Valvulado: COWBOY BEBOP (OST - Blues Jazz) by Yoko Kanno

Cowboy Bebop (カウボーイビバップ Kaubōi Bibappu) is a 1998 anime television series animated by Sunrise featuring a production team led by director Shinichirō Watanabe, screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, mechanical designer Kimitoshi Yamane, and composer Yoko Kanno. The twenty-six episodes ("sessions") of the series are set in the year 2071, and follow the lives of a bounty hunter crew traveling on their spaceship called Bebop. Cowboy Bebop explores philosophical concepts including existentialism, existential ennui, and loneliness.

The series premiered in Japan on TV Tokyo from April 3 until June 26, 1998, broadcasting only twelve episodes and a special due to its controversial adult-themed content. The entire twenty-six episodes of the series were later broadcast on WOWOW from October 24 until April 24, 1999. The anime was adapted into two manga series which were serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Asuka Fantasy DX. A film was later released to theaters worldwide. The anime series was dubbed in the English language by Animaze and ZRO Limit Productions, and was licensed by Bandai Entertainment in North America and is now licensed by Funimation. In Britain, it was licensed by Beez Entertainment and is now licensed by Anime Limited. Madman Entertainment has licensed it for releases in Australia and New Zealand. In 2001, Cowboy Bebop became the first anime title to be broadcast on Adult Swim in the United States.

Cowboy Bebop became a critical and commercial success both in Japanese and international markets (most notably in the United States), garnered several major anime and science fiction awards upon its release, and received universal praise for its style, characters, story, voice acting, animation, and soundtrack. In the years since its release, critics and reviewers, from the United States in particular, have hailed Cowboy Bebop as a masterpiece and frequently cite it as one of the greatest anime titles of all time. Credited with helping to introduce anime to a new wave of Western viewers in the early 2000s, Cowboy Bebop has also been labelled a gateway series for the medium as a whole.

The MUSIC:

The music for Cowboy Bebop was composed by Yoko Kanno. Kanno formed the blues and jazz band Seatbelts to perform the music of the series. According to Kanno, the music was one of the first aspects of the series to begin production, before most of the characters, story or animation had been finalized. The genres she used for its composition were western, opera and jazz. Watanabe noted that Kanno did not score the music exactly the way he told her to. He stated, "She gets inspired on her own, follows up on her own imagery and comes to me saying 'this is the song we need for Cowboy Bebop,' and composes something completely on her own." Kanno herself was sometimes surprised at how pieces of her music were used in scenes, sometimes wishing it had been used elsewhere, though she also felt that none of their uses were "inappropriate". She was pleased with the working environment, finding the team very relaxed in comparison with other teams she had worked with.

Watanabe further explained that he would take inspiration from Kanno's music after listening to it and create new scenes for the story from it. These new scenes in turn would inspire Kanno and give her new ideas for the music and she would come to Watanabe with even more music. Watanabe cited as an example, "some songs in the second half of the series, we didn't even ask her for those songs, she just made them and brought them to us." He commented that while Kanno's method was normally "unforgivable and unacceptable," it was ultimately a "big hit" with Cowboy Bebop. Watanabe described his collaboration with Kanno as "a game of catch between the two of us in developing the music and creating the TV series Cowboy Bebop." Since the series' broadcast, Kanno and the Seatbelts have released seven original soundtrack albums, two singles and extended plays, and two compilations through label Victor Entertainm.