Anime
When it comes to anime, there is an endless list of shows and films to choose from. However, there are a few that are truly the cream of the crop that have cemented their place in pop culture. You’d be hard pressed to find a nerdy person who is not at all familiar with Naruto or Bleach. And we’d dare say that same sentiment goes for Cowboy Bebop. From its iconic theme song and opening sequence to its ensemble of unforgettable characters, Cowboy Bebop is a classic. However, many fans don’t know that this show almost met a swift ending before it even got a chance to truly start.
Steve Blum, who voiced Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop, talked about how the show almost didn’t exist during his appearance on Jim Cumming’s podcast. He noted that it took a lot of years to blow up because it wasn’t very popular in Japan when it was recorded. Sadly, Cowboy Bebop suffered from a lack of marketing direction as well as weirdly airing out of order in Japan.
So the licensing fee to bring it to other audiences was really cheap and easily obtainable. A few years later, Toonami aired Cowboy Bebop in early September 2001 and the rest, as they say, was history. It hit a worldwide English speaking audience and became a certified classic with only 26 episodes in total.
As we know, Netflix tried its hand at a live-action Cowboy Bebop that didn’t fare well with audiences overall, leading to its cancellation after one season. Personally, we thought it was a decent adaptation for a show that feels incredibly hard to bring to live-action. It is basically physically impossible to replicate some of the character’s movements and the atmosphere of it is hard to capture as well.
No matter what, we are so happy that Cowboy Bebop didn’t fall into the abyss so we could see this space cowboy do his thing.
