Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Yes, this movie is not a live action film with real actors and sets. It is not a children's cartoon either. It is Japanese animation (anime) and is just one of the many animes that is entering the households of people of all ages across the country. Cowboy Bebop is a 26 episode series that was released one episode per week over in Japan in 1998. The series turned out to be a huge hit in Japan and was eventually licensed and shown on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" with a professional English dub. Three years after the series finale, Shinichirô Watanabe (director of Bebop) produced a full length feature film that was shown across Japan and in selected US theaters in 2001. The movie can still be enjoyed by people who have not seen the series, but the characters and their interactions are a lot more meaningful if you knew them beforehand. The movie takes place between episodes 23 and 24 of the original series. The reason I love the movie so much is because it is just like watching one huge episode of Bebop, which is pretty orgasmic might I add. The world of Cowboy Bebop takes place in the distant future, where planetary travel is possible and space ships are used as cars. A crew of misfits from all different backgrounds ended up crossing paths and became a team of bounty hunters. The story starts to unravel when a tanker truck is blown to high heavens in the middle of a freeway, releasing a mysterious biological weapon into the air of the city. The Bebop crew - Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine, and Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV, get right on the job when it is announced on television that the award for the culprit is 300,000 buck-o-roos. The case gets twisted and confusing though when Vincent Volaju, who supposedly has been dead for ten years, seems to be the prime suspect of the tanker explosion. Eventually Spike begins to uncover a government conspiracy and must evade a sexy government agent named Electra, as he looks for the truth behind everything. He even learns some things about himself in the process.

If you have never seen anime before and you want to experiment, I recommend checking out this flick. This is the movie that got me into anime so many years back, it is a good gateway drug.