Binge-Watching Netflix: Cowboy Bebop (1998)

Cowboy Bebop (Japanese: カウボーイビバップ, Hepburn: Kaubōi Bibappu) is a Japanese neo-noir science fiction anime television series created and animated by Sunrise, 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 (in six “sessions” of four to five episodes each), 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. Its most prominent themes are existential ennui, loneliness, and the inability to escape one’s past.

Cowboy Bebop was dubbed into English by Animaze and ZRO Limit Productions, and was originally licensed in North America by Bandai Entertainment (and is now licensed by Funimation) and in Britain by Beez Entertainment (now by Anime Limited); Madman Entertainment owns the license in Australia and New Zealand. In 2001, the series became the first anime title to be broadcast on Adult Swim.

Since its release, Cowboy Bebop has been hailed as one of the greatest animated television series of all time. It was a critical and commercial success both in Japanese and international markets, most notably in the United States. It garnered several major anime and science-fiction awards upon its release, and received unanimous praise for its style, characters, story, voice acting, animation, and soundtrack. The English dub was particularly lauded, and is regarded as one of the best. 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 for anime in general.

via Wikipedia

When Cowboy Bebop came to Netflix and my friends started talking about how great it was, my only comment was “I haven’t seen it.” The response from my friends was largely: “How?!”

So I set about rectifying that, watching the series on Netflix on my days off. I will agree with my friends in that it is a good show (I don’t have the nostalgia they do for calling it great). I love all the wildly different and interesting characters that ride and live aboard the Bebop throughout the series.

I also enjoy that the crew rarely turns in their bounty, mostly reforming the criminal or just out right letting them go. The characters’ personal storylines are all very deep and somewhat emotionally upsetting. Some of the situations presented are also deeply emotionally upsetting.

For an animated series that only ran one season, it seems that a lot of detail and thought was crammed into 26 episodes. I don’t always want to watch something like that, mostly I like watching something that takes my mind off the daily struggles of living, but when I do, Cowboy Bebop is just about exactly fills that role completely.

My Ranking: ★ ★ ★ ★