Cowboy Bebop Volume One is a manga by Yutaka Nanten and Hajime Yatate, with cooperation from Shinichiro Watanabe and Sunrise. This volume was released in North America by Tokyopop in 2002. Cowboy Bebop is rated “T” for teens 13 years of age and up; after reading this volume, I would personally say it’s more appropriate for older teens than younger teens.
Cowboy Bebop tells the story of four bounty hunters and their data dog, and the adventures they have aboard their ship, the Bebop. Spike Spiegel is a former member of the Red Dragon Syndicate, Jet Black is a former cop, Faye Valentine is a beautiful bounty hunter who spent 54 years in suspended animation, and Ed is a female computer hacker. This motley crew sometimes works together, while other times battling each other for their bounties.
The Cowboy Bebop manga is not a manga re-telling of the anime series; instead, the manga is simply based on the series. Considering that the anime series had a very definite ending, I’m having a hard time figuring out where exactly in the timeline these new stories could go. I ultimately have to view the Cowboy Bebop manga in one of two ways. The first way is to look at it as stories that somehow fit into the timeline before the end of the anime series, while the other is to look at these stories as a kind of “alternate timeline” in comparison to the anime. However, one thing that is the same between the two mediums is the fact that both the episode titles in the anime and the chapter titles in the manga utilize music references.
There are four new stories presented in the first volume of the Cowboy Bebop manga. The first sees Spike, Jet and Faye ending up in the same place while following their respective bounties without knowing that they weren’t the only ones trying to get a bounty. However, misadventures ensue when an even bigger bounty just happens to arrive, and the three battle against each other to try to get the new bounty.
The next story in this volume is also the longest one. The crew of the Bebop tracks down a bounty they’ve been looking for; unfortunately, he’s already in prison for a shoplifting charge. They get the idea to have Spike get himself arrested and to end up in the same prison as the bounty, in an effort to break him out and get the money. But Spike ends up getting more than he bargained for.
Article comments
1 - Jim Croon
A little bit of a late review, as this is already out of print by several years. It's a terrible spin-off manga that has very little to do with the show other than the basic set-up. The other Bebop manga spin off had even less to do with the show, but was a bit more creative and I would have like to have seen more of it.