See you, space cowboy… this May, in fact!
Earlier today, Animate announced that they will host a Cowboy Bebop cafe as part of the franchise’s 20th anniversary celebration. The cafe, which is a collaboration with Sunrise, will be held at the Good Smile × Animate Cafe locations in Akihabara and Osaka Nihonbashi.
A visual for the project was released, which you can check out below.
The Cowboy Bebop cafe will run from May 15 through June 10, with all offerings being provided on a “first come, first served” basis. Special food and drink offerings, as well as limited-edition merchandise will be sold at both locations.
Cowboy Bebop is a 1998 series from studio Sunrise. Shinichirō Watanabe (Space Dandy, Samurai Champloo) directed the project, which featured character designs by Toshihiro Kawamoto (Blood Blockade Battlefront, Wolf’s Rain). Keiko Nobumoto (Tokyo Godfathers, Macross Plus) was in charge of series composition.
Yoko Kanno (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Macross Frontier, Space Dandy) scored the show’s soundtrack.
Bandai Entertainment originally released the title in North America on VHS and DVD. Cowboy Bebop was the first anime title to air on Adult Swim in the United States, and has aired numerous times since that initial broadcast. Though Bandai closed its doors in 2012, the show has since been rescued by Funimation. They describe Cowboy Bebop as:
The Bebop crew is just trying to make a buck. This motley lot of intergalactic loners teams up to track down fugitives and turn them in for cold hard cash. Spike is a hero whose cool facade hides a dark and deadly past. The pilot Jet is a bruiser of a brute who can’t wait to collect the next bounty. Faye Valentine is a femme fatale prone to breaking hearts and separating fools from their money. Along for the ride are the brilliant-but-weird hacker Ed and a super-genius Welsh Corgi named Ein.
On their own, any one of them would be likely to get lost in the sprawl of space, but together, they’re the most entertaining gang of bounty hunters in the year 2071.
Funimation currently offers Cowboy Bebop on several streaming services, including Crunchyroll (subtitled) and FunimationNow (dubbed).
Source: Animate Times
