Cowboy Bebop is one of the most prolific anime series in the entire medium, and recently celebrated its 20 year anniversary. The anniversary has resulted in incredible new merchandise for fans of the series too.
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This includes an upcoming pair of sneakers inspired by the series, and you can get a glimpse at the shoe’s bold design below.
The black shoe is emboldened with strong red colors along its sole and shoelaces, and the side of the sneaker features line-art of Spike’s now famous Swordfish-II space ship. The inside even features the series logo for a cool extra touch. According to Tokyo Otaku Mode (as translated by SoraNews24), the shoes are made of a microfiber leather and are releasing in U.S. sizes around 6.5 to 11.
Interested fans can check out the listing for the sneakers and potentially pre-order them at the following link here until December 11. They will run you 12, 960 yen (around $115 USD), and are scheduled to ship sometime this May.
Mechanical designer for Cowboy Bebop Kimitoshi Yamane actually got the job on the series in a pretty interesting way. Winning a sort of “contest” for his designs to be included in the series, Yamane told ComicBook.com in an interview that, “It was very, very unique way of picking the mechanical designer. I’ve never experienced that in my career. Normally the director picks the designer and works with that person, but competition is a very fresh, new, unique thing to go through for selecting a designer. Watanabe probably didn’t have an image of what he wanted the mechanical designer to be [laughs].”
Cowboy Bebop was first produced by Sunrise in 1998. Directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, with scripts written by Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, and songs composed by Yoko Kanno, the series explores many existentialist philosophies as it follows the adventures of Spike Spiegel, and a group of bounty hunter misfits aboard the titular spaceship the Bebop in the year 2071.
The series premiered in Japan back in 1998, and ran for 26 episodes until 1999. It was licensed for an English language released by Bandai Entertainment and Funimation, and was the very first anime series to air on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block in the United States. It’s often credited by fans from the 2000s as a major “gateway” show to the world of anime overall and has gone on to major critical, cult, and commercial success.
