カウボーイビバップ(Cowboy Bebop) is an anime, supposedly, about a group of bounty hunters in the future. Yeah, that’s it. They go on cool adventures and the anime is far better than it has any right to be. Though, if you’re expecting an over-arching story…yeah, no. There is something there, though the series is mostly episodic.
Cowboy Bebop belongs to a small group of anime that is good despite being recommended by the Western anime community. That’s a pretty big deal.
It’s actually a shame that the franchise just kinda…didn’t happen, because the worldbuilding and characters are pretty damn good.^A)

Cowboy Bebop has a strong start…then it trips a bit and goes into straight-up ‘weird’ territory for a few episodes before eventually picking up again and ending on a banger. The animation is top-notch for the whole thing though.
The series is mostly episodic, where each episode follows a story that’s largely disconnected from any over-arching plot…though an over-arching plot does exist, it’s mostly in the background until we reach the end.
Cowboy Bebop’s whole thing is that it tries to blend genres…not just film/TV, but also music…and I find the music to be hit or miss. But that’s probably just me. I can’t think of an episode that’s ‘bad’ in this series, though some of them do get really weird…like the time Spike left a lobster in a fridge, which went bad, and then turned into some alien creature.
The worldbuilding of the series makes it feel very real, very captivating. Unfortunately…if you want to learn about that worldbuilding, there is very very little information. Take the Titan War, which is relevant to the backstory of a few characters. There is extremely little information on it and, arguably, the people who tell us the most are unreliable.

The movie takes place between episodes 22 and 23 of the show. The animation here is just a straight-up upgrade from the series.
This is the main source of information for the aforementioned Titan War which shows just how little we know about it. The film also takes place entirely on Mars which I think is a fairly rare location in the anime. At the very least, this is the first time we don’t see the Chinese/Japanese side of Mars.
The main appeal here…outside of the fact it’s another banger of a story…is that we get to see the great cities of Mars, which we don’t really get to see in the anime, which focuses on small settlements and backwards areas.

Yes, I read the manga, though I don’t remember that much about it. The story here is completely different from the anime. The reason being that the manga was created before the anime came out, but based on it…and, well, there isn’t a lot of material to work with if you’re making something for something that doesn’t yet exist. Kinda similar to Patlabor, in a way. Though, unlike Patlabor, there was clearly zero coordination here.
The story here isn’t great, though it’s serviceable and…well, I was more surprised that it existed than anything else.
It’s a bizarre relic, I guess.

Cowboy Bebop has unusually realistic worldbuilding…at least when it comes to cultures. Different planets in the Solar System have different cultures…which aren’t even the same across the whole planet. Mars’ dominant cultures are Chinese and Arab, with a handful of others (likely) mixed in.
This is realistic in that, finally, there’s a sci-fi story that doesn’t depict the entire Solar System as being American™.
There was a point in time that I believed that Cowboy Bebop’s world, or something vaguely resembling it, might actually be a thing. The bit that’s realistic is the bit where different cultures will probably share the Solar System. Let’s hope a 1980s-1990s culture returns as well. Maybe. Maybe not.

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