It Has Been 25 Years Since The Airing Of Cowboy Bebop

On April 3rd, 1998, which was 25 years ago, the first episode of a truly remarkable anime series aired in Japan, which would air across the globe, and that anime is Cowboy Bebop. I didn't know much about the show until Cartoon Network launched its Adult Swim content block that had Cowboy Bebop and other R-rated anime titles. I got curious about Cowboy Bebop after watching Outlaw Star with the latter being on Cartoon Network's Toonami block at least a year or two earlier before Cowboy Bebop aired on the Adult Swim content block.

The anime aired from April 3rd, 1998 to April 24th, 1999.

It was produced by Bandai Visual, one of many companies under the umbrella of Bandai Entertainment, many years before the merger with Namco to become Bandai Namco Entertainment.

Cowboy Bebop is a futuristic sci-fi anime series but it is very unique in its own way with jazz music being one of the fundamental cores of storytelling. The work of Shinichiro Watanabe, the director of the series, would be reflected in future animated works (Kids On The Slope, Space Dandy, and Carole & Tuesday).

For the uninitiated...

The story takes place in 2071 when space travel is possible and commonplace. Earth is rendered almost uninhabitable because the planet is pelted by rock showers, as a result of a moon's portion getting blown up, on a regular basis. You have no idea where or when the next rock shower is going to hit, which means the entirety of the planet's surface is a target.

Humankind has terraformed most of the solar system.

The majority of the story takes place on Mars, which has been terraformed into domed cities. If you enter a domed city, it's just like walking around a major city like Manhattan or Hong Kong. That concept is similar to Big O (in which the main character is voiced by Steven Blum, who also voices Spike Spiegel in the English dub of Cowboy Bebop).

Because of what happened to Earth, which obviously made world governments (the United Nations, European Union, and African Union by extension) unstable, there is the need to uphold and enforce the law across the Solar System. The Inter Solar System Police (I.S.S.P) force is established to uphold the law but that becomes a tall order.

As the human population increases and settles across the Solar System, especially into the far reaches, crime will follow. The overall crime rate in the entire Solar System is too much that the I.S.S.P cannot tackle it on its own. To alleviate the pressure on the I.S.S.P., a legalized bounty-hunting system is established.

Criminals that the I.S.S.P. are normally unable to apprehend have bounties placed on their heads.

Bounty hunters, who are nicknamed “cowboys,” are tasked with bringing these wanted criminals, alive, back to their respective police stations. If a police station in a certain Martian city placed a bounty on one of its criminals and you catch the person on Venus, then you have to bring that person all the way back to that very Martian city.

Cowboy Bebop follows a ragtag crew of “cowboys” who live on a spaceship known as the “Bebop.”

The crew consists of Jet Black, Spike Spiegel, Faye Valentine, Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV, and Ein. The five members supplement each other and become some makeshift ragtag family that has each other's backs though most of them aren't willing to admit it. Jet is a former I.S.S.P detective who left the force over an injury that resulted in the loss of his left arm, Spike is a former hitman for the Red Dragon syndicate who was killed and left for dead, Faye is an amnesiac who woke up from an almost 60-year cryosleep who resorted to being a con-woman, Ed is a hacker, and Ein is an (illegally) genetically modified Welsh Corgi.

With the exception of Ed and Ein, the other three protagonists have dark pasts that none of them are willing to disclose to each other unless the time is right or something goes incredibly wrong.

The series is episodic, in general, though Spike's personal story arc becomes important near the end of the show. A TV show called “Big Shots” announces the latest bounty and that sets up the plot of that specific episode.

The world of Cowboy Bebop beautifully meshes together facets of musical culture, geographical culture, film noir, pulp cinema, and martial arts. This is one of those timeless anime series that one can watch over and over again. It is one of the shows that I will happily rewatch every once in a while if I wanted a nice refresher.

For those who haven't seen the series, Cowboy Bebop streams free on a number of platforms (Tubi, Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Adult Swim).

On September 1st, 2001, a movie called Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' On Heaven's Door, which takes place between episodes 22 and 23, opened in theaters across Japan. It would be released to the United States a few years later.

Cowboy Bebop is the series that made me a fan of the voice work of Steven Blum and Beau Billingslea, respectively, Spike Spiegel and Jet Black in the English dub.

You can read my Medium version, which is slightly longer than this version, here: https://medium.com/@canhoangtran/happy-25th-anniversary-to-cowboy-bebop-one-of-the-anime-g-o-a-ts-dba0f97704c9