Trivia / Cowboy Bebop

• Acting for Two
  • Kevin Seymour playe two of the Three Old Men, Antonio and Jobim as well as Tongpu, The Mad Pierrot.
  • Steve Kramer plays the third old man Carlos as well as Whitney Matsumoto.
  • Barry Stigler plays Udai Taxim and Ed's father Siniz Appledelhi.
  • Daran Norris plays Cowboy Andy as well as Vincent Volaju.
• Anime First: The series is an anime original, though manga adaptations would follow.
• Adored by the Network: From the day it first aired on [adult swim], Cowboy Bebop would be aired in reruns nonstop for several years, to the point where it holds the honor of being the most rerun series on the network. It also holds the honor of not just being the first anime on the network, but one of the first shows that aired on the network.
• All-Star Cast: Kōichi Yamadera and Megumi Hayashibara were already a well-known combo when they began working on Cowboy Bebop, while Unshō Ishizuka was in demand due to his work on Pokémon. The guest cast was also crammed full of veterans and future stars including Norio Wakamoto, Maaya Sakamoto, Joji Nakata, and Kenyuu Horiuchi.
• Children Voicing Children: Aoi Tada was only two years older than Ed's self-professed age of 13 when she was cast.
• Completely Different Title:
  • A single language variation. All episodes have both a Japanese and an English title shown. For most episodes, the Japanese title is just the English title in katakana. A handful, however, are translated rather than just being the same in both languages: "Norainu no Strut" ("Stray Dog Strut"), "Datenshi-tachi no Ballad" ("Ballad of Fallen Angels"), "Akuma o Awaremu Uta" ("Sympathy for the Devil"), "Ganymede Bojō" ("Ganymede Elegy"), and "Yoseatsume Blues" ("Mish-Mash Blues").
  • Furthermore, two episodes have completely different meanings for the Japanese and English titles: "Toys in the Attic" is "Yamiyo no Hevi Rokku", or "Heavy Rock of the Dark Night"; and "Pierrot Le Fou" is "Dōkeshi no Chinkonka", or "Requiem for a Clown". Both of these Japanese titles include the musical style Theme Naming that the English titles lack.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The Trope Namer is a newspaper's inaccurate caption of a screenshot, to the point that every single word except "at" and the photo credit "Bandai" is specifically, individually wrong:
  • The character pictured goes by Ed.
  • Ed is a girl.
  • "Cowboy," the slang term for bounty hunter used in the world of the series, refers to the main characters' profession rather than naming anybody. Ed is also not one, being the crew's Tagalong Kid and a hacker, not a professional bounty hunter.
  • It's Bebop, not "BeBop".
  • Bebop is the name of the main characters' ship, not (again) any person.^note It also references the music style featured in the soundtrack.
  • The only part of the ship's computer actually shown in the picture is the monitor.
  • Ed doesn't own the computer.^note Or the monitor.
• Creator Couple: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Cristina Hernández voiced Katerina and her husband Ricardo Tejedo voiced Jet Black.
• Crossdressing Voices: In the Hungarian dub, Ed is voiced by the male Márk Jelinek after the translator mistook her name as male.
• Defictionalization: The tape and player for it in "Speak Like a Child" are delivered by helicopter-like robots. Delivery robots showed up around 2011 or so.
• Development Hell: The live-action film was announced sometime between 2005-2007 from 20th Century Fox, but nothing came of it since. Keanu Reeves, who was supposed to play Spike Spiegel, has given conflicting statements about his involvement in it. The last time anything would be heard about the project was in 2013. It wouldn't be until 2017 when another live-action adaptation was announced, this time as a TV series.
• Distanced from Current Events: "Sympathy for the Devil", "Waltz for Venus", and "Cowboy Funk" were removed during the initial TV run in response to 9/11, while "Wild Horses" was removed after the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere in 2003.
• Dueling Dubs: There are three Latin American Spanish dubs for the TV series: The first one done for Locomotion in early 2000s and two new ones produced in 2021: one by Funimation and other by Netflix. This was also applied for the Brazilian market for the last two Latin American releases, since the Brazilian broadcast through Locomotion didn't include a dub for the series.
• Gossip Evolution: Some fans claim that Shinichiro Watanabe enjoys the English dub of the series more than the original Japanese version. This stems from a Q&A where he said of the dub of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie:
  "My English isn't that good, but I thought it sounded very good."
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Being owned by Bandai Entertainment, the rights to the series were hanging in limbo after the company's collapse until Sunrise started auctioning their Bandai-licensed shows to other distributors. Funimation would end up being the lucky company who acquired the rights.
  • The movie Knockin' on Heaven's Door, at one point being widely available, has become incredibly hard to find as it is not available on any streaming platforms^note Funimation's website states it is available on there, however that is not actually the case, isn't available for digital purchase, and was not included on the complete series Blu-Ray. The only current means to watch it officially is to buy an out-of-print DVD second hand, or a PAL-region exclusive Blu-Ray.
• No Dub for You: In Brazil, the TV series was broadcast in two channels, but both only with subtitles: Locomotion in 2001, and I-Sat in 2016 (for some reason, this one used the English dub instead, probably acquired from Funimation). Only the movie got a dub in Portuguese because the TV series and movie have different licenses. This was subsequently subverted in August 2021 (23 years after the series' premiere), when Funimation announced a dub in the language for the series, with most of the movie cast returning in the series.
  • That said, it became double subverted some months later, when the Australian feed of Netflix revealed a second dub in Brazilian Portuguese for the series. The Funimation one lacked the original voice of Ed, but the original VA reprises her role on the Netflix version.^note While it seems like an example of The Original Darrin trope, it technically isn't. The dub by Netflix actually was produced first but was released after the Funimation one.
• No Export for You:
  • There's a PlayStation game that was only released in Japan.
  • There's a PlayStation 2 game that was only released in Japan.
  • It took a long time for North America to get the Blu-ray set. Even the UK got it long before North America did. So, techincally speaking, you could say this is a case of Late Export for You.
• The Other Darrin: Several characters for Funimation's Latin American Spanish dub have been recast, both living and dead:
  • Herman López and Abraham Vega replaced the late Maynardo Zavala and Enrique Mederos as Bull and Punch, respectively.
  • Likewise, Jet Black is voiced by Ricardo Tejedo as a replacement of the late Alfonso Ramírez.
  • Katerina is voiced by Cristina Hernández in both Funimation and Netflix dubs, replacing Laura Torres from the Locomotion dub, through she returns in the Funimation dub as VT instead.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Downplayed with Norio Wakamoto as Vicious. While the character is still a villain, most of the time he’s The Stoic, in contrast to Wakamoto’s usual Evil Is Hammy approach.
  • While Cowboy Andy fits the usual comically hammy characters Daran Norris voices, his role as the deadly serious terrorist Vincent Volaju in the movie doesn't to say the least.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Faye Valentine was this for Elsa Covián, since, at the time, she was normally typecasted on voicing cute little girls (or boys), and some people even raised some eyebrows on her voicing a Femme Fatale like Faye. Luckily, she did a really good job on voicing her, just like the rest of the cast.
• Referenced by...:
  • Appears in the video game Sunrise Eiyuutan alongside other Sunrise anime. And despite the series not having any real mecha, Spike pilots his Swordfish in Super Robot Wars T.
  • A PBS Kids station in Boston used "Tank!" for a bumper advertising that the channel would be running 24/7.
• Role Reprise: In the 2021 Latin American Spanish dub:
  • Yamil Atala returns as Spike, though incidentally, he took over for Genaro Vásquez for the film.
  • Elsa Covián and Isabel Martiñón reprise their roles as Faye and Ed.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: Cowboy Bebop only ran for 26 episodes and a movie, but it's one of the most famous and acclaimed anime of all time, especially in the West, and has gone on to inspire countless works across many mediums.
• Shrug of God: Did Spike really die? According to Word of God, it's up to the person watching to decide.
• Star-Making Role:
  • This was the first starring role in an anime series for voice actor Kōichi Yamadera.
  • While they were already established voice actors prior to being cast, this series would cement Steve Blum, Wendee Lee, and Beau Billingslea's popularity among Western fans.
• Technology Marches On:
  • A few episodes imply that technology evolved from commonplace 1990s technology to fictional highly advanced technology of 2071 without CDs, USB drives, touch screen cell phones, streaming devices, digital TVs, or digital computers as a stepping stone. For example, "My Funny Valentine" implies that cell phones with antennas were commonplace in 2014 which in real life were made obsolete by the mid-2000s.
  • One episode hinges on analogue TV's less-than-perfect signals. Faye gets Spike mixed up with her mob contact because all she can make out from the static is the guy's suit and 'do, which Spike shares.
  • Another centers around getting a BetaMax cassette player for a tape containing a movie Faye shot with her college class as part of a time capsule — BetaMax players being completely subsumed by VHS in the '90s; VHS itself subsumed by DVD, Blu-ray, Netflix, and video game consoles since around 2005. This one is very deliberate though, since VHS was already the standard when the show was written, but BetaMax players remained in production in Japan even for a few years after Cowboy Bebop's release. The idea is that the students were deliberately recording their messages on an antique.
  • Everyone smokes real cigarettes. Not one vaporizer is seen.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Ed was originally going to be a boy, but was changed to a girl in the final stage. The original boy design of Ed appears in session 5 stealing an adult magazine.
  • Knockin' on Heaven's Door was originally going to elaborate on Spike's backstory as part of the Red Dragon Syndicate. However, it was determined that one of the defining characteristics of the series was the lack of exposition or backstory, in addition to all of the fan theories surrounding it. As a result, it became an interquel.
  • Keanu Reeves was originally considered to play Spike in the live-action film.
• Word of God: Shinichiro Watanabe confirmed in a 2019 interview that Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop, Carole & Tuesday, and Space☆Dandy all exist within the same universe, and in that chronological order.

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