Cowboy Bebop - Production

Production

In late 1997 and in early 1998 the "space adventure" genre was a very popular TV theme in Japan. Notable examples of space adventure anime series developed around this period include Sunrise's Outlaw Star and Madhouse's Trigun. Thus, Cowboy Bebop was not just a normal anime series produced by Sunrise. The entire studio became very enthusiastic to create the series and consequently assigned its top talents to help develop it.

The leader of the creative team was director Shinichiro Watanabe, most notable at the time for directing the futuristic adventure anime OVA series Macross Plus and Mobile Suit Gundam. Other leading members of Sunrise's creative team were screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, mechanical art designer Kimitoshi Yamane and composer Yoko Kanno. Most of them had previously worked together, in addition to having credits on other popular anime titles. Nobumoto had scripted Macross Plus, Kawamoto had designed the characters for Gundam, and Kanno had composed the music for Macross Plus and The Vision of Escaflowne. Yamane had not worked with Watanabe yet, but his credits included such other anime as Bubblegum Crisis and The Vision of Escaflowne.

Watanabe wanted to create not just a space adventure series for adolescent boys but a program that would appeal to sophisticated adults, exploring a number of philosophical concepts and themes in the process. The most important of the many elements of Cowboy Bebop were its sophisticated and mature existentialist and philosophical concepts. The dialogue of the series was kept "clean", but its level of sophistication was appropriate to adults in a criminal milieu. Themes such as drug dealing and homosexuality were key elements of some episodes.

The series' art direction centers on American music and counterculture, especially the beat and jazz movements of the 1940s–1960s and the early rock and roll era of the 1950s–1970s, which the original soundtrack by Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts defines.

The balances of the atmospheres of the planets and the racial groups of the people in Cowboy Bebop mostly originate from Watanabe's ideas, with some collaboration from set designers Isamu Imakake, Shoji Kawamori, and Dai Satou. The staff of Cowboy Bebop established the particular atmospheres early in the production. Initially in the production, the ethnic groups were not solidly established. Watanabe wanted to have many racial groups appear in Cowboy Bebop.

Mars was the planet most often used in storylines in Cowboy Bebop. Satoshi Toba, the cultural and setting producer, explained that other planets "were unexpectedly difficult to use." Toba explained that each planet in Cowboy Bebop had unique features, and in the plotlines the producers had to take into account the characteristics of each planet. Toba explained that it was not possible for the staff of Cowboy Bebop to have a dramatic rooftop scene occur on Venus, so "we ended up normally falling back to Mars".