It first screened on Cartoon Network's late night programming block Adult Swim in September 2001, and was an immediate success. Plus, it had an amazing, eclectic musical score by Yoko Kanno and her band Seatbelts.Ĭowboy Bebop premiered in Japan in 1998, but it took three years to reach the US. And while the show delivered plenty of exciting action, it also put equal emphasis on the characters and their relationships with each other, and dealt with a variety of philosophical concepts.
The show combined many influences, from epic space fantasy and dark cyberpunk to comedy, westerns, and film noir, and made frequent reference to classic movies and different musical genres.
But when this deal fell through, Watanabe developed a more adult series alongside writer Keiko Nobumoto, that focused on a team of intergalactic bounty hunters who travel through space in their ship the Bebop. Pokémon was one show of course, and Cowboy Bebop was another.Ĭowboy Bebop was created by director Shinichirō Watanabe, and began life as a sci-fi show designed to promote a Bandai toyline. It wasn't until the late '90s that several titles helped break anime to a much wider audience.
While anime continued to grow in popularity in the West throughout the '80s and early '90s, for the most part it remained a cult genre with dedicated fans in the US served by releases on small video labels.