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| Episode: | 1 | | | Writer: | Keiko Nobumoto | | | Director: | Yoshiyuki Takei | | | Air Date: | 24-Oct-1998 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Asteroid Blues, the first
I've covered cartoons like Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League and Duck Dodgers before, but this is the first time I've ever written about an anime. Well, unless you count Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which was actually the first article ever published on Sci-Fi Adventures. I have a feeling this is going to be better.
A lot of anime series are based off a manga, like Sunrise's previous space series Outlaw Star, but this one was original. In fact creator Shinichirō Watanabe gave it the tagline "And the work which has become a genre unto itself shall be called: Cowboy Bebop" which would've been incredibly pretentious if the show hadn't then gone and backed it up. This is one of the most well-regarded and important series in anime history, but you don't need me to tell you how famous it is, because... well, it's famous.
The first episode first aired in Japan on 24th October 1998, which is kind of weird as the series started airing back in April. The initial run on TV Tokyo missed out the pilot and half the other episodes, and I have no idea why. The first English airing on Adult Swim missed out three episodes as well, but that was due to it airing during September 2001 and people being a bit cautious about the kinds of destruction they were showing on screen at the time.
The series only lasted 26 episodes and a movie (it was only ever meant to), and I've seen all of them. In fact I've seen this first episode twice! It's been a long while though, so I'm sure it'll have some surprises for me. There'll be no surprises left for you if you keeping reading past this point however, as I'm going to share SPOILERS for the entire episode scene by scene, with screencaps. I'll not say a word about anything that happens in later episodes though.
