Sequel to Cowboy Bebop
Genre(s): Sci-fi, Action, Comedy, Drama, Mystery
Age-Appropriateness: 16+ (Violence, profanity, suggestive themes)
Platforms: None
Episodes: One 2 hour movie
TheAwersome Rating: 8.9/ 10 (You really should watch this)
Premise: Another day, another bounty—such is the life of the often-unlucky crew of the Bebop. However, this routine is interrupted when Faye, who is chasing a fairly worthless target on Mars, witnesses an oil tanker suddenly explode, causing mass hysteria. As casualties mount due to a strange disease spreading through the smoke from the blast, a whopping three hundred million woolong price is placed on the head of the supposed perpetrator.
TheAwersome’s Thoughts: This is interesting because chronologically, it takes place right in the middle of the series, not after or before. If you’re watching this movie it will be because you liked the series, and the movie fits right in with it, so my thoughts on the series are echoed here. The movie feels like a really good episode that captures everything that is Cowboy Bebop: charming, intense action-wise, funny, rogue-ish, etc. Something that the movie adds that I don’t feel we got from the series is a big-city feel; the city on Mars where this takes place is modeled after New York and feels very human and real.
This is especially good to watch after you’ve finished the original series. Despite taking place before the original series ends, it gives you a lot of good closure and is a great topping-off to your Cowboy Bebop experience, without committing the sin of ret-conning anything or adding in new elements that ruin the rest of the story (glares at J.K. Rowling).
TLDR: A great capstone to the series, definitely worth finding.
For some reason this was rated R? I guess maybe the English Dub has more language than the sub we watched or something, because it’s tamer than any PG-13 action movie these days (Bourne series, Taken, etc.). My personal opinion is that it was rated as such to A: Warn parents that this isn’t a “for kids” movie and B: Make the target audience NOT feel like kids going to see it, because it’s a “cartoon” in the early 2000s and anything animated is only for kids in that era apparently.
At a Glance Anime 