10 Best Shows Like Cowboy Bebop

10 Best Shows Like Cowboy Bebop

Utterly in love with Cowboy Bebop? Dive into these series that audiences need to watch if they enjoy the anime or live-action show.

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The long-anticipated premiere of the live-action version of Cowboy Bebop hits Netflix on Friday, November 19. Audiences who may have grown up with the beloved anime, largely considered to be one of the best of the art form, are both dreading and anticipating the series in equal measure. For those who haven’t seen the Cowboy Bebop anime, however, the live-action show may encourage them to check out the series for the first time.

After a show, especially one as excellent as Cowboy Bebop, is finished, viewers tend to want to see similar content. Luckily, Cowboy Bebop has inspired dozens of series similar to the original. These anime shows promise audiences as wild a time as Cowboy Bebop delivers.

10 Gurren Lagann

A high-octane sci-fi anime with rich and complex characters, Gurren Lagann is a natural next step for those who enjoy Cowboy Bebop. Unlike that show, however, Gurren Lagann includes giant mecha fighting for humanity, which has been largely driven underground prior to the start of the series. Despite its bright veneer, Gurren Lagann, like Cowboy Bebop, can be surprisingly dark, which leads to a more mature story for audiences.

9 Space Dandy

Space Dandy is a series that takes a lot of inspiration from Cowboy Bebop. In fact, many anime viewers consider Space Dandy to be its more light-hearted counterpart. The series follows Dandy, who is a freelance space hunter, throughout his adventures. His job is to search for undiscovered alien lifeforms at the edges of the known galaxy with his crew: robot assistant QT and cat-like alien Meow.

Rather than a serialized story, Space Dandy tends to vary from episode to episode, focusing on its humor and characters over anything else.

8 Trigun

Another Western-inspired anime like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun follows the legendary outlaw Vash the Stampede. Much like Spike Spiegel, Vash, outside of his scarier aspects, is a very laidback sort of guy. However, when he means business it often has a terrifying effect on his opponents.

Cowboy Bebop and Trigun are anime contemporaries, though Trigun did begin as a manga. Still, both are great studies in action-oriented and Western-inspired anime of the late ’90s. The shows make for a good double feature.

7 Samurai Champloo

In contrast to Cowboy Bebop’s futuristic setting, Samurai Champloo goes a bit more old school. Set during an alternate version of Japan’s Edo-era (which lasted from 1608-1868), this heavily hip-hop-infused anime series follows vagrant swordsman Mugen, composed ronin Jin, and Fuu, a girl on a quest to find a samurai who “smells of sunflowers.” The series, despite a very different setting, is stylistically similar to Cowboy Bebop.

It makes sense because Shinichirō Watanabe, who directed Cowboy Bebop, also directs Samurai Champloo. In fact, this is Watanabe’s first series post-Cowboy Bebop. Samurai Champloo is an interesting back-to-back watch for Cowboy Bebop audiences to see how Watanabe’s style evolved between the two series.

6 Paranoia Agent

While Cowboy Bebop was fairly lighthearted at times, the series could also be dark, atmospheric, and intense. Paranoia Agent takes those elements to the next level entirely. The anime follows a large cast of characters whose lives are affected by Shonen Bat (Bat Boy): a kid in a red baseball cap on inline skates who attacks people with a baseball bat. As the detectives assigned to catch him interview his victims, those victims’ secret lives and the truth about the mysterious Shonen Bat are slowly revealed.

Paranoia Agent, much like Cowboy Bebop, is a more adult series. Paranoia Agent does like to play with narrative and perspective, so don’t go in expecting a straightforward story. Much like Cowboy Bebop, there is a mystery and character reveals that are slowly unveiled over time.

5 Outlaw Star

Perhaps the truest contemporary of Cowboy Bebop out there, Outlaw Star was made by Sunrise (the same studio) at the same time as Cowboy Bebop. Unlike Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star was based on a manga series by Takehiko Itō. This combination space opera/Western takes place during the “Towards Stars Era” where humanity has figured out faster than light travel.

Outlaw Star follows a ragtag crew who search the galaxy for the “Galactic Leyline,” a place that claims to hold immense treasure, knowledge, and power. The manga and the anime are paced very differently from each other. In the anime, a lot of the episodes revolve around the crew taking odd jobs in order to handle their ship’s massive maintenance costs. Still, it’s an interesting look at the sort of anime Sunrise was doing at the time along with how it compares to Cowboy Bebop.

4 Bungo Stray Dogs

One genre that Cowboy Bebop embodies outside of the space opera/Western field is that of film noir. For audiences drawn to those sorts of stories, Bungo Stray Dogs is an excellent anime watch. The series follows members of the Armed Detective Agency, each with different powers, as they try to use their abilities to protect Yokohama by solving mysteries and doing side jobs for the mafia.

Each episode follows the sort of one-off format of Cowboy Bebop, which means a less serialized story and more focus on the characters who run the agency. Unlike Cowboy Bebop, there are multiple seasons of the anime with a fourth season announced and spinoff TV series, Bungo Stray Dogs Wan!, airing in 2021.

3 Violet Evergarden

Underneath his likable personality, Cowboy Bebop’s protagonist Spike Spiegel is very much a man haunted by his past. While Violet Evergarden is a gentle anime, at least on the surface, the characters within the series are dealing with their own tragedies, consequences, and regrets just like Spike. As Spike was a prolific killer, the titular Violet wracks up many bodies during her time in the war.

While Spike never has to learn about his emotions the way Violet does, both characters still confront their past actions and inner darkness in some pretty compelling ways.

2 Black Lagoon

Black Lagoon follows a group of mercenary pirates who smuggle goods around the continent while dodging law enforcement and gangs, who seek to disrupt their operations. The excellent action-oriented anime is most similar to Cowboy Bebop in the personal dynamics between the main characters. Cowboy Bebop, more than anything, is remembered for its compelling characters and how they all bonded with each other.

Black Lagoon works on a very similar scale of character dynamics and also includes dynamite action scenes that should appeal to Cowboy Bebop viewers.

1 Psycho-Pass

Would Cowboy Bebop work as well as it does without the strength of Spike Spiegel as a protagonist? The real answer is probably not. Psycho-Pass is also an anime series with an incredibly well-written male lead, Shinya Kogami. While the series takes place in a dystopia cyberpunk setting that operates under the rules of Minority Report, it’s Kogami’s story that remains a huge draw.

Much like Spike’s own past, details are slowly unraveled and revealed to the audience as the episodes pass, which makes for a very compelling narrative overall.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/cowboy-bebop-best-similar-shows/

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