Faye Valentine plays the femme fatale bounty hunter who gives as good as she gets.

The dialogue was kept "clean," but its level of sophistication was appropriate to adults in a criminal milieu. Drug dealing and homosexuality were key elements of some episodes. As a result, Cowboy Bebop achieved the unique record that only half of its 26 episodes were considered suitable for TV broadcast during its initial run on the TV Tokyo network as a Friday primetime 6:00 p.m. series (April 3 through June 26, 1998). The remaining 13 episodes were initially available when the whole series was released on video. The entire series was finally shown on TV on the WOWOW satellite channel on Fridays at 1:00 a.m., October 23, 1998 through April 23, 1999. The TV series won awards in Japan including the 3rd Kobe Animation Festival's award in the Best TV Animation category, and the 2000 annual Japan National Science Fiction Convention's Uchusen SF Award for Best Media science-fiction.

Cowboy Bebop has been a similar fan favorite in America. It originally appeared as one of Bandai Entertainment's early anime home video releases, two episodes dubbed or subtitled on thirteen videos between September 1999 and October 2000. Anime fans who are often critical of the quality of English dubbing agreed that Cowboy Bebop's was one of the best-dubs yet. That was quickly superseded by a bilingual DVD release in six volumes between April and November 2000. The conventional wisdom among anime fans was that Cowboy Bebop was too mature to ever appear on American TV. When it did finally show up on The Cartoon Network's new "Adult Swim" block on September 2, 2001 (at 11:30 p.m. EST), the edits and omitted episodes served as new publicity for the uncut DVDs. A fancy Cowboy Bebop: The Perfect Sessions complete DVD boxed set was released in November 2001 for not quite $200. More recently, Cowboy Bebop: Best Sessions (November 2002) is a two-disc DVD of the six most popular episodes "reedited and remixed ... under the direct supervision of series director Shinichiro Watanabe." All of this new marketing would not be possible if Cowboy Bebop did not continue to be extremely popular.

Terrorist suspect Rachid faces off against Spike Spiegel.

The Big Screen Release
And now the movie! The TV/DVD series was so popular in Japan that there was never any doubt that there would be a theatrical release. Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door is crafted by the same "dream team" of creators: "Yatate," Watanabe, Nobumoto, Kawamoto, Yamane and Kanno. The theatrical budget permitted the story to be set in "Alba City, the capital of Mars;" the major human city off Earth. This is the excuse to create a much larger and more detailed metropolitan cityscape than in any of the TV episodes, which blends aspects of New York City, Tokyo and an ethnic Near-Eastern "Morocco Street" neighborhood. The 116-minute running time allows for the slow buildup of a tremendously suspenseful plot. Each of the main cast is given at least one scene in which to stand out to please their fans, but the main protagonist is Spike Spiegel. He has two lengthy action scenes in which he gets to demonstrate his martial-arts expertise, which has been only hinted at in the TV episodes.