Cowboy Bebop
From TeeVeePedia, the Internet TV Encyclopedia.
Cowboy Bebop is an anime series from Japan, which airs as part of the Adult Swim block on Cartoon Network whenever they get bored with showing 15 consecutive episodes of Family Guy. (So, basically, Christmas and Labor Day. Maybe Easter.)
In mankind's distant future, a Fourth-of-July fireworks display gone terribly, terribly wrong has blown the hell out of The Moon, thereby settling a longstanding bet among Earth's remaining inhabitants regarding what, if anything, could make the planet even less habitable. (The universally acknowledged runner-up: More middle-aged men dressed like Japanese schoolgirls.) Fleeing the asteroid-pocked Earth That Was, humanity has taken to outer space, primarily because outer space has a lot more room for all of humanity's stuff. In this harsh new world, law and order have collapsed, and a new system has arisen to take its place: country and Western line dancing.
Cowboy Bebop follows the crew of the Hank Williams as they travel the stars, entering in boot-scooting dance-offs with the most wretched line-dancing scum that humanity has to offer, and also criminals, on occasion. The series focuses almost entirely on four characters:
- Buck Badass, a magnificently mulleted martial artist fleeing a sordid cattle-prod incident on New Abilene
- Punch Drunk, whose cyborg limbs testify to his survival of the infamous Shania Twain riots of Patsycline V
- Babe Lottaleg, whose outfit consists mostly of cleverly placed suspenders, and who fulfills the mandatory cheesecake requirements imposed upon all anime series by the Japanese government
- Sue, a boy genius who seeks revenge on his father for his unfortunate name, and is a total spaz.
The series is noted for its realistic approach to science and physics -- except, of course, for the characters' hair -- and its authentic-sounding original music by Japanese composer Yoko Ono.
