My Thoughts on “Cowboy Bebop” (1998)

 

(This is a textless poster for Cowboy Bebop (1998).) 

 

 

 

Finally, I finally get to write about Cowboy Bebop (1998), one of my favorite anime shows of all time, if not, my favorite. I should've already started this last month back in June, and I'm sorry that this has taken so long to finally come out. I just got caught up with other projects, other posts, I procrastinated, and I kept doing stuff IRL with my grandma, since ever since we got the money 💵 from my dad's lawsuit with Keller & Keller, we're hardly ever home anymore. We're always going somewhere, whether it'd be Albuquerque, Grants, Santa Fe, Los Lunas, Gallup even (even though I haven't been to Gallup recently), and to the various casinos 🎰 that are nearby where we live. Right now, I'm at a rare moment when we're just staying home today, and we're not going anywhere as far as I know. Though, given how our days have gone so far, I wouldn't be surprised if we still ended up going somewhere. But, I guess I'll see. 

 

This review will be a tad different from my other reviews that I've done so far. Even my milestone reviews, the 99th post, 100th post, 199th post, and 200th post. Because, I don't just plan to talk about the series itself, but I plan to talk about the movie, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie AKA Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' On Heaven's Door, and the video game, Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence AKA Cowboy Bebop: The Song Remains The Same. Basically writing a dedicated review for each. I will write about the series first since that's the first thing I've rewatched and finished for this review, then when that's done, I will watch the movie, and then write my review on that, and then I will review the game afterwards, and then I’ll be done with this whole thing. I haven’t finished watching the longplay of the game, but I’m almost finished. I plan on continuing watching it while I’m writing the section about the series and the section about the movie. By then I should be done watching it, and ready to write about it. I’ve already written some notes about it, things that stood out to me personally while watching it. 

 

The only thing that I won’t talk about is the 2021 live action series on Netflix because I have not watched it, and I have no interest in watching it. It only had one season ☝️ with 10 episodes, and it’s been 5 years since it came out. If it was going to have a second season, it would’ve gotten one by now. But it probably won’t, because people didn’t like this show. The reviews weren’t that great, they were mixed at best, negative at worst, and the fans didn’t respond to it. In fact, they largely rejected it. People were against that show from the moment it was announced, and the casting was announced, and that first trailer was released. They were upset that it even existed at all, and that it existed like this. That it was the way that it was. I thought it looked cheap looking to be honest with you. 

 

It looked fan made in the worst way imaginable. The characters all looked like cosplay, and not particularly good cosplay either. Most people’s mindset when it came to this show was: “this doesn’t need to exist, but if it has to, it better be good.” And a lot of those same people felt that it wasn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people who forgot this show even existed. It’s hard to believe them considering that there hasn’t anything about this show since 2021. No news whatsoever. So I think it’s pretty safe to assume that it’s not getting a second season. So there is no real reason to talk about this, other than to be completionist and talk about every single piece of Cowboy Bebop media. I’m completionist, but not that completionist. This gives me an excuse to not have to talk about a show that I had no interest in, and didn’t even needed to exist. 

 

I will mention in passing in the conclusion, talking about the future of the franchise, if there is a future for this franchise, as well as my own ideas of how I think the franchise could continue past Carole & Tuesday, which is apart of the Cowboy Bebop franchise. It's a spinoff to Cowboy Bebop (1998), it's set in the same universe. It takes place in the same city that the movie takes place in, Alba City. I will watch and review that show at a later date, when I make the time for it. I will review it separately from Cowboy Bebop (1998) and all of its related media because even though it's apart of the same franchise and it's set in the same universe, it's enough of its own thing that it can be reviewed separately. I mean, If I was doing one big mega review of all the Blade Runner movies and ancillary media we have right now at the time of me writing this, I wouldn't exactly include Soldier (1998), even though that is a Blade Runner spinoff and it's set in the same universe. Plus, this review will already be stuffed as it is, I don't want to make it even longer by reviewing yet another show. 

 

Besides, it doesn't actually feature any Cowboy Bebop characters, as far as I know. It features all new characters created specifically for that show, including a female politician who’s supposed to be like Donald Trump. Like, they designed that character off of Trump, and she’s supposed to be an allegory or a parody for Trump. The show premiered during Trump’s first term, in 2019, and it ended in 2020, the last year of his first term. Before he tried to claim that the election 🗳️ was stolen from him. So, it’s no surprise that they took a swipe at Donald Trump because frankly he deserves it. If there’s any US president 🇺🇸 that deserves to be mocked relentlessly, it’s Trump, he hates it, he hates being mocked. It hurts his fragile little ego. Anything Trump hates is good 👍. It is funny though that they decided to make the Trump analog a woman ♀︎, but I guess they figured that since Trump hates women ♀︎, so why not make the parody of him a woman ♀︎? They probably didn’t think that deep into it, but it still works in that way. You can still view it in that way. Maybe they made her a woman ♀︎ because Marine Le Pen is a woman ♀︎, she’s basically the French equivalent to Donald Trump 🇫🇷. She’s France 🇫🇷’s main right-wing populist politician, she’s one of the main oppositional forces opposing Emmanuel Macron’s government, and people are worried that her and her party will win the next election 🗳️. 

 

Maybe this character is supposed to be a combination of Trump and Le Pen, combining two of the worst people in the world into one super bitch, an absolute hag that no reasonable person would want in office. I guess I’ll find out when I finally watch the show, and hopefully see some behind-the-scenes material related to the show. So, I will mention the 2021 live action series in that section along with Carole & Tuesday, but it will not be a full review by any means. I don’t think I’ll ever review the 2021 live action series. It’s not even on my list. I’ll only do it if people beg me to do it, and luckily I don’t anyone will be begging me to review it because like I said, a lot of people have probably forgot that show even existed. Either that, or they pretend it doesn’t exist, like people do with Pacific Rim: Uprising and Independence Day: Resurgence, which I do plan on reviewing pretty soon. At least before the end of this July. I already have it saved in my watchlist on Disney+, since the whole franchise is owned by Disney by way of the Fox merger. 

 

Or even other remakes like Total Recall (2012), RoboCop (2014), The Day the Earth Stood Still 🌎 (2008), Poltergeist (2015). How many people even remember that there even was a remake to RoboCop (1987), or Total Recall (1990), or Poltergeist (1982)? Not every many. Even the Road House remake from 2024 has largely been forgotten about, and that movie came out a couple of years ago. I mean, how many people do you hear talk about Road House (2024)? Probably not a whole lot. I only ever hear people talk about the original, Road House (1989). The original has stood the test of time, and still remembered decades later, while the remake hasn't stood test of time, and has already been forgotten about two years later. The same will largely be the same for the 2021 live action Cowboy Bebop series. It is pretty much a live action remake of the anime, since it largely tells the same story as the anime, while changing a lot of things around (much to the chagrin of a lot of Cowboy Bebop fans), and features mostly the same characters. Albeit much different than their anime counterparts. 

 

The character who's probably the closest to his anime counterpart is probably Jet Black, which is ironic because his casting was probably the most controversial for very obvious reasons 😒. People didn't like that Jet was played by a black man ♂︎, even though he was voiced by a black man ♂︎ in the English dub of the anime, and that particular voice is often considered the definitive voice for the character. Just as the English dub in general is considered the definitive version of the anime. Like, watching the English dub is most fans' preferred way of watching the anime, which is one of the few instances that I know where that's the case. Besides maybe Black Lagoon and the original Speed Racer. But you know, racists are going to be racist, even within the anime community, even within the Cowboy Bebop fandom 😒. 

 

The only thing that they changed about Jet's character in the live action series, besides his skin color, is that he was crooked cop rather than a clean cop who was double-crossed like he was in the anime, which is a change that I do not like. I prefer Jet being a good cop, being one of the few good cops in the force, and being forced out by a corrupt system because the ISSP had no place for goody two-shoes or boy scouts like Jet. It was just too corrupt for good cops like him to last very long. Which is why he ultimately quit, and became a bounty hunter instead. Making him a crooked cop changes his character in a pretty fundamental way. It changes the context of him, and why he left the force and why he became a bounty hunter. It's no good. It's one of the changes and many more that made fans largely reject this series, and either forget that it exists or actively pretend that it doesn't exist. 

 

That's the difference with this show and the other remakes I mentioned. With those, people legitimately forgot that they exist, and the culture as a whole forgot they exist, whereas with this show, people are just pretending that it doesn't exist. Which is the case with those two unpopular sequels I mentioned, Pacific Rim: Uprising and Independence Day: Resurgence, sequels so disliked that people would rather pretend that they never existed than acknowledge them at all. Which is fitting considered that they came out only two years apart from each other, with Independence Day: Resurgence coming out in 2016 and Pacific Rim: Uprising coming out in 2018 (the same year as The Predator BTW), their predecessors, Independence Day (1996) and Pacific Rim were often compared to each other. They're both alien invasion movies 👽, Pacific Rim is technically an alien invasion movie 👽, even though Guillermo del Toro wanted to reveal that the Precursors weren't actually aliens 👽 at all, but future humans (or perhaps even human ancestors since they're called the Precursors) in the sequel. 

 

That was one of his original ideas for the sequel that was thankfully tossed out. He had to fit it in with his "monsters good, humans bad" ideology, he just can't bear the thought of making the monsters (or any non-human creature) the bad guys. Even though it would've completely undermined the first movie. If he didn't want to make monsters the bad guys, then he shouldn't have made a kaiju movie in the first place, or at least one where the monsters are the antagonists 🙄🤦‍♂️. They both feature rousing speeches that rally the troops and get the blood 🩸 pumping, and become iconic in their own rights. How many people did you hear say that the "Canceling the apocalypse" speech was a standout moment in Pacific Rim, and how many people did hear quoting that speech, and specifically quoting the part where Pentecost says, "Today we are canceling the apocalypse!"? For me, it was a lot. And they both end with the humans blowing up the aliens 👽 with a nuclear bomb ☢️. 

 

In Independence Day (1996), they blew up the Harvester mothership with a nuclear weapon ☢️, and in Pacific Rim, they modified Gipsy Danger's nuclear reactor ☢️ and turned it into a bomb, and sent it through the Breach to the Anteverse, and blew up at least some of the Precursors on the other side. They at least blew up one of the kaiju factories, showing the Precursors that can they can send stuff through the Breach to their dimension, and that this is what happens when you fuck with us, when you fuck with humanity. It's sort of the equivalent to the Doolittle Raid. The Doolittle Raid didn't do much damage, but it did send a message. It told the Japanese 🇯🇵 that we, the United States 🇺🇸, can hit them on their own turf, and we will retaliate over Pearl Harbor. And retaliate we did, we pretty much destroyed Japan 🇯🇵's entire war machine, and left almost all of their major cities in rubble due to multiple bombing raids over the course of the war in the Pacific. Bombing raids much more powerful and destructive than the Doolittle Raid. 

 

Only in Pacific Rim, the bomb did have more of an impact and did have more of a strategic purpose other than sending a message like the Doolittle Raid. It was meant to close the Breach for good, and prevent the Precursors from sending more Kaiju to Earth 🌎. Which, if you go by Pacific Rim: Uprising, only worked temporarily since the Precursors found a way to open the Breach back up again, or create a new Breach, and send more Kaiju to our dimension years later. Independence Day (1996) and Pacific Rim have a lot more in common than you would realize. Given how similar the two movies actually are, it makes you wonder if del Toro took any direct inspiration from Independence Day (1996) while making Pacific Rim. Is he a fan of Independence Day (1996)? Because it would be pretty cool if he was. If he is, maybe he's a fan of it because the name of the base that Will Smith's character, Steven Hiller is stationed at is sort of similar to his name, El Toro. It's one letter away from being del Toro. 

 

This is going to be a huge project. It might take me a long time to finish it, depending on how much I have to write it, and if I don’t get caught up with other things, or procrastinate too much. But I still want to keep my blog going, I want to keep posting on here consistently, and I don’t want it to die. So, to keep my blog alive, I will occasionally stop working on this review, and write another post. Just so that there will be something out in the meantime while I’m working on this. They released a trailer for an upcoming Evangelion series that’s being written by Yoko Taro, the creator of the Drakengard/Nier series, and although I’ve written a community post about it on YouTube, I think I still want to write a dedicated post about it. Especially since I have a serious lack of Evangelion related posts on this blog, and this will be an opportunity for me to increase my Evangelion quotient. 

 

I also have Speed Racer on the mind, and I might review Speed Racer (2008) since I have it on 4K 💿. I bought the limited edition 4K/Blu-Ray steelbook 💿 while it was still available at Walmart. So, if I’m still in the mood for it, I’ll take a break from writing this and write a review for that movie. As well as any other movie I decide to review while in the middle of reviewing this. But rest assured, I will spend as much time as I can writing this so that I can get it done as soon as possible. So that I can finally get it over with, and fully move onto other things. I will be able to write whatever I want without having this obligation to deal with. I also plan on reviewing Independence Day: Resurgence before the month of July is over since I reviewed the first one a week ago at the time of me writing this section. 

 

I'm also trying to score an interview with Emirichu, the storytime animated (or illustrated) YouTuber turned travel/food vlogger and collab cafe reviewer. Her real name is Emily, but her YouTube channel name is Emirichu. She's only ever publicly revealed her first name, but not her last name, but given that she's the daughter of South Korean immigrants 🇰🇷, I'm guessing that she has a Korean last name 🇰🇷. I sent her an email 📧 a week ago, she has her email address displayed openly and publicly in her bio, saying that it's for "business inquiry," but so far she hasn't responded. I emailed 📧 another YouTuber who I like and am subscribed to, SK Media AKA Spaghetti Kozak 🍝, and he hasn't responded either. 

 

But with him, it's a bit understandable since he's busy fighting a war. He's a soldier fighting in the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦, and understandably doesn't have enough time to make YouTube videos, or reply to a fan's email 📧. The email 📧 I sent him isn't as pressing as the one I sent Emily, it's just something fun or funny that I thought he would like. I've posted two Community Posts on YouTube where I tagged her, on both her main Emirichu channel and her secondary channel, Spilled Ink 🫟🦑🍓, which she runs with her current boyfriend and fellow YouTuber, Daidus (who hasn't posted a single new video on his main channel since the two of them moved to Japan 🇯🇵 together after both joining GeeXPlus), hoping to get her attention but to no avail. 

 

I don't use X the Social Media Website Formally Known as Twitter 🐦 or Instagram, which are two social sites where she is much more active, and I never will use those. If only she was on Bluesky 🦋, then maybe I would consider joining. I will not X or Twitter 🐦 (whatever you want to call it) so long as Elon Musk in charge. Once he bought it and became the CEO, it went down the drain. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I miss Jack Dorsey. Elon's leadership at the company has been so bad that it's actually made people unironically miss Jack Dorsey. Because at least with Jack Dorsey, he didn't let the site be flooded with right-wing propaganda, and encourage the proliferation of right-wing propaganda on the site by putting it on the homepage, and retweeting (or "re-Xing" I guess 🤷‍♂️) it constantly. AI slop probably still gotten on the site, even if Jack Dorsey was still in charge, or a handpicked successor by him was in charge, but at least there wouldn't be as much right-wing propaganda, or even Russian propaganda 🇷🇺 since Elon Musk is also pro-Russia 🇷🇺 and pro-Putin. 

 

So, I really don't have very many means of contacting her, and I have no idea when she will upload her next video, so I can leave a comment on there. I hope she replies to my email 📧, so she can give me a clear cut answer of whether or not she wants to do the interview or not. A simple "yes" or "no" is all I ask. And if she says, "no," that's fine, at least I tried, at least I gave it a shot and tried to make something happen instead of just thinking about it and not doing anything. I even told her to name her price in my email 📧 to her, just in case she decides to charge me to do an interview with her. If she asks for too much money 💵, like something ridiculous and unreasonable like $10,000 💵, I'll probably have to call the whole thing off. But, I can't imagine that she's like that. 

 

She's worked with smaller creators before, she's helped prop up smaller creators. YouTubers who had triple digit or double digit subscribers. And I'm a smaller creator, so I don't why this would be any different. I don't know why she would refuse, or ask for an unreasonable amount of money 💵 to do a written interview on a blog run by a young disabled Native American man ♂︎ in his late 20s. Unless being in Japan 🇯🇵 and working with GeeXPlus changed her in a more profound way, made her more greedy 🤑. But, I hope that's not the case. But I won't know until she replies to me. Please reply to me. All I ask is that you say "yes" or "no" to doing an interview with me, that's all I ask. If you say "yes," then that's cool I'm glad 👍, it'll be a huge boost to my blog, and if you say "no," that's fine too, I'll accept it, and I won't ask you anymore. I might just type out all the questions I might ask just in case she does agree to it. That way, I can just send the questions to her, and she write her answers to those questions and then send them to me, and I can type out my responses to her questions. Emily, if you're reading this, I will try to ask you questions that no one has asked you before, and wouldn't even think to ask you. With that said, let’s get started. 

 

— 

The Series

 

(This is a poster image of Cowboy Bebop (1998), showing nearly all the main characters as they appeared in the intro sequence. Except for Ein, who wasn't even featured in the intro sequence, but he's here too since he is one of the main characters despite being a dog 🐕, who's intelligent yes, but can't talk. Unless you ignore the preview for Wild Horses 🐎.) 

 

 

 

 

This will probably the longest section of this review, the OG anime series, the thing that started it all. The interesting thing about the show is that it came out in 1998. Not only the same year I was born (I was born on December 3, 1998), but it was also the same year that two other anime shows that can be described as “space westerns 🤠”: Outlaw Star and Trigun (1998). I’ve seen Outlaw Star, and I think it’s a classic, a very underrated show indeed, and one I plan reviewing someday, but I haven’t seen Trigun (1998). But I have known of it for quite sometime, and my interest in it has grown in recent years. Like, really last year my interest in Trigun (1998) spiked, because of the two main female characters ♀︎ in the show, Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson. The counterparts and sort of love interests ❤️ of the two main male characters ♂︎, Vash the Stampede and Nicholas D. Wolfwood, who kind of looks like Spike Spiegel to me. Meryl is much more of a love interest ❤️ of Vash than Milly is of Nicholas, but they’ve got something going on. 

 

But I do like what I’ve seen of both Meryl and Milly so far from watching clips of the show with them in them on YouTube, I like both of their designs, I think they’re both pretty hot 😍. And I like them as a duo, they complete each other. Not really a fan of their personalities, especially not Milly’s. I’m not a huge fan of the childlike personality thing, she’s too much of a womanchild ♀︎ for me. And Meryl is kind of too much of a tsundere for me, since she has feelings for Vash, clearly, but she won’t admit to them, and acts all uptight and bossy, and acts like she hates him and just wants to bring him to justice. Or at least, collect on the damages that he supposedly caused since her and Milly are insurance agents. That's why they were sent to this planet, Gunsmoke to evaluate insurance claims about Vash, and him being a “humanoid typhoon.” I will review Trigun (1998) sometime in the future, along with the movie, Trigun: Badlands Rumble, and the CG animated reboot/remake series, Trigun Stampede. It might be in the same format as this, depending on how it goes. 

 

Now, this show and Trigun (1998) are a lot more overtly western 🤠 than Outlaw Star is. Cowboy Bebop (1998) has a lot of western motifs 🤠, a lot of western tropes 🤠, the music in places sounds like music you’d hear in a western movie 🤠 or would just associate with the Wild West 🤠, and the bounty hunters in this show are commonly referred to as “cowboys 🤠.” Especially by the bounty hunters themselves. And Trigun (1998) has a lot of western motifs and tropes 🤠, but it also primarily takes place on a desert planet 🏜️ that looks superficially like the Wild West 🤠. Trigun (1998) is probably the closest to resembling a classic western 🤠, while Cowboy Bebop (1998) is much more on the neo western 🤠 side of things. Outlaw Star on the other hand, has a lot of more Asiatic influences, a lot more influences from Asian culture and mythology, a lot of things in this show (planets, moons, spaceships, and space colonies) have Asian names, though it does have a lot of western motifs 🤠 and tropes, especially in terms of the music. Outlaw Star features harmonica music in somber scenes that wouldn’t sound too out of place in Cowboy Bebop (1998). 

 

But, Outlaw Star is the only one out of the three to not have much of a lasting legacy, as it is the only one to not have a continuation and remain a standalone anime series. Cowboy Bebop (1998) got video games, a movie, a spinoff series, and a live action remake, while Trigun (1998) was adapted from manga, and has a movie and a reboot series. Outlaw Star was adapted from a manga too, but it doesn’t have anything beyond just the manga and this one anime adaptation. Oh, and I guess Angel Links too, I forgot about Angel Links. So it has a manga, an anime series, and a spinoff series, although from what I understand, some things in Angel Links contradict things in Outlaw Star. There have been attempts at continuing the franchise, like an OVA, a full anime TV series sequel, or even a movie. But nothing actually panned out, and the only thing has to show for is Angel Links, which a lot of people forgot even existed. It’s more obscure than Outlaw Star is. Oh, and I guess, Future Retro Hero Story, since Outlaw Star is sort of a spinoff of that. I wish that weren’t the case, but it unfortunately is.  

 

Cowboy Bebop (1998) was by far, the most successful and beloved out of all of them, and the longest lasting legacy as many people consider it to be one of the anime shows that popularized anime in the West. Especially since it seemed so catered to western sensibilities than any other anime up to that point. Shinichirō Watanabe did his research in including as many references and Easter eggs to as many pieces of western media as he could, especially American media 🇺🇸. There’s a lot of references and Easter eggs to American movies, TV shows, and music 🇺🇸, though not all the music they reference in the show is American 🇺🇸. Like the episodes, Sympathy for the Devil 😈 and Bohemian Rhapsody, the songs that those two episodes were named after were sung by British bands 🇬🇧 (as part of the so-called “British invasion 🇬🇧”), The Rolling Stones and Queen respectively. But they’re both western, so they still count.  

 

Cowboy Bebop (1998) was also the most critically acclaimed out of all of them, and many people to this day consider it a masterpiece, including myself. I have no qualms or reservations about calling this show a masterpiece. Though it certainly isn’t without flaws, which I’ll get to soon. And it wasn’t even based on a manga. It is an original anime, meaning it was an anime first, and wasn’t based on any preexisting source material like a manga or a light novel. Most anime that you see, even nowadays, is an adaptation of some preexisting source material, usually a manga or a light novel, but also occasionally a video game. But not Cowboy Bebop (1998), it was one of the few that wasn’t. Meaning Shinichirō Watanabe could tell whatever story he wanted, however way he wanted, and in whatever time frame he wanted, and wasn’t beholden to an ongoing manga series like a lot of anime series are. That’s why there are no filler episodes, though the show is so episodic that any episode could technically be considered a filler episode, except for the main plot episodes like Ballad of Fallen Angels, Jupiter Jazz Part 1 and 2, and The Real Folk Blues Part 1 and 2. Seinfeld often gets called a show about nothing, something that the show itself jokes about in an ongoing arc that starts in Season 4 and lasts until Season 9, the final seasons, but I’m surprised Cowboy Bebop (1998) doesn’t get accused of being a show about nothing, considering that the majority of episodes don’t really tie into the supposed main plot, and the majority of them don’t amount to much. 

 

Most episodes of Cowboy Bebop (1998) involve the Bebop crew going on adventure, or going after a bounty head, or dealing with some external threat to themselves, or dealing with something or someone from their past that comes back to haunt them, and they end with them getting nothing out of it. Even in the series finale, the groundbreaking, critically acclaimed, and bold series finale, Spike gains absolutely nothing from going after Julia, and then avenging her death after she gets killed. In fact, a lot of people think that he dies at the end, being fatally injured by his final confrontation with Vicious. So, he got nothing out of it, and lost everything. You could even say that all of it was nothing. Even the main plot isn’t really a main plot, just a collection of recurring characters and story elements, but nothing that comes together to form a cohesive plot. And it isn’t overarching storyline either since the show only comes back it three times throughout the entire series, and two of those times were two parters. Creating the illusion that there are more episodes dedicated to this supposed storyline than they’re actually are. Episodes that deal with the Red Dragon Syndicate 🐉 storyline fall into the category of “a character deals with something or someone from their past that comes back to haunt them.” 

 

 

 

(This is a poster/wallpaper image showing Spike and Vicious, the two main players within the Red Dragon Syndicate 🐉 storyline in Cowboy Bebop (1998).) 

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, the whole show could be described as a show about characters dealing things or people from their pasts that come back to haunt them. More on that later. The only episode of the show that I would truly describe as a “filler episode” is Toys in the Attic, which is my least favorite episode of them all, and the episode I consider to be the worst of the entire series. Now that’s an episode that truly goes nowhere and doesn’t amount to anything, in fact it could be argued that it’s non-canon. Though it’s acknowledged in the preview for Jupiter Jazz Part 1, like it continues on from that episode, though the canonicity of the previews can be argued. Especially since they often break the fourth wall, and things occur in them that wouldn’t exactly align with the show’s more grounded universe. Like Ein talking in the preview to Wild Horses 🐎. 

It’s actually pretty amazing that this show got made at all, during the time that it was made, and even now since it’s unlikely that a show like this would even get made nowadays unless it was tied to a preexisting source material, or if it had the backing of an already established anime director behind it. That’s how the majority of Shinichirō Watanabe’s shows after Cowboy Bebop (1998) got made, because of the success of that shows, and because he was established director with a track record of success. But as for this show, it came together through some unlikely circumstances that wouldn’t replicated today, at least not in the exact same way, since a lot of this show’s greenlighting and development was because of sheer dumb luck. 

The show only got made because Bandai wanted an anime show that had something to do with spaceships so that they could sell toys. So they tasked Shinichirō Watanabe and Sunrise with creating an original anime series that involved spaceships. They didn’t give him any notes, they didn’t exactly what kind of show they wanted, and what he could or couldn’t do. Just as long as it had spaceships, they didn’t care. They were very hands off with this show in a way most corporations are not. Especially nowadays. Shinichirō Watanabe and his team at Sunrise were able to make this show that was not only entertaining but also had themes, it had things it wanted to say, without being overly pretentious it. This sort of thing is unheard of, even back then. 

 

If this were any other time, if this were any corporate regime at Bandai, this show probably wouldn’t have gotten made at all, at least not in the same way. If this were Bandai post merger with Namco, the show would’ve either not got made at all, or if it was for whatever still greenlit, Bandai Namco for sure would’ve had all sorts of notes on what they could and couldn’t do, and they would’ve definitely been more hands on, and been more restrictive on what Watanabe and Sunrise could do with the show. It definitely would not have turned out the same, it wouldn’t have been the same show at all. Because while the main reason why Bandai wanted this show made was so that they could sell toys, that would’ve been more so the case had this show been made more nowadays post-Namco merger. They would’ve oriented the show to be more explicitly about selling toys. 

 

 

 

 

 

(These are the logos for Bandai and Sunrise, the company that owns the entire Cowboy Bebop franchise, and the studio that made the 1998 anime respectively.) 

 

 

 

Sure, the show has spaceships, but they’re not the main focus, and they’re not designed to be particularly sexy or cool. They’re more utilitarian. Just get the characters from point A to point B, and give them a way to fight the bad guys. But had this been made under Bandai Namco, under the current leadership, and overall corporate culture, the spaceships would’ve taken center stage, and they would’ve been designed in a way that would make people want to buy toys of them. It would’ve just been a straight up toy commercial. Bandai wanted a toy commercial, but that’s not what Shinichirō Watanabe made, and they weren’t forceful about him making that. They left him and the studio alone, and let them make the show they wanted, in the way they wanted. But I’m saying that had this been Bandai Namco today, that wouldn’t have been the case. They wouldn’t have just left them alone and make whatever they wanted to make. The company would’ve made sure that they made a toy commercial. It was just made under a specific set of circumstances that just cannot be replicated in any another time except that one. 

 

Shinichirō Watanabe on his part, took advantage of Bandai’s lack of oversight, and used this rare and honestly once in a lifetime opportunity to make the show he wanted, which was a show that explored heavy themes but also paid homage to 20th century film, TV, and music. But the show had to have spaceships, and it does meet that requirement. Obviously it meant that the show had to take place in the future, and be a space centric series, but it was done his way. He was the main creative force behind this show. He crafted a pretty interesting and unique sci-fi universe where the Earth 🌎 is left uninhabitable by an easily preventable accident involving the show’s wormhole technology, the Astral Gate. The Astral Gates had a defect, the scientist that created them warned the company that operates them about it, but they did they nothing. The one near the Moon 🌕 exploded 💥, and blew off a large chunk of the Moon 🌕, and sent the debris hurdling towards Earth 🌎, leading to massive meteor showers ☄️ that destroyed the entire world, and forced most of humanity to abandon it and relocate to the many space colonies that have been established throughout the Solar System. On the rocky planets and moons. Even on some of the asteroids ☄️ in the asteroid belt ☄️. 

 

The show never specifies when these colonies were established, whether they were before the Astral Gate accident, after, or if they were being developed when the accident happened. Given the size and complexity of these colonies, I’m guessing before. There’s no way humanity could’ve built all of these colonies in the short time after the accident happened and the world was being destroyed by the debris from the Moon 🌕. All those Moon fragments 🌕 falling down to Earth 🌎 as meteors ☄️. Forever altering the topography of the planet. I think it’s a combination of the two, the colonies were established before the Astral Gate accident, and were in the process of being built when the accident took place. The accident likely accelerated construction on each of the colonies. There was more urgency to have these colonies be complete as soon as possible so that people can move there in mass since the Earth 🌎 had become too dangerous for people to live on. Humanity forced to leave the planet in which they originated from. But not everyone left. 

 

While the majority of humanity left the planet in the wake of the accident, some choose to stay, or more often than not, were left behind in the scramble. Intentionally or unintentionally. Part of me thinks some of it was intentional because a lot of people who left the planet were probably rich people 🤑, people who could actually afford it, and they being callous pompous rich people 🤑, decided to leave all the “undesirables” behind. Leave all the poors to suffer on Earth 🌎, while we, the rich and powerful 🤑, go live on Mars, Ganymede, and Venus. I didn’t mention Io, Mercury, Titan, or Callisto because not many people live on them, they don’t seem like the most desirable places to live, of all the established colonies throughout the Solar System. 

 

Callisto is a cold, miserable moon 🥶 with an all-male population ♂︎ that's pretty just a safe haven for fugitives and crooked cops. It was very heavily inspired by Russia 🇷🇺, since every other character's wearing a ushanka, and winter outfits, and Russia 🇷🇺 is usually thought of as a uniquely cold place 🇷🇺. Not so much these days due to climate change, and winters ❄️ becoming less cold around the world than they were in the past. But, when these rich people 🤑 came to these other planets and moons, they ended up creating the same type of class system that existed on Earth 🌎. I bet some of them even became the middle class and poor people of these colonies. Being rich 🤑 on Earth 🌎 doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be rich 🤑 on Mars. 

Because I got so caught up with other projects, and I hyperfixated and a few other things since I came up with the idea of reviewing Cowboy Bebop (1998) back when our Internet 🛜, it did take me awhile to get back into the headspace to want to watch this show again. I did struggle. When I started watching the first couple of episodes, I couldn't get back into it. I don't know what it was, maybe I was tired 🥱 when I started rewatching the show. I was a bit a tired 🥱 when I started watching the first episode, Asteroid Blues ☄️, which isn't a super remarkable episode to me. I don't hate it, I don't think it's bad, I like it a lot more than Toys in the Attic, which is my actual least favorite episode, it's just not one of my favorites. But, I get it, it's the first episode of the series, it's our introduction to this world, and to our main character, Spike and Jet. It's just compared to what comes after, the absolute highs that this show hits, it just pales in comparison, it doesn't leave much of an impression, at least for me on this particular viewing. Maybe if I ever decide to watch this show again in the future, I might feel different, especially since I won't have to watch it for a review. I can just watch it for fun because. I also don't care that much about Asimov and Katrina Solensan and their story. 

 

But, I did eventually find a rhythm and started enjoyed the show again. I just had to find a way to be able to watch this show again without it just feeling like work. That's why the actual rewatching of the show took the longest, besides all of those other things I mentioned before in the intro. Going into this, I thought the rewatching the show was going to take the shortest, and the actual writing part was going to take the longest, but so far it's been the opposite. The rewatching part has taken the longest. I don't even think the writing part of this will even take that long, especially if I stick to my notes, and if I stay consistent, and write as many days and as much time as I can. And it's really just because I wasn't as hyperfixated on this show has I had been months prior when our Internet 🛜 was off. I wasn't constantly listening to the music, which is what gave me the idea to review this show now of all times in the first place. 

 

But, I made the mistake of saying that I would review this show in a couple of my past posts. Mainly the Riddick (2013) review and the CoMic post. I made a promise, and I fully intend on keeping that promise. Unlike some content creators I know, like Cody from PointlessHub, when I commit to something I see it through to the end. Cody, he started reviewing the MonsterVerse movies on his channel, and so far he's only done two of them ✌️: Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island. He has yet to do Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), despite it being the next film in the MonsterVerse after Kong: Skull Island, and despite his fans (including me) asking and begging him to do it. And it seems he has very little intention of doing that one or any of the other movies in the franchise, like Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, and the upcoming Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, which stars the late Sam Neill (rest in peace 😔) and Delroy Lindo, another one of my favorite actors. 

 

That one in particular is being directed by Grant Sputore, an Australian filmmaker 🇦🇺 who's best known for directing the Netflix movie, I Am Mother, but recently co-produced the Australian zombie movie 🇦🇺🧟‍♂️, We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️,  starring Daisy Ridley, the actress best known for playing Rey in the Star Wars sequels. I don't even he ever intends to do the two streaming shows that apart of the MonsterVerse, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which is on Apple TV+, and the animated series, Skull Island, which is on Netflix. I don't know why these two shows are on two different streaming services, why not just have them both be on the same streaming service? It doesn't seem smart to me to spread your franchise out across multiple streaming services. It seems better to me keep in all in one place. That way you ensure audiences will have a better watching everything the franchise has to offer. 

 

People can't watch Monarch if they don't have Apple TV+, and people can't watch Skull Island if they don't have Netflix. I mean, most people who have streaming services have Netflix, but still, not everyone does. Not everyone can afford Netflix or any streaming service really. It's kind of become too expensive to even be subscribed to one of them, let alone trying to be subscribed to all of them. That's why streaming is both the best invention and worst invention, with it learning more towards the worst invention these days since it's given companies the excuse to abandon physical media, during a time when we need it now more than ever. And it threatens it end theatrical releases for new movies, though I think things are somewhat heading in the right direction when it comes to that. People are going to the theater more often now, including me. 

 

Two of the biggest and most talked about movies of the year so far, Obsession (2025) and Backrooms, were both released theatrically, both were horror films, and both happen to be made by YouTubers, Curry Baker in the case of Obsession (2025) and Ken Parsons in the case of Backrooms. I didn't watch them, but a lot of other people did. The fact that these two movies did as well as they did, shows that there is still an audience for theatrical released movies. People will show up, pay the high prices, to go see a movie in theaters if it's interesting, unique, and original enough, and doesn't come across as big studio slop. Both The Mandalorian and Grogu and Supergirl (2026) failed to capture the attention or imaginations of the general public, and they both big budget tentpole summer blockbusters ☀️, and I liked The Mandalorian and Grogu. Go read my review if you want to learn more about my thoughts on that often dismissed film. If Cody doesn't want to do the rest of the MonsterVerse, and wants the freedom to do other stuff that's fine. 

 

What bothers me is that he somehow has the time to do more Transformers related videos, even though that franchise isn't relevant in the slightest. The last movie at the time of me writing this, was Transformers One, and that was a box office bomb 💣. Apparently, they're making another Transformers movie with Michael Bay returning to direct, just so that Paramount can hold onto the rights, but we'll see how that goes. So, if he can make time for a franchise that hasn't had a new installment since 2024, doesn't have anything concrete coming up, and is fading in terms of relevancy, why can't he make time for the MonsterVerse? It's outrageous, and I wish that he would be more transparent about this sort of thing. If you don't want to do it, then just say you don't want to do it. 

 

Don't ignore the requests and the demands, and pretend they don't exist and hope that they will go away, because they won't go away. They won't go away so long as I still have anything to say about it, and until you finally do it. History Buffs finally did Napoleon (2023) after receiving relentless requests from his fans to do so. If you want these requests to stop, just give the people want they want, and what they've been asking for.  Or if you really don't want to do it, address it and say that you don't want to do it, and you want to focus on other things. That's all you need to do. It's that simple, and I hate that you, and other YouTubers who make other commitments they don't fulfill don't just do either of those things. But at least, with me, you'll know that if I make a commitment, I will fulfill it. Even if it takes me a long time, I will fulfill it. 

The best way I can describe this show is that, at its core, it’s about characters being unable to escape their past, no matter how much they try. Even characters who seemingly don’t have a past like Faye or Ed, they too have pasts that we learn later on about, and they kind of reconcile with. Especially Faye, she probably has the most detailed backstory out of any of the four main characters in the show. We learn the most about her compared to everyone else. Even though she’s physically 22 or 23 years old, she is actually 77 years old. She was born in 1994, making her a Millennial technically, and then she spent 54 years inside of a cryogenic pod, healing from her fatal injuries from an accident she was involved in with her parents in the year 2014, when she was only 20 years old. 

 

It wasn’t the Astral Gate accident, that happened a decade later in 2022, it was a completely unrelated accident involving a private spaceship that her and her parents got a ride on. Because she came from a rich family 🤑, and both of her parents were extremely wealthy 🤑. So, they could afford to do a space tourism and take a ride on a spaceship in Earth 🌎’s orbit, or in the Moon 🌕’s orbit. Something happened, the ship exploded 💥, and both of Faye’s parents were killed. Orphaned in an instant. She survived, but sustained injuries that would’ve been fatal, had they not gotten to her in time. She was quickly cryogenically frozen 🥶 until medical technology had advanced enough to actually treat her wounds. 

 

However, during her sleep, the Astral Gate accident happened, and pretty much destroyed Earth 🌎 with all the falling Moon debris 🌕 from the explosion 💥, and any and all records of who she was are lost. So by the time she’s woken up in the year 2068, no one knows she is, or who she used to be, who her family was, and she’s got amnesia as a result of the cryo stasis and the advanced medical treatments she went under to fix her body. So she can just tell people who she is, and what family she comes from. She gets scammed by Whitney Haggis into taking on his debts 💸, and she becomes broke as a result. She awakens in this future world that she does not recognize, and is immediately in debt 💸, all because of a scam artist who pretended to be a lawyer. And pretended to fall in love ❤️ with her. Although the feelings did become genuine at a certain point. But, it didn’t change the fact that he scammed her and put her in debt 💸, she just can’t forgive him for that. 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is a wallpaper image for Cowboy Bebop (1998), showing Faye throwing her horse betting 🐎 cards, or tickets, I'm not sure what you actually call, and walking away without a care in the world. While there are clouds ☁️ in the shape of horse racers 🏇. Faye is a gambler of course, a gambling addict you might say, one of the things she likes to gamble on is horse races 🏇. We see her betting on these races at several points during the series, and usually she loses. Though in Speak Like A Child, she actually won, she bet on a winning horse 🐎...at first. Next time we see her, she already lost all money 💵 because she bet on a losing horse 🐎. So all the gains she made from betting on that winning horse 🐎 at the beginning of the episode, she lost it all from betting it all on a losing horse 🐎. And yes, I realize that I used a dollar emoji 💵 even though the currency in Cowboy Bebop (1998) is wulongs, but that's really the only money emoji 💵 we've got. Apple doesn't exactly have a wulong emoji, now do they? ) 

 

 

 

 

He broke their trust, and there’s nothing that he can do to get it back. And he doesn’t because years later, when the two reunite in 2071, year the show entirely takes place, she immediately turns him into the authorities because during that time between then and when they first met, Faye became a bounty hunter and gambling addict. She found herself working for a shady casino owner 🎰 before she met both Spike and Jet, who took her in, and made her apart of their crew. Even though they all pretend to hate each other, and complain about each other constantly, do secretly care about each other, and that comes in moments when it actually counts. Like, they didn’t have to go save her when she left and went to Io, and then got tied up and imprisoned by Gren, who locked her in his bedroom. But they did anyway. Jet would like to say that he only saved her because of the money 💵 she stole from them, and then spent, probably through gambling 🎰. But really, he cares about her. 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Cowboy Bebop (1998). I took it from one of the episode previews that's available to watch on YouTube. I don't remember which one, but I chose this one because it's one of the few shots in the show that just shows these three, Spike, Faye, and Jet. The original trio before Ed came along.) 

 

 

 

I do miss that short period of time where it was just Spike, Jet, and Faye. I don’t hate Ed, or anything, but the show definitely had a different feel when it was just those three. A more mature feel you could say. When Ed was introduced, it became somewhat more kiddie or lighthearted, even though it’s still not a kid’s show and it’s not a full comedy. Still though, this show has plenty of moments of levity to keep things from getting too serious. And I do think if they make a true sequel series to Cowboy Bebop (1998), not like Carole & Tuesday, but an actual sequel or continuation of Cowboy Bebop (1998), I do think that it should focus on both Jet and Faye because they have a great dynamic. They often act like an old married couple. 

 

 

 

 

(This is another screenshot from Cowboy Bebop (1998). I don't remember where I got this one from, I think I got it from another one of those episode previews on YouTube, but I'm not sure. If it is, I don't know what episode it was a preview for. Either way, it shows Faye fresh out of the shower 🚿 with a towel around her head 🧖‍♀️, reading some kind of note 📝. I'm showing this because it's relevant to what I'm talking about in this section of the review, which is Faye.) 

 

 

 

 

 

Like in that one episode (I think was Black Dog Serenade), where she gets upset at him when he refuses to fix the shower 🚿 for her because he’s too busy tending to his bonsai trees, and then she answers the phone for him and yells into it in a mocking tone, “He’s busy right now!” That’s a totally a wife moment, that’s definitely a wife thing to do. But the most that we learn about Faye’s backstory are in the episodes, My Funny Valentine ❤️, Speak Like A Child, and of course, Hard Luck Woman ♀︎, the last “normal” episode before the two-part series finale, The Real Folk Blues. With most insights coming from Speak Like A Child and Hard Luck Woman ♀︎, which is a direct sequel in a lot of ways to Speak Like A Child. We learn about Faye’s childhood, through these beta tapes that she filmed with a Betacam camera, and we see one of her old childhood friends, Sally Yung, who is an old woman ♀︎. She is essentially what Faye would’ve looked like had she lived out her full life, and actually grew old, instead of being cryogenically frozen 🥶 when she was still in her early 20s. 

 

She meets her granddaughter, who she scares by telling her that she's a ghost 👻, inspired by what Sally told her earlier about how ghosts 👻 always return to the place where they have the most regrets. Even though she probably traumatized that child, she right in a sense. Obviously, she's not a real ghost 👻, there are no overt supernatural elements in Cowboy Bebop (1998), although they do imply some spiritual things especially the stuff involving Laughing Bull and the stars that represent the spirits or souls of warriors, but that's really left up to interpretation, and it could be seen as more metaphorical rather than the show literally saying that there were spirits/souls. I'll get to Laughing Bull later on in the review. But, Faye is a ghost 👻 in a metaphorical sense since she is a relic of the past. She was perfectly preserved the way she was before her accident, while everyone else around her aged and grew old like Sally Yung, and the world was destroyed, including her home (her big gated mansion) while was asleep for 54 years. 

 

The world changed and she didn't, or rather the world changed around her, and she stayed the same. Of course, she did eventually adapt to this new world that she found herself in, but once she does start learning more about her past, she finally realizes how out of time she really is. I'm not much of a comic book fan, I'm not much of a superhero fan, or even really a Marvel fan, but I feel like this is the moment where Marvel fans would probably compare her to Steve Rogers, since Steve Rogers is also a character that was out of time due to being frozen 🥶 and preserved for several decades, and being forced adapt to a time that is not his own. Any Marvel fan (or specifically MCU fan) would probably say that Faye is the "female Steve Rogers ♀︎." I did like that moment in Hard Luck Woman ♀︎ where Faye is flying around on Earth 🌎, trying to find her own old home where those Beta tapes were filmed, and she just has Ed tied to the top of her ship 😆, which does look cool BTW. 

 

I think of all of the Bebop crew's ships, I think Faye's has the coolest designs. I do like that nearly all of their ships were repurposed from something else. They had a different purpose than the one they're being used for now by the Bebop crew. The Bebop itself was a fishing trawl, the Swordfish II was a high speed racer (a remodel MONO Racer to be exact), the Hammer Head was basically a towing craft, and the Red Tail was a MONO carrier/zipcraft. We don't know exactly what the Red Tail was originally used for prior to Faye acquiring it, or how she acquired it (we don't know how any of the Bebop crew acquired any of their ships), but it is clear that it had another purpose prior to Faye acquiring it, and using it as her primary mode of transportation. Even when she leaves the Bebop crew a few times throughout the show, she's still got the Red Tail to rely on. It makes the world feel more lived in, and that there was an entire history prior to the events of the show. 

 

And I maybe speaking for myself here, but I would really like to see what these ships were all originally used for before these bounty hunters commandeered them and used them for their own purposes. Especially the Swordfish II, I would love to see that thing in a race with other similar race craft. I really like the podrace scene in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and I like racing stuff in sci-fi. It's why I want to get into Wipeout, and Quantum Redshift, which was an exclusive for the original Xbox and was made by a lot of the same people who made the first three Wipeout games. The ones on PS1. I think a racing game set in the Cowboy Bebop universe with the Swordfish II and other MONO Racers like it would be pretty cool.

 

Which brings me to Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivruski IV, or Ed as she's usually referred to as in the show, the fourth and final member of the Bebop crew. She's the last of the four main characters (five if you include Ein) to be introduced, and she's introduced pretty late into the show. Like, we still get quite a few episode focused on just Spike, Jet, and Faye, before Ed is even brought up. She was originally going to be a boy ♂︎, which is why her name is Edward, but at some point during the development of the show they decided to make her a girl ♀︎ instead. And the reason why is that they didn't Faye to be the only female member ♀︎ of the Bebop crew, so by making Ed female ♀︎, the team is perfectly balanced. Two males ♂︎ and two females ♀︎, as far as the humans are considered. Ein I think is male ♂︎, but he's not human, he's a dog 🐕, so he doesn't count. But if we were to count him, the males ♂︎ would still outnumber the females ♀︎ on the team. But if don't include him, then the team is perfectly balanced as far as gender makeup is concerned. 

 

But, despite changing her gender/sex from male ♂︎ to female ♀︎, they still kept her name Ed, and still kept her same boyish appearance ♂︎. They made subtle tweaks here and there to show that she is indeed a girl ♀︎, like they emphasized her eyelashes, but for the most she mostly still has her same design from when she was a boy ♂︎. That's why there are all those jokes throughout the show about people mistaking her for a boy ♂︎, or questioning whether she's a girl ♀︎ or a boy ♂︎, because she was originally supposed to be a boy ♂︎, but they changed their minds and made her a girl ♀︎ instead because they wanted the Bebop crew to be more balanced gender-wise and they didn't want Faye to be all by her lonesome being the only female ♀︎ on the team. And she is in fact a girl ♀︎. 

 

I know the 2021 live action series made her non-binary ☿, they even cast a non-binary actress ☿ in the role in the short minutes or seconds of screen time that she had in the last episode. She was going to have a larger role in Season 2, but Season 2 was seemingly scrapped due to the mixed reception of Season 1 and backlash from hardcore fans. So, the 2021 live action series is a one season show ☝️, unless they were a making Season 2 all this time, and release a trailer for it this year, or in the coming years, but I would very surprised if they did. But, right now, I think it's pretty safe to say that Cowboy Bebop (2021) is dead in the water 💦 and it isn't coming back. It's been canceled, simply as that. It is amazing though, what they were going to do across multiple seasons, this show managed to do in just one ☝️. This is why the streaming model is flawed. 

 

You get shorter seasons with fewer episodes, and you have to wait longer for those seasons to come out. Often times years, if the shows get renewed at all. And that's just because of how expensive most streaming shows are. They cost hundreds of millions of dollars 💵, maybe even half a billion dollars 💵 in some cases, or in the case of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, over a billion dollars 💵. Amazon spent over a billion dollars 💵 on this one show ☝️, and so far, haven't gotten close to making it back since the second season had a significant drop off in viewership compared to the first season. I think it's pretty safe to say that they will not be making a return on their huge investment. That's why you shouldn't spent a billion dollars 💵 on a single show.

 

So, given that production costs on these streaming shows have ballooned, and they're spending as much, if not, more than on a big budget blockbuster movie, it just isn't feasible to make long seasons with 26 episodes. The reason why traditional TV was able to do shows with longer seasons is that TV shows back in those days were a lot cheaper to make. That's why there was this disconnect between TV and movies. TV was where they would cheap stuff on a budget, while movies were they would pull out all the stops and spend the big bucks to get huge stars and make everything good. But now, in the age of streaming, production values on a show pretty much match that of a movie, and they're able to get all the big expensive actors that you could only get on movies, which means they cost more to make. 

 

That's why we get short seasons with 10 episodes at most, and there are such long gaps in-between seasons. Some shows, the gaps in-between seasons is in years, like it takes 3 or 4 years for the next season for a show to even come out. Even the individual episodes on some of these shows are as long as movies, like they're feature length, and that's because there are no restrictions on the length of an episode on streaming. They no longer to make these things long enough, or rather short enough, to fit into a specific time slot like in traditional TV. They can make things as long as they want, even if it strays into self-indulgent territory with how long some of these episode are. The lines between movie and TV show are pretty much blurred now in the age of streaming. 

 

But, Ed in the original 1998 anime series is a girl ♀︎. Everyone who knows that she's a girl ♀︎ refers to her as such, and she identifies as such. There's no indication that Ed identifies as non-binary ☿. I feel like they just made her non-binary ☿ just to increase the amount of queer characters in the show. Which I'm all for, I'm all for greater LGBTQ+ representation 🏳️‍🌈. I just think the way that the 2021 live action series went about it shows a lack of understanding or appreciation for the source material. It's not as if the anime was completely retrograde and devoid of LGBTQ+ representation 🏳️‍🌈 since it features a gay couple ⚣ in the middle of having sex in the Waltz for Venus episode. Okay, maybe they weren't a couple, but it was just a one night stand situation, but it still, it was bold of them to include gay sex ⚣ in an anime in 1998. Even some movies and shows that focused entirely on LGBTQ+ characters 🏳️‍🌈 and LGBTQ+ issues 🏳️‍🌈 didn't go that far. There's even some crossdressing prostitutes in the two-part episode, Jupiter Jazz and the movie. Although the one in the movie is a creep since they were lusting on Ed even though she was clearly a child, and only stopped creeping on her when they realized that she was a girl ♀︎. So, you can't accuse this franchise of only portraying LGBTQ+ people 🏳️‍🌈 in a positive light since they made one of them a pedophile 😬. 

 

We're not explicitly told if these crossdressing prostitutes are trans ⚣ or are cisgendered or even genderfluid gay men ⚣ who like dressing up as women ♀︎ and wearing women ♀︎'s clothing. Plenty of gay men ⚣ do like to cross dress, even though they do identify as men ♂︎. Even some straight cisgendered men ⚤ like to cross dress. It's a wide spectrum, and every person who cross dresses does it for a different reason. Some do it because they genuinely identify as women ♀︎ and cross dressing is a stepping stone to them coming out as trans ⚧, some just want escape from the usual stresses of work and daily life and be someone else for a while, some want to explore a different part of themselves, some are genuinely curious what it's like to dress up as a woman ♀︎ and wearing women's clothing ♀︎, some just find women's clothing ♀︎ more comfortable (especially those who just wear panties), and while others get sexual gratification from it and it's more of a fetish type thing for them.

 

And then of course, there's Gren, the one-off character featured in Jupiter Jazz, the second entry in the ongoing Red Dragon Syndicate 🐉 story arc. While the 2021 live action series portrayed Gren as a transgender person ⚧, specifically a transgender woman ⚧, which was pretty much controversial in and of itself (mostly among anti-woke people 😒), in the original 1998 anime series, I would say it's more accurate describe Gren as intersex. He's a hermaphrodite basically, he has male and female body parts ♂︎♀︎, which is much closer to the intersex experience than the transgender experience ⚧. And he doesn't identify as a trans ⚧, or as a woman ♀︎. In the scene, where he comes out of the shower 🚿, and Faye sees him and his true nature is revealed, and she asks him which one is he, as in, is a man ♂︎ or a woman ♀︎, and he clearly says that he's both and neither at the same time. That's textbook intersex right there. Intersex people have features of both men ♂︎ and women ♀︎, but not enough to be considered either. They don't necessarily fit within the gender binary, which is why they're generally considered to be apart of the LGBTQ+ community 🏳️‍🌈. What the I stands for whenever people include the I in the acronym, LGBTQI+ 🏳️‍🌈 or LGBTQIA+ 🏳️‍🌈, it stands for intersex.

 

A lot of intersex people are also infertile because they were born without the proper reproductive organs or reproductive cells (or gametes as the proper scientific term for that is). They're either born without sperm, eggs, or even ovaries. Intersex people definitely the embodiment of the saying, "born this way," since they were all born the way they were, and their intersex features were the result of genetic mishaps 🧬 and birth defects. Something got screwed up the development process that caused them to be like this. Intersex people didn't choose to be like this, and they just have to deal with it for the rest of their lives, without being mocked or judged for it. That is easier for some intersex people than it is for others, depending how whether or not their intersex features are visible this way. 

 

Of course that's not to say that transgender people ⚧ choose to be the way that they are, they don't. They don't choose to feel as if they were born in the wrong body or were born the wrong gender, they just do, and it has nothing to do with mental illness like some transphobic people like to make it seem. The ones who try to use science to validate their transphobic beliefs. But, transgender people ⚧ get too choose whether they affirm their gender or not, and how to affirm to affirm their gender, whether it's through hormones, or surgery, or even just changing clothes, wearing makeup or not wearing makeup, growing their hair out or cutting it short, wearing wigs, the way they walk, the way they talk. Intersex people on the other hand, don't get to choose what happens to their bodies. It will always be apart of them, and all they can do is choose whether or not to hide it from other people, or be open and honest about it. Be proud of it, which what LGBTQ+ pride 🏳️‍🌈 is all about. It's not about just being out, it's about being proud of who you are and not being ashamed of it in any way. 

 

This element, the lack of choice, is key to understanding Gren as a character. Gren did not choose to be the way that he is, or was, since he's canonically dead; he dies at the end of the second part. He's a veteran of the Titan War, he fought in it alongside Vicious, they were in the same unit together, and at some point, either during the war or after the war was thrown in prison after being falsely accused and suspected of being a spy, and while he was in prison, they gave him drugs 💊 that altered his hormones, and then altered his appearance. Giving him a more feminine form, as well as giving him boobs. But if Faye's reaction to him is any indication, he still has male genitalia ♂︎. He was involuntarily given female physical traits ♀︎ in addition to his already existing male physical traits ♂︎. And he just has to live with being like this, and clearly he hides it from the rest of the world, and does a pretty good job at it since to the outside world, he looks like an ordinary man ♂︎. A man ♂︎ with long hair but still a man ♂︎. Even Judy, the co-host of the in-universe bounty hunter TV show, Big Shot, is convinced that he's a man ♂︎, and even shows an attraction towards him, calling him "handsome" 😍. I even think Faye is a little bit attracted to him at first before she sees that he's associated with Vicious and immediately gets suspicious of him 🤨, and before he starts acting creepy towards her, and then ties her up and locks her in his bedroom, on his bed 🛏️. 

 

It's only when he invites you into his home, his apartment on Callisto, that you actually get a peek behind the curtain, and see that he is not a full man ♂︎. He is only half a man ♂︎. Not in the stature sense, he's not short, he seems to be average height, but in the physical sense as he is half woman ♀︎. He is a hermaphrodite, or intersex, and it's all thanks to the drugs 💊 that were shoved down his throat when he was in prison on Titan. Of course, Faye only found this out after she broke into his bathroom and peeped on him while he was taking a shower 🚿, but still he invited her into his home, and told her his life story. At least the part of his life story that dealt with the Titan War and Vicious, since his connection to Vicious is what made suspicious of him in the first place. 

 

We don't learn much about the Titan War, like why it was fought, and for what, and what were the sides, like who were the belligerents were. Everything we know about the Titan War comes from this two-part episode, Jupiter Jazz, and the movie, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie AKA Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' On Heaven's Door, but we'll get there when we get there. And even then, we aren't given much information about the war, behind how it affected people who fought within psychologically. Needless to say, they were traumatized and got PTSD. It lead them down dark paths. Vicious became a gangster, Gren got thrown in prison and was forcibly given drugs 💊 that altered his body in pretty dramatic and permanent ways, and Vincent became a psychopathic terrorist. The only one who seemed to come out of the war in a better position than they were before with their head on straight was Elektra, who stayed in the Mars Army, working for a colonel who ran a pharmaceutical company controlled by the Martian military, Cherious Medical. 

 

While she was officially a soldier within the Mars Army, she was ultimately just working as a glorified security guard for Cherious Medical before she got sent on a mission by her commanding officer (the aforementioned colonel) to track down Vincent and kill him before he commits any more terrorist attacks, and to cover up the existence of the nanomachines and their connection to the Mars Army. But even then, Elektra was still traumatized by her experience during the war, mostly because of her relationship with Vincent, and how he basically lost his mind as a result of his experiences during the war, and the human experiments that he was subjected to. He was one of the unfortunate souls who the nanomachines were tested on, and it pretty much twisted his mind, and left a searing anger and hatred for those who did this to him 😡, and he vowed revenge against them. Which is why he does what he does in the film, but like I said, we'll get to that later. I still got a lot of ground to cover with the series first. 

 

It is this aspect of Gren's character, is why I refer to Gren by he/him/his pronouns, that makes me uncomfortable with being portrayed as a transgender woman ⚧ and being lumped in with that side of the LGBTQ+ community 🏳️‍🌈 because he doesn't identify as a woman ♀︎, he's not correcting anyone on their pronouns and telling them to refer to him as a woman ♀︎ (using she/her pronouns) and to refer to him by a different name (a female name ♀︎), and he didn't choose to be this way. He didn't voluntarily take any hormones, he didn't go through any surgery. He was made this way against his will and he has to deal with that. Again, more similar to intersex people and their experience, but not exactly since Gren wasn't born this way, he was made this way after being forced to take drugs 💊 that altered his body in his ways that he did not foresee or ask for. 

 

Of course, this gets into this whole conversation about whether transitioning should be voluntary or not. Like, it should be an individual person's choice whether they choose to transition, especially medically, especially with the more risky procedures like surgery. And yet, not everyone gets that choice, since they either have to stay in the closet, or if they do transition it's against their will like it is in one country ☝️. One that you may not expect. Iran 🇮🇷 used to, or even still does, forcefully transition anyone who openly identifies as gay ⚣, or more likely, anyone's suspected of being gay ⚣. Because they have this distorted view that men ♂︎ cannot like other men ♂︎, only men ♂︎ can like women ♀︎, so therefore any men ♂︎ who does like other men ♂︎ must become a woman ♀︎. 

 

So, their hatred for gay men ⚣ inadvertently made them forward thinking about trans people ⚧. Which some people noted in a video that talked about this topic. "One step forward, and several steps back" as one of the comments on that video said. Most trans people ⚧ that you will talk to are against the idea of gay men ⚣ being forced to transition into women ♀︎ because of their government's strong homophobia, and they're against the idea of forceful transitions all together. Most of them believe that transitioning should be a choice, it should be done if and whenever the person is ready to do, and it is up to the person's own discretion how it should be done. In other words, they don't like Iran 🇮🇷 forcing gay men ⚣ to become trans ⚧. It's unethical in every conceivable way, and it's ultimately motivated by hatred. Hatred for another group within the LGBTQ+ community 🏳️‍🌈. 

 

And LGBTQ+ people 🏳️‍🌈 have to stick together and look out for each other in a world that is overwhelmingly against them. Even if they themselves are not the best at sticking together and having each other since LGBTQ+ people 🏳️‍🌈 do hate on each other, especially bisexual people. There is a lot of biphobia and bisexual erasure with the LGBTQ+ community 🏳️‍🌈. In a space where bisexual people should feel welcome and safe, they feel unwelcome and unsafe by a small but vocal minority within the LGBTQ+ community 🏳️‍🌈. While I am all for trans characters ⚧ being added to movies and TV shows, any form of fiction really, I am not for Gren being one because of the context of the character (context that people who made the 2021 live action series ignored) and the fact that he doesn't openly identify as a woman ♀︎ despite having a more feminine form and having boobs. And I think making him trans ⚧ in the 2021 live action series was the wrong way to go. 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is a poster image for Cowboy Bebop (1998), showing all four of the main human characters + Ein, Spike, Jet, Faye, and Ed, standing side-by-side each other inside a suspect lineup room, looking like they're about get a mugshot. Don't know why, they're bounty hunters, not bounty heads, unless they broke the law, and actually got arrested by the police, the ISSP, because of something they did while trying to catch a bounty head. They do cause a lot of property damage, especially Spike, so it's not entirely surprising. Either this is still a great poster. I even have a physical version of it that I have pinned on my way as a wallpaper 📌, you know, for decoration. To show anyone who comes in my room my fandom of the show. I might take a picture of it and show it in a future post.) 

 

 

 

 

 

Even though Ed is the greatest hacker in the Solar System, and she does use her hacking skills and her knowledge of computers to help out the rest of the Bebop crew on their missions when they go bounty hunting, she's mostly just comic relief. She doesn't even really that many episodes completely dedicated to her. The only episode where she's the main focus or the main protagonist is Mushroom Samba 🍄‍🟫, where her and Ein wander around Io searching for food after the Bebop crash lands on the moon, and they encounter a mushroom farmer 🍄‍🟫 named Domino Walker, and two bounty hunters who are after him, and get caught up in the mix. They even try catching Domino themselves once they realize that he's a bounty head. But, they let him go after he successfully bribes them with a bag whole of edible mushrooms 🍄‍🟫, which they then take back to the Bebop to feed the rest of the crew. Although at least one psychedelic mushroom 🍄 slipped through the cracks, and once again got Ein pretty high. 

 

Ed even, at one point, intentionally gets the rest of the Bebop crew high off of the psychedelic mushrooms 🍄, or "bad" mushrooms 🍄 that Domino was growing, to test them out to see if they truly are bad mushrooms 🍄 or not. She basically uses them as test subjects, or guinea pigs 🐹, and we're treated to each of their individual trips. With Spike hallucinating going up an endless flight of stairs with a talking frog 🐸 on one of the steps, Jet hallucinating his bonsai trees talking to him, and Faye hallucinating that the water 💦 from the toilet 🚽 shoots out and turns into an ocean with fish 🐠🐟 swimming around. 

 

 

 

 

(This is another poster image for Cowboy Bebop (1998). This time it's of Ed and Ein on a little motorcycle 🏍️ or moped, I don't remember what kind of vehicle it was that they rode, chasing after Domino, the shady mushroom farmer 🍄‍🟫 who's selling psychedelic mushrooms 🍄 as well as normal edible mushrooms 🍄‍🟫. Which is he's a bounty head, and why he's being pursued by multiple bounty hunters including Ed and Ein, because psychedelic mushrooms 🍄 are a type of drug, so by growing them and selling, Domino is essentially a drug dealer. So of course he'd be on the run from the law, and given that bounty hunters are essentially a form of law enforcement, not just in the Cowboy Bebop universe but in our world as well, and arguably a better and more effective form of law enforcement than the actual police of this show's world, the ISSP, it makes sense why they're after him. So, this poster is essentially depicting the events of Mushroom Samba 🍄‍🟫, or at least the climax of it, where Ed, Ein, and the two adult bounty hunters, Shaft and Coffee are all chasing after Domino, which culminates in Ed confronting Domino on top of a train 🚊 he jumped on top of, while Shaft and Coffee both crash into each other, and lose out on the bounty.) 

 

 

 

 

 

But, really, the episode is just an excuse for them to reference and pay homage to blaxploitation. It is the blaxploitation episode. Since Domino as well as the two bounty hunters who are after him, Shaft and Coffee are all black, and Shaft and Coffee were written and designed to be archetypal blaxploitation characters. They're even named after famous blaxploitation characters, Shaft (or John Shaft, as his full name is) of course, who was played at first by Richard Roundtree and then later by Samuel L. Jackson in the reboot movies, and Coffy (or Nurse Flower Child "Coffy" Coffin, as her full name is), who was played by Pam Grier. Although the character in this show's name is spelt differently, since it's spelt Coffee like the actual drink ☕️. Of course this does bring up a rather uncomfortable conversation regarding race, and how this show in particular depicts black people. This show does portray black people in a rather stereotypical light. Like, in the Black Dog Serenade episode, there’s a black convict that joins Udai’s crew that has missing teeth 🦷, and only has two teeth 🦷 that are visible when he talks. Then there’s the scene in Mushroom Samba 🍄‍🟫 where Coffee buys a watermelon 🍉 from this guy ♂︎ who’s selling them on the side of the road. The same one that Ed was going to get a watermelon 🍉 from but couldn’t because she didn’t have any money 💵. No wulongs. 

 

On the face of it, that may not be bad, but there are a lot of racist stereotypes about black people being associated with watermelon 🍉. Just like there are with black people being associated with fried chicken or even grape soda 🍇. The people behind the show probably didn’t intend this, they didn’t intend for this to have a racist connotation, but it’s not a great look. Overall, this show’s representation of black people is a mixed bag. It’s better than most other anime at the time, and even now, but it’s not perfect. I would say your mileage will vary depending on whether or not you find any of this stuff offensive. I am not black, so I can’t speak for black people, so I can’t say if this will offend them or not. It’s really up to them whether they find any of this stuff offensive. But I did think while watching this that this was a bit problematic. Again, not as bad as it could’ve been, but not exactly great either. I would Udai Taxin, the former European syndicate assassin, is the best black character in the show, even though he’s a villain. Or Jet, if you want to count him. I don’t count him because while he is voiced by a black guy ♂︎ in the English dub, he himself is not black, he looks pretty white to me. Now, the 2021 live action version of Jet, you can definitely count him since he is black and is played by a black actor. 

But, even if Cowboy Bebop (1998)’s depiction of black people isn’t exactly perfect, it’s still better than it’s depiction of Native Americans. This is my first big flaw with the show, and it’s one that matters to me because I’m Native American, and I am pretty critical of media depictions of Native Americans. Because most of them are pretty bad, and usually only represent one type of Native American: the Plains Indians. And they extrapolate to mean that every Native American looks, dresses, talks, and behaves like a Plains Indian, when we don’t. This show is no exception to that. It is guilty of portraying Native Americans in a pretty stereotypical light. Laughing Bull is a pretty stereotypical Native American character. According to the Cowboy Bebop wiki, he was inspired by the real life Native American holy man ♂︎, Sitting Bull, who was a member of the Lakota tribe. But even if he was inspired by a real person, that doesn’t make this depiction any less stereotypical. This is a future world, with spaceships, space colonies, wormhole machines, and even AI, with MPU, and yet the one recurring Native American character in the show looks like he’s straight out of the mid-to-late 19th century, and talks cryptically and is treated as a mystic. Almost every time a Native American appears in a story that isn’t historical, they’re portrayed as being mystical, like we all have powers or something. We’re almost never portrayed as regular people living in the modern day, which is more of what I want to. 

 

That’s why liked Pepper Ann’s depiction of Navajos, they portrayed them as regular people who live in the modern day, wear modern clothes, live in the suburbs, and have jobs just like any other American 🇺🇸. Though that does bring me to something else I want to talk about here that’s related to what I said earlier. Whenever Native Americans are portrayed on screen, they’re usually Lakota or Navajos. Those are two most commonly represented Native tribes in media, and non-Natives will often extrapolate that, and make it seem every Native tribe is like them, but they’re not. Every Native tribe is different, and has their own unique language, culture, and customs. There might be some overlap, like with Puebloans, but they’re still not exactly the same. I think a lot of this is due to the fact that people of other Native tribes are not encouraged to get into the film industry, they’re not encouraged to engage with the arts beyond traditional art like pottery, painting, basket making. 

 

It’s mostly Navajos and Lakotas who break into the industry and become actors or filmmakers. I hope this will change in the future, but right now, that’s why Native American representation is so minimal and so narrow. Sure, Laughing Bull has a son who was introduced in Jupiter Jazz Part 1, and friend who looks younger than him and was introduced in the movie, but we don’t we see much of them, and they too are pretty stereotypical. They’re always hanging around him, and we never see them outside of these moments where Laughing Bull appears to consul Spike and help him out, or if Spike and/or Jet seek his guidance. So yeah, this show’s depiction of Native Americans is pretty bad, but that’s par for the course for anime in the 1990s, or really any media at any time. 

 

Representation of other races and ethnicities still isn’t perfect, it’s still flawed, but it’s still a lot better than it is for Native Americans. Like I said in a YouTube comment on a video about black representation in anime and animation as a whole, we Native Americans pretty get nothing. But what can you do 🤷‍♂️? All I can do is try to be the change that I want to, by including more positive and non-stereotypical Native American representation in my own stories. Or in other people’s stories if I ever get hired to work on a franchise that I personally didn’t create. I don’t know if the 2021 live action series included Laughing Bull or not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t include him because there’s just no way to fix that. It’s better to just leave that character out. Especially since he has no barring on the plot whatsoever. You could all of his scenes out of the show, and it would literally be no different. In fact, it would probably be a lot better. 

Because Ed is usually treated as a comic character, and the one episode that was fully dedicated to her was a comedic episode, she usually gets left out of more serious episodes. Like, she appears in Jupiter Jazz, and was left out of the other two-part episode of this show, The Real Folk Blues entirely. That’s why they had her and Ein leave the Bebop crew to apparently go live with her neglectful father, Appledehli Siniz Hesap Lütfen on Earth 🌎 in Hard Luck Woman ♀︎ because a funny character like her wouldn’t fit a serious episode like The Real Folk Blues. One where Julia, the woman ♀︎ that Spike has been pining after all this time, not only dies, but Spikes as well. Whether Spike truly died at the end of The Real Folk Blues Part 2 or not is question that’s left ambiguous enough that people can interpret it however they please, whether they want to believe he died or he survived. Sort of the question of whether Deckard is a Replicant or not in Blade Runner. Though it seems most Cowboy Bebop fans have made up their minds, and decided that Spike did in fact die. That’s the commonly accepted opinion within the fandom it seems. And indeed, if you watch the ending of that episode with the idea that Spike dies, it certainly makes more tragic, and more clear that Spike is going on a suicide mission. He knows it, and both Jet and Faye know it. 

 

 

 

 

(This is a wallpaper image for Cowboy Bebop (1998), once again showing Spike and Vicious with their backs turn at each other. The central conflict of Spike's story within this show. It also shows the contrast between the two by showing the kinds of weapons they prefer to use. Spike likes to use guns, and Vicious likes to use swords. Essentially, a cowboy 🤠 goes up against a samurai, or perhaps a ronin.) 

 

 

 

 

 

Neither Jet nor Faye want Spike to go, because they know if he goes, then he's definitely going to die, and they don't want him to die. They care about him too much, even if neither of them will admit it. To themselves or to Spike. They may claim to hate him or be indifferent towards him, but it's all an act. They do both really care about him, they both really like him, and they don't want to see him go, as in die. If they really hated him or were indifferent towards him, they would not have reacted the way they did when they realized that Spike was going to go to the Red Dragon Syndicate's stronghold to face off against Vicious and avenge the death of Julia. The scene where Spike returns to the Bebop, and he and Jet have dinner, and Spike tells his own story, has an air of tension and awkwardness. Like, both of them know what's about to happen, and that Spike isn't going to let this go, and he will go back and he will probably die. Basically committing suicide now that he lost the woman ♀︎ that he loved ❤️. They're just not saying it. 

 

They're both just acting casual, as if nothing ever happened, and everything's normal when they both very well know that it's not. Jet in particular is in denial that his friend and partner is going off to die, and doesn't want to let him go, and just wants everything to be back the way it was before Julia and Vicious came back into the picture, but knows that he can't stop him and that he has to just accept it. Faye is really the only one out of the two that actually tries to stop Spike from going, first by pointing a gun at him, and then trying to talk him out of it. Neither of which works. And she has the most outwardly emotional reaction to Spike leaving, as we see her crying 😭, while Jet sits in, or stands, in silence in a contemplative melancholy, which says just as much, if not more than Faye crying 😭. He knows that he lost his friend, and he's never coming back.

It was probably a good thing for Ed to sit this one out. It would’ve just broken her heart 💔 if she knew that Spike died or was going to die, and there was nothing she could do to stop 😭. Though, I still don’t like how her story ended. I don’t have a problem with her leaving the Bebop and staying on Earth 🌎, but I do have a problem with her going to live with her father. I think that Appledehli is a bad parent, and he’s completely unfit to raise Ed and be the father that she needs him to be. He gets easily distracted, and he didn’t even know her name or know that she was a girl ♀︎ and not a boy ♂︎. You get the sense that he doesn’t care about her at all, and cares more about his work, surveying the Earth 🌎’s topography, and drawing new maps based on the latest meteor impacts ☄️. If it wasn’t already clear before, the meteors ☄️ that keep hitting Earth 🌎 are pieces of the Moon 🌕 that are falling down to Earth 🌎. The debris from the Moon explosion 🌕💥 caused by the Astral Gate accident is the main cause for the global catastrophe that led to most of humanity abandoning the Earth 🌎 to go live on the various space colonies and the other planets and moons in the Solar System, even on asteroids ☄️. 

 

Appledehli and his hapless assistant, Macintire are trying to create an updated map of the Earth 🌎 based on the latest impact by one of these Moon meteors 🌕☄️ (Moon rocks 🌕🪨 I guess you could say since these are just chunks of the Moon 🌕 that came off the Moon 🌕 after the Astral Gate accident blew a huge chunk of it off 💥). But as Jet points out in the episode, because the landscape keeps changing as a result of these impacts, what Appledehli and Macintire are trying to do is pretty much impossible. So Appledehli is wasting all of his time doing that, instead of raising his kid like he should. His neglectfulness is probably what to Ed wandering the Earth 🌎 all by herself, having to survive nearly all on her own, and pretty much becoming a drifter. The nun who ran that orphanage compared Ed to a stray cat 🐈, who just wanders into some place, acting as if she always lived there, and then leaving as suddenly as she appeared. I do like that Ed does actually exhibit some cat-like traits 🐈, which makes the comparison all the more fitting. That’s why the song “Cats on Mars 🐈” is the perfect theme for her. 

 

We don’t even know if Appledehli is actually her father or not. The episode presents us no proof that he is in fact her biological father, other than his word, and as the episode makes very apparent, his word is unreliable. He might’ve just saw her, and mistakenly thought that she was his daughter, or son because she looks like a boy, and that he had a child at all, sent that letter ✉️ based on that mistaken belief. When the reality could be that he never had a kid, and Ed isn’t his daughter. That is something that they could explore if they make a spinoff movie or show about a grown up Ed. Like, she finds out that he isn’t her father after all, and she grows to hate him, and maybe she already kind of grew to resent him because he kept abandoning her and forgetting about her, but learning that he wasn’t her father after all just drives her over the edge into straight up hatred 😡. And then you could have Appledehli die, likely by being killed by the main villain. Which I would be okay because as you can probably tell, I really don’t like this character that much. But he is the only other character besides Tongpu AKA “Mad Pierrot” to absolutely dominate Spike in a fight. 

It is interesting though that the two female members ♀︎ of the Bebop crew are from Earth 🌎, while the two male members ♂︎ are from Mars. Considering this show’s all about metaphors and messages, if they really wanted to drive that point home, they would've had the female members ♀︎ of the crew be from Venus, and the male members ♂︎ be from Mars. Because the female symbol ♀︎ is the Venus symbol, and the male symbol ♂︎ is the Mars symbol. It's where it's where that phrase, "Men ♂︎ are from Mars, women ♀︎ are from Venus comes from." It's what song, "Venus" sung first by Shocking Blue and then later by Bananarama is all about. It's where it got its name, and why one of the lyrics is "I'm your Venus, I'm fire 🔥." It's referring that to that old saying of men ♂︎ being from Mars and women ♀︎ being from Venus. They missed an opportunity there for symbolism and funny metaphors. 

 

Like, in a universe where humans live on other planets and moons besides the Earth 🌎 after abandoning the Earth 🌎 years ago due to a man-made accident, like of course it would be fitting for the main male characters ♂︎ to come from Mars and the main female characters ♀︎ to come from Venus. It just makes sense in a primal sort of way. But, since there are no other characters in the show that are tied to Earth 🌎, I guess having Faye and Ed both be from Earth 🌎 still works. Faye is an Earth woman 🌎♀︎ out of time, reawakened in a time where humanity has largely abandoned the Earth 🌎 and left those who couldn't leave behind and forgot about them, despite the fact that it was humanity's original home, it was our birthplace. It was the "Cradle of Humanity" so to speak, which is sort of how Africa is described currently in our world due to the "Out of Africa" Theory, which posits that the human race originated from the African continent. 

 

Like the human species first evolved on that continent starting from the earliest progenitor species, the precursors to the genus Homo, to us, Homo sapiens, and then we spread out across the entire world. There were other human species that co-existed along us like Neanderthals and Homo floresiensis AKA the "Hobbit humans," but they all died out, and we're the only ones left. We're the only human species left in existence. It’s a theory that is widely supported by scientific evidence that we have about human evolution. And there are those (mainly myself) who believe that if humanity were to spread out amongst the stars and colonize other planets, over time, over the course of millions, maybe even just thousands of years, we too would see the rise of completely new human species. Each one perfectly suited to the environment in which they find themselves in. From us, the sole human species on this planet would evolve dozens of other species, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands, depending on how many planets humanity managed to settle. Perhaps we would even guide this evolution by purposefully and intentionally genetically engineering new human species 🧬 to survive on these other planets. Perhaps the colonists themselves would genetically modify themselves 🧬 to better survive on these planets. 

 

This is a world, or star system I guess, that had no time for Faye, and had no place for her, and had to make a place for herself within it. She was supposed to be an old lady ♀︎ now, she was supposed to live out her years, and grow old like all her old friends back on Earth 🌎, like Sally Yung. But she's not, she still looks like a 20 something year old, she still is a 20 something year old physically. Chronologically, she's old, but physically she's still young. She never got the chance to live a normal life, and live out her days at a normal pace, and age out when she was supposed to. And because she's still technically a young woman ♀︎, she still has to make it as a young woman ♀︎ in her early 20s, and everything that comes with that. While still trying to adapt to this future world that she finds herself in that wasn't made for her and isn't willing to accommodate or meet her halfway. 

 

That's her struggle. Being from a time gone by, and trying to thrive in a time that wasn't build for her or people like her, while also trying to regain memories of her past that she forgot. Because the medical procedure used to heal her body from her accident gave her amnesia and wiped all her memories of her old life on Earth 🌎. Although she looks young, and is physically young, she is still ultimately a dinosaur whose time has already passed. She doesn't even fully realize that until after she regains all of her memories and learns the truth about who she is, and what happened to her family while she was cryogenically frozen 🥶, kept in a state of suspended animation for 54 years. 

 

While Ed on the other hand, is the greatest hacker in the entire Solar System, who just happens to hail from Earth 🌎, a humble little planet that most of humanity stopped caring about after the Astral Gate accident happened left most of the planet uninhabitable. The idea that someone so smart and skilled at what they do, while being so young and being so quirky and weird, could from a world that lost all of its significance to humanity, and is pretty much inhospitable is a really cool idea. It makes Ed all the more special, and inspiring. It's sort of like the Skywalker family in Star Wars, and how one of the most important Force sensitive lineages, the lineage that changed the galaxy, came from a desert planet that is considered such a backwater. A place you'd try to escape from rather than go to. 

 

I like most episodes of the series. I wouldn't be calling a masterpiece if I didn't. The only episode that I absolutely don't like is Toys in the Attic, which is a shame because it's the episode that pays homage to Alien (1979), and it's the closest thing to a creature feature that Cowboy Bebop ever got close to doing, since this show really doesn't have aliens 👽 I don't think. I don't think they ever explain what these other animals are that are on these other planets and moons, if they're creatures that humanity created and brought over there, or if they're actually native wildlife. I would actually like to see the characters in these type of space western anime, like Cowboy Bebop (1998), or Trigun (1998), or even Outlaw Star, in actual legitimate creature feature. Especially Cowboy Bebop (1998) and Trigun (1998), which are the most grounded out of those three shows, and don't really feature any creatures. I know that this episode has its fans, who will defend it and argue its merits, and it supposedly has deeper themes. There are those who argue that the Bebop crew died in this episode and the rest of the show is just a dream 💭, similar to what people say about the movie and how it's all just a dream 💭 and Spike is actually dead. That is one of the main interpretations of the movie. 

 

Some argue that Spike was alive for most of it until after his confrontation with Vincent on the train 🚟, which ended up him getting beat up by him and then blowing up when the train 🚟 explodes 💥 from the bomb that Vincent planted on there. Spike doesn't die from the explosion 💥 itself, it's not as he gets blown up vaporized, but he gets launched out of the train 🚟 when it explodes 💥, or he jumps out after he does. I haven't seen the movie in a while, and I'm writing this section before I rewatch the movie for the movie section. I think what happens is that he gets shot, and then he falls out of an open window on the train 🚟 and falls into the water 💦 just as the bomb (carrying nanomachines if I'm not mistaken) goes off and the train 🚟 explodes 💥. But, depending on your interpretation, he either survives and makes it back to shore with Laughing Bull and his unnamed friend nursing back to health, or he succumbs to his wounds and dies, and the rest of the movie is just a death dream 💭, one last dream 💭 Spike has in his final moments before succumbing to death. But, I just can't get into this one. 

 

Ever since I first watching it, and honestly if I wasn't rewatching the show for a review, I would've just skipped it. In fact, I did actually skip when I was rewatching the show for this review. I tried watching it for a little bit, I tried giving it a chance, but I just couldn't do it, and I just skipped the rest of the episode and went to the next episode, which of course Jupiter Jazz Part 1, which is a far better episode in my opinion. Both parts of Jupiter Jazz blow the hell out of Toys in the Attic. It is probably the most skippable episode in the entire series, it's really not essential viewing. It's the closest this show ever got to having a "filler episode" because the show had 26 episodes, they needed to hit that 26 episode mark and needed something for the 11th episode, even if it's evident they didn't really an idea for it. Or at least a good idea for it 🙄. They didn't have enough ideas for a 26 episode series. So, they came up with it, something to fill in the 11th episode (or "session") spot. Even if it really isn't that good, and isn't the show operating at its full capacity. The people who worked on the show did not bring their A game for this one, and you can tell. That's a filler episode in an anime for ya. it really doesn't go anywhere, or amount to anything. 

 

The episode could almost be viewed non-canon since supposedly all the characters in the episode, all the Bebop crew "die," and then the next episode just carries on as if nothing ever happened. As if the events of the episode didn't actually happen. Or if you go with the death interpretation, it did actually happen, and the rest of the show is nothing more than a dream 💭 that characters all had before they finally died. I don't go with that interpretation, I think people are pulling stuff out of their asses to try to make this episode fit with all the other episodes of the series, and make sense continuity wise or make it seem deeper than it actually is. Finding meaning where there is none. Which only highlights how much it doesn't and isn't. 

 

It's funny, in the preview for Speak Like A Child, Jet described it as a pointless episode that doesn't go anywhere, even though that description is more fitting of Toys in the Attic than Speak Like A Child. Speak Like A Child is one of the most important episodes in the series, since it was the first episode where we really started getting glimpses of Faye's backstory, and seeing her childhood and her life on Earth 🌎 before her accident, and before the Earth 🌎 was left uninhabitable by the Astral Gate accident. It's also one of the episodes where Cowboy Bebop (1998) really shows how prescient and forward thinking it was since it pretty accurate predicted drones and drone delivery since both the packages carrying the Beta tape and the Beta player were both carried by drones. Which cleverly each had a turtle 🐢 and a hare 🐇 to reference The Turtle and the Hare 🐢🐇, the old fable about a turtle and a hare 🐇 (which is another word for rabbit 🐇) who race each other, and the turtle 🐢 still manages to win the race despite how much slower it is compared to the hare 🐇. 

 

But, I get it, the preview was deceptive in how it described the episode, it make it seem like it's just a normal stand alone episode about the Bebop crew going on one-off adventure that doesn't really have any wider implications for the rest of the series. In other words, they tried to make it seem like Wild Horses 🐎 or Bohemian Rhapsody, a fun episode, but one that doesn't have a lot of barring on the main plot or the characters themselves. It's just another adventure. So that they didn't give away the big revelation that was at the end of the episode, which is a tape showing parts of Faye's childhood. A childhood that she doesn't remember. But Toys in the Attic has nothing. It's about nothing, and it offers nothing to the series as a whole. 

 

Truly, the only redeeming quality about it, the only good thing in it is the scene where Jet and Faye play strip poker ♣️♦️♠️♥️ (or some kind of card game 🃏 with a stripping element), and Jet loses, and loses all of his stuff to Faye, and is forced to strip completely naked. Though this was still a network TV show, and it's not a hentai, so you don't see anything, sorry, if you wanted to see some Jet peen or booty. It's one of the funniest moments of the entire show 🤣, and it's the only good part of the episode in my opinion. If you choose to skip this episode, especially after everything I've said about it, you're really not missing out on anything. There are no important plot points, there are important character revelations (the episode kind of just reiterates what we already know about these characters, and doesn't say anything about them that we couldn't already glean from other episodes), it's pretty self-contained and stand alone, and none of the events within the episode are never acknowledged. 

 

There are a few more things before I wrap up this section of the review, and move onto talking about the movie and then the game. I wrote a lot of notes for this review, and I don't want them all to go to waste. First, I'm going to give an explanation of the ISSP, the main police force throughout this franchise, not just in this series but also in the movie and in the game, and probably the 2021 live action series, but I wouldn't be surprised if they left them out. I didn't really get much chance to talk about them in this review because of the direction it ended up going in. When I went into this, I thought that it would be a break down of nearly every episode, and since there are plenty of episodes throughout the series that deal with the ISSP, but that's not how it went down. 

 

My review ended up just being a general overview of the series, talking about the things that stuck out to me the most, mainly the characters, and mainly Faye. I mostly focused on Faye throughout this review. I didn't mean for that to happen, I just had a lot to say about her, because she really is one of the most interesting characters throughout the entire series? Like out of any of the main characters in the Bebop crew, she definitely has the most interesting backstory. And I do ultimately think that was the right approach to take with this review, instead of just going every single episode. 26 episodes is a lot, and this review would take even longer to write if I were going to try to go through every episode and give my thoughts on each one, and frankly I don't have enough to say about each one for that method to even work. 

 

So, going with a general overview, and talking about the things that stuck out to me was the right approach, that's pretty much what I do whenever review any series. It's what I did on my review Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 1, which you can read clicking on the link 🔗 I provided. I will review Season 2 after I get done with this because I've been thinking about Godzilla and the MonsterVerse again recently, and it's on my mind again, so it's really the perfect time to cover Monarch Season 2. That way I'll be fully caught up when Godzilla x Kong: Supernova comes out next year, in March or April. I think it's coming out in March. Unlike a certain somebody who I mentioned earlier in the intro to this review 😒. I haven't read the MonsterVerse comic/graphic novel, MonsterVerse Declassified, so I probably won't cover it when I talk about Monarch Season 2, except for the information I already know comes from it. Mainly that Tiamat is still alive, despite what happened to her in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, and she's being kept under lock and key by Monarch, who are holding her head inside of tank for study while she fully heals up. Because Tiamat is fully capable of regeneration, and can regrow her entire body even if it's damaged like it was in The New Empire. Just like Reptilicus. 

 

Basically, the ISSP, or Inter-Solar System Police, is an interplanetary police force that, as the name suggests, polices the entire Solar System, all of the major colonies that were established and fully populated by humans after the Astral Gate accident happened. It was established after humanity had fully colonized the Solar System, and it was decided that there needed to be some kind of police force maintaining order throughout the system. Although it was created with noble intentions in mind, and the institution was respected at first, it eventually became corrupt and lost any and all respect amongst people throughout the Solar System. Like all police forces, the ISSP's job was to protect and serve, but as the years went by, the people saw throughout the colonies within the Solar System saw that the only people that the ISSP protected and served were the crime syndicates, since the ISSP at this point in the Cowboy Bebop timeline was already in bed with various crime syndicates. To the point where the ISSP just lets the crime syndicates do whatever they want, and don't even try to stand in their way. 

 

Any ISSP officer that wasn't in bed with the crime syndicates was immediately eliminated. That's why Jet had to go. He was one of the few good cops on the force, and he stuck his nose 👃where he shouldn't have, and he refused to play the game like everyone else. He was actually trying to do his job as a cop, and bring criminals to justice, and clean up the streets the best he could, and he paid the price for it. He's lucky he just lost his arm, and he didn't get killed that day. That incident is ultimately why Jet became disillusioned and quit the force to live out the rest of his days as a bounty hunter. Sure, the job isn't as glamorous as being an ISSP officer, and it doesn't come with anywhere the same perks or respect attached, bounty hunting is generally seen as a pretty unscrupulous line of work with in the Cowboy Bebop universe, even though it really isn't much worse the ISSP in fact it could be argued that it's better than the ISSP, but hey, at least it's more honest. At least it isn't pretending to be something that it's not. 

 

At least he still gets to kind of catch the bad guys, even if he won't be recognized or respected as a hero for doing so. Although Jet may say he's done being a hero, and will always deny that he's playing hero, he still basically is. He still has a heroic side of him that always wants to do what's right and help whoever's in need or punish whoever's causing trouble and bring them to justice. Only this time, he's ostensibly getting a monetary reward 💰 for doing so. And a lot of times, he doesn't get the reward because the bounty head either dies before he can turn them into the authorities, or they escaped, they're let go. Spike and the other Bebop members are the main reasons why they never collect the bounties and why they never get paid, and why they're pretty much always broke. 

 

That's why Jet decides to help Pao Meifa even though he really doesn't have much of a friendly or familial connection, beyond being associates with her father, Pao Pu-Zi back when he used to be an ISSP officer and Pu-Zi used to be an informant, and really has no real reason to help her. He's not getting any money 💰 out of this, there are no bounty heads that he can catch, there's not even any food, except for maybe that ice cream 🍨 he and Meifa eat at the park. He still has this desire, no, need to help people and be the hero no matter what. Even if he's beyond the point of being the hero at that point in the series, and within the wider timeline of the universe. BTW, since I mentioned Meifa and her relationship with Jet, there is something I do want to quickly talk about in relation to the episode, Boogie Woogie Feng Shui. Great title BTW, that would be an excellent title for a movie, especially an exploitation movie or exploitation movie homage, or even a 1970s noir movie, or 1970s noir movie homage/throwback. Probably one that has to do with Chinese culture and Chinese people, since Feng shui is a Chinese concept. Hopefully it wouldn't be as controversial as Year of the Dragon 🐉 (1985).  

 

Although Jet and Meifa is purely platonic, it kind of has to be, otherwise it would be really creepy, there is subplot, or rather running joke even in the episode of Spike and Faye assuming that Jet is in love with Meifa, or he's lusting after her and that's why he's helping her episode. Even the preview for the episode was all about them assuming that he was some kind of pervert who was into "younger" women ♀︎, pretty much underage girls ♀︎. Even in the main plot, there's a joke related to this, when during the park scene, Jet panics when Meifa talks about how she never had a close one-on-one conversation with her dad, Pu-Zi, assuming that she sees him s a father figure, and Jet is very insecure about his age and looking old. He does have receding hairline after all. 

 

So he tells her that he's not old enough to be her father, and then says he could be her boyfriend, and then realizing his mistake, he tries to cover it up and say he could be her older brother. And that's when we get the "ice cream 🍨, ice cream cone 🍦" joke a second time since they did once before in the same scene, where it was Jet saying it to Meifa and Meifa frantically eating her ice cream 🍨. And then Meifa does the same thing to Jet when he puts his foot in his mouth by suggesting he could be her boyfriend when he's an adult man ♂︎ in his 30s, and she's still a teenager, pretty much a child. Because contrary to what teenagers themselves often believe (including myself I was guilty of this at that age), teenagers are still children. They don't stop being children until they hit 18. 

 

Some will argue until they hit 20 or 21, but legally speaking, in the eyes of the laws, a person stops being a child and becomes an adult when they hit the age of 18. That is the standard age of consent in most countries, and probably is in the space colonies in Cowboy Bebop. In some countries, the age of consent is higher, the same age when someone is legally allowed to drink 🥃, smoke 🚬, and gamble 🎰, 21. She probably isn't even 17 yet, she looks more like she's 14 or 15. They never say what Meifa's exact age is at any point during the episode, probably so that they can could these pedophile jokes. They purposefully left Meifa's age ambiguous so that they could make jokes about Jet being a pedophile, or at least Spike and Faye assuming that he is. 

 

I don't why they would do this, don't they want us to like the characters, especially Jet, who's probably the most righteous among the Bebop crew, or at least sees himself as the most righteous and tries to be? Because I feel like all this would do is make us suspicious of Jet 🤨, and make us doubt his intentions for helping Meifa, and make us assume the worst about him. If they didn't push this so hard, and make it a running gag, it'd be one thing, but the fact that they kept coming back to that, and hammering that point home, and repeating that same joke, makes it seem like they trying to say something with that. They were trying to say something about Jet's character 🤨, and make him seem a lot more unsavory than he actually does and is throughout the rest of the series.

 

But, he does care about Meifa, he clearly does, and he does become somewhat attached to her and does become somewhat of a father figure to her, even if Jet denies it and doesn't want to be seen as a father because it makes him feel old. Even though he would fit the role quite nicely as this episode shows. Jet would be a pretty good father if he actually became one for real, at least from what we're shown of him throughout the series. He even became a father figure to Ed in a lot of ways. He even pretended to be her father to get into that hospice where Rosny Spanngen, the real mastermind behind the Scratch cult, was being kept in the Brain Scratch 🧠 episode. He become protective of her, especially when Spike and Faye start smoking 🚬 in front of her, and he tells them to smoke outside 🚬 because her doesn't want her to breathe in the cigarette smoke 🚬 and damage her lungs 🫁. 

 

Which is funny because pretty much every adult character smokes 🚬 in Cowboy Bebop. They either drink 🥃 or they smoke 🚬, often both. Jet telling Spike and Faye to smoke 🚬 outside and making the living room inside the Bebop a non-smoking area 🚭 only highlights how much characters smoke 🚬 in this show and in the movie too. The only other anime that has as much smoking 🚬 as this that I can think of is Black Lagoon. I don't know if they smoke 🚬 this much in the 2021 live action series, I sort of doubt it. Because you really aren't allowed to show characters smoking 🚬 in movies and shows anymore. 

 

I mean, you can, but it's usually discouraged because public attitude towards cigarettes 🚬 and tobacco in general is much more negative now than it was in the past. People look down on you if you smoke 🚬, or they look down on any piece of media that could be interpreted as promoting cigarettes 🚬 or glamorizing smoking 🚬. So rather than purposefully craft a piece of media to portray cigarettes 🚬 and smoking 🚬 badly, most filmmakers and showrunner opt to just not having smoking 🚬 at all. That's why smoking 🚬 in the James Bond movies has been limited in recent years, despite it being a trait of the character since the beginning, since the Ian Fleming novels 📚. The Ian Fleming novel version of James Bond 📖 was pretty much a chain smoker 🚬. 

 

The ISSP even conducted human experiments, trying to create the perfect assassin through genetic engineering 🧬, which is how we got Tongpu, better known as "Mad Pierrot," and why he went on a killing spree, wiping out everyone who was ever involved in the project. He wanted revenge for what they did to him, and there was very little they could do stop him. That's what happens when you create the perfect weapon. It was only when he went after Spike after he saw his face (Tongpu has a thing about people seeing his face and he'll target anyone that does), and his mind start regressing into that of a child, and his fear of cats 🐈 (a result of the trauma he faced while being experimented on by the ISSP), that he was finally defeated and killed. Injuring him with a ricochet and crying like a toddler when a giant animatronic crushed him with its foot during their final confrontation at Space Land, an abandoned amusement park on Mars. Once again, even when faced with a grave threat to themselves, a threat that they created, the ISSP proved how useless they are. 

 

Just like how the Martian government is supposed to be a mirror 🪞 of the US government 🇺🇸, and everything that comes with that, the ISSP is supposed to be a mirror 🪞 of American police forces 🇺🇸, and a thinly veiled critique of American police 🇺🇸. This depiction of the ISSP as being a systemically corrupt and inept organization holds up pretty well and surprisingly prescient, especially in recent years as more and more people across this country (and even across the world) have become more critical and distrusting of our police. Whether it's because police brutality, wrongful police killings, systemic racism, and racial profiling. This show tackles those issues head on, maybe not the racism thing, but definitely the police brutality and police corruption thing. There are a lot of ISSP officers in this show that are just straight up dirty cops, shamelessly so, and harm usually does come to these crooked cops whenever they appear in an episode. Some might even say that this show is full ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) with how it depicts the ISSP as being no good. 

 

I did forget to mention that Ed was heavily inspired by the show's composer, Yoko Kanno, in terms of personality. She literally is just her as a racially ambiguous kid who looks like a boy ♂︎, often gets mistaken for a boy ♂︎, but is actually a girl ♀︎. BTW, Yoko Kanno's music is excellent. I haven't gotten much chance to actually gush about her music throughout this review, but her music for this show is amazing. It's one of my favorite scores to anything, whether it's movies, TV shows, or games, and she is one of my favorite composers because of her work on this, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which she did after this, and probably got chosen to work on because of this. People associate Cowboy Bebop with jazz, like whenever they think of anime and jazz, they instantly think of Cowboy Bebop. Literally, whenever anime has music that's even just slightly jazzy, they immediately compare it to Cowboy Bebop (1998). They also associate it with old west-style music, stuff with acoustic guitars and harmonicas. Whenever something has vaguely old west sounding music, they also compare it to Cowboy Bebop (1998). Or Trigun (1998). 

 

But the music in Cowboy Bebop is so much more than that. There's also a lot of rock music, pop music, and even electronic music in Cowboy Bebop (1998). There are even straight operatic tracks in the show, especially in the episode, Ballad of Fallen Angels, which is the first episode of the series to really focus on the Red Dragon Syndicate 🐉 storyline. The soundscape of Cowboy Bebop is a lot more diverse than you would think from just hearing the title, and hearing what people have said about the show and the music, always making those comparisons whenever they see another anime that has jazzy music. You can't pin the music of Cowboy Bebop (1998) since it pretty features every genre of music. A little bit of everything. 

 

Music is key to this show's identity, even though it isn't actually a musical. There's a reason why the show's called Cowboy Bebop, and why the text in the opening titles for the show (and also some of the eyecatches) talk about Cowboy Bebop being a new genre, and comparing the Bebop crew to being a renegade jazz band. One genre I wish was in the show more was rockabilly music, especially since the show features a diner called Mac's Diner in the episode, Heavy Metal Queen, which coincidentally shares a name with a minor restaurant chain here in New Mexico. Specifically, in Albuquerque, I don't know if Mac's Steak in the Rough even exists outside of that one city ☝️. There's also a restaurant chain in Albuquerque called Bob's Burger 🍔, just like the show, though the chain obviously predates it. Us Burqueños (and Burqueñas) were talking about Bob's Burgers 🍔 long before that show was ever conceived. And before you ask, yes, that is apparently what people who live in Albuquerque are called. 

 

I've never heard and I lived there for most of my childhood, but apparently that's what inhabitants of the great Duke City are called. One of my nephews is named Duke by the way, he's my second oldest sister's son and first child overall. She also gave the middle name, Pirate 🏴‍☠️ because she was really obsessed with pirates 🏴‍☠️, specifically Pirates of the Caribbean 🏴‍☠️. She had a huge crush on Jack Sparrow 😍. I do feel kind of bad for him that his middle name is Pirate 🏴‍☠️, and I heard him say that he doesn't like his middle name (for obvious reasons), but then again, I don't really like my middle name either. I don't really like Nathaniel. But he is into Godzilla, probably because of the huge DVD collection 📀 of Godzilla movies that I had that my sisters held onto, I don't know if he reads this blog. 

 

He's probably a bit too young to be reading it considering some of the stuff I talk about and say on this blog, but my most recent post at the time of me writing this portion of the review, was a review of the 2007 video game, Godzilla: Unleashed, and that one isn't as "adult" as some of my other ones. So he could read that one if he wants. He's also super obsessed with Australia 🇦🇺, and has said on multiple occasions that he wants to go there. Like, if there was any country in the world that he could visit, it would be Australia 🇦🇺. That would've been the perfect opportunity to use some rockabilly music and give the show a bit of a 1950s vibe for a change. Though Shinchirō Watanabe would sort of make a show with a 1950s vibe later on with Space Dandy, which also combined different music genres, as well as different art and animation style. That show was kind of a free-for-all for anime director or animator who wanted to come and experiment, since nearly episode of Space Dandy from what I understand was directed and animated by someone else. At least in terms of the main character's design and his hairdo, and the fact that he's a dandy...in space.  

 

Since I mentioned the Eyecatches in this series, I should quickly talk about them. For those that don't know, an Eyecatch is a type of transition in an anime made for TV, usually an anime TV show, when then the anime goes to commercial break. Like, when the show goes to commercial it'll show this title card that has the title of the show on it, sometimes even a character from the show, and some music playing over top of it, like a little music sting or interlude, and then the show comes back from commercial, it'll either show that same title card or a similar one. This was much more of a common thing back when anime were made for traditional network TV, and it's not really something you see nowadays. Even though even streaming services have ads on them now, so maybe they still have them. But, I have watched anime on streaming, much more recent anime made in the actual 2020s, and I didn't see any Eyecatches 🤷‍♂️. But again, with these streaming companies pumping ads into their services, I wouldn't be surprised if Eyecatches were brought back. 

 

But for sure, when you watch an older anime, especially from the 1990s or 2000s, you'll definitely see some Eyecatches because they were made with commercials in mind. They knew that they would have to go to commercial break, so they inserted these interludes/transitions in for whenever it would go to commercial, so it would be a more smoother transition and wouldn't be so abrupt. I wish western cartoons did this, although most western cartoons, particularly those in America 🇺🇸, usually are broken up into two 11 minute segments (usually that have no connection to each other whatsoever), so when one segment ends, then it goes to commercial, and then when it comes back the next segment begins. So there's no for an anime style Eyecatch transition, except for cartoons that use the full 30 minutes instead of being made up of two usually unrelated segments. But again, those are less common. Even in the 2010s, when cartoons with overarching storylines became more common. 

 

Most Eyecatches in anime are pretty unremarkable. They usually just have the logo for the show, and they'll sometimes include a character from the show, as was the case with the Eyecatches for Inuyasha, but most of the time they'll just have the logo of the show with a music sting over top of it. Even the Eyecatches for Outlaw Star aren't anything to write home about. They didn't have the exact logo of the show, but they did say the show's title, Outlaw Star, and rather than music stings, they had gunshot sound effects, or at least the one going into the commercial break did, and the one coming out of it had a music sting as well as gunshot sound effects. The Eyecatches for Cowboy Bebop (1998) on the other hand, are pretty unique. While they all say the title, each one has a different look and feel, being designed to fit the episodes they appear in perfectly. 

 

And while they do repeat the same music stings, they have enough of a variety to where you don't feel like listening to the same thing every time there's an Eyecatch, and it goes to commercial. And the music stings they use are just as good and just as catchy as any of the other music in the show. I watched the show on Blu-Ray 💿, every single time I've watched, including for this review, which I will close this section of the review out with a discussion about because I have plenty to say about that. so I didn't see any commercials obviously, just goes to black and then comes back to shows the other Eyecatch, but those moments where it shows the Eyecatch and then cuts to black were clearly where the commercials were supposed to go when this was originally airing on TV. Both in Japan 🇯🇵 and in the US 🇺🇸 since this aired on TV on Adult Swim in the US 🇺🇸, in the 2000s, which is mainly how it became as popular as it did in the US 🇺🇸. 

 

This was long before Toonami was put on Adult Swim, after it was revived in 2012 due to popular demand. A lot of Millennials were nostalgic for Toonami during that time, and they wanted it back. For Millennials, Zillennials, and even some older Gen Zers (I hate calling us "Zoomers," and I refuse to use that name referring to us) of a certain age, it was how they got into anime. And for once, Cartoon Network actually listened and brought back, but instead of putting it on the main channel, they put it on Adult Swim, a late night programming block established in 2001 to allow Cartoon Network to air more adult orientated programming. Because this second iteration of Toonami, this relaunch, was not for kids of the next generation, it was for adults of the previous generations. They brought it back specifically for the people who grew up with it in the 2000s and were adults now. 

 

Just like what Marvel did with X-Men '97. They didn't make that for kids of the current generations to enjoy and get into X-Men, they made it for the people who grew up with the original X-Men: The Animated Series and were adults now, and they brought it up to their level. The new show matured along with its audience. X-Men '97 is a much more adult oriented show than the original X-Men: The Animated Series. And the second iteration of Toonami under Adult Swim was also more adult oriented. The programming was a lot more adult oriented, the anime they chose to air were much more mature than the ones in the original iteration of Toonami on the main Cartoon Network channel. But before all that happened, before Toonami was revived and brought back as a programming block within a programming block on Adult Swim, Adult Swim was already airing anime in the 2000s back when the original Toonami was in its heyday on Cartoon Network. Kicking ass, and bringing anime to American television screens 🇺🇸. 

 

Not just Cowboy Bebop (1998), but also Inuyasha, Trigun (1998), Wolf's Rain 🐺, FLCL, Samurai Champloo, and even Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, among others. The kind of anime that the current Toonami would air, Adult Swim was already doing, and that's how a lot of these shows gained followings in the US 🇺🇸 when they did. It is kind of sad to talk about Toonami now because Peter Cullen recently died, on Wednesday August 26, 2026 😔, and he did a lot of the promos for the original Toonami back during the TOM 2 era, which a lot of Toonami fans consider to be the "golden age" of Toonami. He might've even done the promos for Toonami during the TOM 3 era as well, but I'm not quite sure. He's just as much associated with Toonami as he is Transformers, because of his legendary voice, and his ability to make anything sound cool and epic. He made every anime that aired on Toonami back then seem larger than life. I think half of Toonami's popularity and longevity can be owed to him. Toonami would not have been nearly as beloved with Peter Cullen's amazing voice during those promos. 

 

There is one more thing I would like to talk about before I finally wrap this section up by talking about the Blu-Ray 💿 itself, and it's Jet's ex-girlfriend, Alisa. We're introduced to her in the episode, Ganymede Elegy, and she only appears in this one episode ☝️ (she's a one-off character), and it seems that show wants to think to that Jet was in the wrong, and was the main person responsible for ending the relationship. Even Jet's English voice actor, Beau Billingslea seems to think so, that it was all Jet's fault why the relationship didn't work. But I'm not buying it. Jet did nothing wrong, he's completely innocent in this situation, it's all Alisa's fault. 

 

Which is weird to say because her name is just a few letters away from being aunt's name. My aunt is somewhat of a public figure, within the indigenous arts and crafts world (she's a sort of famous potter now), so I'm okay with saying her name here, her name is Alisha. As you can see, very similar to Alisa. All that's missing is the H. It's just as awkward for me as when I wrote my Riddick (2013) review, and I talked about Dahl's sexuality because my second oldest sister (the mother of my oldest nephew, Duke)'s nickname was Dahl. That's what I used to call her when we were kids. And there I was, talking about a fictional character who's also named Dahl, a woman ♀︎ no less, and whether she's a lesbian ⚢, straight ⚤, or bisexual. Though honestly, this is not as awkward as that since we're not talking about sexuality here in relation to this character. 

 

From the reasons that we're given, the reasons that Alisa herself names for why she dumped Jet, she is completely in the wrong in my opinion. Her reasons for leaving Jet just make her look immature, irresponsible, and dumb. She left him because she didn't like that he was taking care of, and doing everything for her, and making all her decisions for her, and she felt constrained by that, and she wanted to be free. Not because he was abusive, not because he was cheating on her, but because he did everything for her and she wanted to do things on her own 🤦‍♂️. That's not something you end a relationship, that's something you talk over with your partner so that they can make adjustments, and let you do more things on my own and make your own decisions. If your partner wasn't receptive, and they continued to do everything for you, or just became more consciously controlling, then maybe, yeah, I'd say it'd be okay to dump them. But what do I know? I'm a virgin who's never been in relationship before 😒. 

 

But, it's not as Jet was being overly controlling of her, at least from what we're shown and what we're told. He was by all accounts, a good boyfriend. He took care of her in the way that everyone tells men ♂︎ that they should take care their partner, especially when their partner is a woman ♀︎. It's part of the traditional gender roles, and social expectations that are expected of men ♂︎ in relationships. At least in straight relationships ⚤. It's just that Alisa all of a sudden got tired of it, and wanted to do things on her own. But again, this whole thing could've been resolved with a single conversation between the two of them, it didn't have to result in the relationship just straight up ending. But since Alisa clearly doesn't have the emotional maturity to actually communicate her feelings to Jet when it actually mattered, she just cut things off, and left while he wasn't home, and just left a pocket watch (that either belonged to her or Jet) and a note saying, "Farewell." 

 

She didn't tell him the reasons why she leaving, she didn't have the emotional maturity, or guts to do so. We're not told or shown when this happens within the timeline, whether it happened before or after Jet lost his left arm and left the ISSP. If it was before, then it him losing his arm was just one last insult to injury to girlfriend leaving him for seemingly no reason. And if it was after, then I could see Alisa calculating that with Jet having only one arm (before he got a prosthetic/robotic one to replace the one he lost) and him no longer having a good paying job, he could no longer be the provider that he once was, and that played a role in her decision to dump him. If that's the case, then she's even worse than I thought 🤬. 

 

What makes it worse is that fact that we can see in the episode, that her life got materially worse after she left Jet 🤦‍♂️. Especially since in the time between then and the present when the episode takes place, she started dating this jackass named Rhint Celonias, who is in deep with some loan sharks 💸 who he managed to piss off, and he's on the run from the law. He even has a bounty on his head, which is why Jet stays on Ganymede and stays involved in the plot instead of just leaving after he reunited with Alisa and caught up with her. He goes after Rhint just so he can get close to Alisa again after their conversation in the bar (the bar that she owns and operates), and I guess punish her for leaving him, like he uses this opportunity to settle an old score with her. Or maybe, being his ol' righteous self, he's trying to protect her from a really bad and stupid guy ♂︎ who's clearly making her life worse just by being around her. Even though they're not together anymore, Jet is still trying to be her knight in shining armor, and be Captain Save-a-Hoe. 

 

But since the show largely still takes her side, Jet lets him go, and convinces the authority to drop the bounty on him, and take him on much minor charges. He may not be an ISSP officer anymore, but he still has connections, and can still pull some strings with what little influence he has left. Remember, Bob? And they go their separate ways, with Jet realizing, as we all should, that she isn't worth it and was never worth it. If she could so easily end the relationship over something so trivial. That's why he's so easily able to let her go and move on, while Spike isn't able to let go of Julia. But, the show still makes it seem like she was in the right, and he was in wrong, and she was right to leave him and he just has to accept it, and accept her reasons why even though they're completely stupid. 

 

Even though she completely ruined her own life with her own bad choices, and getting with this guy ♂︎ who's clearly pretty dumb himself (dumber than her in all honesty), we're still supposed to accept it as good because hey, it was still all her decision, and not Jet's. She even says it herself in the episode, even though she makes bad decisions that make her life worse, it was all still worth it because they were her choices 🙄. I don't see how anyone can look at what I just laid out, and not come to conclusion that Alisa is a bad person, she's a stupid person, an immature and irresponsible person, and she didn't deserve Jet in the first place. He was too good for her. And I don't know why the show takes her side, when she is so clearly in the wrong. Just because she's an "independent woman ♀︎" 🙄. 

 

Just because a woman ♀︎'s independent doesn't mean that she's smart or that she makes good decisions. Alisa is clear evidence of this. She is one of my least favorite characters in this show, she's one character that I actively dislike 👎. I like her less with every rewatch and the more I think about her and her character. Her reasons for leaving Jet. Like, the sword-wielding murdering psychopath gangster is more likable than this bad decision maker, who leaves you for no good reason and doesn't tell you why until years later when you show up at her doorstep, and ruins her own life and insists that everything is fine, and that she made the right decision to leave you 🖕. I feel bad for Jet, he didn't deserve to be treated like this. Not be her, or by the show. And the show's mistreatment and disrespect of him didn't end there since he was the butt of jokes in Boogie Woogie Feng Shui with Spike and Faye poking fun of him, making jokes at his expense, and basically calling him a pedophile 😒. 

 

The Blu-Ray 💿 for this series is pretty nice. It came during a time when Funimation was still around, and when it was still an independent company. This was before it got bought out by Crunchyroll, and it's name was changed to Crunchyroll Dubs. Like, the official Funimation YouTube channel's name was changed to Crunchyroll Dubs after the acquisition, and it's now the place where Crunchyroll uploads all of their dub content. The actual Crunchyroll channel called Crunchyroll is where all their sub content is, so if you want to see clips of subbed anime, you go to Crunchyroll, and if you want to see clips of dubbed anime, you got Crunchyroll Dubs. I prefer dubbed anime, so I usually frequent the Crunchyroll Dub channel when I want to see anime related content on YouTube that isn't just reviews, or reactions, or video essays. There are lot of video essays about anime out there, as well as rant videos about anime as well. I mean, how many videos have you seen on YouTube that are complaining about anime tropes, or specifically, complaining about tsunderes? Because I've seen a lot. 

 

I actually wrote a journal on DeviantART about the acquisition back when it was originally announced back in 2022. I may repost that on here, I might not, but suffice to say, I wasn't a big fan of it. I was a huge fan of Funimation, I liked their dubs, and I liked their physical releases, and all the special features they'd include on them. They were pretty good at including special features on their releases, some anime distribution companies didn't do that, and still don't really, even if not all the special features they'd include on their releases were my cup of tea, like the textless opening and end titles. Those don't really do it for me, I don't care about them, and I usually avoid them whenever I buy an anime on Blu-Ray 💿, and this release was no exception. It's just so sad to see such a great company that produced good work, and was reliable go, and I'm generally not a fan of these bigger companies buying smaller companies and consolidating. 

 

It always felt really scummy to me, and it defeats the whole purpose of capitalism, one of the supposed selling points of capitalism and why it's better than socialism ☭ or communism ☭, competition. It eliminates competition, and competition is one of the few things that actually keeps these companies in check, since a lot of these anti-trust organizations that are supposed to hold corporations to account are not doing their jobs, and they too are supposed to safeguard the marketplace and make these companies remain competitive, and they can't just buy up their competition. But, they're not doing that either. They're just letting these companies do whatever they want, and get bigger and bigger, and become less competitive overtime (due to the lack of competition), while cutting corners everywhere and whenever it's convenient for them. 

 

If Crunchyroll really did have to buy out Funimation, I think think they should've kept the name, and still have it exist as its own entity, its own separate label from Crunchyroll, while still being a subsidiary of Crunchyroll. Sort of like what Warner Bros. does with New Line Cinema, or even what Disney does with Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Studios. Crunchyroll could've handle the subtitled anime and streaming side of things, while Funimation could've handled the dubbed anime and physical side of things. Since, as things are, Crunchyroll has kind of been skimming out on the physical releases of these anime movies and shows. Mostly shows. They've really limited their physical releases in recent years, in favor of focusing on their streaming service, becoming the main streaming service for anime. Sure Viz Media also has a streaming service of its own, but it's not as big as Crunchyroll's is. Crunchyroll functionally owns a monopoly on the anime distribution industry here in North America. 

 

I'm a huge advocate for physical releases, and it's become trendy to be an advocate for physical releases (not just of movies and TV shows but of video games), in light of PlayStation's recent decision to end all physical releases on their games in 2028. Something that was met with such backlash, that every time PlayStation posts a new video on their official YouTube channel, a new trailer to a game, or DLC for an already existing game, they get flooded with comments talking about how they will only buy the game if it has a physical release, if it comes with an actual disc 💿, and comments mocking PlayStation talking about "disc this 💿, and disc that 💿." It is annoying that no one is actually talking about the game in question, the game that's being advertised, and they're only posting comments either demanding PlayStation reverse their decision and continue doing physical releases for games even past 2028, or just mocking PlayStation for even making this decision in the first place, and acting all smug and cool, like "Yeah, I've never going to buy PlayStation ever again. It's Steam for me from here on out," or "Easiest decision I've ever had to make," in regards to boycotting PlayStation and choosing not to buy any of their products. 

 

We'll see if any of these people actually keep their word, actually do boycott PlayStation when this decision goes into effect, I suspect not because gamers really bad at staying committed to cause, and actually boycotting anything. Remember, when everyone said they were going to boycott the Nintendo Switch 2 because of how expensive it was 😒? Yeah, thought so, that didn't last one. Every single one of those people probably ended up buying a Switch 2 anyway 🤦‍♂️. This is why you generally can't trust what gamers say, and only what they do. Don't listen to their words, watch their actions, and then you'll truly know if they actually mean what they say, and actually stand for something, and aren't just saying these things to be cool and edgy, or to follow the trends and seem with the times, or to get clicks and views. I was into physical media, and I was pushing for it before it was cool. 

 

The Blu-Ray release 💿 of Cowboy Bebop (1998), the complete series release, is pretty well done 👍. It obviously comes with every single episode, all of them in 1080p HD (except for select moments when the show uses CGI, and then picture quality dips down to 480p SD for some reason, and then other moments where the picture quality isn't as strong), and it came jammed packed with special features. It came with audio commentaries, some of which feature the dub actors, and some of which feature the original Japanese voice actors 🇯🇵 and some of the people who worked on the show originally in Japan 🇯🇵, the writers and animators. It has behind-the-scenes documentaries/featurettes, including that was made in Japan 🇯🇵 and focused on the Japanese side of things 🇯🇵, the actual production of the show, featuring interviews with the director/creator, Shinichirō Watanabe, the animators, writers, and cast members, the voice actors, which was subtitled in English. 

 

And then three that were about the North American distribution and dubbing side of things, two older ones that mainly focused on how the show ended up on Adult Swim as well as its cultural impact in the West, the United States 🇺🇸 in particular, and one that's just an interview with Wendee Lee, the voice actress that did the English voice for Faye in the English dub. She also provided the English voice for Twilight Suzuka in the English dub of Outlaw Star, a completely different character from Faye, in terms of look and personality. That just shows her range as a voice actress, that she can voice two characters in two different shows (that were initially released the same year and are vaguely in the same genre) that are complete polar opposites of each other. 

 

The newer one is much more of a retrospective, with the dub actors and the dub director, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, the English voice of Julia and Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, reminiscing about their time working on the English dub for this show, as well as reflecting on the death of Kevin Seymour, who happened to be the English voice for Tongpu AKA Mad Pierrot and died while they were making this documentary and putting this release together, in 2014, talking about his accomplishments, his role in popularizing anime in the US 🇺🇸, reminiscing about their time working with him and saying their goodbyes. There's also this cast reunion thing, where all of the dub actors as well as the dub director, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn are all having dinner together at a table outdoors, talking and getting drunk. It's not as insignificant as the main retrospective documentary talking about the making of the English dub, but it is still kind of fun to watch, especially if you like these voice actors and appreciate their contributions to this show and to popularizing anime in the West. BTW, fun fact about Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and Steve Blum, the voice actor who does the English voice for Spike, they’re actually married in real life 💍. So, just like Steve Blum said in that cast reunion interview on the special features to Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, Spike got to be with Julia after all. They got their happy ending after all. I am a bit jealous that he’s married to her, I would like have her as my wife. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, and she has a great voice, she seems like she’d be the whole package. She’s my kind of woman ♀︎. Steve Blum definitely is a lucky man ♂︎. 

 

There are also the textless intros and end credits that I mentioned before and don't really care about, as well as this weird little animated short film sort of thing. It's not really animated, it's more like a motion comic (or motion manga), or even PowerPoint presentation. It has a storybook look to it, with watercolor painted backgrounds, and focuses on Ein on vacation. I don't know what this is supposed to be, but I personally don't care for it. It might be someone else's cup of tea, but it's certainly not mine. Overall, this is a top notch release, you couldn't ask for a better release for fans of this show. I would like to have a 4K release 💿 of this show, since that seems pretty unlikely, at least this time, this is probably the best HD release of this show that we're probably ever going to get. If you have it in your collection, you might want to hold onto it. Which is why it puzzled me why I saw so many people on YouTube apparently dunking on this release. I was looking at it like, "Why are so many people hating on this release? It's excellent, what more could you ask for?" Looking more into it though, it seems like the release they were actually complaining about was not the 2014 Funimation release, but the more recent 2023 25th anniversary release by Crunchyroll. Post-acquisition of Funimation of course. I don’t own that release, so I can’t say if it’s actually good or not. 

 

 

 

 

(This a picture I took a few months ago back in June, of the Complete Series Blu-Ray 💿 of Cowboy Bebop (1998) that I currently own. This is the older one by Funimation from 2014, so it has the slip cover with the yellow bar up top that has the title and the "Complete Series" thing on it, as well as the blue streak on top with the Blu-Ray logo on top to show that it is indeed a Blu-Ray Disc 💿. The newer edition by Crunchyroll, post-acquisition, does have the same artwork as the older 2014 Funimation release, but it's nearly all black and lacks that yellow band or border on top. Looking a lot more similar to the poster I used at the beginning of this post. At the very top. This is genuinely a good release, and I'm going to continue holding onto it as long as possible. Especially since there's no guarantee that there will ever be a 4K release 💿, or the newer release Crunchyroll put out is any good.) 

 

 

 

 

There was also this other YouTuber I saw complain about Cowboy Bebop (1998). It wasn’t about the Blu-Ray 💿 this time, it was instead about the show itself. The YouTuber in question that did this was called Mugen, after one of the main characters in Samurai Champloo, the sister show to this one. He posted a video titled something along the lines of I just don’t get Cowboy Bebop. I didn’t watch the video because I didn’t want to support that video or that channel (that’s why I won’t provide a link 🔗), but I was puzzled by the title 🤔. What is so hard to get about Cowboy Bebop (1998) that you had to make a whole video about it? Sure it has deeper themes, it has metaphors and allegories, but it’s not cryptic and hard to understand that you wouldn’t be able to understand it or enjoy it on a more surface level.

 

You know, it’s not Serial Experiments Lain or Boogiepop Phantom. I haven’t seen Serial Experiments Lain, I really want to, but I have seen Boogiepop Phantom and that show was pretty cryptic and hard to understand. It doesn’t help that it’s a sequel to the light novel 📖, Boogiepop and Others, though I bet even if you have read the light novel (or watched the recent anime adaptation), you still probably wouldn’t get Boogiepop Phantom. Great music though, I have the whole soundtrack, including the opening theme by Shikao Suga and the end theme by Kyoko, neither of which were included on the actual soundtrack album for Boogiepop Phantom. At least in the US 🇺🇸. And everything I’ve heard about Serial Experiments Lain indicates that it is pretty weird and cryptic, since when I watched Boogiepop Phantom for free on YouTube, everyone in the comments compares it to Serial Experiments Lain. Not just because of the writing and tone, but also because of the art and animation style. Again, great soundtrack though, it’s one of the reasons why I even want to watch Lain in the first place. Cowboy Bebop (1998) definitely has something it wants to say, but it does in a way that’s not completely exclusionary, and doesn’t alienate you. It doesn’t purposefully try to confuse you or leave in the dark like those shows do. 

 

It’s a show that, while having deeper theme that you can look into and notice on repeat something, you can still enjoy purely on a surface level. It is an episodic show, and doesn’t really an overarching storyline except for some recurring characters and elements here and there. Like Julia and Vicious for instance. I mean, this YouTuber’s channel name is Mugen, a character from Samurai Champloo, another anime series directed by Shinichirō Watanabe, and that show handles its themes in much the same way as Cowboy Bebop (1998). It’s pretty much a companion piece to Cowboy Bebop (1998), or perhaps a spiritual predecessor since Samurai Champloo takes place in the past while Cowboy Bebop (1998) takes place in the future. Their titles mean almost the exact same thing. 

 

I assume he was able to understand Samurai Champloo, otherwise he wouldn’t have liked it and named his channel after one of the characters. What about Samurai Champloo made it so much easier for him to understand than Cowboy Bebop (1998)? I just don’t get it. If it was a matter of preference rather than I understanding than I would get it, I wouldn’t care if he preferred Samurai Champloo to Cowboy Bebop (1998). I personally prefer Cowboy Bebop (1998) to Samurai Champloo, but whatever, it’s his opinion, everyone’s entitled to have their own preferences when it comes to entertainment. Any form of entertainment, not just anime. But if that’s the case, then actually say that. Don’t just say you don’t get Cowboy Bebop (1998) and then leave it at that? Be honest, and say that it’s a matter of preference and you just prefer Samurai Champloo over Cowboy Bebop (1998), it’s not really that hard 😤. 

The show did get a movie of course, in 2001 called Cowboy Bebop: The Movie AKA Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, which is will be the subject of the next section of this review. Hopefully, it’ll be shorter and won’t take as long to write as this section did 😒. I won’t give away my full thoughts on the movie, I’ll save that all for the actual movie section, but I will say that I liked it. I thought it was a pretty good movie, and was a nice continuation of the series, even though it’s not actually a sequel to the series, and it’s set during the events of the series. It’s set in between the episodes, Cowboy Funk 🤠 and Brain Scratch 🧠. It also makes for a pretty good Halloween movie 🎃, since it’s actually set during Halloween 🎃, or at least, the climax is, which is why I hope the movie section doesn’t take long to write, and I’m able to time it right in time for Halloween 🎃. But apparently, the movie got mixed reviews from fans, and even critics, which kind of surprised me to hear about. I was under the impression that the movie was universally loved by fans, but I guess I sort of see why someone wouldn’t necessarily like the movie. It does have flaws, and it really isn’t for everyone, not even every Cowboy Bebop fan. But I enjoy it, and I can’t wait to rewatch it for this review. 

The show also got plenty of video games, most of them on the PS1, but it did get one game ☝️ on the PS2, Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence, which will be the third and final section of this review. While it is generally considered to the best Cowboy Bebop game that’s ever been made (which isn’t exactly a high bar to reach), unfortunately fans of the show in North America and elsewhere didn’t get to experience it because it wasn’t released outside of Japan 🇯🇵. It is a Japan exclusive 🇯🇵. Though strangely, at least one of the game’s cutscenes was dubbed into English by the same voice cast that did the English dub for the show by ZRO Limit Productions. I don’t know if it was included as a bonus feature in the extras, or if it was something that was left in the game’s files that people on the Internet 🛜 managed to uncover years later. Whatever the case, that it is only cutscene that was dubbed into English, and it is proof that the developers and publisher did consider dubbing the game into English, and releasing it in English speaking countries, but for some reason, they didn’t. More on that when I actually get to the game itself. 

While Shinichirō Watanabe has yet to make an official return to the Cowboy Bebop universe and franchise, he did make an anime series for Netflix that was actually set in the same universe called Carole & Tuesday. It came out in 2019, and it’s about these two 17 year old girls ♀︎ named Carole Stanley and Tuesday Simmons (hence why the show’s called Carole & Tuesday), who live on Mars and become best friends after bonding with each other over music. Carole is a piano player 🎹 while Tuesday is proficient with an acoustic guitar and dreams of becoming a musician. It’s more of a straight up drama series as opposed to a space western 🤠 with action, adventure, comedy, and drama elements like Cowboy Bebop (1998). While the show doesn’t really announce itself as a Cowboy Bebop spinoff, the Wikipedia page makes no indication of it being connected to Cowboy Bebop, and doesn’t seem to actually feature any characters from the show, it is nonetheless set in the same universe. It literally takes place in the same city that the movie takes place in, Alba City, and Carole is a refugee of Earth 🌎. She wouldn’t be a refugee of Earth 🌎 if there wasn’t anything wrong with Earth 🌎, if there wasn’t anything to flee from. 

 

So I think it is pretty safe to assume that this is set in the same universe as Cowboy Bebop (1998), and the Astral Gate accident did happen, and left Earth 🌎 pretty uninhabitable, at least for most humans, and Carole was one of the lucky few who managed to escape the planet, years after the great migration to the colonies. So, I’m counting it as a Cowboy Bebop spinoff, I don’t care what Shinichirō Watanabe, Netflix, or Wikipedia say, if they try to deny it, it is a Cowboy Bebop spinoff. It pretty much takes the same approach as the movie, Soldier (1998), in terms of being connected to an already established franchise while still mostly being its own thing. The fact that the show is mostly about two girls ♀︎ who become friends by bonding over the music shows that Shinichirō Watanabe didn’t forgo the franchise’s musical identity, even if it does incorporate music in a much more direct way than Cowboy Bebop (1998) did, making it an actual part of the plot and the arcs of the two main characters. 

 

He also didn’t forget to include the more political aspects of Cowboy Bebop, since Carole & Tuesday features a politician character who’s clearly supposed to be a dig at Donald Trump. This was during Trump’s first term after all. Though interestingly, the Trump analog in the show is depicted as a woman ♀︎ instead of man ♂︎, like most other media that features parodies of Trump. Maybe Shinichirō Watanabe thought that since Trump is very misogynistic, and quite openly hates women ♀︎ (the guy ♂︎’s literally an adjudicated rapist), the best way to mock him would be to make the character supposed to represent him a woman ♀︎. That would be clever if that was the case, if that was the intent, but I suspect that he didn’t think that far into it. i also suggested in the intro to this review that the character could be an amalgamation of Trump and the similar French politician 🇫🇷, Le Pen, who is a woman ♀︎. That could be the case, but again I don't know. I haven't watched the show, and I don't know what Shinichirō Watanabe said, if anything, about this character and what his thought process behind creating her were and what his inspirations were. I do plan on reviewing Carole & Tuesday, but not apart of this review. It’s enough of its own thing that it deserves its own review.

 

But besides Carole & Tuesday, I would like to see some Cowboy Bebop spinoff that continue the story of Cowboy Bebop (1998) and feature characters from that show. Like, I wouldn’t mind a spinoff about Ed, a grown up Ed, and showing how she’s survived living on Earth 🌎 all this time, and showing how her life turned out and what she became after she left the Bebop. I’m envisioning something like Tank Girl, a comedic post-apocalyptic story with some irreverent punk rock elements, and maybe even some feminist undertones ♀︎, since Tank Girl is often interpreted as a piece of feminist literature ♀︎. The 1995 movie is certain viewed as a “feminist movie ♀︎” especially in retrospect since the 1995 Tank Girl movie was hated on when it came out, and in the years after, until in more recent years where it gained a cult following and is now looked back on fondly. Especially since we haven’t gotten another Tank Girl movie, or even a Tank Girl show (live action or animated), since then, and the movie that it did inspire, Birds of Prey (2020) wasn’t very good. 

 

It tried to capture that same bonkers irreverent quirky tone by focusing on a post-Joker Harley Quinn, who gets wrapped up in a criminal conspiracy involving a girl ♀︎ named Cassandra Cain (who becomes Batgirl in the comics, as well as Black Bat and Orphan) and a crime lord named Roman Sionis, better known as Black Mask (due to his black skull-like mask), and having to team up with the Birds of Prey team to stop him and protect Cain. While also making it sort of a girl power type movie ♀︎, with men ♂︎ often portrayed in a negative light. At least compared to all the women ♀︎. It didn’t really work, and it didn’t resonate with fans or audiences, the only people who seemed to like it were certain critics and certain feminist academics, journalists, and activists ♀︎. It also has a ridiculously long title that no one actually says when they refer to this movie: Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. 

 

Who says that? So most people just call it Birds of Prey (2020) as a result. It’s honestly more of a Harley Quinn movie than a Birds of Prey movie, and I think even the filmmakers knew that, which is why they gave it that title initially, but it just made the title way too long that no body actually wanted to read it or say it out loud. Enough time has passed that I think it’s safe to say that Birds of Prey (2020) was a complete disaster, and greatly contributed to the DCEU’s downfall. But, it was inspired by Tank Girl (1995), and that’s all that really matters to this discussion. You could throw Ed into a serious story, where everyone is taking it more seriously than she is, just so that there’s a greater contrast between her and the rest of the character. Everyone else can be the straight people to Ed’s antics. Though of course, we would’ve deprive the character of having any serious or dramatic moments. Like her estranged relationship with her “father,” Appledehli could be the emotional anchor of the story ⚓️. 

 

You could have her show emotions that she didn't really show in the original series when she was just a kid, like anger 😠 and sadness 😢, with her having conflicting feelings about her supposed dad (again I'm not entirely convinced Appledehli is her real dad 🤨). She wants to have a father, she left the Bebop crew specifically so that she could experience having a dad, or really having any parent, since she grew up having to fend for herself in the wasteland of Earth 🌎 post-Astral Gate accident, and only occasionally seeking refuge in an orphanage run by a nun. But he keeps abandoning her and forgetting about her, forgetting that she even exists, and completely abrogating his responsibilities as a father, if he even is her father for real, to do cartography work with an assistant he treats like shit. So once again, she's left alone to fend herself just like she was for most of her childhood before she met the Bebop crew. 

 

Because of that repeated neglect from her supposed father, she's grown to resent him, and this would be a major source of conflict within this series or movie, and it would be key to her emotional arc. Her realizing that she doesn't need her father, she never did, and her true family is the one she made along the way. The Bebop were more of a family to her than her father ever was, Ein was more family to her than her father, and the character she could meet and befriend in this movie are more family to her than her father. It would be a story about someone who never had a family, learning to appreciate the found family she made along the way. Everyone I'd say loves a good found family story.  

 

This show, Cowboy Bebop (1998) did the whole found family thing in the context of science fiction and space adventure long before Guardians of the Galaxy ever did, because Faye's character arc becomes about her trying to uncover her lost past, reclaim her lost memories, and find her family, only to realize her biological family is long gone and her old home is no more, and that the Bebop was her real family all along. Faye had a found family, and it was only by the end of the series after she went back to Earth 🌎 and realized she had nothing left from her past (except maybe those tapes 📼 that were mysteriously mailed to her), that she learned to appreciate it. But, when she did finally appreciate it, that found family was torn apart by the departure of both Ed and Ein, and the death of Spike, someone who she clearly had feelings for. 

 

The show could either be called Radical Edward, or Cowgirl Ed, since that was the title that was mentioned in the preview for Jupiter Jazz Part 1, where Ed addressed the events of Toys of the Attics, and tried to make it seem like everyone died, and then breaks the fourth wall to announce her own show, which she calls Cowgirl Ed. It was even the name of a limited mini-CD 💿 compilation album, which feature six random tracks from the show's soundtrack, including "Goodnight Julia," "PAPA Plastic," "Telephone Shopping 📞🛍️," "Kabutogani kodai no sakana (The Horseshoe Crab, the Ancient Fish)," "Slipper Sleaze," and "23 Wa (Episode 23." All of these tracks hadn't been featured in any other soundtrack release up to that point, when it came out, in 2001, but they would eventually be featured in a special edition version of the official soundtrack album for Cowboy Bebop: The Movie called Cowboy Bebop – Knockin' On Heaven's Door (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – Future Blues). 

 

So if you didn't get to buy the Cowgirl Ed album, you could still listen to those songs on the Future Blues album for the movie's soundtrack as part of a second disc 💿. But, it would be cool to bring it back around, and bring it full circle to have a Cowboy Bebop spinoff about Ed that's actually called Cowgirl Ed. But, Radical Edward would be a good title too, since that was her nickname before the Bebop crew met her in the episode, Jamming with Edward. That was actually the title I came up with when I was coming up with the idea of the show being a Tank Girl esque post-apocalyptic show set on Earth 🌎 with a grown up Ed at its center, until I remembered the name, Cowgirl Ed. So I'm more leaning more towards Cowgirl Ed, but I would be accepting of Radical Edward if they chose to call it that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(These are two images I found on DeviantART that depict an older Ed, like around 18, 19, or 20. They're both different takes on what an older version of her would look like, specifically what a young adult version of her would look like, in the artists' unique art style. The first image is called "Grown Up Radical Edward," it was created by an artist on DeviantART called AlessandroGazzoli, and the second image is called "Radical Edward Age 18" by maldo71, also an artist on DeviantART. If I was to choose which design was my favorite of these two, I would say I prefer the first one by AlessandroGazzoli over the second one by maldo71, even if the one maldo71 is slightly more faithful to the art style of the anime, and even if it gives an exact age while one by AlessandroGazzoli. But the AlessandroGazzoli is clearly supposed to be a young adult, like late teens or early 20s. We're not seeing a middle aged Edward or an elderly Edward in either of these two designs. I will link 🔗 their pages here and here.) 

 

 

 

 

 

But, I would also like a more direct sequel to Cowboy Bebop (1998) centered around Jet and Faye. Going on adventures, collecting on bounty heads, and trying to cope with the death of Spike. This gap in their lives, this gapping hole 🕳️ or void that Spike left behind in his absence. They both feel as if apart of them is missing with him gone. As far as they know, they lost everybody, and all they have is each other. That would be a great idea for a sequel series or sequel movie, that would play up the melancholy and loneliness and would perhaps have a darker and more noir feel to it. You know, these two lost a friend, a colleague, and a brother or son in a lot of ways, since they really did become a family, and Spike was both a brother and a son to Jet. 

 

Jet was both a brother figure to Spike and also a father figure to him since a lot of their scenes and interactions felt like a dad reprimanding his teenage son. His troublemaking, reckless teenage son. And of course the show heavily implies that Faye does have feelings for Spike, that go beyond just being a colleague and a fellow crew member. Feelings that in end, ended up unrequited but were still there. I mean, why do you think Faye was so heartbroken 💔 when he left, to the point of crying 😭? Without him, there's this void in both of their lives, and they both feel as if something is missing with him gone. They might not want to admit that they miss him, but they do. These would be interesting things to explore in a series that continues from where the original series left off. Maybe not right after, but maybe years after, show how things things have changed and how Jet and Faye have coped with the loss of Spike, and they've tried to move on, but still can't because their attachment to him was so strong. 

 

It would be a great opportunity to age up the characters, just like with the show idea I came up with for Ed, have them both be a bit older, since Jet was his 30s during the events of the original series and Faye was still in her early 20s due to being perfectly preserved in cryo-stasis for 54 years. Maybe, Jet could be in his 40s and Faye could be in her 30s. Maybe even 50s and 40s respectively. It really depends on how much time has passed, and how long after you want to set it after the original series, like how far into the future do you want to set it. Hopefully these are things Shinichirō Watanabe if ever wants to fully dive back into this franchise, and make new shows and/or movies within it, after he dipped his toes back into it with Carole & Tuesday in 2019, which was 7 years ago now at this point. 

There’s also the 2021 live action series on Netflix, which I’ve mentioned numerous times throughout this review (more than I thought I would), and I don’t plan on ever reviewing. But, before that, there actually was another attempt at doing Cowboy Bebop in live action in the 2000s. I checked to see if this was a real thing or if it was just a rumor, but apparently, it was real. It was being produced by 20th Century Fox…before the Disney merger of course. Back when it was still called 20th Century Fox. Keanu Reeves was going to Spike, there are pictures online that show what he might’ve looked like (I don’t know if those images were real or if they were fake, if they were fan made), and I heard rumors that Bruce Willis was going to play Jet, and there are similar images of him what he might’ve looked like in the role as Jet. That would’ve quite an odd pairing, Keanu Reeves and Bruce Willis in a live action anime adaptation, whoever came up with that? It sounds crazy, but I would’ve liked to have seen. Just for curiosity sake. 

 

The movie didn’t happen of course, and we ended up getting the 2021 live action series instead years later. But after everything, part of me feels like we would’ve been better off with that movie than the 2021 live action series. Maybe they both could’ve existed, though if they did, people would watch the 2021 series and look back at this movie in the late 2000s or early 2010s much more fondly. Saying that they prefer the movie to the series. That’s happened to a lot of movies from the 2000s and 2010s that were hated when they came out, and in the years after, including another movie Keanu Reeves was in, Constantine (2005). People hated that movie when it came out, and said it was bad in the years after, but nowadays, people like it and say it’s great. They say it’s underrated. Same thing with another live action anime adaptation, Speed Racer (2008). This usually happens when people are presented with a much worse newer movie to compare the older movie to, and the older movie looks better by comparison. 

 

I think one of the main reasons why the live action Cowboy Bebop movie didn’t happen was just because of whitewashing. People complained that a white guy ♂︎ was cast to play Spike. Even though, if you actually watch the original 1998 show, there really is no reason why Spike has to be played by an Asian actor. His last name is Spiegel for crying out loud, Spiegel is a Jewish last name ✡️. Same goes for Jet as well, there’s nothing about him that makes it so that he has to be played by an Asian actor either. I mean, he was played by a black actor in the 2021 series. Sure, that got a lot of backlash, mostly from racists online who hate black people (but won’t admit it), but it did show that it was possible and even sort of accepted to cast a non-Asian actor in that role. The only character that I would say would be imperative that they be played by an Asian actor, it’s Faye. If you’re going to do a live Cowboy Bebop movie, or really live action Cowboy Bebop anything, she has to be played by an Asian actress. Ideally one of Chinese descent since Faye is Chinese. 

 

She’s Han Chinese, maybe even Cantonese, who knows? We’re not told where exactly Faye’s family came from, if they came from mainland China 🇨🇳, or Hong Kong 🇭🇰 (while it was under British rule 🇬🇧), or Macau 🇲🇴 (while it was under Portuguese rule 🇵🇹), or Taiwan 🇹🇼 (even if modern Taiwanese people 🇹🇼 consider themselves separate from Chinese 🇨🇳), or Singapore 🇸🇬, or Malaysia 🇲🇾. Anywhere where there’s Chinese people. All that we know is that Faye is Chinese-American 🇺🇸, and her parents were most likely immigrants. We’re also never told or shown what her parents did that made them so wealthy 🤑 that they could afford an orbital space flight (we’re not told for sure if it was just an orbital flight around the Earth 🌎 or if it was an orbital flight around the Moon 🌕). I’d like to think Faye’s dad was a casino owner 🎰. Like maybe he owned and operated casinos 🎰 in Macau 🇲🇴, since that was the gambling capital of Asia (the Asian Las Vegas if you will), and he decided to open a casino 🎰 in the United States 🇺🇸, which is why he moved here with his wife, Faye’s mom. 

 

It would fit with Faye’s gambling addiction, and why she’s so inclined towards casinos 🎰. She’s subconsciously drawn to casinos 🎰 because they remind her of her dad, even if she doesn’t remember her dad and remember exactly what he did, but there is this part of her that’s attracted to casinos 🎰 because her dad owned and operated casinos 🎰 and she went to casinos 🎰 a lot because of it. It’s one of those things where you’re drawn to something and you don’t know, but subconsciously you’re attracted to it because it is something you experienced a lot in the past, especially when you were a kid. This could be with a certain type of food, or drink, or a song, or a movie, but in Faye’s case, it’s casinos 🎰 and gambling. Her gambling addiction wasn’t simply the result of her being in debt 💸 and what Whitney Haggis Matsumoto did to her, but because her dad worked in a casino 🎰, he owned and operated one (maybe even multiple of them), that left an impression on her to such a degree that she’s subconsciously drawn to casinos 🎰 and gambling. That’s my theory anyway. 

 

 

 

(This is another poster or wallpaper image for Cowboy Bebop (1998). Those one shows all the four main human characters + Ein walking in a line side-by-side what appears to be an airport, or spaceport rather, since all of the crafts that land at the airports that we see in the show are spaceships. Or maybe they are aircraft that fly in the air or the sky, but they double as spaceships that go into space. All the Bebop crew's spaceship double as aircraft since they do fly them around the different planets and moons they visit, and they fly in between the buildings of the cities they visit. Only here in this image, there are no spaceships or airplanes ✈️, but the tarmac where the spaceships or airplanes ✈️ would land for refueling or to take on new passengers, and the title of the show, Cowboy Bebop is written on there in yellow paint. This is honestly one of my favorite images associated with Cowboy Bebop, and I wish that there was a larger and higher quality version of it. If there was, I would've used it here, but there isn't. I tried scouring the Internet 🛜 for one, I tried finding one using reverse image search, but I couldn't find one. I took that mean that none actually exists. so all I have to use is this smaller lower quality one. But it still works for the purposes of this review.)  

 

 

—

The Movie 

 

 

(This is a wallpaper image for Cowboy Bebop: The Movie AKA Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door. It shows Spikes and Vincent during the final confrontation on top of the tower in Alba City, which strongly resembles Tokyo Tower, during the end of the film.) 

 

 

 

 

Well, I just wrapped up the series, after two months ✌️, and I can finally talk about the movie, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie AKA Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door. I don't know why the title was changed to Cowboy Bebop: The Movie in the US 🇺🇸, Knockin' on Heaven's Door is a more distinctive title, but for whatever reason it was, and the movie's called Cowboy Bebop: The Movie in the US 🇺🇸 while it's called Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door in Japan 🇯🇵. The soundtrack album for the movie also retains that same name. Guess they they thought maybe they would be more Cowboy Bebop movies after this ones, so it would be good to give it a distinct title rather than calling it just Cowboy Bebop: The Movie. But to this day, it is still one and only Cowboy Bebop movie ☝️, which might be the reason why Americans 🇺🇸 decided to rename it to just Cowboy Bebop: The Movie. 

 

But, the one and only Trigun movie ☝️ we have so far has a distinct title. I mentioned it in the section on the series, Trigun: Badlands Rumble, and that title was retained for the US release 🇺🇸. In fact, according to the Did You Know Anime? video on Trigun, the movie was made mostly for American fans 🇺🇸 of the show, since most of the demand for one, or at least demand for a continuation of Trigun of any kind came from the US fans 🇺🇸. Since Americans 🇺🇸 seem to like Trigun more than Japanese people 🇯🇵 did, which is the complete opposite for Cowboy Bebop, where the love for it comes from both US and Japanese fans 🇺🇸🇯🇵. It's loved pretty equally in both countries, although there is a slight edge in the US 🇺🇸, due to how Americanized 🇺🇸 it is, and how influenced by American cinema and television 🇺🇸 it is. 

 

But, it's not as if the Japanese fandom 🇯🇵 for it is nonexistent, like the Did You Know Anime? video on Trigun made it seem for Trigun. Shinichirō Watanabe by his own admission said that he didn't make the show with an international audience in mind, he didn't intentionally tailor make it for Americans 🇺🇸, it just gained an international, and more specifically, an American audience 🇺🇸 naturally because of all the clear American influences 🇺🇸 and more American storytelling and characterization 🇺🇸 it has that Shinichirō Watanabe put in there because he was influenced by them (those were his inspirations), which it made more accessible to American audiences 🇺🇸 than a lot of anime tends to be, especially anime back then in the 1990s. That's why Cowboy Bebop is often considered a "gateway anime." 

 

So why couldn't this movie retain its unique title for its US release 🇺🇸? Did they think American audiences 🇺🇸 wouldn't know that it was a movie unless it had The Movie in the title? Did they think American audiences 🇺🇸 would be confused by the title and wouldn't get it 😕? Did they think American audiences 🇺🇸 would think it was a religious movie just because it had the word "heaven" in the title? Did they just not like the title? The title change for Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence made sense because in Japan 🇯🇵, it was just called Innocence, people in the US 🇺🇸 wouldn't immediately know that it was a Ghost in the Shell movie just from seeing or hearing the title, so putting Ghost in the Shell and then calling it a sequel to the 1995 movie was a smart move. But this, this one doesn't make any sense. 

 

Regardless of why the title was changed for the American 🇺🇸 or North American release, for the sake of brevity, I will be referring to this movie as Cowboy Bebop: The Movie for the rest of this section, instead of Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door unless it's absolutely relevant. It's the title that I know, and I'm sure it's the title most of you know, especially if you live in the US 🇺🇸 or Canada 🇨🇦, so that's the one I'm using. I actually don't know for sure if this movie was released in Canada 🇨🇦 or not, but I assume it was because whenever people talk about international releases in relation to this movie or the series, they always say "North American release" instead of just "American release 🇺🇸" or "US release 🇺🇸," and North American usually just means the US 🇺🇸 and Canada 🇨🇦, even though Mexico 🇲🇽 is also apart of North America. 

 

Sorry JJ McCullough, but Canada 🇨🇦 is not America 🇺🇸. I say that because if you know anything about him, you'll know that he thinks that American and Canadian culture 🇺🇸🇨🇦 are indistinguishable from each other, and they should be considered the same. In fact, he thinks that the US 🇺🇸 and Canada 🇨🇦 should be considered the same entity, as one country, and Canada 🇨🇦 should be apart of America 🇺🇸. Even though they have completely different histories and trajectories, and really aren't as compatible as you would think. Even their political systems are completely different. Sure, they're both liberal democracies, but Canada 🇨🇦 has a parliamentary system, meaning it has a parliament and a prime minister, whereas America 🇺🇸 is a presidential system, meaning it has a president and legislature called a congress. 

 

The basically difference is that in a parliamentary system, the head of state (usually a prime minister) derives their power from the legislature (usually a parliament) and can be dismissed by that legislature if they lose confidence in their leadership and governance. Whereas in a presidential system, the head of state (the president) isn't necessarily answerable to the legislature and can be removed from power by that legislature simply due to "lack of confidence." It would take some extraordinary circumstances to justify removing a president from power, than it would a prime minister. Even the way elections 🗳️ are run in the US 🇺🇸 and Canada 🇨🇦 are different, and while JJ may think that the overall cultures of the US 🇺🇸 and Canada 🇨🇦 are indistinguishable, the political cultures of both countries are very different. This is simply what happens when you have two countries that started out as British colonies 🇬🇧, and one colony remained under the British crown 🇬🇧👑 and remained loyal until post-World War II decolonization started and the British Empire 🇬🇧 started breaking apart, while the other broke away, in a pretty violent and dramatic fashion, and became its own thing, forging its own identity and political system completely distinct from Britain 🇬🇧. And doing everything it can to piss off Britain 🇬🇧 😡😤 along the way.

 

I do wonder though if JJ still believes that the US 🇺🇸 and Canada 🇨🇦 are one entity, and is still on board with Canada 🇨🇦 becoming apart of the US 🇺🇸 after Trump became president again, and he started "floating" around the idea of annexing Canada 🇨🇦 🤔. I wonder if he's quietly backed down from that position, and is pretending that he never had that position in the first place, or is loudly condemning Trump for saying these things and threatening Canada 🇨🇦 with annexation in the first year of his second term, and is all of a sudden a staunch Canadian nationalist 🇨🇦, a group and identity he's openly criticized and condemned in the past for denying America 🇺🇸 and Canada 🇨🇦's commonalities. Because to me, he seems like the kind of guy ♂︎ who would only be on board with Canada 🇨🇦 becoming apart of the US 🇺🇸 so long as it isn't Trump doing it. 

 

If Trump wasn't saying it, and it was a different president saying it, he'd be all for it 👍. I wouldn't know because I stopped watching him a couple of years ago, back in 2024, after the Frutiger Aero debacle. I wrote a whole post on this blog about that if you're interested. But I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case since he lacks so much integrity as a content creator and supposed journalist. This is all relevant again in light of Trump's recent trade war with Canada 🇨🇦, which is hurting the US economy 🇺🇸 even more than before, increasing prices on food and goods even more than before, and him renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America 🇺🇸 🙄 in response to Canada 🇨🇦's retaliation against Trump's tariffs.

 

BTW, not long after that, Trump also proposed renaming my home state, New Mexico to New America 🇺🇸, because Trump is fundamentally uncreative and is more than possibly demented (it's strongly speculated that he is suffering from dementia because of his forgetfulness, his sleepiness 😴, and his more erratic behavior in recent months and due to his family history since his father also suffered from dementia), and America 🇺🇸 is the only word he knows, which he doesn't actually have the authority to do. Unlike just renaming a body of water 💦 like the Gulf of Mexico or Lake Ontario, where governments, organizations and companies can choose to recognize it or not, and most of them don't (almost no one has recognized Trump's unilateral renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario to the Gulf of America 🇺🇸 and Lake America 🇺🇸 respectively, except for Google and Apple Maps, two companies that are already in the pockets of the Trump administration), renaming a state requires approval from that state's government, and in my case, my state's government is largely against this and is very unlikely to approve it. I mean, they're a blue state 🔵, why would they? 

 

There was an attempt at making a live action Cowboy Bebop movie in the late 2000s under 20th Century Fox, if you remember me mentioning it towards the end of the series section. It was going to star Keanu Reeves, and that's all we really know for sure about it. There were rumors that Bruce Willis was being considered for the role as Jet, and there are Photoshopped images online of him with the signature Jet beard and sideburns, as there are of Keanu with the faded yellow button shirt, black tie, and bushy hair, while holding a cig 🚬 (since Spike and pretty every adult character in Cowboy Bebop smokes 🚬), but nothing was really confirmed.  We don't even know what the plot would've been, if they even had a plot figured out yet by that point. But, obviously, that project fell through and there never was a live action Cowboy Bebop movie in the late 2000s or early 2010s, likely due to fear of backlash from whitewashing. The decision to cast Keanu Reeves in the role as Spike was met with backlash from fans and was seen as yet another example of Hollywood whitewashing, as in, casting a white actor in a non white role for "wider appeal," which really just means, white appeal (they don't want alienate white audiences by casting a person of color in the lead role, so they replace them with a white person). 

 

A lot of live action anime/manga adaptations in the West, particularly ones made in America 🇺🇸, have admittedly been whitewashed, and have featured white actors playing Asian roles, or roles that people perceived to be Asian because it was made in Japan 🇯🇵. The clearest examples of this are Speed Racer (2008) and Ghost in the Shell (2017), but also Fist of the North Star (1995), which is a bit more obscure and only fans of Brandon Tenold would probably know about, and even Alita: Battle Angel to a certain extent, even though that movie does plenty of non-white actors in the main cast. The title character is played by a Latina, Rosa Salazar. Same with Ghost in the Shell (2017), that movie also had a pretty diverse cast and wasn't all white people, as some people have made it out to be. But it is perceived as a "whitewashed movie" because of the casting of Scarlett Johansson as Major Motoko Kusanagi, who is referred to most of the movie as Mira Killian until it's referred that her real name is Motoko and Mira was just a fake name given to her by the corporation that built her cybernetic body, Hanka Robotics. The movie that people see as the prime example of whitewashing an anime/manga for an American live action film 🇺🇸, can be viewed as a critique of whitewashing because of that plot element of Motoko being a Japanese girl 🇯🇵♀︎ who was kidnapped and stripped of her identity and given a completely new one by this evil corporation, and the new identity they gave her was that of a white woman ♀︎. 

 

This fear of whitewashing is also probably one of the main factors why the live action Akira movie was been stalled for some time besides budgetary concerns, because one of the many scripts or story ideas wrote and/or proposed for the movie have been to set the movie in the US 🇺🇸, or having it still be set in Japan 🇯🇵, in Neo Tokyo, but having the characters to be white people. Chris Evans was one of the actors that was rumored to be considered for the project. The fans of Akira (both of the manga and the anime) caught wind of this, and rejected it outright. They not only reject the idea of a live action version of Akira altogether, but they reject the idea of one being whitewashed, and potentially not taking place in Japan 🇯🇵, and instead in the US 🇺🇸. And speaking of budgetary concerns, that's probably another reason why this live action Cowboy Bebop movie didn't happen.  

 

Cowboy Bebop (1998) was a sci-fi space western 🤠, so a live action movie would cost a lot of money 💵 to make. Money 💵 that 20th Century Fox probably wasn't too willing to spend, given the project was met with negative reactions from fans. We wouldn't get a live action version of Cowboy Bebop until the 2020s when we got the 2021 Netflix series, which was largely met with mixed reviews from critics and negative reactions from fans. The 2021 Netflix was largely rejected by fans, and the show was subsequently canceled and wasn't ruined for a second season. That's why 5 years later, we still haven't gotten a second season to the live action Cowboy Bebop series on Netflix and why it remains a one season show ☝️, because there won't ever be a second season. Cowboy Bebop (1998) was also a one season show ☝️, but that was because it told a complete story and killed off its main character in the season finale, Cowboy Bebop (2021) was a one season show ☝️ because hardly anyone liked it and they were going to stretch the story across multiple short seasons consisting of 9 or 10 episodes at most, because seasons for streaming shows are notoriously short and spread out across multiple years. 

 

It's the to point where if a streaming show gets renewed for another season, fans of that show have to wait at least 2 or 3 years, maybe even 4 or 5 until that season comes out. But because the show got canceled because of the mixed critical reception and overwhelmingly negative fan and Internet backlash 🛜, we only got one chunk of the story. Of a story that was already told and told more successfully 23 years prior. Like, the show ends just as Ed has been introduced, meaning we didn't even get to see what the Netflix version of Ed would've been like, outside of them being non-binary ☿. Even though the character was a cisgendered girl ♀︎ in the original 1998 anime series, despite her boyish appearance ♂︎.

 

If those truly are the case, then those are pretty weak reasons to scrap this movie. I really don't know what 20th Century Fox was so afraid of, considering that most of those examples of whitewashing that I mentioned either happened while this project was being developed or years after it fell through, and whitewashing became more a contentious issue that could actually kill a project like this, or really too obscure to really affect anything or move the needle one way or another. And considering how much the 2021 Netflix series probably cost, despite it look like glorified fan film (where every character looks like cosplay), budget would not have been as a big of an  issue as the Fox executives thought it would. In fact, it probably would've costed less than the 2021 Netflix series, or the still unmade live action Akira movie would. It would still probably have a big budget, but nothing too crazy like in the $200 or 300 million 💵 range. 

 

They easily could've pushed forward with this project if they wanted to, there really wasn't anything stopping them, but they just didn't for some reason, and we will likely never know the reason, or reasons, why this particular project fell through. If it did get made though, and the 2021 Netflix series did still happen, I could see people looking back on the movie fondly, and saying that it isn't as bad as it was made out to be by critics or fans at the time of its release, at least compared to the 2021 Netflix series. Movies and shows can, and often get reappraised when people have something worse to compare them to, or if enough time has passed and hindsight being 20/20, as was the case with Godzilla (1998). That movie was pretty hated when it came out, especially by fans, who didn't even want to consider it a Godzilla movie. But as time as passed, fans, and even a few critics here and there, and look back on it and realize that they were being a little bit too harsh than they should've been, and they can now appreciate the movie for what it is, which is a fun silly popcorn movie 🍿. 

 

The same thing has happened with other movies that were hated when they originally came out like the Star Wars prequels, people look back at those movies, especially in light of Disney Star Wars, and realize that they do have a lot more merit than people gave them credit for initially, and this is especially happened with Speed Racer (2008). While that movie may still get accusations of whitewashing here and there, nowadays, it's genuinely viewed as a misunderstood masterpiece, and it has a whole entire cult following that no one could've anticipated when the movie came out originally, in 2008. It's not even viewed as a "bad movie" anymore, except for a few holdouts here and there. If anything, it's viewed as a good movie with bad timing, since it came out the same year as Iron Man (2008) and The Dark Knight, which both changed the course of film history forever. Nobody wanted a silly and colorful kid's movie when they've got these darker and gritter superhero movies to watch. Iron Man (2008) isn't dark, serious, or gritty by any means, but it strive to be more realistic, and make the character somewhat believable. Something that the MCU has since largely abandoned in favor of being pure comic book. 

 

But, as the years have gone by, and people have grown tired of superhero movies in recent years, despite what superhero/comic books will say in denial (I always see superhero/comic book fans say there's no such thing as "superhero fatigue," there's only "bad writing fatigue," or "mediocre movie fatigue," despite evidence to the contrary, and it annoys me 😤 whenever I see it), people are more willing to give a silly colorful kid's movie like Speed Racer (2008) a chance. The world is dark and bleak enough, people could use a bit of colorful, silly, and perhaps "kiddie" fun as a form of escapism from the horrible shit that's going on in the real world right now. The world is burning 🔥, though I'd personally argue it was always burning 🔥 (there's always been dark shit going on in the world). 

 

It's just that we have a greater access to information about the horrible things going on in the world, and people have recency bias. People have recency bias about a lot of things actually, and the Internet 🛜 encourages that from the way it's set up, and the way these tech companies make their profits 🤑. It just inundates you with current events, and only tells you the bad news as oppose to the good news. That's why the British YouTuber 🇬🇧, Sam Bentley set up his YouTube channel, to tell the Internet 🛜 about the good news, the good things happening in the world right now as opposed to the bad things. Not dwelling on the negativity like everyone else does. That's why Speed Racer (2008) has been elevated to the status of misunderstood masterpiece or just really kick ass cult movie fun, or perhaps fun curiosity, since no other movie looks or sounds anything like this before or since. Besides maybe the Spy Kids movies or The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 🦈🌋, all of which do have cult following of their own, mainly due to the nostalgia. But Speed Racer (2008)'s cult following isn't due to nostalgia, it gained a cult following by its own merits, from people discovering it for the first time after ignoring it during its original theatrical run, and appreciating for the unique weird thing that is. 

 

It is also interesting that this movie was distributed in the US 🇺🇸 by Sony, through their Destination Films label, while the live action movie with Keanu Reeves was being developed by 20th Century Fox. It's funny how rights issues work. And so, this is the only Cowboy Bebop movie that we have, and may ever have. Besides Carole & Tuesday (which wasn't marketed as a Cowboy Bebop spinoff even though it totally is), Shinichirō Watanabe doesn't seem too keen on returning to the Cowboy Bebop franchise. Which is understandable, he told a complete story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and he doesn't want to ruin that by making a sequel to the series, and continuing from where it left off. That's why this movie is set during the events of the series, as opposed to being set after, so it doesn't ruin what he sees as a perfect ending. He explored these characters in every way he thought he could, and he probably thinks that there isn't anything more than he can do with them, without perhaps rehashing ideas. He's not completely against the idea of returning in a more direct way than he did Carole & Tuesday, he is open to it, but he hasn't any incentive to go back, he hasn't had any real ideas on what he could do, where he could take the story, the characters and the universe. 

 

I have ideas, I laid them out in the previous section, but it's unlikely that he'll ever read them. I am a nobody blogger, and even if I was well known enough to be on his radar, I don't know how well he could read English. I guess he could put it into Google Translate, or some other online translator, but those translators aren't perfect, and some things will be lost in translations. As is natural with these kinds of things. Instead, he's mostly stuck to just doing more original work that has nothing to do with Cowboy Bebop. Again outside of Carole & Tuesday, which is literally set in the Cowboy Bebop universe, even if Netflix, the people who made the show, and even Wikipedia might deny it. Samurai Champloo, Kids on the Slope, Terror in Resonance, Space Dandy, and most recently, Lazarus (2025), which for some reason, got a mostly negative reception from pretty much the entire anime community online, but especially on YouTube, as I came to find out. 

 

Like, there almost no positive reviews of that anime anywhere on YouTube, I only managed to find one review ☝️ that was actually defending it and I made sure to add it to my Favorites playlist, which I still rearrange sort out properly. I've added so many videos to my Favorites, and I have so little free time, it'll take me a long time to sort through them all and put them in the right spots. Even that new anime, Chainsmoker Cat 🚬🐈 has more defenders than that show does, like what happened? Why did so people turn on Shinichirō Watanabe and hate on Lazarus (2025) and decide that it was indefensible and irredeemably bad? I haven't seen Lazarus (2025) outside of that one trailer, which is pretty good, I do plan on reviewing it in the future (if it's still available on HBO Max that is 😒), but I'm pretty it isn't anywhere near as bad as most of the Internet 🛜 says it is. 

 

It's funny, animes that I hate, like Godzilla: Singular Point or Gamera: Rebirth I come to learn were much more well received online, while animes that I like, like Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka ♀︎ were much more poorly received. Guess it shows that outside of a few shows and movies, I'm not exactly lockstep with the majority of the anime community. I'm not lockstep with the majority of the movie reviewing community or the majority of the cartoon community either. So likely won't be any other Cowboy Bebop movies in the future, unless Shinichirō Watanabe gets a big idea and makes one, or if he reads any of my ideas 👀. Give me a call, or send me an email 📧 if you ever want to work with me or use any of my ideas, Watanabe 😏, so long as you give me credit for coming up with them of course. 

 

It is pretty fitting that Cowboy Bebop did get a movie though. Shinichirō Watanabe is on record saying that he want each episode of the series to be its own unique short film, and that's how he and everyone else who worked on the show approached it. That's why the show's episodic. Each episode is its own stand alone adventure, and while there is some continuity, there is some narrative through line, each episode doesn't carry on from the last one. There isn't one continuous storyline going on from each episode, the show isn't really serialized like a lot of anime is. That is something that's got to be appreciated. A show that isn't serialized, doesn't have an ongoing storyline that stops and then continues on from the last episode, and is episodic and each episode is its own stand alone thing that doesn't carry out into the next episode.  

 

Samurai Champloo would continue on with this format of being episodic, and having each episode be its own unique thing that doesn't continue on into the next episode (although it is a bit more serialized than Cowboy Bebop is), and then Space Dandy would take this format and go even further than either Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo, by having almost no continuity, and having each episode be completely self-contained and having no affect on the series going forward. That's why they were able to do episodes where all the characters die at the end in Space Dandy, and not have it hurt the show in any way since there is no continuity, and the character don't actually grow or change. Everything just resets, and everyone is just back to being the same way they were before, as if nothing ever happened. Which is why Space Dandy is as chaotic it is, anything goes, and anything goes because the show's episodic and there isn't a continuity that they have to stick to and keep consistent from episode-to-episode. There isn't even art style that they have to stick to or keep consistent from episode-to-episode, since, from what I understand, almost every episode of Space Dandy has a different art style, which is mainly due to each episode being directed by a different director and animated by a different studio, though I could be wrong on that. I know for sure I'm right about the different director thing, but I'm not sure about the being animated by a different studio each time thing. 

 

The fact that they were already thinking in terms of cinematic, the fact that Shinichirō Watanabe specifically said they approached each other as a short film, often with its own unique genre, shows that they were thinking about the possibility of how to turn this into a movie. So, when it get turned into a movie, 3 years after the show ended, it was a pretty natural fit, by Shinichirō Watanabe's own admission, because they were already approaching each episode cinematically. It's just how they were going from short length to feature length. The movie isn't long by any means, it's only 115 minutes long, or 1 hour and 55 minutes, but it is still longer than an average episode of Cowboy Bebop (1998). Even when you combine the two part episodes into one. The exact budget of this movie isn't known, or it isn't listed on the Wikipedia page, but it is clear that they had a lot more money 💴 to work with on this movie than they did on the series, as the animation is much more fluid and detailed and there is a wider variety of animation than in the series. 

 

They make a greater use of CGI than the series did, and while the CGI is pretty noticeable in a number of shots, it does still look good. It does still blend in with the 2D animation and does still hold up. Like the first person POV shot from Faye's perspective as she's being infected with the nanomachines inside of Vincent's apartment is pretty cool. I bet people who saw this movie back in 2001 were blown away 🤯 and were wondering how they did that. Obviously they used CGI, and it's one of the best uses of CGI in a primarily 2D animated anime. It blends in with the 2D animation pretty well and it holds up pretty well 25 years later. Or at least the CGI didn't bother me like it probably would some people, especially those who only focus on the animation and the quality of the animation. Animation is important to me too, there'd be no point in making this animated if it wasn't, but it isn't the only thing that's important to me, story and characters are also important to me, and luckily for me, this movie does deliver. So, what is this movie about exactly? Well, let's get into it. The movie does have a pretty simple plot that does get a little bit more complicated as it goes along, as the mystery surrounding the main villain and his plan and motivations are unraveled, and the lore is expanded upon, but at its core, the plot is pretty simple, and despite the complexities that are introduced as the film goes along, it doesn't detract from the simplicity of the plot. 

 

It doesn't get bogged down in complexity, and isn't complicated for the sake of being complicated because complicated movies are smart movies, no. This is a simple plot that is easy to follow, and doesn't require a ton of rewatches to truly understand. Although I have rewatched this movie numerous times by now. I don't know the exact number of times I've rewatched this movie, but it was a lot, and most of them were for my own enjoyment, because I wanted something to watch. This was the first time that I rewatched the movie for a review, for something other than my pure enjoyment. Basically, it's set in-between the episodes, Cowboy Funk and Brain Scratch 🧠, and it deals with this terrorist named Vincent Volaju, who starts committing a series of terrorist attacks throughout the Martian city, Alba City using nanomachines, though at least it's assumed that it's a chemical or biological weapon ☣️. The Bebop crew all decide to hunt him down and stop him after a bounty is put on his head, and it's through their investigations that they learn that Vincent is a veteran of the Titan War (the same war that Vicious and Gren fought in), and his nanomachine attacks are tied to a wider conspiracy involving the Martian military. Especially when someone from Vincent's past, Elektra Ovirowa, shows up after being sent by the Mars Army to hunt him down and kill him, in order to cover up the existence of the nanomachines, and their connection to them. 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Cowboy Bebop: The Movie AKA Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door. I didn't take this one, I found this on online a few years ago, back in 2019, which was 7 years ago, can you believe? It's from the scene at the beginning of the movie where Faye is pursuing Lee Sampson, hoping to capture him and collect the bounty on him, and witness the first attack carried out by Vincent. She has this look on her face in that moment when she sees Vincent for the first time, looking down on him from her ship, of confusion and uneasiness. Like, she's very clearly unsettled and off put by what she sees, and isn't really what to make of that person that she saw. She has this look that says, "Who the hell is that?" It's a great scene in all honesty.) 

 

 

 

 

I've already talked about Vincent and Elektra's pasts and the Mars Army conspiracy involved Cherious Medical in the section I wrote about the series, so I won't repeat too much of what I said there here, but it is interesting that they decided to tie the story of this movie to the Titan War, a war that we only heard about in both parts of Jupiter Jazz, and was central to that episode's main plot. We really don't learn much new about the Titan War in this movie, other than they conducted human experiments involving nanomachines, and Vincent is one of the test subjects, and is those experiments that ultimately led to Vincent losing his mind, and deciding to seek revenge on the Martian military and government, by killing everyone on the planet with the same nanomachines that they had experimented on him. But, his connection to the Titan War, and that playing a role in who he is today, is one of the ways that Vincent is a Vicious-like character. 

 

Obviously, this movie is in continuity with the series, it's set in-between the last two "normal" episodes ✌️ before the last three episodes of the series altogether, Hard Luck Woman ♀︎, The Real Folk Blues Part 1, and The Real Folk Blues Part 2,  which I really count as one episode ☝️. So really, it's the last two episodes ✌️. When I say "normal," I really mean that it's they were the last episodes that had normal episodic plots and where all four of the Bebop crew were still together, before the crew started splitting up, starting with Hard Luck Woman ♀︎, which saw the departure of Ed and the crew's pet dog, Ein. Ein chose to go with Ed because he had formed the closest attachment to Ed out of anyone else in the Bebop crew. He could survive without the other three Bebop crew members, he'd miss them, but he could manage, but he couldn't live without Ed. So he chose to go with her. 

 

Faye also left, but then came back in The Real Folk Blues Part 1 after her search for her long last family proved fruitless, and she realized she was all alone and the Bebop crew were all that she had. And then of course, The Real Folk Blues Part 2 saw the departure and death of Spike. So even if Ed and Ein came back, they'd still be short one member, and there'd be no way to recover from that loss. Even if they did replace him with a new member, it still wouldn't be same, so it's my personal theory that after the events of The Real Folk Blues Part 2, Jet and Faye decided to stick together, and didn't even bother trying to find a third crew member because deep down both of them knew that nobody could replace Spike and fill that hole in their lives. 

 

They couldn't have Vicious be the main villain in this movie, and have him die at the end because that would've broken continuity, but they still liked that dynamic between him and Spike, and still liked his backstory being tied to this war on Titan that happened sometime in the past before the events of the show. So, Shinichirō Watanabe and the other people behind the movie, including the writer, Keiko Nobumoto decided have their cake and eat it too by creating a character that was similar to Vicious, but different enough to not raise suspicion 🤨. Obviously it didn't work since I'm talking about it here. Vicious and Vincent have very similar body times, they're both very slender and have long hair, they both have a calm and somewhat gravelly voice, they both talk very cryptically, although Vincent tends to ramble on and on nonsensically about dreams 💭 and finding the door 🚪 to Heaven (hence why the movie's Japanese title 🇯🇵 is Knockin' on Heaven's Door) as a way to try to explain his motivations. But all it does is show just far gone he is. 

 

But even Vicious will monologue too, especially whenever he's around Spike. Vicious usually doesn't talk that much, but he's at his most talkative whenever Spike shows up and the two of them start fighting again. And they both have a similar dynamic with Spike, where they're supposed to act as a dark mirror to Spike, to show what Spike could have become, or still could, if he went down a darker path. If he didn't leave the Syndicate, almost die, and then meet Jet and become a bounty hunter, living on his ship with him. They even both have mutual love interests ❤️ with Spike, Julia in the case of Spike and Vicious and Elektra in the case of Spike and Vincent, although Elektra isn't long term for Spike. His heart ❤️ still belongs to Julia, and while he says that she's faded away, when he tells Elektra about her in their cells when they're imprisoned together, literally next door, whenever she's brought up, he immediately tries to find any sign of her and any sign that she's still alive and that she's still waiting for him. And then, in the final two episodes ✌️ (which again, I only really consider one ☝️), when he found out that she was alive, he dropped everything and went over to go see her, at the meeting place they told each other to meet at. 

 

But, even if Elektra isn't endgame, and never was going to be (she couldn't for the sake of continuity), it is clear that Spike is attracted to her. At the very least, in a physical sense. He's clearly intrigued by her when he sees her walking around in a burka in Moroccan Street 🇲🇦, he flirts with her during their confrontation at Cherious Medical 😘, which is where we got that iconic line, "I like a girl ♀︎ who can kick my ass," and then when he return to the Bebop and tells Jet about her, he tells him that she was "really beautiful 😍." He even jokingly calls their time in the prison "a date," referring to their interaction at Cherious Medical where he said he was going to flip a coin 🪙, heads he'll tell why he's at Cherious Medical and tails she'll go out on a date with him. And it's clear he only chose to keep her around, and let her help them defeat Vincent even though she was a soldier working for the Mars Army and was tasked with killing Vincent as part of their cover up of the nanomachines, because he found her attractive. 

 

I guess he figured that, even though he was still attached to Julia and wanted to see her again, he wasn't sure if he ever would, since despite his best efforts, he still couldn't find her, and she didn't pop back up in his life up to that point in the timeline. So why would have a little bit of fun with this attractive woman ♀︎ that he just met, and has a bit of an edge and toughness to her herself? Who says the Bebop crew can't have non-committed sexual relations on the side? They're all living in the same ship together, and even though none of them are in relationships, that doesn't mean they don't still have sexual desires, and they're clearly not having sex with each other. Even if they might want to, in the case of Faye (wanting to have sex with Spike that it is) 😏. So, why not stop and have sex during their off time, while they're still parked at a particular planet or moon (or even asteroid ☄️ since the humans in the Cowboy Bebop have also colonized asteroids ☄️ as well as mining them) and they're not catching bounties? 

 

If they can go off and gamble 🎰 or drink 🥃 after they've had their first catch of the day and got paid, then why couldn't they have sex either? Who's to say they didn't? Just because we don't see it, doesn't mean that it didn't happen. Maybe he saw Elektra was potentially temporary fling until Julia showed up again, or maybe he saw her as a potential one night stand, or fuck buddy. Whatever the case, it is clear that he was attracted to her and still wanted to do something with her, despite not having as deep of an attachment to her as Julia, or having much a stake in the love triangle ❤️ between him, her, and Vincent. Although, going back to Julia, I will say that Faye's description of her in The Real Folk Blues Part 2 as "an angel from underworld or a devil from parade" is pretty spot on 👌. I couldn't have said better myself. 

 

Even the names, Vicious and Vincent sound very similar to each other, like Vincent is just a few syllables from being Vicious, and you could easily mix up their names while saying them both in the same sentence. I know I did. The only real differences between the two characters are more cosmetic, aesthetic, and occupational. You know, Vincent has black, somewhat curly hair while Vicious has silver straight hair, Vincent has facial hair while Vicious is clean shaven, and while they're both veterans of the Titan War, they went down vastly different career paths. Vincent became a terrorist trying to wipe out the human race, or at least wipe out the Mars population a revenge against the Mars Army for experimenting on him, as well as find some kind of solace or absolution within him which is what all that talk about finding the door to Heaven 🚪 is all about (at least that's my interpretation). 

 

I even see some parallels between Vincent and the real life doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo, and their plan to kill thousands of people, topple the Japanese government 🇯🇵, and start the apocalypse using sarin gas. It was to hinder police investigations into the cult, but you know what I mean. Vincent bares a vague resemblance to the cult's leader, Shoko Asahara. Certainly looks more like him than the other character that was inspired by him and the cult, Londes, he looks more like Marshall Applegate, the leader of the Heaven's Gate cult. Only here, Vincent is working alone and he's using nanomachines that spread rapidly from person to person until everyone's infected. Insuring the total annihilation of the Martian population, and anyone who steps onto the planet. But he is operating under similar delusions that a cultist would. while Vicious became a gangster and a drug dealer. He's a Syndicate man ♂︎, and he wants to lead the entire Red Dragon Syndicate 🐉, which motivates him carry out a crew against the top bosses of the syndicate, the Van, or simply the Elders. He doesn't like their leadership, thinks they're too soft, and have lost their edge, while they think he's too bloodthirsty and volatile to lead the organization, and would just run into the ground with his reckless decision if he was put into total control. 

 

Vincent is slightly more sympathetic than Vicious, mostly in the sense that he's a victim, and became this way as a result of the war and the Mars Army's actions. He's basically their Frankenstein's monster who they can't control and they're trying to desperate to destroy to cover their asses. Because his continued existence, and his use of the nanomachines is a threat to the entire Martian military and government and their credibility and integrity, what little they actually. The general that Elektra reports to, and who gave her the order to find Vincent and eliminates straight up says that the continued existence of Vincent and the nanomachines threatens to bring down the entire Martian government. Which goes to show just how corrupt and morally bankrupt the Martian government actually is, if just this one terrorist ☝️ and these nanotech weapons can bring it all down. 

 

This movie goes out of its way to show how corrupt the Martian government is, whereas the series mostly focused on how corrupt the ISSP is, though it is this movie where we learn just how corrupt the ISSP is. Jet's friend within the force, Bob straight up says that the ISSP is rotten to the core, and that they aren't actually interested in solving crime, and just covering their own asses and moving up the ladder. The Cowboy Bebop franchise is very critical of institutions, whether they be government, military, or law enforcement. The only "good" guys here are the bounty hunters, and even then, they're not really good guys either, and often do some shady shit themselves. I guess the point of this franchise that everyone is bad, everyone is corrupt no one can really be trusted, except for yourself and though in your immediate family or friend group. Keep those closest to you in this corrupt and cruel world. 

 

Again, that's my interpretation, that's the conclusion I came to after rewatching the show and the movie for this review. This movie was actually pretty timely when it came out, back in 2001, considering that it deals with terrorism and war, and the toll that war takes on a person, as well as government overreach and corruption. What happens when a government and/or military commits war crimes, and does other bad things in the name of “national security,” and then tries to cover them up? What does that do a government’s integrity and credibility? These were relevant topics and themes when this movie came out. They obviously didn’t know 9/11 was going to happen, it was already in development long before that ever happened, but considering that 9/11 did happen and considering the US 🇺🇸’s response to that event, this movie was a lot more prescient than people realized at the time. 

 

Meanwhile, Vicious has almost no redeeming qualities, and he really isn't much a victim. He's victimizing others, inflicting suffering on everyone he meets or has ever met, and showing no remorse his actions. Just lacks any and all empathy. He's so nihilistic that he doesn't care about anyone or anything, other than just existing, and killing anyone who wrongs him in anyway. The only person he sorts of cares about is Gren, but I'll get to him in a little bit. He did care about Julia too, he was in a love triangle ❤️ with her and Spike, but he grew to hate her and wanted her killed once he realized she chose Spike over him, feeling a bit betrayed by her. Which does show how little self awareness Vicious actually has, but I'll get to that. He isn't motivated by revenge like Vincent, he's just motivated by a misanthropic hatred for everyone and everything. It's not even really made clear why he wants to lead the Syndicate, other than the hates the Elders and thinks that they're too old and too soft to lead, and he has a bloodthirsty urge for violence 🩸. He seems to think that the Syndicate can only exist if it's in a perpetual state of violence, like if it's carrying out its business through bloodshed 🩸. He doesn't really seem to have much other motivation than that. It doesn't seem like he cares about money 💵, but nothing he does throughout the show seems to be motivated by money 💵. 

 

Even the drug deal he carries out in Jupiter Jazz seems less motivated by money 💵 and a desire to get rich 🤑, and more as a vein attempt to meet back up with his old war buddy, Gren. It seems like from the way he initially talks to Gren, both on voicemail and in person, he still expects Gren to view him as a friend and a comrade, despite his betrayal. Vicious straight up betrayed Gren, either during the war on Titan or after. He testified against Gren when he was accused of being a spy, and got him sent to prison, where he was given life altering drugs against his will. Vicious never once stopped to consider, and reflect for a moment, that Gren might be upset at him for what he did and might not be too keen on being friends with him, and he may in fact hold a grudge against him. The same way he himself holds a grudge against Spike and Julia after feeling betrayed by them. Vicious's betrayal against Gren is real and tangible, while Spike and Julia's betrayal against him is largely imagined. That's probably one of Vicious's most dishonorable traits, among many, and why I conclude that of the two villains, him and Vincent, Vicious is probably the most irredeemable. Despite Vincent's actions causing a lot more causalities than Vicious's. 

 

With its heavy focus on nanomachines, this is the most sci-fi that Cowboy Bebop has gotten. The only way they could've gone more sci-fi is if they had a plot line about aliens 👽, which I suppose they kind of did with Toys in the Attic, but not really. Although we see creatures that definitely don't exist in real life, and aren't from Earth 🌎 (at least I don't think), the franchise hasn't fully committed to the idea of aliens 👽. It's not as if aliens 👽 come down and start attacking, or anyone gets abducted by aliens 👽, or even humans discover ancient alien ruins 👽 or an ancient alien super weapon 👽 on Mars or any of the other planets and moons that they've settled in the Solar System, although that would be a cool plot line for a Cowboy Bebop story. Or really any space western story 🤠, except Outlaw Star which already has a bunch of alien stuff 👽 in it, including an ancient alien artifact, or monument, or machine (whatever you can call it), the Galactic Leyline. The only thing that was sillier than the nanomachines in this was that virus 🦠 in Gateway Shuffle that was created by the ecoterrorist group, the Space Warriors, that turns people into apes. It also assumes me that they're actually called "nanomachines," just like in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, you know, "Nanomachines, son," that line, which became a meme in the 2010s. 

But like all the sci-fi stuff in this show, it is pretty grounded. The way that the nanomachines were built, and they way they were portrayed, you do believe that they could build something like, you watch it and you go, “They could actually build this 🤔.” Because here, as I said before, the nanomachines are made out of protein, and they hide in the bloodstream 🩸, disguising themselves as lymphocytes, and then they swim up the bloodstream 🩸 until they reach the brain 🧠, and once they reach the brain 🧠, it’s game over for the victim. But before they kill you, you hallucinate these butterflies 🦋 made out of pure light, and these butterflies 🦋 are a sign that they’ve reached your brain 🧠, and they’re the last thing you see before they kill you. A really scary technology if you ask me. 

 

So far, to my knowledge at least, nanotechnology hasn’t been developed to the point where we can create nanobots to use as weapons, despite nanobots and nanotech weapons appearing in science fiction, not just in this movie, but also The Day the Earth Stood Still 🌎 (2008), G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Terminator: Genisys, and most recently, No Time to Die. It’s still mostly hypothetical. The tech companies are all just investing in AI 🙄, which is still bad, don’t get me wrong, I’m an AI hater too (I was an AI hater before it was cool), but it is slightly better than tech companies investing in microscopic robots that can kill people by infecting them like a virus 🦠, and then eating their brain 🧠, or their other internal organs, or even their entire body, and multiply rapidly (duplicating themselves), and keep spreading from person to person until every single person is infected. 

 

You could have a grey goo situation, where the nanobots multiple rapidly and swarm, almost like bees 🐝 or wasps, and then just devour everything in sight, both organic and inorganic material, until everything’s been gobbled up, and there’s nothing left on that. That’s the scenario in the 2002 Michael Crichton novel 📖, Prey, as well as the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still 🌎 with Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, and the first live action G.I. Joe movie, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. But the nanomachines in this aren’t really like that, they’re much more like the nanobots in the most recent James Bond movie, No Time to Die, where they’re much more like a pathogen, and kills you from the inside, rather than eating you all up like grey goo nanobots. But, like in No Time to Die, they’re designed to wipe out an entire population, and they’re used by the bad guys of both movies for that purpose. However, unlike in No Time in Die, they do actually have a vaccine 💉 for the nanomachines to stop the spread. That’s why Vincent and Elektra aren’t affected by them, because they have the vaccine 💉 in their blood 🩸, so they decide to administer it to the entire population of Alba City via the air to foil Vincent’s plan. So that when he does release the nanomachines, nothing happens because everyone’s already vaccinated against them 💉. 

 

I do like the Arab scientist 👨‍🔬 that created the nanomachines, Dr. Mendelo al-Heida, he was pretty cool, even if he didn’t speak directly and kind of referred to himself in the third person when telling Spike about his history. Him and Spike kind of talk through code throughout their entire interactions, they never say exactly what they mean, but they know exactly what they’re trying to say just from the selection of words that they use. It’s a shame that Mendelo dies, getting shot by the Martian military to tie up loose ends and cover up his involvement in creating the nanomachines (as well as covering up the nanomachines as a whole), but I suppose he kind of had to die since he was the one who created these horrible machines that are killing people. He was Dr. Frankenstein and the nanomachines were his monsters, although as a Godzilla fan, I think a more apt comparison would be that Dr. Mendelo was Dr. Serizawa and the nanomachines were his Oxygen Destroyer. Although, unlike Serizawa, Mendelo never gets the chance to fully redeem himself and use his weapon of mass destruction for good, as good as killing an innocent creature mutated by nuclear testing ☢️ could be. 

 

But, Godzilla wasn’t fully innocent since he laid waste to Tokyo and killed hundreds, if not, thousands of people. That’s not even taking into account the people he killed on Odo Island, or the people he killed on that fishing boat at the beginning of the movie, or those other boats and ships throughout the first half of the movie. That destruction and those deaths had to be avenged, and Godzilla just had to be stopped before he attacked another city. A creature can be a victim, while also being a victimizer, especially when you consider that even the 1954 version of Godzilla was somewhat anthropomorphized and had human traits. As much as the later Shōwa era movies, but still a lot. We wouldn’t have a version of Godzilla that was fully like an animal until the 1998 version, but people didn’t like that version. But, you get what I’m saying. Although, shortly before Mendelo dies, you get the sense that he knows he’s not long for this world, he’ll probably get killed because he knew too much, and was too much of a threat to the Martian government because of what he knew, so he kind of accepted it and was waiting for the soldiers to show up at his door, and then gun him down. He just didn’t expect them to gun him down immediately after he got done talking to Spike, and telling him everything about Vincent and the nanomachines. 

Speaking of game over, I even like Lee Sampson, Vincent’s accomplice throughout the first half of the movie, before Vincent kills him too. He’s a hacker, he's 17 years old (according to that bio that Faye had on her Zipcraft's computer), and he’s pretty valuable to Vincent in the beginning, especially when it comes to spreading his message, and warning people that he’s going to launch another attack during the Halloween parade 🎃. He’s all into video games, to point of using gaming puns and terminology like “game over,” but mostly the retro stuff since he’s bored with the newer games. Sound familiar? This character was more ahead of his time than we thought. Although we do see him play an arcade game, a light gun shooting game with 3D graphics (which is one of the extensive uses of CGI in this movie, they used CGI to create the graphics for that arcade Sampson was playing), when Faye confronts him and tries to get information about Vincent out of him, while collecting the bounty that’s on his head. He also speaks with a British accent 🇬🇧, making him one of the few characters, if not the only character in the franchise who talks with a British accent 🇬🇧. At least, in the English dub, everyone speaks Japanese in the Japanese version 🇯🇵. 

 

Although, it does make you wonder, how did Vincent meet these two guys ♂︎ and convince them to be his accomplices? Because in addition to Sampson, he’s got one other accomplice, this guy ♂︎ who works at the warehouse where they’re storing the pumpkin balloons 🎃 they’re going to use during the Halloween parade attack 🎃. I don’t know if he’s a security guard or what, but he works at those warehouses. Vincent isn’t exactly the most charming or personable guy ♂︎. Most people would probably be scared of him if he met them, and tried to convince them to help him commit a bunch of terrorist attacks around the city, culminating in one that would wipe out the whole population. He doesn’t exactly make a strong case for himself, or make it seem like he’d be someone worth working with. Most people would just think he’s about to kill them, which isn’t an unreasonable fear considering what ends up happening to Lee Sampson and the warehouse worker guy ♂︎. The warehouse worker guy ♂︎ does ask him for money 💵 when we first see him, so clearly Vincent bribed him, but how did that first interaction even play out? Did Vincent walk up to him, and say something to the effect of, “Hey, if you help me with these balloons, I’ll give you some money 💵,” and then his guy ♂︎ just agreed? 

 

Did the guy ♂︎ even fully know what Vincent was going to do? It seems like he did, since Vincent talks about it during that one scene in the warehouse towards the beginning of the movie, and he didn’t seem to have a problem with it so long as he got paid. If that’s the case, then maybe he deserved to die, maybe he deserved to get killed by Vincent. But then again, Vincent talks so cryptically, talking about Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and a door 🚪, that it’s hard to know what he’s talking about. Both Lee Sampson and the warehouse guy ♂︎ both end up dying, and they both end up getting killed by Vincent. He kills Lee Sampson by blowing one of those marbles containing the nanomachines open and infecting him with them, and then he stabs the warehouse guy ♂︎ to death with the same knife that he used to cut Faye’s yellow bra type thing open, and sort of expose her chest, or give easier access to her boobs, although we don’t actually see her boobs. This movie may be rated R, but it's not for nudity, it's only rated R for "Violent Images" 😆.  He just did it to creep her out, and make her uncomfortable. 

 

So helping Vincent clearly didn’t work out for either of them. I don’t know why you would even want to work with Vincent, he’ll just kill you once you stop being useful to him. Or if you just annoy him, and come to his apartment unannounced when he told you not to, as was the case of the warehouse guy ♂︎. The reason why Vincent stabs him to death is that he shows up at his apartment unannounced to warn him about the authority snooping around the warehouses and expressing concern that they might discover the balloons 🎃, and they had a strict rule in their arrangement that he's not allowed to come to Vincent's apartment under any circumstance. Even if it's just to alert him about the authorities potentially discovering their plan. He knocks on his door 🚪, Vincent goes to answer it after he was creeping on Faye, he answers it, sees that it's warehouse guy ♂︎ all panicky, Vincent stoically says, "I told you not to come here," the warehouse guy ♂︎ says he knows and apologizes, and explains that the police snooping around the warehouse and they might discover their plans, but Vincent isn't concerned, and just asks the warehouse guy ♂︎ if he said his prayers, and the warehouse guy ♂︎ stops talking because he's all confused, and before he can really process what Vincent asked him, Vincent stabs him and kills him, and that's the end for that guy ♂︎. 

 

I almost forgot to mention the two detective character who we see throughout the film. We don't see them a lot, but the movie will cut back to them once in awhile doing their own investigation into the terrorist attacks, and trying to find who the culprit is, and what kind weapon was used. But of course, they're both several steps behind everyone else, and they're pretty ineffectual, as they have no real affect on the story, and their story ends with them failing since Vincent tricks them and the Mars Army into going after the wrong target. He purposefully sends them to the wrong location (at the water treatment plant 💦), as a diversion why he carries his real attack, which is in the Alba City during the Halloween parade 🎃, which is why the nanomachines are inside of Jack O'Lantern balloons 🎃. 

 

Really, they're just there to show how incompetent the ISSP is, compared to our main characters. They're sort of meant to represent everything wrong with the ISSP just like Fad was in Black Dog Serenade. Although these characters are a lot more sympathetic than Fad was, they're not villains in the same way Fad was. You get the sense by watching them that they're just trying to do their jobs the best they can, and get to the bottom of this mystery bring the person responsible for these attacks to justice, and their hearts ❤️ are in the right place. It's just that they're unaware of the system that they're operating in, and how that system is limiting them from actually solving crimes and catching criminals. Whereas Fad of course was just fully in bed with the mob. 

 

He was directly on the European Syndicate's payroll and they ordered him to assassinate Jet because he was becoming a pain in the neck with his righteous idealism and his dedication to true justice. Of course, he didn't actually kill him, he just blew his arm off, probably because Fad had a soft spot for Jet, he still cared about him, even if he didn't share his point of view or his dedication to justice. He purposefully shot him in a way that wouldn't kill him, but still eliminate him as a threat to the Syndicate. BTW, I didn't even realize that character's name was Fad, and it totally fits considering that he's an old man ♂︎ who's out of touch, or behind the times, and is on his way out, which he was since he dies at the end. Though I'm sure he didn't intend to die that way. But, regardless of competent or incompetent they are, how important or unimportant they are to the main plot, I still liked these two bumbling detective characters. They act as comic relief (in addition to Ed of course), and I liked their interactions, with the older more serious one constantly getting frustrated by things not going his way and the investigation going nowhere, and constantly being told what not to do, especially being told not to smoke 🚬. 

 

It's the closest this franchise has gotten to having anti-smoking message 🚭, and calling out how unhealthy smoking 🚬 is, besides that scene in Boogie Woogie Feng Shui, where Jet designates the living room in the Bebop a non-smoking area 🚭 and tells Spike and Faye to smoke outside 🚬 to protect Meifa, who is still a child. She's a teenager, likely either 14 or 15. Or Fad talking about quitting smoking 🚬 in Black Dog Serenade until the end of the episode, when on his deathbed (so to speak), he asks Jet for a cigarette 🚬 so he can have one last smoke 🚬 before he dies, and just as Jet lights the cigarette 🚬 for him, he laments that he wasn't able to quit smoking 🚬 after all, and then he draws his final breath and dies. Not even finishing the cigarette 🚬 that Jet lit for him. 

 

But this movie was the first and so far only instance to my knowledge (maybe they also did this in Carole & Tuesday) where the franchise acknowledged that there are places where you can and cannot smoke 🚬. The older detective's younger afro headed partner tells him that smoking 🚬 isn't allowed in the hospital 🏥, and he closes his Zippo lighter and takes the unlit cigarette 🚬 out of his mouth, and then later when he's in the police station, he also gets told by his partner not to smoke 🚬 because I guess police stations are not smoking areas 🚭. Every other time in the franchise, especially in the original 1998 anime series itself, character just pull out a cigarette 🚬, put it in their mouth, light it, and then start smoking away 🚬. No designated smoking 🚬 and non smoking areas 🚭, no buildings where smoking 🚬 just isn't allowed at all. 

 

You get the sense that Cowboy Bebop takes place in a future where smoking 🚬 just became more acceptable again, and people just started smoking 🚬 again non stop. Until this movie, which made it clear that smoking 🚬 is still frowned upon, and there are indeed places where you aren't allowed to smoke 🚬 at all. It's just that the characters that we focus on all partake in smoking 🚬, and in fact are chainsmokers 🚬. Not to degree as Yaniko in Chainsmoker Cat 🚬🐈, but still chainsmokers 🚬. These people are addicted to tobacco and nicotine. If Cowboy Bebop unintentionally makes smoking 🚬 look sexy or cool, then Chainsmoker Cat 🚬🐈 makes it look like the unglamorous and ugly thing that it is. For better or worse. 

 

A lot of people who like Chainsmoker Cat 🚬🐈 (and even some who don't) describe it as being the best anti-smoking ad 🚭 they've ever seen, and from what I've heard about it, it does that by making smoking 🚬 look as unattractive and disgusting 🤢 as possible, and just generally being as disgusting as possible 🤢. One of the biggest criticisms for that show among its detractors is that while does show how awful of an addiction cigarettes 🚬, tobacco, and nicotine are, it does a bunch of other gross out gags 🤢 that detract from the main message the show is trying to convey, and they feel that rather than adding to the show's message and strengthening, it's just being gross for the sake of being gross 🤢. I know that when I think of anime, I don't immediately think of gross out humor 🤢, and since becoming an anime fan in the late 2010s and early 2020s, Chainsmoker Cat 🚬🐈 is the first anime that I'm aware of that heavily relies on gross out humor 🤢 and tries everything it can to gross you out 🤢 and make you uncomfortable. 

 

Sure, there's gore anime, and plenty of people are grossed out by blood and gore 🩸 🤢, but the people who make gore anime don't do it specifically with the intention of grossing people out 🤢. They just do it because they think it looks cool, or is perhaps satisfying or cathartic. You don't exactly see anime that often that has fart jokes and diarrhea jokes, and even when you do see them, you hardly see female characters ♀︎ doing them like you do in that show. Though personally, if you ask me, as someone who isn't a fan of gross out humor 🤢, especially fart and poop jokes, I could do without anyone doing gross out gags 🤢, whether they be man ♂︎ or woman ♀︎. In other words, it's a show that you probably shouldn't watch while you're eating. A lot of that stuff is in the first episode of Chainsmoker Cat 🚬🐈 from what I understand, it just hits you with it, so if you're not board with that kind of humor, if you're not on board with that kind of unpleasantness, you just turn it off, and never watch the show again. I'm just not used to seeing an anime try to illicit any kind of emotion or reaction other than amazement 🤩, happiness 😁, laughter 🤣, sadness 😭, or even anger 😡, that it specifically tries to illicit disgust 🤢 and discomfort 😖 in the viewer. 

 

The younger partner's whole thing is that he has hay fever. He's constantly sneezing 🤧 or about to sneeze 🤧, like he's about to sneeze 🤧 but then stops and it goes away (which happens to me a lot and is honestly a funny moment), which initially freaks people out when they think that it's a virus 🦠 going around, instead of what it actually is, which is nanomachines. He's also constantly telling his older and grumpier partner not to smoke 🚬 inside certain buildings like the hospital 🏥 or the police station, which that he likes following the rules and is a bit of a square 🟨. And he's got a white guy afro ♂︎. I don't entirely know why they made that design choice, but I'm glad they did. He's a bit of a dorky and awkward character, a guy ♂︎ who's perhaps out of place in the kind of work he does, but I like him. 

 

Him and his partner have a great dynamic, and I do wish that we saw more of them, and that we perhaps got to see them interact with the Bebop crew. After the botched raid on the water treatment plant 💦, we never see them again, not even during the ending montage because their role in the story is already finished. There is no need to show them again from a narrative perspective. But considering that we see Laughing Bull's friend in that end credits montage, despite not serving any narrative purpose by that point, I think they could've cut back to these two, and showed what they were doing after nanomachine crisis had been resolved, and things in Alba City and Mars as a whole returned to normal. Maybe they could've showed them doing paperwork, and the older detective being visibly frustrated and angry 😡 about being humiliated at the water treatment plant 💦 in such a way, and being outdone by a bunch of bounty hunters. His competition. While the younger (afro) detective is just sneezing away 🤧 or is trying to hold back a sneeze 🤧. 

 

It’s fitting that I’m writing this in September, a month before Halloween 🎃 considering that, as I’ve sort of made it clear, this is a Halloween movie 🎃. It takes place on Halloween 🎃. It’s about as much of a Halloween movie 🎃 as Die Hard is a Christmas movie 🎄, and people will defend tooth and nail that movie’s status as a Christmas movie 🎄. Or if we were to use another movie set during Halloween 🎃 that isn’t necessarily a horror movie, it’s as much of a Halloween movie 🎃 as The Predator is. In fact, it’s more of a Halloween movie 🎃 than The Predator is since Halloween 🎃 does actually play into the main plot in this movie, whereas it didn’t really in that movie. That movie could’ve set at any time of the year, any holiday, but this movie had to be set during Halloween 🎃. 

 

Vincent specifically chooses Halloween 🎃 to carry out his final attack because of its significance to his plan and his outlook on the world, and wanted to use the holiday to make a statement about his state of mind, or find some sort of escape since he views the world as being a type of purgatory, and he believes that carrying out this attack, and climbing to that top of that tower will help him find the door to Heaven 🚪. But it’s also for revenge against the Martian military and government, though Vincent doesn’t talk about his action in those terms, he doesn’t talk about it in terms of vengeance even though it is vengeance at the end of the day. This movie definitely takes the Die Hard approach in terms of incorporating a real world holiday into the main plot. In fact, for me, this is such a Halloween movie 🎃 that I almost made it a tradition to watch this movie every Halloween 🎃, just like I did trying to watch Independence Day (1996) every Fourth of July 🇺🇸. But just like with that movie, I couldn’t do it, and I decided to just each these movies whenever I’m in the mood rather than trying to make it a yearly tradition. 

 

I hope that I can get this out before the end of September, and before October to be in time for the Halloween season 🎃. I’ve got other stuff I want to write, other movies I want to review in the Halloween season 🎃, like We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️, that Australian zombie movie 🇦🇺🧟‍♂️ starring Daisy Ridley that came out in the US 🇺🇸 back in January. I have it on Blu-Ray 💿, I just need to watch it. The reason why I want to watch it, besides it starring Daisy Ridley and me being attracted to her 🥰, is that it was co-produced by Grant Sputore, the Australian filmmaker 🇦🇺 who’s directing Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, since Adam Wingard was busy directing Onslaught (2026), which I have not seen yet at the time of me writing this. I’m also thinking of finally writing that Eternal Darkness post that I said that I was planning on writing at the beginning of the year before our Internet 🛜 got shut off. 

There is one thing that I want to say the Halloween parade scene 🎃, couple of things actually. First, I really like the song that it’s set to, “Yo Pumpkin Head 🎃,” in fact I like all the music in this movie. Just like the soundtrack to the show, the soundtrack to this movie is also pretty good. It’s Yoko Kanno, what do you expect? Of course it’s going to be good. Second, I did notice Andy, in the background, taking part in the parade. If you don’t know who Andy is, or you don’t remember, he’s the dim-witted and naïve rich guy 🤑♂︎ from Cowboy Funk who wanted to become a bounty hunter, dressed as a literal cowboy 🤠 complete with a horse 🐎 (he rides horseback 🐎 pretty much everywhere he goes), and became Spike’s rival throughout the episode, until he pivoted to dressing like a samurai at the end after he lost his fight with Spike. Although he still rides a horse 🐎 since samurais ride horses 🐎 too. 

 

This movie isn’t reliant on you having seen Cowboy Funk, it doesn’t make any overt references to that episode except for that building still being destroyed from the end of that episode, you know the Teddy Bomber 🧸 blowing it up, and then Spike and Andy fighting within the ruins on top of the roof. Between the Teddy Bomber 🧸 and Vincent, this city just can’t catch a break with terrorists can they? But it is nice that they gave Andy a cameo in this movie, just as a reminder to any eagle eyed fans 👀 watching that this movie takes place after Cowboy Funk, and to give respect to this ridiculous character. And he’s still wearing his samurai outfit, so it’s in continuity. It’s keeping his character consistent from what his arc was at the end of that episode, going from dressing and acting like a literal cowboy 🤠 to dressing and acting like a literal samurai. They could’ve easily have just had him dressed in his cowboy outfit 🤠, and be done with it, it’s not like most people would notice or care, but to their credit, they did, they stayed true to where that character ended up at the end of Cowboy Funk. That’s the kind of attention to detail I can appreciate. 

One last thing that I want to talk about before I finally wrap this section up and move onto the third and last one, on the video game, is the ending of this movie. Specifically, the end credits. This is the only movie that I will sit down and watch the entire end credits. I used to do that as a kid, but I really don’t do that anymore, and this is the only movie that I still do it with. Not because there’s some after credits scene, although it does technically have one, but because the movie doesn’t truly end when the credits start rolling. The story continues, showing a montage, set to the excellent song, “Gotta Knock a Little Harder” sung by Mai Yamane, showing what happened after the nanomachine vaccine 💉 was dispersed thanks to the three old guys and some other pilots spraying it down onto the city in some crop dusting planes, and Faye forcing the climate control people to make it rain 🌧️, spreading the vaccine 💉 even further. It shows people looking up at the sky, presumably seeing all the light butterflies 🦋 that you hallucinate whenever the nanomachines reach your brain 🧠, though none of them actually die because they’ve all been vaccinated 💉. 

 

Then it shows the next day, as life in Alba City returns to normal, with everyone going back to their normal routines, as if nothing ever happened and there hadn’t been a bunch of terrorist attacks throughout the city in the previous days, including the previous night, where all the Jack O’ Lantern balloons 🎃 exploded and released all the nanomachines into the air. It even shows what the Bebop crew is doing the next day, after they defeated Vincent and saved the city. We get a payoff to what Faye said just before the credits started rolling. She asked him if he wanted to bet some horse races 🏇 with her, and he just says to her, “You never change,” since she’s always gambling and betting on horse races 🏇. We actually see her at a horse race 🏇, and lose because she bet on a losing horse 🏇. We even see the rainbow 🌈 that she jokingly suggests they might see the next day after the rain 🌧️ stops. 

 

 

 

 

(This is another screenshot from Cowboy Bebop: The Movie AKA Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door. I also didn't take this one, I found it on the Internet 🛜 the same year as the previous one that I used. This is from the final moment in the movie before the credits start rolling and we get that montage showing the city return to normal, where Faye asks Jet if he wants to go with her to bet on horse racing 🏇, which he kindly declines by saying, "You haven't changed a bit.") 

 

 

 

 

 

We see Spike walking the streets, just like he did earlier on in the movie when he was doing his own investigation into the terrorist attack on the bridge, the one that Faye witnessed. Only this time, it’s just a leisurely walk, a walk for fun. He does stop and do a double take when we sees a woman walk by, wearing the same burka that Elektra wore earlier on during the Moroccan Street 🇲🇦 sequence, but continues walking after he realizes that it isn’t her. And then finally, it ends with an after credits scene where Spike wakes up from a nap 😴, and sees one of those hallucinogenic butterflies 🦋, grabs it in his hand ✋, only for it to disappear once he opens his hand ✋. All while he continues his narration from the beginning of the movie, and then the movie ends with one of those captions on the bottom right corner of a black screen that we saw in a few episodes of the series, only this one says: “Are you living in the real world?” 

 

This whole end credits sequence is one of the best end credits sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie, not there are a lot of movies that do this. It actually makes you want to stay for the credits, unlike with a traditional after credits scene or even mid credits scene like you see a lot of modern movies, not just the MCU, but pretty every major blockbuster. Even the Super Mario movies by Illumination have after credits scenes. In fact, this movie also has an excellent opening credits sequence. It’s all in black and white, it’s set to another excellent song, “Ask DNA 🧬,” and it features portraits or snippets of realistic looking humans (more realistic than what you usually see in the Cowboy Bebop franchise), including two that were based off two of the English voice actors, Beau Billingslea and Steve Blum, probably rotoscoped, just doing normal every day things. I guess Shinichirō Watanabe did this to make the city and the people that live in it characters in of themselves, just to give you a sense of what it’s like before all the bad stuff that’s happening. That you’ll actually feel for the city and its people, and actually want the Bebop crew and their allies to save it. It’s interesting that the movie pretty much bookends with montages of the city, and people living on their normal everyday lives. It’s not something you’ll necessarily notice right away when you watch the movie for the first time, but once you’ve watched the movie a couple of times, and notice it, you won’t be able to unsee it. It’s pretty cool, and it’s one of the things that makes this movie unique, and makes it stand out. 

 

 

 

(This is a picture I took of the Blu-Ray steelbook 💿 that I own of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie AKA Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door. It actually shows both titles on the front cover. I actually really like this release, it comes with a lot of special features. One new interview type thing with the English voice cast, labeled as a cast reunion, and a bunch of archival featurettes. Most of what I said about the movie and its production came from these featurettes, including the anecdote about Shinichirō Watanabe saying that he didn't make the show with an international audience in mind, but it gained one anyway because of all the international, and especially American influences 🇺🇸 and iconography that is in the show. And of course, it has the original American trailer 🇺🇸 for it. 

 

The only thing that would make this better is if it had audio commentaries. This particular release has none, not one with the voice cast, English or Japanese, and not one with the animators or filmmakers, not even one from a film historian or film analyst. This is in complete contrast to the 2014 complete series Blu-Ray release 💿 for the series, which had audio commentaries on nearly every disc 💿. I do wish that there was a 4K release of this movie 💿, that not only had a decent 4K transfer, but also had all the special features from this release and previous releases, as well as new ones, including audio commentaries. If they released something like that, I would buy it in an instant 🫰. But for now, I think I'll hold onto this release.) 

 

 

—

 

 

The Video Game  

 

 

 

 

(This is the front cover for the video game, Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence AKA Cowboy Bebop: The Song Remains The Same, released exclusively in Japan 🇯🇵 on the PS2.) 

 

Alright, we’re to the final stretch, and we’ve reached the final section of this review. It took a lot longer to get here than I expected, but we finally got there, and I’m glad. I’m glad that I’ll be finished with this review and finally be able to put it out after three months of writing it. I created this post back in June, and I didn’t start writing it until July, and I’ve been writing it on and off ever since. Now we’re into September, and I hope I can get this done before the month is over. But like I’ve been saying in my Community Posts on YouTube, I make no promises. I’ll publish it whenever it’s finished. However long it takes place. So, let’s talk about the video game, Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence, and finally bring this review to a close. 

 

While there is another Cowboy Bebop game, simply called Cowboy Bebop for the PS1, the reason why I'm covering this one and not that one is that this one actually canon to the series. Or at least, that what I've heard. It's sort of like how the Futurama video game is canon to the Futurama series, and is actually considered apart of the series. So much so that they actually compiled all of the cutscenes in the game, and edited them together into one episode which they titled as if it were a "lost episode" called Futurama: The Lost Adventure, which they included on the special features of the one of the Futurama DVD box sets 📀. Someone actually did something similar with this game, Serenade of Reminiscence. A YouTube channel called Studio Sokodei or simply sokodei, took all of the cutscenes of the game, subtitled them, and edited them together into an unofficial movie called Cowboy Bebop: The Song Remains The Same, and uploaded it to YouTube in multiple parts. The whole playlist is here if you're curious. 

 

This technically means that this game has two different titles ✌️, which sort of mean the same thing but not quite, Serenade of Reminiscence and The Song Remains The Same, which does sound like it could also be a Bond title. You know, a James Bond movie that has to do with music in someway, or a single song, or is just about a singer, who's also perhaps a villain with ambitions for world domination. It's not too out of the realm of possibility considering we have musical artists and singers who are billionaires like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Jay-Z (who is currently the richest music artist in the world 🤑), Rihanna, and Bruce Springsteen. Yes, Bruce Springsteen, he is indeed a billionaire, his net worth is $1.2 billion 💵. Bet you didn't know that, huh? And people have questioned the ethics of such billionaire music artists, particularly Taylor Swift and Jay-Z. Who's to say that a music artist couldn't become a Bond villain if they became rich enough 🤑? And if not a Bond movie, you could also be the plot of a live action Totally Spies movie if they ever made one. 

 

Just like I did with the movie in the previous section, for the sake of brevity, I will be referring to the game by the Serenade of Reminiscence title rather than The Song Remains The Same title, despite how much I just gushed about that title just now,  because Serenade of Reminiscence is the official title (it's a literal translation of the Japanese title 🇯🇵, Tsuioku no Serenade), while The Song Remains The Same is an unofficial title of a fan subbed cutscene movie of the game made by one small YouTuber ☝️ back in the day. The videos uploaded by sokodei of the game were uploaded 18 years ago, which was 2008, so those videos and that playlist are older than the longplay I watched for this review 👇. In fact, they're older than a lot of the YouTube channels I'm currently subscribed to. And honestly, as cool of a title as The Song Remains The Same is, Serenade of Reminiscence is more representative of what the game is actually about. 

 

The other reason why I'm reviewing Serenade of Reminiscence and not the PS1 Cowboy Bebop game is that of the two Cowboy Bebop games that have been made, this one seems to be the most liked. I haven't any good things about the PS1 game, it's like a flight simulator game from what little I've seen of it, where you main control the Swordfish II (Spike's ship) and you don't actually see any of the characters on screen. And part of the appeal of Cowboy Bebop, and the reason why the series has endured for this long, why it still has dedicated fanbase all these years are the characters and seeing them interact, and the PS1 game just took that away, and I guess a lot of fans felt like it missed the point. Serenade of Reminiscence is a lot more of what people expect from a Cowboy Bebop, and action adventure beat 'em up game with some third person shooter elements, but most importantly it has actual cutscenes featuring the characters on screen interacting. I think that's why this game has an edge over the PS1 game, even if it does have some of its flaws. And a nearly 100% accurate recreation of the opening intro of the show also helps. 

 

But one thing ☝️ both games have in common is that for whatever reason, neither of them were released outside of Japan 🇯🇵. They were both Japan exclusives 🇯🇵. So, if you were a Cowboy Bebop outside of Japan 🇯🇵, like in the United States 🇺🇸 for instance, then you definitely did not play either game. But, in the years since both of their releases, they have been fan translated, so English speaking westerners can play both games now if they so wish. But likely only with an emulator, like most old games from the fifth and sixth generation. Strangely though, to add another wrinkle to this story, the Samurai Champloo video game (which is also canon to that series), Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked did release a North American release in both the US 🇺🇸 and Canada 🇨🇦, and of course, Samurai Champloo is another anime show created and directed by Shinichirō Watanabe, has a similar title to Cowboy Bebop that has a similar meaning, and explores similar themes and ideas as Cowboy Bebop and is kind of a spiritual predecessor to Cowboy Bebop (I say "spiritual predecessor" because Samurai Champloo takes place in the distant past while Cowboy Bebop takes place in the distant future, meaning Samurai Champloo takes place before Cowboy Bebop). 

 

So why did Sidetracked get a North American release while neither of the two Cowboy Bebop games did? I mean, as much as I like Samurai Champloo (and believe me, I like it a lot), Cowboy Bebop is more popular than it, so you'd think any video games made of that show would get a release here in North America and maybe even Europe, since Cowboy Bebop is arguably more popular on both of those continents than it was in its native archipelago. People forget that Japan 🇯🇵 is an archipelago, but it is, it's an archipelagic country, just like Indonesia 🇮🇩, the Philippines 🇵🇭, Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬, the Bahamas 🇧🇸, Fiji 🇫🇯, Comoros 🇰🇲, and Cape Verde 🇨🇻 to name but a few. Even New Zealand 🇳🇿 counts as a archipelagic country even though it's not recognized as such under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 🇺🇳 (UNCOLS III 🇺🇳). An archipelago is basically a collection of islands that closely knit together, and under that basic criteria, Japan 🇯🇵 is an archipelago since it's made up of multiple islands. I mean, there's a reason why Cowboy Bebop got the live action treatment while Samurai Champloo so far hasn't. 

 

This was still a time where an anime like Cowboy Bebop (or even Samurai Champloo later on) could still get a video game. Nowadays, if an anime gets a video game at all, it's usually just the most popular ones. But even then, there are a lot of popular anime nowadays that don't have video games made out of them. Like correct me if I'm wrong, but does My Hero Academia have a video game, or One Punch Man, or going a little bit further back, Attack on Titan, or Kill la Kill, or something more recent like Demon Slayer, or Spy x Family, or Dan Da Dan, or Chainsaw Man? Because I highly doubt it. It seems like the only anime that still gets video games made out of it is Dragon Ball, but even then, those are still few and far in between. Then of course, you got those anime that started out as video games and then became anime later like Pokémon, Yo-kai Watch, Sakura Wars 🌸, and more than a few of the isekai games that got turned into anime. 

 

But the 1990s and 2000s really were the golden age for anime based video games. Ghost in the Shell of course got plenty of games during this era, both on the PS1 and PS2, Evangelion got some games too (even though most of them weren't released outside of Japan 🇯🇵), and even Ranma ½ got some game, 17 of them in fact, and most of them seem to be fighting games, which is kind of interesting. Ranma ½ is mostly seen as a romantic comedy ❤️, a romcom ❤️ (that puts more emphasis on the comedy than the romance ❤️), so it's interesting that when it came time to make video games out of it, they mostly made fighting games out of it. Well Ranma ½ does put a lot of emphasis on martial arts 🥋, the title character, Ranma Saotome is literally training to be a martial artist 🥋.

 

That's how he gets the genderswapping curse, because his dad took him to China 🇨🇳 so he could teach him martial arts 🥋 (some techniques he could teach him while in China 🇨🇳), and the two of them ended up in these cursed hot springs ♨️ that causes whoever falls in to them to take on the appearance of whoever died in them whenever they're exposed to cold water 💦. So Ranma's dad ends in a cursed spring ♨️ that a panda 🐼 died in, so he starts turning into a panda 🐼 when he's exposed to cold water 💦, while Ranma himself ends in a cursed spring ♨️ where a girl ♀︎ died, so he starts turning into a girl ♀︎ whenever he's exposed to cold water 💦. That's why the franchise is called Ranma ½, because he's half boy ♂︎ and half girl ♀︎, cursed to turn into a girl ♀︎ whenever he's exposed to cold water 💦. But despite being cursed to change their appearance whenever they're exposed to cold water 💦, they both still train in martial arts 🥋, Ranma's dad is still teaching him to be a marital artist 🥋. And plenty of other characters know martial arts 🥋 as well. So it does make sense to a certain degree. 

 

There is so little information about this game, on either Wikipedia or the Cowboy Bebop wiki, likely due to it not having a North American release, that neither website was a particular helpful resource when putting this section of the review together. So, all the information I used to write this section of the review came from me actually watching the longplay, and talking screenshots along the way of the most relevant parts. So what is Serenade of Reminiscence about anyway? Well, it starts off with the Bebop crew doing their usual routine, catching bounties, barely getting paid for any of them to buy food or other essentials due to either the bounties dying during the hunt or the constant property damage that Spike causes during their hunts. In this case, it's the latter. 

 

The game starts off with the Bebop crew catching a bounty at an aquarium, and in the process, Spike nearly destroys the entire aquarium, and all of the money 💵 that they did make from the bounty ends up going to pay for the property damage that Spike caused at the aquarium. It's a recurring theme or motif that the Bebop crew are always broke, no matter how many bounties they catch, and it's usually Spike's fault. If it's not his fault, than it's the fault of outside forces or circumstances. Honestly, it's just like the opening to the movie, only it's set in an aquarium and not in a convenience store. But everything changes when Jet tells everyone about the legend of a space pirate 🏴‍☠️ named Captain H who has a hidden treasure 🪎 somewhere in the Solar System (likely on Mars), and rather than continue to go after bounties as usual with Spike and Jet, Faye decides to go looking for the treasure 🪎, fully believing that it's real and it'll bring her greater riches 🤑 than any one bounty ☝️ would. 

 

Meanwhile, Spike runs into a music producer (who may or may not have a bounty on his head) named Steve who's looking for a lost song by this music artist he's really fond of named Priscilla A. as well as these two rookie bounty hunters who are twins named Bianca and Kent, who also happen to have a connection to Captain H. Something that immediately catches Faye's attention in her ceaseless quest to find the treasure 🪎, and she takes one of the twin rookie bounty hunters, the brother Kent, under her wing and pretty much forces him to help her find the treasure 🪎. Under the guise of trying to teach him how to be a "real man ♂︎." And Jet reunites with another woman ♀︎ from his past, Ellen, who may also have connection to Captain H, or at least the missing song that Steve is looking for, "Pearls," the companion piece to the song, "Diamonds 💎" also by Priscilla A., which is already in the public eye. In typical Cowboy Bebop fashion, this is all connected to something much bigger and much more sinister. 

 

The game really has three main subplots, the game will cut to each of these subplots at different times as you switch between the three main playable characters, Spike, Faye, and Jet. One subplot involves Spike and him trying to help Steve find the lost song by Priscilla A. as well as deal with Bianca, who is totally convinced that he's a criminal and a bounty head. She becomes quite a nuisance to Spike, and hindrance to him catching bounties or helping Steve. Another subplot involves Faye trying to look for the treasure 🪎 belonging to Captain H, with the help of Kent, who she pairs up with after she saves him from some bounty heads that attack him and after he tells her that Captain H was his and Bianca's grandfather. As mentioned in the plot synopsis, she also tries to treat him how to be a man ♂︎, according to her own warped sense of manhood ♂︎, because Kent is pretty young (both him and Bianca are) and he's pretty boyish ♂︎, and not tough enough or "manly ♂︎" enough for Faye. 

 

She just sees him as a push over, and ultimately as a way to get rich 🤑, and over the course of the game, she tries to toughen him up, and make him more of a man ♂︎, whatever she thinks that means. Honestly, her advice on how to be a man ♂︎ is about as useful as any of the so-called advice on how to be a man ♂︎ that comes out of the manosphere ♂︎, and I don't just mean incels, or pick up artists, looksmaxxers, or Andrew Tate types, but MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way ♂︎) as a well, a movement/ideology that I almost fell over and became apart of. I almost became a MGTOW, until I learned better and I saw the light. Got out of there before I got too in deep with it. And while the manosphere rightly gets criticized for a lot of things, I don't see MGTOW get brought up nearly as much as they should. MGTOW should be brought up and criticized, along with the rest of the manosphere ♂︎. It's like a man ♂︎ trying to teach a girl ♀︎ how to be a woman ♀︎, there's only so much that they could teach them since they lack the lived experience of being a woman ♀︎ (since they weren't born as one), and what makes someone a woman ♀︎ is largely dependent on their own perceptions and prejudices, and really just means what the person thinks its means or want it to mean. 

 

It makes sense why Kent isn't tough or "manly ♂︎" to be a bounty hunter considering that he didn't even want to be a bounty hunter in the first place. His sister, Bianca was the one who wanted to be a bounty hunter, and she kind of forced him into it, because she didn't want to go at it alone. She's definitely the dominant one of the two siblings, and she calls all the shots. Kent's story is a really a story of him being lead around or controlled by women ♀︎, and not being given the opportunity to forge his own destiny and make his own decisions. Whether it's Bianca or Faye, there's some woman ♀︎ in Kent's life that's telling him what to do, and forcing him to do something that he doesn't really want to do, and not being given a say in the matter. He's not in control of his own destiny, and he lacks the assertiveness to tell these domineering, and dare I say, bossy women ♀︎ in his life "no." 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence, showing Bianca and Kent when they first meet Spike and Jet. I took this screenshot from the longplay of this game that I watched by The Game Archivist.) 

 

 

 

 

 

He's a very submissive and timid person, which some people consider to be a feminine trait. Submissiveness I mean, not timidness, although I'm sure some (the stupidest among us) will argue that being timid is a feminine trait. By the end of the game, his biggest growth is him realizing that he's not cut out to be a bounty hunter, and deciding to quit and go back to a normal life, while Bianca decides to stay in the game and continue being a bounty hunter (because it was her dream and not his, and recurring theme throughout this game is dreams and people pursuing them, regardless of whether other people think they're stupid or not), or at least that was my impression. I may be a writer, but I don't want to sit here and be an armchair writer, and say that I were writing the story, that's how I would've ended it, but it is. 

 

I would've had it end with Kent deciding to quit being a bounty hunter after his experiences throughout the game, and leave it all behind to live a normal life, while Bianca continues on, realizing her mistake and realizing that she can't force her brother to also be a bounty hunter if he doesn't want to, and she can't be solely dependent on him for everything in her bounty hunting career, like finding bounties, or acquiring equipment for them. She has to start doing that stuff all on her own because hey, this is the life she chose, this is the line of work she wanted to pursue. You gotta do it yourself, girl ♀︎. Your brother's not going to be there to hold your hand 🤝 through the whole thing. And if that is how it ended, and my interpretation was correct, then good on them 👍. Because it wouldn't make much sense for Kent to still continue being a bounty hunter after everything he experienced throughout the game because his whole character arc was about him learning to stand up for himself and not let others control his life or his life choices, and learning to make his own choices on the direction of his life. And as mentioned before, Bianca pretty much forced him into it because she didn't want to go at it alone, and she made him do all the menial tasks that she was too lazy to do herself. 

 

 

 

 

(These are screenshots from Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence, from the cutscene where Jet reunites with another woman ♀︎ from his past, Ellen, who also runs a bar, just Alisa from Ganymede Elegy. I took this screenshot from the longplay I watched by The Game Archivist.) 

 

 

 

 

The third and last subplot in the game involves Jet meeting back up with another woman ♀︎ from his past named Ellen, who also happens to run a bar, and has a connection to the main villain, former ISSP officer turned vigilante, Ronald McCarthy's scheme of luring bounty heads and bounty hunters to this island 🏝️ that he controls with the fake legend about Captain H's treasure 🪎 and killing them as a way of eliminating crime for good, and also because he despises bounty hunters because he sees them as maggots (that's the exact word he uses) who are only motivated by money 💵, who no obligations, no responsibilities, and aren't being driven by a code of honor or a sense of justice. This is the second time in the franchise that Jet has met a woman ♀︎ from his past who's currently running a bar, and is tied to something shady. 

 

 

 

 (This is a screenshot from Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence, showing a close-up shot of Ellen's face, looking real shady. I meant she was tied to something shady, so I wanted to show a screenshot of her looking shady. I took this screenshot from the longplay I watched by The Game Archivist.) 

  

 

 

 

Jet has a knack for meeting women ♀︎ who later get wrapped up in some shady stuff, and betray him and point guns at him. They pretty much repeat that same moment in Ganymede Elegy, where Jet's ex-girlfriend, Alisa points a gun at him and he quickly and silently walks toward her, confident that she won't shoot him, while she keeps yelling at him to stay back and she will for sure shoot him, only for her to intentionally miss him because she doesn't actually want to kill. Only here it's with Ellen, and it's in a different context since she's working with the bad guys, although she regrets it and feels bad about helping Ronald in his scheme, and then starts helping the heroes after this little confrontation with Jet, and him convincing her to lower her weapon. Whereas Alisa was just Jet's ex-girlfriend, who dumped him for stupid reasons (in my opinion) and started dating this dumbass who got too in deep with loan sharks 💸. 

 

 

 

 

 (These are screenshots from Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence, from the cutscene I was talking about where Ellen points a gun at Jet, in a way to threaten and intimidate him, and he just walks toward her calmly, confident that she won't actually shoot him, while she keeps telling him to stay back and she will shoot. Even though when she does actually shoot, she intentionally misses because she doesn't actually want to kill Jet. And then once Jet gets close to her, he manages to get her to lower her weapon. Just like he did with Alisa in Ganymede Elegy. I took these screenshot from the longplay I watched by The Game Archivist.) 

 

 

 

 

While it isn't explicitly said, there is a chance that Jet and Ellen may had something at one point. Like, maybe after Alisa left, Jet tried something with Ellen, and it didn't work out, and the two went their separate ways, with Ellen ultimately getting married 💍. At least, that's the impression I got from the dialogue in her introduction scene at the bar. I thought they were going to have some kind of reveal that Ellen is actually the wife of Captain H and by extension, the grandmother of Bianca and Kent, who was perhaps cryogenically preserved and then unfrozen in the mid 21st century, in either the late 2060s or 2070s, sort of like Faye was. Because they show a picture of Captain H's wife or lover ❤️, who would be also Bianca and Kent's grandmother, and she bares a strong resemblance to Ellen. 

 

But alas, that's not the reveal they go with, instead the reveal is just that she's working with Ronald and helping him in his scheme to kill off bounty heads and bounty hunters with this fake legend about a long lost treasure 🪎 belonging to Captain H. I guess the implication is that Priscilla A. was Captain H's wife/lover ❤️ and Bianca and Kent's grandmother because the actual treasure is the long lost song that Steve was looking for, "Pearls." So no, Ellen's not secretly Bianca and Kent's grandma. If you want to see a story where a brother and sister meet their long lost grandmother, but she still looks really young (like almost the same age as them), then you'll have to stick to Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which I have reviewed the first season of and provided a link 🔗 to in the series section, and I do plan on reviewing the second season of sometime in the future after I get done with this. 

 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence, showing Ronald McCarthy, the main villain of the game. I took this screenshot from the longplay I watched by The Game Archivist.) 

 

 

 

 

 

Ronald is a pretty refreshing villain for the franchise though. Instead of being yet another crazy or unhinged villain who barely talks, or talks very cryptically and has some kind of delusion, we've got a villain who's fully convinced that he's in the right, and what he's doing is the right thing to do to bring justice to the star system. He has almost the same backstory as Jet, where he started as a police officer working for ISSP, but left after becoming disillusioned with the organization. Only instead of becoming a bounty hunter like Jet, Ronald decided to become a vigilante, exacting justice in his own way, by training his subordinates how to be assassins, and conducting extrajudicial killings. But Ronald isn't just going after criminals, he's going after bounty hunters too because he believes that they lack any moral convictions or principles, and aren't driven by a sense of justice like him, but instead are only driven by a desire to make money 🤑. 

 

He just sees them as greedy lowlife parasites 🤑 who only get in the way and make everything worse, while he's motivated by justice and is making things right, when the police can't or won't. Even though what he's doing is immoral, and bounty hunters do way more to stop crime than the police do because the police (the ISSP) are corrupt and inept, and largely in the pockets of the various crime syndicates that control the Solar System. He pretty much loses any right to claim moral superiority when his men ♂︎ kill Steve, a seemingly innocent man ♂︎ who just wanted to find a song by his favorite music artist. The existence of this island 🏝️ is a bit of a stretch and little bit hard to swallow because Mars is not fully terraformed in the Cowboy Bebop universe. They just have these settlements, cities, peppered here and there on the planet's surface (a lot of built out of craters left behind on the surface by asteroids ☄️ and meteors ☄️ that crash into the planet), where they recreate Earth 🌎's atmosphere (and Earth 🌎's gravity, maybe?) the best they can so that humans and other Earth creatures 🌎 can live there. There isn't a whole ocean with islands 🏝️ in it like this game makes it seem. 

 

 

 

 

(These are screenshots from Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence, showing the part where Ronald explains his evil plan to all the main characters present, and explaining his motivations. I took these screenshot from the longplay I watched by The Game Archivist.) 

 

 

 

 

Unless they built a settlement that just had a small body of water 💦 in it, like a lake, and they just built artificial islands 🏝️ in it, but it doesn't seem like this island 🏝️ is an artificial one made out of sand, it seems like it's a legit island 🏝️ with rocks and cliffs. And when we do see the island 🏝️, the liquid that's surrounding it is purple 🟣, so maybe it isn't water 💦 after all. Or maybe it is water 💦, and it only looks purple 🟣 because of the sunrise 🌅. So, I don't know what's going on there. I really don't know this island 🏝️ fits in with the lore, and the timeline of events that the show establishes about humanity's colonization of the entire Solar System. It seems like it kind of breaks the lore doesn't it? We have a potentially lore breaking plot detail and location because the people who made the game wanted to do a Treasure Island type story that pay homage to old pirate movies 🏴‍☠️, even though there are no pirates 🏴‍☠️ in the game at all, and didn't think about how such a story and location would work within the established lore of Cowboy Bebop, and how Mars colonization works within this particular universe. 

 

Neither the show nor the movie really delves that deep into the logistics on how the Mars colony works, the different human settlements that make up the entire colony, the movie went into a little bit more detail than the series did, but still didn't give us whole rundown of how the system works, and how they're able to have humans and plants and animals from Earth 🌎 live on there. But they did make it clear that the whole planet hasn't been terraformed. Whenever the characters leave or enter one of these Martian cities, we see them flying over landscapes that look like Mars how we know it to look right now, a cold, empty desert (by empty I mean, it has no life and no civilization) full of rocks and orange or red sand, or dirt. It's not at all how Mars looks in Bravest Warriors for instance. 

 

When was the last time you ever heard about that show? I haven't watched that show in years. I stopped watching it after they stopped showing it on YouTube and moved it VRV, that short-lived streaming app for cartoons and anime that almost every AniTuber (a YouTuber who focuses on anime) and storytime animated YouTuber embarrassingly did sponsorships for back in the mid-to-late 2010s. Including Emily from Emirichu, who is the only storytime animator who I'm subscribed to, though calling her that is a bit of a misnomer since her videos aren't actually animated. In fact, most so-called storytime animation YouTubers aren't. That's why I like to refer them as "storytime illustrators" rather than "storytime animators." You can’t call something animation if it’s not actually animated, and you can’t call yourself an animator if you don’t animate. It was like Quibi, only somehow even stupider 🙄. 

 

If you don’t know what Bravest Warriors is, it’s a web series that was created by Pendleton Ward, the creator of Adventure Time, for YouTube, that has the same art style and style of humor and storytelling as Adventure Time, only it’s sci-fi instead of fantasy, and it takes place in space, on other planets, including a fully terraformed Mars, which is where the main characters live. It's sort of like the difference between The Simpsons and Futurama, or Futurama and Disenchantment. Which is a fitting comparison considering Pendleton Ward is a huge fan of The Simpsons and he contributed a couch gag 🛋️ for one episode (doing it in the same art style as Adventure Time and Bravest Warrior, and essentially making it a parody of the Adventure Time intro). And it takes itself a lot less seriously than Adventure Time does. Adventure Time can get pretty pretentious, and people try to make it seem deeper than it actually is, including the creators themselves. The way people talk about Adventure Time, including the people who worked on, just comes across as pompous. Bravest Warriors, for the most part, lacks that kind of pretension, and has no allusions about what it is. That's not to say Bravest Warriors doesn't have serious moments, it does, but it doesn't focus on them on the much and it isn't constantly on trying to say something profound like Adventure Time does. 

 

It'll explore something vaguely existential, and then just move on, as if nothing ever happens, whereas Adventure Time makes the serious moments the vocal point, and really wants to say something profound, that will change your world view and the way you think. The people who made Adventure Time are genuinely convinced that they made something important, and the people who are still fans of it are genuinely convinced that they're watching something important. Whereas the creators behind Bravest Warriors, and the people who are fans of it, are a lot less pompous and self important. Which is weird since both shows were made by a lot of the same people. Only, because it was made for YouTube initially, it was able to feature more adult themes and language, with characters swearing 🤬 (saying cuss words), talking about sexual stuff, and getting into sexual situations. So, Bravest Warriors is really just a more adult version of Adventure Time, where Pendleton Ward and his team of writers and animators from Adventure Time were unconstrained by the limits of a cartoon show on a children’s network. It’s where they were able to do all the swearing 🤬 and adult jokes they weren’t able to do on Adventure Time. 

 

If Adventure Time was rated TV-PG, then if Bravest Warriors were a network TV show and had the same content, it would be rated TV-14, which is basically the TV equivalent of the PG-13 rating, or even R rating, since R movies that get aired on TV networks that aren’t HBO, or Starz, or Showtime, or any of those premium subscription channels, are rated TV-14 since they often censor them and take out all the naughty words and replace them with cleaner ones with some good ol’ fashioned dubbing. Pretty bad dubbing often times, but dubbing nonetheless. It isn’t as well known or as well regarded as Adventure Time, mostly because of Channel Frederator’s asinine decision to take the show off of YouTube (to stop uploading episodes on YouTube) and put it on VRV instead. Losing a good chunk of the show’s audience, including myself, in the process. If only the geniuses at Channel Frederator had the foresight to know that tying this show to a sinking ship like VRV was a bad idea 🤦‍♂️. Then maybe that show would’ve had a lot more longevity than it did, and been remembered a lot more than it is. 

 

While I did say earlier than my ideal ending for the game (which actually be the real ending) would be that Kent quits being a bounty hunter, while Bianca continues being one on her terms since she was the one had the real dream to become a bounty hunter, I do think that Bianca probably should've died during that scene where the main characters all confront Ellen and Ronald, and the whole scheme about luring bounty heads and bounty hunters to the island 🏝️ with a fake legend about lost treasure and then killing them is revealed. Like, just when Ronald finishes his speech about why he's doing what he's doing, and Bianca swoops in with her big gun to save everything, and trying to arrest Ronald (believing that he's just a bounty head), if I was writing that scene, I would had Ronald and his men ♂︎ kill her right then and there. Just shoot her down from her elevated position, and have a devastated Kent run over to her, and holds her in his arms as she bleeds to death 🩸, and talk to her until the life leaves her eyes, her body goes limp, and she draws her final breath. 

 

I know the characters are ultimately motivated by the death of Steve, and that's why they try to kill Ronald, but I feel like having Bianca die there would've given that scene, and the story as a whole, more emotional weight, and given Kent more of a personal stake in what he's going on. Like, rather than simply help the Bebop crew avenge the death of some guy ♂︎ he barely knew (a bounty head that he and his sister were hunting), now he's helping them to avenge the death of his twin sister. It becomes more of a revenge story for him. And it would also help explain why he decides to quit being a bounty hunter at the end, because his sister's no longer around, and there's no real reason for him to still be a bounty hunter considering that he was never cut out for it and didn't want to do it in the first place. But that's just me. If I had my way, I would have Bianca die in that scene, but if she had to survive, then I would end it in the way I said earlier where Kent quits being a bounty hunter while she continues to be one, going completely solo. 

 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence, from the cutscene where Spike meets Steve for the first time. I took this screenshot from the longplay I watched by The Game Archivist.) 

 

 

 

 

 

But the fact that Spike's subplot about him helping a guy ♂︎ find a long lost song, does mean that this game sort of predicted the lost media craze. Like it's literally about trying to find lost media. This Japan exclusive 🇯🇵 Cowboy Bebop game for the PS2 in 2005 featured a subplot about lost media a whole decade before lost media really became popular online. Although lost media, and finding lost media didn't truly take off until the late 2010s and early 2020s. The 2020s were really when the lost media craze kicked into high gear. And this game pretty much predicted it. Sure, it ends with Steve getting shot and dying, but at least his lost media search was successful since just before he dies, he asks Spike to play him the song "Diamonds 💎," believing that he failed to find "Pearls," but instead Spike plays him "Pearls," which he found while exploring the island 🏝️, and Steve is pleasantly surprised. He got to die knowing that he found the song after all, and that his search wasn't in vein. Getting to listen to a song by your favorite artist, what a way to go, what song would you listen to before you die? His death does kind of mirror Roco Bonnaro's death in Waltz for Venus, since that was the last time Spike made a friend with someone who was a good person who happened to bounty head, and was undeservedly killed.

 

The two songs, "Diamonds 💎" and Pearls" were created specifically for the game by the show and movie's composer, Yoko Kanno and her band, the Seatbelts, and unlike the other original songs throughout the franchise, these two songs are diegetic and they exist in-universe. Sure, they're credited to a fictional artist, Priscilla A., but they still exist as is within the universe itself. They characters hear these songs and react to them, and they play a huge part of the plot, since the motivation of one of the main characters is finding one of those songs. The Bebop crew listening to the song, "Diamonds 💎" when Spike finds a futuristic portable music player in a trash can at the aquarium in the prologue to the game (which acts as a tutorial section), is the inciting incident, it's the thing that sets up the plot, what the main plot of the game is going to be, and then Spike meeting Steve is really what kicks the plot into high gear, and sends everyone on this crazy journey. 

 

But they did also make one other original song for this game, "Einstein Groovin'," which plays during the end credits, and seems to be non diegetic unlike the other two songs. Of the three original songs created for the game, "Einstein Groovin'" is probably my favorite, but the other two songs are pretty beautiful also, especially "Pearls," which is pretty difficult to find a good quality sounding version of on YouTube because of copyright ©. I'm so glad that I bought the CD 💿 that the three songs were included on, Tank! THE! BEST!, and I downloaded the songs off of iTunes, so that I could listen to "Pearls" in an unaltered state and in good sound quality. Though if you watch the longplay that I watched on YouTube, you won't be hearing any of the music. Neither the original songs, nor the ones recycled from the series and movie ♻️. 

 

To avoid getting a copyright claim ©, the YouTuber who recorded the longplay removed all the music from the game, and replaced it with the royalty free jazz music that doesn't really fit the mood of the gameplay or cutscenes, and completely kills the vibe that the game is trying to go for, which is recapturing the vibe of the series. Plus, as I said, two of the songs play a huge role in the game's story, so it does hurt the game's story when you can't actually hear either of those two songs. And the movie to a lesser extent. Since I did mention the gameplay, I should talk about that for a little bit. This is a video game after all. Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who never played the game for himself, and thus didn't truly experience the gameplay and the gameplay loop first hand. The gameplay for the most part is your standard action beat 'em up gameplay, where you go up against waves of bad guys, and you beat them up until they're all dead. 

 

You can hit the enemies multiple times to get combos, though I'm not really what you get out of this since there isn't really a point system in the game (from what the longplay showed), and you don't earn points from any combos you're able to score, and there are no unlockables that you can unlock using the points you've earned. Since there are no points in this game. So, the combo system is just there to give you something to do during gameplay, or assume you by having the enemies make the same funny pain noises they make when you hit them. There are also shooting sections where you use your guns, since all three of the playable characters have guns, puzzles, mainly to unlock doors and progress further into the game, and even flying sections, where you fly one of the playable characters' spaceships. Mainly Spike's since he's the one whose ship you use the most in the game. Which makes sense, he is the main character after all. 

 

There even these sections where you run away from any enemy spaceship firing at you or something, and the camera perspective is in front of the character rather than in back. There were similar sections in Resident Evil 6, and while I understand that such sections are mean to create a sense of danger and urgency in the player, I don't really like them that much because you can't actually see where you're going. All you see is the character running towards you, and aren't actually make decisions on where to go, and you have to just hope that you're heading in the right direction. The third person run away from danger segments are little bit different in this game than in Resident Evil 6, since the view is a little bit more top down and you can kind of see where you're going, but it's still not my favorite. I could do without those kinds of sections I was playing this. 

 

 

 

 

(These are screenshots from Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence, showing different gameplay moments featuring Jet and Spike respectively. I took these screenshots from the longplay I watched by The Game Archivist.) 

 

 

 

 

This does seems like a game that I would've enjoyed as a kid if I got the chance to play it (if it was released in the US 🇺🇸), or even now since I'm a huge Cowboy Bebop fan, and the gameplay generally looks fun. The only part doesn't look like it would be much fun is this really long and tedious section where you're playing as Jet, and you have to diffuse a bunch of bombs that were planted by the bad guys inside the Bebop. It just goes on forever, and even I was getting bored watching it in the longplay 🥱. As mentioned before, there are only three playable characters in the game, Spike, Faye, and Jet, meaning that Edward isn't playable in the game. Instead, acts as a sort of guide throughout the game, giving you tips, and telling you where to go and what to do. 

 

However, for some reason, they decided not have to her voice acted during gameplay whenever she pops up on screen to talk to you. But she's voice acted during cutscenes, so I don't know why they made this choice. In other video games, even if a character isn't playable and is just there to give you tips and directions, and tell you where to go and what to do, they're still voice acted. Particularly, during tutorial sections. My only guess as to why they did this, is that the game was rushed, and they didn't have time to have her be fully voice acted during gameplay. But then it's like, the game came out in 2005, which was 6 years after the show ended, since it started in 1998 and ended in 1999, and 4 years after the movie came out, since the movie came out in 2001. It should not have been rushed. 

 

They had plenty of time to work on it, and get it right. It's not like they had to release this right away to catch the momentum of the series, since most of that momentum, especially in Japan 🇯🇵 was already gone by that point since the Japanese market 🇯🇵 had moved onto other things. And this game was only released in Japan 🇯🇵, so...🤷‍♂️. There probably won't be another Cowboy Bebop game anytime soon, but if there is, then I do hope that they make Ed a playable character. Either as one of the main playable characters, or as an unlockable character. I'm sure they could find a way to incorporate her in a way that feels organic. I mean, they did in the show and the movie, giving her a sizeable role (the movie has a whole scene dedicated to her, where she and Ein track down Lee Sampson and find his whereabouts using the hat he left behind when he got chased down by Faye in an earlier scene), so, why can a video game?