is a Japanese neo-noir space Western anime television series that aired on TV Tokyo and Wowow from 1998 to 1999. Created and animated by Sunrise, it was led by a production team of director Shinichirō Watanabe, screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, mechanical designer Kimitoshi Yamane, and composer Yoko Kanno, who are collectively billed as Hajime Yatate. The series, which ran for twenty-six episodes (dubbed "sessions"), is set in the year 2071 and follows the lives of a traveling bounty-hunting crew aboard a spaceship, the Bebop. Although it incorporates a wide variety of genres, the series draws most heavily from science fiction, Western, and noir films. It explores themes such as existential boredom, loneliness, and the inability to escape one's past.
Cowboy Bebop was a critical and commercial success both in Japanese and international markets, most notably in the United States, and has been widely hailed as one of the best animated series of all time. It garnered several major anime and science fiction awards and received acclaim from critics and audiences for its style, characters, story, voice acting, animation, and soundtrack. The English dub was particularly lauded and is regarded as one of the best anime English dubs. Credited with helping to introduce anime to a new wave of Western viewers in the early 2000s, Cowboy Bebop has also been called a gateway series.
Plot
In the year 2071, roughly fifty years after an accident with a hyperspace gateway that made Earth almost uninhabitable, humanity has colonized most of the rocky planets and moons of the Solar System. Amid a rising crime rate, the Inter Solar System Police (ISSP) set up a legalized contract system, in which registered bounty hunters (also referred to as "Cowboys") pursue criminals and bring them in alive in return for a reward. The series' protagonists are bounty hunters working from the spaceship Bebop. The initial crew consists of Spike Spiegel, an exiled former hitman of the criminal Red Dragon Syndicate, and Jet Black, a former ISSP officer. They are later joined by Faye Valentine, an amnesiac con artist; Edward Wong, an eccentric child, skilled in hacking; and Ein, a genetically engineered Pembroke Welsh Corgi with human-like intelligence. Throughout the series, the team gets involved in disastrous mishaps, leaving them without money, while often confronting familiar faces and events from their pasts: These include Jet's reasons for leaving the ISSP and Faye's past as a young woman from Earth injured in an accident and cryogenically frozen to save her life.
While much of the show is episodic, the main story arc focuses on Spike and his deadly rivalry with Vicious, an ambitious and ruthless criminal of the Red Dragon Syndicate. Spike and Vicious were once partners and friends. However, when Spike began an affair with Vicious's girlfriend, Julia, and resolved to leave the syndicate with her, Vicious attempted to eliminate Spike by blackmailing Julia into killing him. Julia hides to protect herself and Spike, while Spike fakes his death to escape the syndicate. In the present, Julia comes out of hiding and reunites with Spike, intending to make their planned future a reality. Vicious, having staged a coup d'état and taken over the syndicate, sends hitmen after the pair. Julia is killed, leaving Spike alone. Spike leaves the Bebop after finally apologizing to Faye and Jet. Upon infiltrating the syndicate, he finds Vicious on the top floor of the building and confronts him after dispatching the remaining Red Dragon members. The final battle ends with Spike killing Vicious, only to be seriously wounded himself in the ensuing confrontation. Looking up to the sky, Spike sees a vision of Julia. The series concludes as Spike descends the main staircase of the building into the rising sun before eventually falling to the ground in front of the remaining syndicate members, presumably dead.
Genre and themes Shinichirō Watanabe created a special tagline for the series to promote it during its original presentation, calling it "a new genre unto itself". The line was inserted before and after commercial breaks during its Japanese and US broadcasts. Later, Watanabe called the phrase an "exaggeration". The show is a hybrid of multiple genres, most notably Westerns, noirs, and pulp fiction.Clements & McCarthy, 2006 p. 113 One reviewer described it as "space opera meets noir, meets comedy, meets cyberpunk". It has also been called a "genre-busting space Western".
The musical style was emphasized in many of the episode titles.Camp & Davis, 2007 pp79–80 Multiple philosophical themes are explored throughout the series using the characters, including existentialism, existential boredom, loneliness, and the effects of the past. Other concepts referenced include environmentalism and capitalism. The series also makes specific references to or pastiches multiple films, including the works of John Woo and Bruce Lee, Midnight Run, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Alien. Additionally, the series incorporates extensive references and elements from science fiction, bearing strong similarities to the cyberpunk fiction of William Gibson. Several planets and space stations in the series are made in Earth's image. The streets of celestial objects such as Ganymede resemble a modern port city, while Mars features shopping malls, theme parks, casinos and cities. This setting has been described as "one part Chinese diaspora and two parts wild west".
Characters
The characters were created by Watanabe and designed by Toshihiro Kawamoto. Watanabe envisioned each character as an extension of his own personality, or as an opposite person to himself. Each character, from the main cast to supporting characters, was designed to be an outlaw unable to fit into society. Kawamoto designed the characters so they could be easily distinguished from one another. All the main cast are characterized by a deep sense of loneliness or resignation to their fate and past. From the perspective of Brian Camp and Julie Davis, the main characters resemble the main ones of the manga and anime series Lupin III, if only superficially, given their more troubled pasts and more complex personalities.Camp & Davis, 2007 p81
The series's primary focus is on the main protagonist Spike Spiegel (voiced by Koichi Yamadera), a "space cowboy" with fluffy black hair, often seen wearing a blue suit. The overall theme of the series is often interpreted as being Spike's past and the karmic effect it has on him. Spike is portrayed as someone who, having been separated from the woman he loves, has lost his expectations for the future and finds himself in a near-constant state of lethargy. Watanabe specified that Spike should have an artificial eye, as he wanted the crew of the Bebop to have flaws which would be explored in the show's plot. Originally, Spike was set to be portrayed wearing an eyepatch, but this decision was vetoed by producers.
Jet Black (voiced by Unshō Ishizuka) is shown as someone who lost confidence in his former life and has become cynical about the state of society. Spike and Jet were designed to be opposites, with Spike being thin and wearing smart attire, while Jet was bulky and wore more casual clothing. The clothing, which was dark in color, also reflected their states of mind. The rebellious hustler Faye Valentine, hacker "Radical" Edward (voiced by Aoi Tada), and "data dog" Ein join the crew in later episodes. Their designs were intended to contrast with Spike's. Faye was described by her voice actress Megumi Hayashibara as initially being an "ugly" woman, with her defining traits being her liveliness, sensuality and humanity. To emphasize her situation when first introduced, she was compared to Poker Alice, a famous Western figure.
Edward and Ein were the only main characters to have real-life models. The former had her behavior based on the antics of Yoko Kanno as observed by Watanabe when he first met her. While generally portrayed as carefree and eccentric, Edward is motivated by a sense of loneliness after being abandoned by her father. Kawamoto initially based Ein's design on a friend's pet corgi, later getting one himself to use as a motion model.
Production
Cowboy Bebop was created and developed by animation studio Sunrise and Hajime Yatate, the well-known pseudonym for the collective contributions of Sunrise's animation staff. The leader of the series' creative team was director Shinichirō Watanabe, most notable at the time for directing Macross Plus and Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory. Other leading members of Sunrise's creative team were screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, mechanical art designer Kimitoshi Yamane, composer Yoko Kanno, and producers Masahiko Minami and Yoshiyuki Takei. Most of them had previously worked together, in addition to having credits on other popular anime titles. Nobumoto had scripted Macross Plus, Kawamoto had designed the characters for Gundam, and Kanno had composed the music for Macross Plus and The Vision of Escaflowne. Yamane had not worked with Watanabe yet, but his credits in anime included Bubblegum Crisis and The Vision of Escaflowne. Minami joined the project as he wanted to do something different from his previous work on mecha anime.
Concept Cowboy Bebop was Watanabe's first project as solo director, as he had been co-director in his previous works. His original concept was for a film, and during production he treated each episode as a miniature movie."From the Small Screen to the Big Screen". His main inspiration for Cowboy Bebop was the first series of the anime Lupin III, a crime drama focusing on the exploits of the series' titular character. Co-writer Keiko Nobumoto was also inspired by British acid jazz Jamiroquai's song "Space Cowboy". When developing the series' story, Watanabe began by creating the characters first. He explained, "the first image that occurred to me was one of Spike, and from there I tried to build a story around him, trying to make him cool." While the original dialogue of the series avoided any profanities, its level of sophistication was made appropriate to adults in a criminal environment. Watanabe described Cowboy Bebop as "80% serious story and 20% humorous touch". The comical episodes were harder for the team to write than the serious ones, and though several events in them seemed random, they were carefully planned in advance. Watanabe conceived the series' ending early on, and each episode involving Spike and Vicious was meant to foreshadow their final confrontation. Some of the staff were unhappy about this approach as a continuation of the series would be difficult. While he considered altering the ending, he eventually settled with his original idea. The reason for the ending was that Watanabe did not want the series to become like Star Trek, with him being tied to doing it for years.
Development