune Do of Bruce Lee fame, which I've written about before.
I've watched that cartoon probably a dozen times from start to finish. It is a masterpiece of storytelling and a textbook example (now) of what makes a truly mature story stand out these days. I think the first real example of this effect is the Bible. The whole idea of a heaven and hell (with angels and demons fighting for control of what is essentially other worlds) is compelling, and most importantly, deep and broad.
That probably doesn't make a ton of sense, but think of J.R.R. Tolkien next. His Lord of the Rings and There and Back Again were fantastically immense. That's what separated his works from the rest of the crowd, and what C.S. Lewis and others have emulated since then with varying degrees of success. Every "influential" or "must read" book list includes Tolkien's masterpiece and people have often struggled to understand why. Well, that's misleading. The book is exceptionally written, there are interesting characters, there are all kinds of things that give the story extra power. The most powerful and compelling part of Tolkien's works was then, and remains, simply the scope.
The stories about Middle Earth take place over thousands of years. The bible takes place over thousands of years. An eon is the perfect backdrop time frame for an epic novel. Humans can kind of understand a millennium because it's basically the ceiling of human lifespan times ten, and that's a pretty round figure. Long enough to be beyond our comprehension, but short enough to kind of relate. Toss in a couple millennia and it's just a backdrop at that point, but with all kinds of automatically filled in rich depth, simply from your brain's natural inclination to fill in the gaps for these things.
The characters in these stories make themselves important in the context of this epic world. An everyday person, like you or I, can become a hero in an everyday story. That's great and all, but it is nothing compared to the hero of the ages that redeemed all those people that came before and saved all those people yet to come.
The original Cowboy Bebop excelled in this respect. The time frame was less than 100 years, but the characters were so small in that universe (at first) that it felt immense to the viewer. The netflix adaptation was really good, fantastic when you consider the goals they had when translating it from cartoon to live action. I'm sure there were conversations about sequels or season two from the beginning. The original only had so much source material to work from and if you play it too tight to the original, you'll maybe kill your main character, or something.
Of course the live action will get a second season. The last episode basically tells us as much, so this story is an example of one that was the result of evolution, underwent a devolution, and will now evolve into something new. Well, maybe change is the right word since there's no competition involved against a novel story. Which is why this amazing cartoon was remade into an interesting live action series. The second season has a lot of potential.
My only issue with the new version is how much they make Spike speak. I guess this might be the point of this story: good stories let the viewer/reader fill in the gaps. The netflix adaptation of Cowboy Bebop fails in only this regard. The original Spike was so interesting because he didn't fill every 4 seconds of screen time with dialogue, the new one is just all right. They're both really good, but the original was better.
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