Top 10 Best Cowboy Bebop Episodes
Cowboy Bebop is a 1997 anime centering on a bounty hunter crew traveling in their spaceship, the Bebop. It is an old classic among anime fans for its perfect mixture of comedy, action, and story.Cowboy Bebop is one of the most beloved anime of all time and has many critically acclaimed episodes. This list counts down the ten best of them.
A bounty hunter tries to investigate a bounty related to his former syndicate boss, who has already been killed by one of the bounty hunter's old comrades. The episode culminates in a violent church shootout and plays heavily on the shadows of the protagonist's past life in a crime syndicate, underscoring themes of betrayal and lost innocence. Really, were you expecting anything else? So much is revealed with still shots in about two minutes. Also, the action was stellar in this episode.
While pursuing an executive of the Red Dragon crime syndicate, Spike confronts Vicious, an old enemy.
I love this episode. The best part of the episode was the song Rain.
The crew's sole female member steals the team's funds and disappears, prompting a search that leads to clues on a frigid moon. A cryptic reference to the name "Julia" on Callisto compels the haunted bounty hunter to investigate, as he believes it may refer to the woman from his past that he longs to find. Faye leaves the Bebop for Callisto. While Jet chases her, Spike finds some clues about the location of his old girlfriend Julia, which leads him to a confrontation with Vicious.
A power struggle in a criminal syndicate reaches its climax as a ruthless man violently seizes control of the organization, while the ex-hitman protagonist finally reunites with the woman he lost from his past. They plan to escape the violent underworld together, but the protagonist's lingering need for vengeance leads to a final deadly showdown with his former syndicate and its new leader. Reunited, Spike and Julia plan to escape the Red Dragon Syndicate, but Julia is killed. Spike returns to the Bebop for a last meal with Jet, then storms the Red Dragon's headquarters to confront Vicious.
Shin is killed. Spike fights his way to the top of the Syndicate skyscraper but is wounded. Spike shoots Vicious, killing him. Spike faces Syndicate members. He makes a gun gesture and says, "Bang," before collapsing.
A bounty hunter accidentally witnesses a murder committed by a deranged, weapons-laden killer, who then turns his full arsenal on the hunter in a sadistic pursuit. This episode adopts a surreal, nightmarish tone by portraying the usually unflappable hunter in a rare state of fear and vulnerability against a seemingly unstoppable foe born of twisted experimentation. Spike is targeted by an insane assassin named Mad Pierrot after accidentally witnessing the kill.
Incredibly dark and psychedelic episode. The villain is as crazy as they come. It should have continued as a subplot.
Absolutely in the top 5. Best stand-alone episode with some of the best action.
On the snowy streets of Callisto, the pursuing bounty hunter regains consciousness after being drugged and continues his dogged hunt for the syndicate operative he came to confront. Meanwhile, the wayward woman from the crew encounters a war veteran who shares a personal history with their common target, and all parties converge in a violent confrontation over a deal involving the addictive Red Eye drug. Faye is helped by Gren, who holds a grudge against Vicious. He and Spike reach Vicious at the same time, and a three-way battle takes place.
A female bounty hunter unwittingly crosses paths with a mysterious woman on the run from a crime syndicate hit squad, ultimately conveying the woman's urgent message to the ex-hitman she once loved. This leads to a long-awaited reunion between the former lovers, even as their spaceship is left severely damaged by the pursuing syndicate assassins who tracked the meeting. Spike and Jet are ambushed by members of the Red Dragon Syndicate. They are saved by Shin, who explains that after Vicious unsuccessfully tried to seize the organization, everyone connected to him is being hunted down.
Faye finds Julia and passes a message from her to Spike. Spike rushes to Julia. Vicious escapes and kills the leaders of the syndicate.
On Venus, a skilled bounty hunter finishes a successful job and gains an eager admirer in a small-time gangster who witnessed his techniques. The young outlaw has stolen a rare and priceless plant from his own gang - a medicinal Venusian plant he intends to use to cure his sister's blindness - introducing themes of sacrifice and hope amid the planet's harsh conditions. Spike meets Rocco Bonnaro, who is on the run from the Venusian mob for stealing a rare plant, which he will use to pay for surgery to restore his sister's eyesight.
A young hacker on the ship's crew sets a fake bounty in the police database to track down her long-lost father, successfully reuniting with him on Earth. When her eccentric father immediately wanders off again to continue his geological survey work, the child decides to leave the crew to follow her own path in search of family, departing with the crew's data-dog as her companion. The Bebop is forced to make an unscheduled stop on Earth. Faye travels to the landmarks she saw in the video. She and Ed find an orphanage where Ed once lived and a picture of her father.
Faye and Ed find an old schoolmate. Jet and Spike track down their bounty, but Ed reveals that the bounty head is her father. She placed the bounty herself to find him. Ed's father speeds off. Faye finds ruins where her home used to be. Ed leaves the Bebop.
It's a fantastic episode of Bebop. From Faye's realization that the home she sought is gone, to "Call Me Call Me," to Spike and Jet eating Faye and Ed's eggs after accepting that they've left, to Ed's message on the deck of the Bebop, to the final caption, it strikes all the right chords.
While the ending of "The Real Folk Blues" is perfect, it doesn't hit me emotionally the way this episode does at the end. I still tear up every time!
The crew receives an enigmatic package containing an old Betamax videocassette addressed to the female member of their team. While she avoids it fearing it's from a debt collector, the others embark on a difficult quest to find a vintage player, eventually discovering that the tape holds a long-forgotten glimpse of her past. A package addressed to Faye arrives on the Bebop containing an old tape, a time capsule recording made by a teenage Faye.
Gets me teary-eyed every damn time I watch it.
A bounty hunt for a fugitive criminal leads the crew into an uncanny encounter with a wheelchair-bound man and a seemingly innocent young boy who is not what he appears to be. The mystery ties back to a catastrophic hyperspace gate accident on Earth, revealing the boy's unnatural agelessness and exploring the burden of a life eternally trapped in childhood as a result of that event.The Newcomers
A terrorist nicknamed the "Teddy Bomber" is blowing up skyscrapers and attracting bounty hunters with his hefty price, but the main chase is continually derailed by the interference of a self-styled cowboy vigilante riding on horseback. The absurd rivalry between the series' protagonist and this over-the-top cowboy parody becomes the central conflict, satirizing Western hero tropes and letting the actual bomber's plot play out mostly as a backdrop. This episode had it all! Maybe I'm just sentimental after seeing this show so many times, but this episode cracks me up every time.
This episode was hilarious. Watching Spike get annoyed with someone who was exactly like him was the best.
A bounty on the head of a cult leader lures one crew member to infiltrate a religious group called Scratch, which preaches that humanity's destiny is to leave the body and meld into an "infinite sea of electrons" (digital existence). As the others investigate through hacking and old-fashioned detective work, they discover the cult's elusive leader is nothing more than a fabricated persona - an AI-driven sham - underscoring the episode's commentary on technology, deception, and blind faith in a digitized age. This episode really nailed the whole cult part. Scratch felt like a genuine cult in action. Also, Londe's speech at the end was just brilliant.
A bounty-hunting duo tracks a violent drug smuggler and his desperate partner, who have stolen a stash of the lethal combat drug "Bloody Eye" in hopes of escaping their lives on the impoverished asteroid colony. The pursuit ends in tragedy as the pair's attempted getaway is brutally cut short by law enforcement, setting a noir tone of futility and lost hope in this opening session.
After their ship crash-lands on Io due to a collision, the stranded crew splits up in search of food while grappling with extreme hunger. The crew's young hacker and her canine companion stumble upon a kooky mushroom smuggler and accidentally dose the rest of the crew with his hallucinogenic mushrooms during his capture, resulting in a series of surreal, psychedelic misadventures.
A creeping, mysterious creature infiltrates the Bebop spaceship and begins incapacitating the crew members one by one with venomous bites that leave swollen purple welts. Eventually only one crew member remains to stalk the intruder with makeshift weapons, in a suspenseful homage to classic space-horror scenarios (mirroring Alien's style) blended with the show's signature dark humor.
On his home moon Ganymede, the ex-cop of the crew is confronted by a woman from his past who abruptly left him years before without a word. The encounter coincides with a bounty linked to this old flame, and the story offers a sober, mournful reflection on lost love and the difficulty of finding closure as past and present collide.
A routine mission has the crew chasing an elusive thief who has stolen a valuable "data dog" from a research facility in exchange for an eight-million woolong reward. The pursuit turns chaotic as scientists, criminals, and the crew all vie for the genetically enhanced dog, but in the end the clever canine finds an unlikely home aboard the crew's ship amidst the confusion.
During a casino stop, the crew crosses paths with a cunning woman working as a roulette dealer who is secretly running a scam with a mobster in an attempt to pay off her enormous debt. After a series of double-crosses and narrow escapes aboard a space casino liner, this new femme fatale proves to be far more devious and resourceful than initially assumed, hinting at her complicated future involvement with the crew.
The crew's pursuit of an explosives-smuggling bounty head leads them to cross paths with a tough, heavy-metal-loving space trucker hauling cargo across the galaxy. Together they engage in a high-speed chase through an abandoned asteroid mining tunnel to stop the criminal, highlighting the value of unlikely alliances in the lawless frontier of space.
The crew's female member recounts her past: decades ago she awoke from cryogenic freezing with no memories and crushing debt, only to be deceived by a con man who posed as her benefactor and then faked his death. When that same man is later brought in alive as a bounty, she is forced to confront his betrayal and question what parts of her life - from her identity to her debts - were real, a reflection on themes of trust and identity amidst her fragmented memories.
A prison transport ship in space is overtaken by its inmates, forcing the ex-cop bounty hunter to team up with his former police partner to subdue the violent uprising. On board, he comes face to face with a notorious criminal tied to the loss of his arm and uncovers the grim truth of how his partner's past betrayal led to that injury, bringing long-buried history and vengeance to a head. Gotta say, while it probably has a lot to do with my particular love of film noir, I really dig this episode. It's nothing super special, but I think it's pretty perfect for what it is.
The crew tangles with a fanatical eco-terrorist group called the Space Warriors, whose leader plots to unleash a virus that can revert humans into apes as punishment for harm to endangered species. Amid this chaos, the wayward gambler from an earlier encounter (now stranded in space) manages to stumble back onto the crew's ship and ends up helping thwart the bioterror plot, inadvertently cementing her place among the team.
After capturing a string of low-level crooks involved in hacking hyperspace gates, the crew realizes that none of them is the elusive mastermind who has a 12-million woolong bounty. Their only clue is an electronic chess piece that leads them into a virtual chess match against the true culprit, Chessmaster Hex - a reclusive hacker who makes the crew unwitting pawns in his grand game - in an episode filled with chess motifs and clever twists.
While Jet and Faye try to apprehend a band of space pirates who use viruses to hijack ships, the team's ace pilot visits Earth to get his faithful mono-racer repaired by an old mechanic friend with a love for classic aircraft. When the pirates ambush at the worst possible moment, the pilot is forced into a harrowing dogfight during atmospheric re-entry and is ultimately saved by the mechanic's timely arrival piloting an antique NASA space shuttle - a dramatic homage to old-school rocketry and the enduring bond between man and machine. How is Wild Horses ranked second to last with the iconic whatever happens, happens scene?
A cryptic note from a supposedly deceased friend draws the ex-cop into an investigation alongside the friend's daughter, who uses Feng Shui divination to decipher its clues. Together they follow astral signs and energy flows to uncover the friend's fate while evading syndicate thugs on their trail, blending elements of mysticism with science fiction as they seek closure and a final message from beyond the grave.
Bizarre giant geoglyphs begin appearing on Earth's surface, prompting authorities to post a bounty for the culprit and drawing the Bebop crew to investigate the phenomenon. They encounter an eccentric child hacker who is initially suspected of creating the massive land drawings, but the true culprit is revealed to be a lonely AI satellite program guiding an obsolete orbital laser, and in the aftermath the talented young hacker happily joins the crew.