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. 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. Credited with helping to introduce anime to a new wave of Western viewers in the early 2000s, Cowboy Bebop has also been called a gateway series for anime in general. The English dub was particularly lauded, and is regarded as one of the best. It garnered several major anime and science-fiction awards upon its release, and received unanimous praise for its style, characters, story, voice acting, animation, and soundtrack. It was a critical and commercial success both in Japanese and international markets, most notably in the United States. Since its release, Cowboy Bebop has been hailed as one of the greatest animated television series of all time. In 2001, the series became the first anime title to be broadcast on the Adult Swim network.
Its most prominent themes are existential ennui, loneliness, and the inability to escape one's past.Ĭowboy Bebop was dubbed into English by Animaze and ZRO Limit Productions, and was originally licensed in North America by Bandai Entertainment (and is now licensed by Funimation) and in Britain by Beez Entertainment (now by Anime Limited) Madman Entertainment owns the license in Australia and New Zealand. Although it incorporates a wide variety of genres, the series draws most heavily from science fiction, western, and noir films. The series, which ran for twenty-six episodes (in six “sessions” of four to five episodes each), is set in the year 2071, and follows the lives of a traveling bounty-hunting crew aboard a spaceship, the Bebop. Cowboy Bebop ( Japanese: カウボーイビバップ, Hepburn: Kaubōi Bibappu) is a Japanese science fiction neo-noir anime television series 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.