For the Netflix adaptation:
The following have their own pages:
Other examples:
- Alternative Character Interpretation: While he's still undoubtedly a neglectful parent, Ed's father being uncertain whether Ed is his "son" or his "daughter" could also be interpreted as him being supportive of her (potentially) nonstandard gender identity. The fact that he's just as much of a ditzy, non-malicious Cloudcuckoolander as Ed only heightens the ambiguity.
- Base-Breaking Character:
- Despite his initial popularity, Vicious grew divisive over time. While he's recognized by many fans as The Chessmaster who puts all the pieces in place brilliantly, has epic fight scenes, and has an intriguing code of warrior's respect, not to mention significantly darkening the tone every time he appears, Vicious has also received criticism from people who find him to be an edgy Cliché Storm whose sparing appearances and minimal dialogue leave something to be desired in terms of depth, especially for the show's overarching antagonist and the man who (probably) kills Spike Spiegel. Whether his minimalist, precise usage and his enigmatic Warrior Poet personality make him feel like a genuine threat or a plot device who exists only to kill off characters and move the story along have made him one of the more controversial characters in the show, even among those who otherwise like the overarching storytelling.
- Radical Ed. Some consider her to be an endearing and hilarious kid who adds some necessary levity to the show thanks to her bizarre antics and is a perfect fit for the Bebop crew due to her hacker skills and being able to bring out the crew's better traits, while others found her to be insufferable and obnoxious, arguing her antics contrast too much with the show's grounded and serious tone. She also has the least development and depth amongst the crew, remaining mostly the same throughout the show, unlike the rest of the Bebop crew, which, depending on who you ask, either strengthens or weakens her as a character.
- Bizarro Episode:
- "Toys in the Attic" deals with a seemingly sentient mold that attacks the crew and hunts Spike, and it ends with Ed "defeating" the mold by mistaking it for manjū
and eating it whole. It's never referenced or talked about again. - In what is a fairly grounded sci-fi series, "Pierrot Le Fou" is just out there. As Spike does battle with a super-powered Super-Soldier Serial Killer who can, among other things, fly, block bullets with a force-field and has the personality of a sadistic 6-year-old.
- "Toys in the Attic" deals with a seemingly sentient mold that attacks the crew and hunts Spike, and it ends with Ed "defeating" the mold by mistaking it for manjū
- Complete Monster:
- Vicious rose in the Red Dragon Syndicate from a young hitman to their most feared, dangerous member. When his best friend Spike Spiegel and girlfriend Julia have an affair behind his back and plan to leave the Red Dragon, Vicious gleefully takes the opportunity to try to force Julia to kill Spike, lest he murder both. Spike and Julia flee the Syndicate, while Vicious, who believes the Red Dragon should continue its days of gang wars and bloodshed, remains to grow more powerful and plot revenge, luring Spike out by killing their old mentor through massacring a peace summit the man was attending. Later on coldly killing a man he betrayed and left to be arrested for Vicious' own crimes, Vicious also sets in motion his plot to take over the Red Dragon, having the current heads murdered in a firefight alongside their loyalists. Gathering the survivors under his iron-fisted rule, Vicious uses them as pawns to lure Spike out for one last battle, caring nothing for the countless killed as Spike attacks their headquarters, nor Julia's death by his men attacking Spike.
- "The Van", Wang, Sou, and Ping Long, are the seldom seen yet sinister ruling triumvirate of the Red Dragon Syndicate. Over their long rule, the Van maintain a policy of executing any who attempt to resign, and when Vicious kills their loyal capo, merely arrogantly assert their dominance without showing any care. When their soothsayer indicates Vicious finally intends to turn on them, the Van opt to capture him alive and make an example of him by having him publicly executed within the Red Dragon headquarters, murder his entire faction and even gunning down innocent civilians who so much as knew him.
- Knockin' on Heaven's Door: Lee Sampson is a teenage hacker addicted to video games and thrills, who has decided to try his hand at being a "real terrorist" just for fun and infamy. Allying with Vincent Volaju, Sampson uses his hacking skills to help Vincent find dispersal methods for his lethal nanovirus, and works with him to bomb a metropolitan area and unleash the virus, killing dozens and endangering hundreds more. Having such disregard for human life that he reacts to Vincent killing an innocent man with less emotion than losing at a video game, Sampson is ultimately hoping to use his skills to ensure Vincent's plan of total genocide of all life on Mars succeeds, and takes a special joy in broadcasting a haunting message for the entire planet that foretells its coming annihilation.
- Crazy Is Cool:
- Some of Spike's plans are pretty eccentric, and a few of them are suicidal.
- Mad Pierrot is a dapper gentleman in a suit and top hat, with a body shape that's almost perfectly round like a balloon. He's as fast and agile as a rubber ball, almost completely unstoppable, and crazy as a loon:
Pierrot: Hello, gentlemen. I journeyed here in order to take your lives.- Doohan the mechanic coming to save Spike in the Columbia Space Shuttle!? Hell, the very first shot of Doohan is him walking into frame apparently not caring that he's on fire.
- Edward usually is in her own little world, but whenever she's set on something, this is the result. In her first appearance, she outsmarts the police, hacks into government satellites to find her new AI friend, carves a smiley face into the continent with a laser from said AI, keeps tabs on the Bebop and manages to blackmail them into joining the crew, and has a little fun taking the ship for a spin remotely from her laptop.
- Creepy Awesome: Vincent Volaju in the movie and Tongpu, a.k.a. Mad Pierrot.
- Death of the Author: Shinichirō Watanabe encourages viewers to interpret whether Spike dies or not as they will, but seems to personally prefer the conclusion that he's just sleeping. Although considering his tone, the translation of what he said, and the fact that sleep and derealization are such prominent themes in the story, it's hard to know if he was being sarcastic or cheeky, or just how much.
- Die for Our Ship: Spike/Faye fans tend to really dislike Julia, who has the added disadvantage that not only is she canonically Spike's ex-girlfriend, but also that his feelings for her are very explicit and major driving parts of her character. The fact she canonically gets explicitly killed at the series' end, whereas Spike's death is ambiguous, doesn't lessen the dislike from those who ship Spike with Faye.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- A lot of fans regard Andy very fondly. Teddy Bomber from the same episode is also one of the few one-shot villains fans remember.
- Tongpu is another rare instance of a one episode villain leaving a huge impression on the fanbase. He's memorable for his terrifying presence, awesome super powers and surprisingly tragic backstory and death.
- Wen, the Creepy Child of episode 6, is probably the third best remembered one-shot villain of the show, particularly due to his harmonica playing skills and having a memorable Alas, Poor Villain death that even serves as foreshadowing for how the series ends.
- Evil Is Cool: Vicious is a pretty entertaining antagonist and his backstory and his betrayal of everyone is generally seen as a good part of the story. Not to mention, he dresses in black, wields a katana and has a cormorant as a pet. Vincent from the movie also counts.
- Fair for Its Day: While the show gets criticized in modern analyses for its stereotypical depiction of racial and sexual minorities, it's worth noting that the world of Cowboy Bebop is filled with a wide range of diverse characters across races, sizes, ethnic groups, gender identities, and sexualities, with the anime rarely bringing attention to it and mostly treating such characters in a very casual and normal manner, something that even a lot of modern anime today struggles to achieve.
- Genius Bonus:
- In The Movie, when all the classic war planes are taking off one of the planes is piloted by the three old guys. As they're taking off one of them asks the others where they're going and gets the (incorrect) response that they're "going to sink the Bismarck". The plane they are flying in is the same model of plane that delivered the crippling torpedo shot to the Bismarck. In a further bonus the name of that model of plane is Swordfish.
- In the two halves of the finale, Jet and Spike make references to The Snows of Kilimanjaro and the Japanese children's book The Cat Who Died a Million Times. Both deal with characters who view the world in terms similar to Spike, and both savage that view mercilessly.
- Spike's Jericho pistol has a small Laser Sight mounted on it, but it never seems to be turned on. This is because it's an infrared sight that's Invisible to Normals designed to work in tandem with his cybernetic eye.
- In The Movie, when all the classic war planes are taking off one of the planes is piloted by the three old guys. As they're taking off one of them asks the others where they're going and gets the (incorrect) response that they're "going to sink the Bismarck". The plane they are flying in is the same model of plane that delivered the crippling torpedo shot to the Bismarck. In a further bonus the name of that model of plane is Swordfish
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While Cowboy Bebop was a commercial hit in Japan and is still respected there, it's one of the most beloved anime ever in Europe and especially in America. It's easy to understand why considering the series uses so many American action movie and Western tropes; at times it seems like it was made for a Western audience.
- Growing the Beard:
- The first four sessions of the show are fairly standard Monster of the Week trysts, only really serving to establish the characters and setting while not offering much in the way of artistic compulsion. That all changes with session 5, "Ballad of Fallen Angels", which introduces the show's continuous exploration of Spike's past and adds a level of Myth Arc and character drama not previously seen up to that point, and afterwards the series only exponentially grows in quality.
- Incidentally, the show's English dub took an identical path of progression, starting out fairly shaky for the first four episodes before taking a major upwards leap in "Ballad of Fallen Angels" and rapidly establishing itself as one of the greatest and most enduring English dubs in voice acting history.
- Harsher in Hindsight: In "Wild Horses" Doohan's secret project turns out to be the space shuttle Columbia, now a long-disused antique undergoing restoration, which he uses to rescue Spike when the Swordfish is disable in space, then has a Reentry Scare when the thermal tiles are damaged, but safely crash lands. In 2003, the real Columbia disintegrated on reentry, killing everyone on board, which was later revealed to be caused by damage to the thermal protection tiles.
- Heartwarming in Hindsight:
- The relationship between Spike and Julia ended with their deaths—but their respective English voice actors, Steve Blum and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, entered into a relationship that saw them get married.
- With time it's possible to see Columbia's presence in the episode "Wild Horses" as this. Here the space shuttle survived far longer, and brought everyone back in one piece after one last mission.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Back in the early 2000s, some advertisements mistakenly stated that Cowboy Bebop was a part of Toonami, which was still airing on Cartoon Network at the time. Fast forward to 2012 where the series finally made its debut on Toonami, albeit as a holdover from [adult swim] Action.
- A character voiced by Maaya Sakamoto named Stella.
- "Cowboy Funk":
- There's another Andy who also loved to play cowboy and appeared more than three years earlier before "Cowboy Funk" aired.
- The episode ends with Andy becoming a samurai. The hindsight comes in the form of Samurai Champloo, which features a samurai who's an expy of Spike.
- The villain is named "Teddy Bomber" and at one point, he dons a Teddy Bear costume. Toy Story 3 came out a decade later and the teddy bear turned out to be the Big Bad.
- The plot of the PlayStation 2 video game features the crew of the Bebop on a hunt for the lost treasure of a legendary Space Pirate named "Captain H." It appears there's no need for a "pirated" version as they meet the real deal in Super Robot Wars T.
- This anime wouldn't be the last time Melissa Fahn voiced a quirky, goggle-wearing preteen computer expert.
- The monkey retrovirus from "Gateway Shuffle" is much funnier in light of the Return to Monke meme.
- Ed is a red-haired hacker who travels with a corgi. Cue Infinity Train in which the protagonist of that series is a red-haired coder who travels with a corgi.
- Ho Yay:
- Gren admits to Faye that he is "not interested in women," and much of his interaction with Vicious could be read as jilted former lovers. At the very least, it's very much in Vicious' character to be aware of Gren's affections and manipulating him through them.
- Ed rubbing her head against Faye's thigh in "Ganymede Elegy", in a cutesy child-crush sense. Also, Faye's constant glancing at Julia in "The Real Folk Blues".
- Hype Backlash: Considering its status as an apparently universally beloved anime that is so great that people should like it even if they don't like anime, someone is bound to be disappointed by it. Even if a viewer likes the series' style, the episodic stories that the show focuses on can be seen by some as underwhelmingly average.
- I Am Not Shazam: No character is actually named "Cowboy Bebop". "Cowboy" is an in-universe slang term for bounty hunters, while the ship used by the main group of hunters is named the Bebop. Referring to the Bebop as such is practically a fandom Berserk Button.
- Tongpu, the Acrofatic Monster Clown, is often mistakenly called "Pierrot", after his alias "Mad Pierrot" and the episode's title "Pierrot le Fou", which literally means "Pierrot the Madman".
- It Was His Sled: Anime fans to whom the ending isn't spoiled are a rare breed. Spike dies... Or does he?
- Jerkass Woobie: It's impossible not to feel bad for Tongpu when he cries for his mother after Spike throws a knife into his leg.
- Memetic Mutation:
- SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY...
- SEE YOU IN SUPER ROBOT WARS SPACE COWBOY...Explanation
- SPIKE DIES.
- Related to the spoiler above and much more common nowadays: "Bang", or "You're gonna carry that weight."
- "Don't talk to me or my son ever again". Explanation
- "I love the kind of woman that can kick my ass."Explanation
- SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY...
- Moe:
- Edward, full stop. She's like a little sister you would love to have.
- Ein, he's a Welsh Corgi, one of the most adorable puppies ever, so yes he's definitely this.
- Faye as a child.
- Moral Event Horizon:
- Udai Taxim breaks it through his Establishing Character Moment, which is breaking out of jail and slaughtering everyone inside who isn't assisting him.
- Vicious breaks it by betraying Gren, who was arrested, imprisoned and experimented on with a nasty drug that changes his body, making him develop breasts. This is despite Gren being loyal to him.
- Narm:
- Spike's arch-enemy and former ally goes by the name of Vicious. Although many people say that Faye's reaction to hearing him introduce himself by name to her helps to subvert it and effectively establish him as someone to be feared.
- The ending of the episode "Pierrot le Fou". Let's just say the sight of a grown man squirming on the ground crying out for his mommy just before being stepped on by a big goofy dog thing doesn't exactly help his previously established image as a stone cold assassin who is Immune to Bullets and kills for the love of killing.
- Narm Charm:
- Specifically, the sight of a preteen Faye in a cheerleader getup giving a cutesy cheer to encourage her future self should be utterly ridiculous. And yet, it's the one time she's shown to be genuinely happy, she's utterly adorable, and Megumi Hayashibara delivers her lines like a young girl might, with all the awkward enthusiasm you'd expect; makes it one of the series' most memorable scenes.
- Tongpu's Villainous Breakdown should be silly and hard to take seriously, yet can still come off as just as terrifying and creepy as anything else he does, precisely because it's so childish and greatly contrasts his previously established image as a stone cold assassin. The saccharine goofy parade and the carnival music emphasize the contrast, making the scene even more creepy.
- Nausea Fuel:
- In the third episode, Spike's response to Jet pointing out a "No Smoking" sign is to pretend to swallow his cigarette.
- Spike opening the disused fridge in "Toys in the Attic" and seeing the incredibly spoiled contents of it. No wonder he shuts the door looking so horrified afterwards.
- Once Original, Now Common: While this series is still among the pantheon of anime classics, some aspects are not perceived as they once were:
- The English dub is something this series has been praised for. However, given that the quality of dubbing in anime has improved since 2000, this isn't as big of a selling point as it once was.
- While Spike is an indisputably popular character for his badassery and cool attitude, he ends up coming across like a clone of countless other generic cool guys that are a dime a dozen in anime that followed.
- One-Scene Wonder:
- Wen, the Creepy Child (but not really) from "Sympathy for the Devil".
- Mad Pierrot was a villain of the week who only appeared in one episode, but being made of pure Nightmare Fuel made him one of the most memorable characters in the series.
- Andy, a oneshot Small Name, Big Ego Rival Fauxreigner Upper-Class Twit, is memorable for the exact opposite reason. His episode, "Cowboy Funk", is easily one of the funniest in the series. He showed up just two episodes after Pierrot, funnily enough. The comedy stands out all the more for being the last lighthearted episode before it takes the final plunge into darker themes and tragedy. He must have been popular with someone important, since he has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in The Movie in his "Musashi" getup.
- The "alien" from "Toys in the Attic", a small, borderline indestructible Blob Monster that picks the leads off one by one during the episode. Despite being a sci-fi series, it's the only "alien," really a mutated rock lobster kept in a moldy fridge for a year, the crew ever encounters.
- Presumed Flop: The series is often brought up as an example of an anime that tanked in its home country but became a huge success overseas. Except half of that isn't true. While it didn't have the lasting staying power the series still has in the West, it was very well-received in Japan and sold very well. In fact, of all anime released in 1998, it was the number one best-selling anime on home video in that year. Even counting anime from previous years, the only two series that sold more in that year were the absolutely juggernauts that are Neon Genesis Evangelion and the original Mobile Suit Gundam. It's possible the misconception stems from confusion with fellow 1998 Space Westerns Outlaw Star and Trigun, which are examples of that trope (the latter to a point where the movie premiered there first).
- Sacred Cow:
- Needless to say, this series is near-unanimously regarded as one of the greatest anime of all time, if not the greatest— attempting to question its quality and legacy is a good way to get your ass handed to you online. The series is so thoroughly acclaimed that the announcement of a live-action adaptation led to immense backlash among both casual and hardcore anime fans.
- The English dub is subjected to this: to this day it is still held up as the gold standard for an English dub, and even people who prefer the Japanese version usually acknowledge it to be great.
- Signature Scene:
- Julia getting shot, then falling to the ground in excruciating slow-mo is one of the most iconic moments in all of anime, not to mention a major Tear Jerker.
- Spike's final moments on the stairs at the end of the series.
- Spike's fall from the cathedral to the music of "Green Bird" in "Ballad of Fallen Angels".
- Also from "Ballad of Fallen Angels", the duel in the cathedral as a whole, but particularly the shot where Spike and Vicious are on the ground, each holding his weapon (in Spike's case a gun, and in Vicious' case a sword) against the other's chest.
- Spike going One-Man Army and effortlessly destroying a group of thugs who mistake him for Vicious in "Jupiter Jazz Part 1".
- Suspiciously Similar Song: When the back story of Tongpu is revealed, minimalist synthesizer music with a marked similarity to "On the Run" by Pink Floyd can be heard in the background. In fact, the song is more accurately described as a cover, sharing the same name on the official soundtrack.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- One that came up years after the series stopped airing, but if you don't want to get ranted at for a long time, don't remind anyone of the Spike pencil drawing by the original designer in a Cartoon Network stairwell that some intern doodled over with a sharpie.
- The reaction to the live action series, which got cancelled after one season.
- One that came up years after the series stopped airing, but if you don't want to get ranted at for a long time, don't remind anyone of the Spike pencil drawing by the original designer
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Ed. In her introductory episode, she's positively eager to join her idolized Bebop, which is literally the only motivation she shows in the entire series, and even manipulates events around so she can do so. After joining, however, she spends the rest of her screentime barely doing anything to even help the Bebop's crew in the first place, aside from very sporadic info breaks and a fortuitous solo bounty hunt played for laughs. This not only clashes with her initial mindset, but also prevents a lot of the action she might have produced in their next battles with her masterful abilities.
- Too Good to Last: Shooting Star, the first manga spinoff. It was meant to run for a year but got cancelled after just ten installments. Due to its being made while the anime was still airing, it had an almost completely different continuity, which may have been the deciding blow against it. Yet, many reviewers in the West considered Shooting Star superior to the second manga spinoff (this one simply named after, and hewing much closer to, the show) due to its lively artwork and interesting, though abortive, story arc.
- Trans Audience Interpretation: Many LGBTQ+ fans interpret Ed as trans or nonbinary due to her name, boyish appearance, and flamboyant personality. It helps that many characters in the show including Ed's own father comment on how hard it is to tell if she's male or female, and the live-action adaptation seemingly supports the idea given its casting of a nonbinary actor in the role.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Jet's ex-girlfriend, Alisa, is supposed to be a fundamentally sympathetic character, but the fact she broke up with Jet over feeling "infantilized" by just up and running away whilst he was at work one day instead of talking to him about her concerns makes her look very selfish and self-centered. Things aren't helped by the fact that her relationship with Rhint is implied to have resulted in her being the "self-assumed dominant" of the relationship. Nor are they helped by the obvious mistakes she's made in her life since running away, though these are lampshaded and defended by Alisa noting that even if the outcomes were bad, she at least made the decisions leading to them herself.
- Values Dissonance: Abdul Hakim's Wanted poster listing "Race: Negloid" is likely to elicit a wince from Western audiences.
- Viewer Gender Confusion:
- In addition to several characters in-universe, many viewers initially assumed Ed was a boy. Then again, many viewers interpret Ed as trans or nonbinary regardless.
- VT from "Heavy Metal Queen" also a very masculine appearance and a deep voice which can cause some initial confusion.
- Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: About the only thing in common between the spelling and pronunciation of V.T.'s last name is that it starts with a T. No wonder no one can guess her real name. Turns out it's Terpsichore (pronounced terp-si-CORE-ay), who was The Muse of Dance from Greek Mythology. She took the name of her bounty hunter husband when they married, which is how Spike is able to guess it.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: If you first see the title of the series, was the first thing that came to mind "Hey, my son loves cowboys! Maybe I can let him watch this show!"? Despite the show having the word "Cowboy" in the title, don't make an assumption that it's actually about cowboys. It's not very kid-friendly, either. It has very strong violence and adult themes, but despite this, when it aired on TV Tokyo, it ran on Fridays at 18:00 (6 p.m.), a time previously occupied by G-rated or almost-G-rated shoujo series like Hime-chan no Ribbon, Akazukin Chacha, Nurse Angel Ririka SOS and Kodomo no Omocha. The series only made it through half of its initial run.
- The Woobie:
- Everyone and their dog, really. Spike's a seemingly happy go lucky thrill-seeker that couldn't care less about his safety, using the adrenaline rush to mask his suicidal and apathetic outlook, still running from a dark past he refuses to acknowledge. Jet's a cynical cop that's haunted by his failures to protect his love and stay an honorable man in a police force gone corrupt, believing the world has no place for him, vainly attempting to project a wiser image of himself to his few friends. Faye's a Fish out of Temporal Water forced into an unfamiliar world with amnesia, feeling she cannot belong to a past with a home and family she cannot remember nor the present with people that have only betrayed her. The only exception is Ed, who seems cheerfully oblivious to everything around her, having fun in her own little world where she skips to her own beat, speaking in silly rhymes in a singsong voice without a care in the world. Not even learning she's an orphan with a father that abandoned her seems to slow her down much, though her last scene in the series suggests otherwise.
- As for the not-main cast, Gren takes the cake. Despite fighting alongside Vicious and considering him a close comrade, Vicious frames Gren for a major crime that he didn't commit. To say that this shattered his faith in making friends is putting it lightly.
