The Sci-Fi Western Anime Trifecta That Dominated the ‘90s

The Big Picture

• Cowboy Bebop
  ,
  Trigun
  , and
  Outlaw Star
  are so similar in tone, they act as an unofficial trilogy, influencing contemporary sci-fi entertainment.
• Trigun
  ‘s protagonist, Vash, balances humor and moral complexity, drawing attention to the consequences of his actions.
• Outlaw Star
  offers a lighter, colorful take on space-faring adventures, focusing on a diverse crew navigating the sci-fi frontier.

Cowboy Bebop is preeminent. From Firefly to Guardians of the Galaxy to, uh, Cowboy Bebop, its versatile style and charismatic space-faring ensemble have made an indelible mark on science fiction entertainment. The key to the show is its bold, expressive genre fusion. Set in a semi-dystopian future full of outlaws, crooks, and bounty hunters, the show infuses its jazzy noir aesthetics and space-adventure premise with a Western ethos. Something like the Outer Rim from Star Wars, Bebop‘s space is a richly contested frontier for social and economic expansion. With its unforgettable cast of characters, its wildly colorful animation, and its versatile approach to episodic storytelling, Cowboy Bebop has cemented itself as a stone-cold classic that stands apart from any of its contemporaries. Any, that is, except for Trigun and Outlaw Star.

What Makes ‘Cowboy Bebop,’ ‘Trigun,’ and ‘Outlaw Star’ Similar?

Cowboy Bebop deserves its status as the gold-standard it is, but it’s a bit of a crime how much these two similar shows are overlooked, especially considering how many fans of Shinichirō Watanabe‘s masterwork are bound to enjoy them. All three shows had short runs starting in 1998. Trigun and Outlaw Star pull from the same palette of influences as Bebop, but spin them together to create very different effects. Once you’ve gotten a taste of them all, it’s impossible not to see their cumulative influence over today’s sci-fi landscape as uniting them into an unofficial trilogy of sorts.

Trigun’s pseudo-apocalyptic Western wasteland renders the sunburned fatalism of Unforgiven with a goofball extravagance you would only find in a cheeky anime from this era, and totally prefigures the production design sensibility of Firefly. Outlaw Star has an overall lighter tone, but doesn’t shy away from some exuberant violence and adult humor. Its ensemble cast resembles Firefly a great deal, too, including the first-episode revelation of a girl with special abilities being hidden in a large trunk! On top of revealing to us what Joss Whedon may have been watching in the ’90s, Trigun and Outlaw Star, along with Bebop, carved out a special niche in an already golden era of anime. They each leverage their serialized form to push storytelling in interesting and unique directions, and visually realize worlds that, once you’ve seen them, you can’t stop seeing them everywhere else.

‘Trigun’ Follows a Deceptively Complex Protagonist

Trigun especially teases out the conventions typical of the anime serial to an interesting end. If you just watched the first couple of episodes, you could be forgiven for thinking this is just another fun, somewhat lurid Saturday morning cartoon for the Toonami crowd. The series at its start is very silly. In fact, it’s mostly a comedy. We’re introduced to our main hero, Vash (Masaya Onosaka/Johnny Yong Bosch), a laid back amnesiac with an astronomically high bounty on his head. Stalked by a couple of insurance adjusters named Milly (Satsuki Yukino/Lia Sargent) and Meryl (Hiromi Tsuru/Dorothy Elias-Fahn), Vash is revealed to have a passive approach to his pursuers, outwitting or outmaneuvering them with wily guile. It’s a joke at first, that Milly and Meryl keep encountering him in the wake of property damage brought on by his escapades. However, as the series goes on, it finds the moral core of this premise.

Vash’s laid back charisma is always entertaining to watch as he dodges bounty hunters throughout the wild wasteland, but the target on his head doesn’t just put him in danger. Innocent bystanders are often endangered by the trouble he seems to bring with him wherever he goes. Usually, he finds a way to save them, but even then, he can’t always expect them to be particularly grateful. Sometimes, however, his mysterious past sows truly dire consequences. In one episode, “Diablo,” Vash attracts the attention of one particularly deranged pursuer called Monev (Masuo Amada/Peter Spellos).

Monev tears through the town to get to Vash, toppling houses and shredding civilians with his gunfire. Vash eventually overpowers Monev through means I won’t spoil, and comes within a hair’s breadth of killing him, but holds to his ideals and lowers his weapon. This becomes the central moral quandary of the series. Even though Vash is a passivist, he cannot escape culpability when violence follows him. In fact, his refusal to take violent action often puts people in danger. This kind of thorny content may be one reason why the show has never been adapted to the more visceral medium of live-action; only anime could capture the complete tonal volatility this show pulls off.

What ‘Outlaw Star’ Lacks in Budget, It Makes Up for in Style and Substance

Outlaw Star is an overall lighter affair. It follows a young odd jobber named Gene Starwind (Shigeru Shibuya/Bob Buchholz) and his diverse crew of misfits. Outlaw Star may look like any number of space-faring, sci-fi anime out there, but it never lets go of its Han Solo-flavored western style. The crew of Gene’s ship, which includes a child sidekick, a cyborg, an assassin, and an alien cat-person, are on the trail of a legendary realm which holds power and treasure. Along the way, they encounter rival treasure hunters, bounty hunters, and all manner of other hazards in a gritty sci-fi frontier full of excitement and danger.

The two elements of Outlaw Star that ensure it holds up are its art and its crew. While the show’s budget constraints are often visible, it makes up for it with a neon color palette and kinetic, fluid action set pieces. It keeps the action vibrant and visceral, even in space battles. Many of the ships are equipped with large arm-like protrusions, so when standard munitions aren’t enough, a dogfight turns into a zero-gravity boxing match instead. The show is always a pleasure to the senses, whether the action is set against the twinkling expanse of space or a neon-streaked cyberpunk metropolis.

The crew, while maybe not quite as memorable as Cowboy Bebop‘s, is full of rousing reports and compelling character arcs. They all get along naturally, and the holistic nature of their character development makes sure that every character relates to each of their crew mates in a unique and compelling way. Beware, though, this show, along with Trigun, is not exactly light on fan service. Gene is a dashing rogue, so it makes sense that he’s an incorrigible flirt, but it can be quite distracting when the camera fixates on the female characters’ bodies. Regardless, each of the characters in both shows are fully developed as people, and embody many of anime’s best tendencies in addition to some of its worst.

Neither show quite reaches the expressive or artistic heights of Cowboy Bebop, but taken as a whole, this trio of great shows capture an era of rapid innovation in the form, and do so in style. Whether it’s the cool interstellar swashbuckling of the Outlaw Star crew or the evocative moral fables in Trigun, we likely have a lot of great sci-fi to thank these shows for. Plus, Cowboy Bebop is even better when seen as a part of a larger project of the era, one that impresses and invites audiences into expansive and novel worlds by remixing the styles they already know.

Cowboy Bebop is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.

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