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Cowboy Bebop Movie Gets Anniversary Screening with Director Shinichiro Watanabe
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
It's been 25 years since Spike Spiegel boarded his Swordfish. The film and series director Shinichiro Watanabe will attend an anniversary screening of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie on September 23 at Shinjuku Piccadilly theater in Tokyo. He will be joined by Kōichi Yamadera (Spike), Megumi Hayashibara (Faye Valentine), and Aoi Tada (Ed). The screening marks the first time in a decade that the cast has appeared together for a Cowboy Bebop-related event.
Cowboy Bebop scriptwriter Dai Sato will moderate the event. Fans can submit questions ahead of the screening at the Sunrise World website. Tickets will be available via lottery via Ticket Pia until midnight on September 4, followed by general ticket sales on September 8. Tickets retail for 3500 yen.
A free Watch Party project for the TV series is underway. Fans can vote for their favorite episodes on the Sunrise World website until August 31 when submitting questions for the screening. The episode categories include action, comedy, and drama. The top two episodes will stream on Sunrise's official YouTube channel in the future.
Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Cowboy Bebop: The Movie) premiered on September 1, 2001, in Japan and premiered in the United States at AnimeCon in 2002, followed by a home video release in the States in 2003. It was released on Blu-ray disc in Japan in 2008 and in the U.S. in 2011. Funimation's Funimation Films held a two-night screening of the movie for its 20th anniversary in 2018.
Funimation described the film:
Caught up in a world of dreams, lost in the cruelty of reality. What should have been an easy bounty turns into biological war after a terrorist gets ahold of a deadly virus. Drawn in by the pretty price on the mastermind's head, Spike and the Bebop crew are ready to collect a much-needed reward. Unfortunately, the gang's about to find themselves in more trouble than money when the terrorist threatens to unleash the virus on Halloween—effectively killing everyone on Mars. With little time and leads that seem more dreamy than helpful, they'll have to use their own bag of tricks to stop a dangerous plot.
The series' staff are celebrating the 1998 anime's 25th anniversary. So far, this has included a new key visual drawn by character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto (pictured above), an exhibition at Seibushibuyaten Movidakan department store in Tokyo on October 27, and multiple collaborations. New planned merchandise includes fashion items from the F-LAGSTUF-F and ZOZOTOWN brands, new figures from Good Smile Company, and a new book of production materials.
Source: Comic Natalie (Link 2)
