Cowboy Bebop

* Cowboy Bebop (Manga)
* Cowboy Bebop (TV Series)

***Cowboy Bebop*** (Japanese: カウボーイビバップ, Hepburn: *Kaubōi Bibappu*) is a Japanese neo-noir science fiction anime television series, which originally ran from 1998 to 1999. It was created and animated by Sunrise, led by a production team of director Shinichirō Watanabe, screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, mechanical designer Kimitoshi Yamane, and composer Yoko Kanno, who are collectively billed as Hajime Yatate.

## About

In 2071, roughly fifty years after an accident with a hyperspace gateway which made Earth almost uninhabitable, humanity has colonized most of the rocky planets and moons of the Solar System. Amid a rising crime rate, the Inter Solar System Police (ISSP) set up a legalized contract system, in which registered bounty hunters (also referred to as "Cowboys") chase criminals and bring them in alive in return for a reward. The series' protagonists are bounty-hunters working from the spaceship *Bebop*. The original crew are Spike Spiegel, an exiled former hitman of the criminal Red Dragon Syndicate, and Jet Black, a former ISSP officer. They are later joined by Faye Valentine, an amnesiac con artist; Edward, an eccentric child, skilled in hacking; and Ein, a genetically-engineered Pembroke Welsh Corgi with human-like intelligence. Over the course of the series, the team get involved in disastrous mishaps leaving them without money, while often confronting faces and events from their past: these include Jet's reasons for leaving the ISSP, and Faye's past as a young woman from Earth injured in an accident and cryogenically frozen to save her life.

## Music

The music for *Cowboy Bebop* was composed by Yoko Kanno. Kanno formed the blues and jazz band Seatbelts to perform the series' music. According to Kanno, the music was one of the first aspects of the series to begin production, before most of the characters, story, or animation had been finalized. The genres she used for its composition were western, opera, and jazz. Watanabe noted that Kanno did not score the music exactly the way he told her to. He stated, "She gets inspired on her own, follows up on her own imagery, and comes to me saying 'this is the song we need for *Cowboy Bebop*', and composes something completely on her own." Kanno herself was sometimes surprised at how pieces of her music were used in scenes, sometimes wishing it had been used elsewhere, though she also felt that none of their uses were "inappropriate". She was pleased with the working environment, finding the team very relaxed in comparison with other teams she had worked with. Watanabe further explained that he would take inspiration from Kanno's music after listening to it and create new scenes for the story from it. These new scenes in turn would inspire Kanno and give her new ideas for the music and she would come to Watanabe with even more music. Watanabe cited as an example, "some songs in the second half of the series, we didn't even ask her for those songs, she just made them and brought them to us." He commented that while Kanno's method was normally "unforgivable and unacceptable", it was ultimately a "big hit" with *Cowboy Bebop*. Watanabe described his collaboration with Kanno as "a game of catch between the two of us in developing the music and creating the TV series *Cowboy Bebop*". Since the series' broadcast, Kanno and the Seatbelts have released seven original soundtrack albums, two singles and extended plays, and two compilations through label Victor Entertainment.