Summary
Life on Earth in Cowboy Bebop is post-apocalyptic, with decay and sadness. It is not a fancy place to live compared to other planets. The portal disaster destroyed Earth and caused a massive exodus to other worlds, leading to the rebirth of the Wild West and the rise of bounty heads. The disaster also led to a loss of access to the human past, a stratification between the rich and the poor, and a lower class yearning for a better life. Despite the bleak future, humanity shows strength in recovery.
cowboy bebop didn’t spend a lot of time on Earth, and what it looks like shows that life there isn’t all that great. However, things don’t just decompose on Earth; the whole situation is really post-apocalyptic. In a solar system filled with sadness and heartbreak, Bebop’s version of Earth could be the series’ greatest tragedy.
In the world of Cowboy Bebop, the main home of human civilization is actually Mars, not Earth. Bebop and its crew actually visit Mars quite often, starting with the first episode, even though Mars doesn’t look what it is today. In addition to Mars, there are human civilization groups on several worlds, including Ganymede and the other Galilean moons of Jupiter, as well as Titan, a moon of Saturn. There are even people who have been shown to live on Venus, which today is too hot for a space probe. The question from all of this is, how did the Earth get so bad that humans wanted to take their chances in a place like Venus?
The Cowboy Bebop’s Gate disaster destroys the earth
Earth becomes what it is in Cowboy Bebop because of an incident known by a few names, but generally the portal disaster. In the program, the ships travel through the solar system in a relatively short period of time thanks to the existence of the Astral Gate network, which allows travel through hyperspace at incredible speeds, making the voyages months or years into hours. yacht. The first portal was built in 2022, about 50 years before the series was set, however it was destroyed in some sort of accident, unleashing a high-energy explosion that destroyed a large portion of the Sun. moon. Debris from this explosion fell to Earth, killing billions, and the debris remained in orbit, falling slowly and unpredictably even in today’s series; Ed’s father in Cowboy Bebop is even said to be a scientist tracking these effects. With Earth in such a sad state, people got out of there as quickly as they could, settling wherever they could find a place. Only the poorest people are left on Earth, with no resources to rebuild.
However, there are other consequences of portal disasters. Moon debris close enough to the portal became flooded with hyperspace energy, creating sunstones that contributed to Jet’s worst episode, “Boogie Woogie Feng Shui.” Exposure to hyperspace energy also causes some people to stop aging, such as Wen in “Sympathy for the Devil”. Many things that were once easily obtained have become almost non-existent, such as old technologies and records from the 20th century.
Setting the stage for Cowboy Bebop
Although only discussed indirectly, Cowboy Bebop’s gate disaster is what sets the stage for the entire series. It forced large numbers of people to immigrate to unsettled outside worlds, like the reincarnation of the Wild West, so it’s no surprise that terms like “cowboy” are back in vogue. It cuts off humanity’s access to its past. It permanently stratifies the difference between the rich and the poorest. And it created a bottom line that wanted to leave Earth and build a better life, even while committing crimes, leading to a lot of bounty heads running around. However, even in Cowboy Bebop’s With a bleak outlook on the future, humanity has enough strength to pick itself up from the brink.