Shinichiro Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop is one of the most influential sci-fi anime of all time. Following Spike Spiegel and the crew of the Bebob across space as they hunt for bounties, the series was a soulful, hilarious, and emotional episodic adventure. Bebop is one of those shows that hits differently and desperately leaves audiences trying to fill the void after the credits roll on the final episode. While many will argue that nothing comes close to the tone and vibe of Cowboy Bebop, we offer a solution… Planetes.
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The influence of Cowboy Bebop on Planetes is apparent from the very first episode. The manga was written by Vinland Saga‘s creator, Makoto Yukimura, four years before he would write his seminal Viking drama. Planetes follows Hoshino, Tanabe, and their colleagues in a space debris cleaning company across their day-to-day corporate lives. The manga was quickly given an anime adaptation in 2003, with Cowboy Bebop‘s own Studio Sunrise working on the adaptation. But it’s not just the animation that makes Planetes the spiritual successor to Cowboy Bebop.
Planetes Perfectly Captures the Cowboy Bebop Vibes
It’s strange that a show with no cowboys and no bebop manages to perfectly capture the same vibe and mood of Watanabe’s masterpiece. In fact, in terms of their narratives, both shows are entirely different. Cowboy Bebop is an intergalactic adventure following larger-than-life bounty hunters with checkered pasts who kill and don’t give it a second thought. Meanwhile, Planetes is a slow, grounded series about a crew of space debris cleaners who dream big and have no way of getting there.
But it is through Planetes’s more mundane plot that it manages to capture the essence of what fans loved about Bebop. Like its spiritual predecessor, Planetes isn’t concerned with telling a wide-scoping narrative or peeling back a mystery with each episode. Most of its episodes would be labeled as “filler” by modern standards. But it is in these inconsequential episodes that the show thrives.
Apart from the music, what is the most memorable part about Cowboy Bebop? It’s the time we get to spend with the characters. Yes, Spike Spiegel’s kicks are cool, but fans remember his more somber moments and hard-hitting lines much better. Planetes features some high-stakes “action.” As debris cleaners in space, the crew of Technora’s Space Debris Section are constantly putting their lives on the line through constant space walks. But most of its runtime is spent delving deeper into the characters’ psyches throughout their mundane lives within their office. Hoshina dreams of owning his own ship but can never afford to, while Tanabe wants to work her way up the corporate ladder, and their manager Myers is simply waiting out retirement.
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Planetes and Its Worldbuilding Is Believably Out of This World
Another highlight of Cowboy Bebop was its world-building. Whether the series gave you ambitions to become a bounty hunter or not, everyone who’s watched the show has thought about living in the world of Cowboy Bebop at least once. Watanabe’s anime blended hard sci-fi with realism as people shaped their lives around the advanced technological developments, and every new discovery became commercialized or turned into a form of entertainment.
That is also one of Planetes’ strongest traits. If you’re looking for a hard science fiction series where the world-building feels intricately thought-out and applied to the human experience, then Planetes is the show for you. In the series, space has been conquered and explored. It has become nothing more than a giant vacuum highway for people to traverse through to get from planet to planet. As a result, a giant means of transport needs government contracted workers to maintain, which is where the core cast of Planetes comes in.
The Characters in Planetes Are Painfully Relatable
In one of the first scenes of Cowboy Bebop, we see Spike Spiegel and Jet struggle to feed themselves as they eat beefless bell peppers and beef. That brief moment made audiences instantly realize these aren’t your usual, cool bounty hunters. They’re regular people with ambitions who can barely afford to survive day-to-day.
Therein lies another crossection between Cowboy Bebop and Planetes. Its core cast get to spend their lives floating through space, which is a dream shared by many of its viewers. But, the reality of life also weighs them down. As well as their dead-end jobs, the crew of the Toy Box (the name of their debris-collecting ship) have to deal with sleazy insurance salesmen, health and safety protocols, nepotism in the workplace, middle management, and all the things that make people hate their jobs in real life. As well as enriching the world-building of this sci-fi series, the characters in Planetes feel painfully relatable.
Planetes is available to stream on Crunchyroll. Like Cowboy Bebop, it only ran for a single season (hopefully, Netflix won’t make a live-action reboot), with 26 episodes in total.
