Spike Spiegel leads the hunt for the biggest capture reward ever, but the cowboys might get more than they bargained for from the government.

The studio press kit for the American-retitled Cowboy Bebop: The Movie English-dubbed theatrical feature (featuring the same popular voice cast as the TV series) says that it made "its world premiere at the Big Apple Anime Fest 2002 (BAAF) in New York City [on Labor Day weekend]." But its original Japanese release was on September 1, 2001. (It was in Japan's top 15 box office for five weeks. In July 2002 it won the SPJA Industry Award, presented at Anime Expo in Long Beach, California, in the 2001 Best Japanese Anime Theatrical Release category.) This is significant because, if it had been delayed for just a few weeks, it would have looked like a blatant and unimaginative imitation of the 9/11/01 NYC terrorism combined with its follow-ups. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie features a deadly terrorist threat involving massive explosions and what appears to be the release of an unknown bioplague that kills thousands in a cityscape that is practically rotoscoped from NYC. The suspects include a mysterious Rachid in an Arabic district. At the same time that the largest reward in history is offered for the terrorists (which attracts our Bebop gang), the authorities (both government and some powerful corporate villains) react with authoritarian force against all possible suspects. There are ominous implications that any bounty hunters who do actually find the terrorists may not be rewarded but "disappeared" for Knowing Too Much. One wonders whether a reason for the delay in the movie's general release since its film festival premiere last August has been that it was still too close to the 9/11/01 attacks.

So it is finally being released. But, despite Cowboy Bebop's popularity with the American fans, it is only getting an art-theater release: one theater each in seventeen cities (well, two in NYC). Will it do well enough to earn a wider release for itself, or for the next anime theatrical feature to be released in America? Let's hope...

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s. He wrote the liner notes for Rhino Entertainment's The Best of Anime music CD (1998), was a contributor to The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 2nd Edition, ed. by Maurice Horn (1999) and Animation in Asia and the Pacific, ed. by John A. Lent (2001).