The year is 2071. Following a terrorist bombing, a deadly virus is released on the populace of Mars and the government has issued a 300 million woo-long reward, the largest bounty in history, for the capture of whoever is behind it. The bounty hunter crew of the spaceship Bebop; Spike, Faye, Jet and Ed, take the case with hopes of cashing in the bounty. However, the mystery surrounding the man responsible, Vincent, goes deeper than they ever imagined, and they aren’t the only ones hunting him. The original creators of the virus have dispatched Electra to deal with Vincent and take out anyone who may stumble on the truth behind him. As the hunt for the man with no past and no future continues to escalate, they begin to question what about the world is reality and what is a dream as the line between sanity and insanity becomes more apparent. —IMDb
Shinichirō Watanabe (渡辺 信一郎 Watanabe Shin’ichirō?, born May 24, 1965 in Kyoto) is a Japanese anime filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for directing the popular anime series Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo.
Watanabe is known for blending together multiple genres in his anime creations. In Cowboy Bebop, for example, Watanabe mixes classic cowboy western with 1940s/1950s New York City film noir, Jazz music and Hong Kong action movies, and sets the entire series in space. In his later work, Samurai Champloo, Watanabe mixes the cultures of Okinawa, hip-hop, modern-day Japan, and chanbara.
After joining the Japanese animation studio Sunrise, Watanabe supervised the episode direction and storyboards of numerous Sunrise anime, and soon made his directorial debut as co-director of the well-received Macross update, Macross Plus. His next effort, and first full directorial venture, was the 1998 television series Cowboy Bebop. It was followed by the 2001 film, Knockin’… read more
Hiroyuki Okiura (沖浦啓之 Okiura Hiroyuki?, born October 13, 1966 in Katano, Osaka Prefecture) is a Japanese animation director and animator. Okiura, who entered the industry at the age of 16 with no academic background, is known for his detailed effects animation in, for example, the chopper attack scene in Patlabor The Movie 2, and more recently his highly realistic character animation in works such as the opening credits to Cowboy Bebop: The Movie and several Production I.G features. His debut work as a director, Jin Roh, completed in 1998, was the recipient of the Minami Toshiko Award at the 11th Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in February 2000. Okiura’s next written and directed feature film, A Letter to Momo, premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. It was in development for seven years. —Wikipedia
The film itself is based highly on American Jazz and film-noir classics, the animation is able elaborate this. Still, the position of each character during a climatic sequence is set up exactly like a spaghetti western. The physicality of an anime character has very large eyes, so this increases the elongated stare that builds up the tension. It doesn't exaggerate with the simplicity of Japanese anime, it's original.
If you are brand new to Cowboy Bebop, the series revolves around a quartet of bounty hunters who according to the series treatment, “play freely without fear of risky things. They must create new dreams… read review
