BNP At NYCC 2018: Cowboy Bebop: 20 Years Later

If you can believe it, it’s been 20 years since Spike Spiegel and the rest of his space cowboys first came alive in anime form. In celebration of the iconic series, on Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018, at New York Comic Con, some of the show’s creators and members of the English voice cast shared their thoughts on a panel about one of the all-time best anime shows ever created and its lasting appeal. On recognizing the uniqueness of Bebop in the early years…

“We had no idea what we were even doing, much less if anybody would see it. All we wanted to do was try to honor what we were given, and it was such a beautiful piece of work that we didn’t want to screw it up. We wanted to make it something that we would want to watch. So we would have no idea that it would blow up and that it would last all these years too.” —Steve Blum, English voice of Spike “I knew when Spike walked into the church and ‘Rain’ started playing that this was something unbelievably special. This was something I had never seen before. And at that moment I was so honored to be working on something so beautiful with such complex, nuanced storytelling that not only was told through the words but also through the images and also through the music. And all I could think of was — because at the time, there really wasn’t a place where anime was shown, especially dubbed anime, on television — and all I could think to myself was, this may be the greatest show I ever work on and I don’t know if anyone is ever going to see…