Ask John: Why Does Black Cat Seem to Copy Cowboy Bebop?

Question:
Why is black cat so similar to Cowboy Bebop? It’s bounty hunters with pasts. Train & Spike are both ex-members of a gang. Sven & Jet are both ex-police officers who lost body parts in the line of duty. Rinslet & Faye are both attractive women who sometimes use their looks to get what they want. Eve & Ed are both children with special abilities. Saya & Julia are both dead love interests for the leads. Creed & Vicious are both villains who worked for a gang then overthrew the leader or tried to. Granted, there are differences in the story, but I was wondering are the same writers on both shows or what?

Answer:
I’m not familiar enough with artist Kentaro Yabuki’s action/adventure manga series Black Cat to exhaustively analyze its parallels and similarities to Cowboy Bebop, but I can’t dismiss the observation that they exist. None of the principle creative staff members of the Black Cat television anime series also worked on Cowboy Bebop. But Kentaro Yabuki’s Black Cat manga series premiered only a year after the end of the Cowboy Bebop TV series’ broadcast, so it’s certainly possible that Yabuki may have been inspired or influenced – either consciously or not – by the earlier series. Parallels and similarities between anime series are actually quite commonplace. We should keep in mind that Japanese manga artists and animators are typically fans of manga and anime themselves. So it’s to be expected that Japanese creators may be familiar with other, earlier or contemporary works and may be inspired or influenced by them.

In certain cases, similarities are attributable to modern anime archetypes. Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s Tetsujin 28 introduced the concept of a young boy inheriting control of the giant robot built by his father. This trope reappears in countless anime, with minor variation, including Mazinger Z, Gundam, and Evangelion. The 1965 Yusei Shonen Papi television series revolves around an alien boy secretly integrating himself into human society (a’la Superman). Yokoyama’s Mahotsukai Sally transposed the concept onto a witch from another world. This trope, again with small variation, reappeared in later anime titles including Majokko Meg-chan, Mahou Shoujo Lalabel, Cosmic Baton Girl Comet-san, Minky Momo, Kaibutsu-kun, Tetsuwan Birdy Decode, and Dai Maho Touge. Other similarities are more specific. Love Com’s rocky romance between a short boy and a tall girl harkens back to the earlier series Kabocha Wine. Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto exhibits a number of similarities to the earlier Star of Cottonland OVA. Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto seems heavily indebted to the 1982 anime series Sasuga no Sarutobi. CLAMP’s Angelic Layer is an obvious but unacknowledged remake of the 1983 anime series PlaWres Sanshiro that merely transposes the gender of the protagonist from male to female. Mamotte Shugogetten is sometimes called a veiled remake of Ah! My Goddess. The 1979 TV series Space Carrier Blue Noah is Space Cruiser Yamato with a submarine standing in for the battleship. Kodomo no Omocha seems to parallel Marmalade Boy in a number of ways. If I describe a tall, thin high school girl who hangs around a boy because she has a crush on his elder brother who is away playing baseball, I can’t tell if I’m referring FLCL episode 1 or Kimi ni Todoke episode 18. Transpose the Dirty Pair from a sci-fi setting to a swords & sorcery setting and you get the 1990 Gude no Monsho OVA. The 1992 Hayou no Ken OVA series contains a number of obvious similarities to the earlier, similar Legend of Lemnear OVA. Kaito Reinya is Cat’s Eye that extends the cat theme one step farther. Tohru Fujisawa’s GTO mirrors the concept of Hiroshi Motomiya’s Salaryman Kintaro manga that launched three years earlier.

As critical observers, we’re expected to notice and decry copying or, worse yet, plagiarism. However, we also need to acknowledge that a certain degree of conscious homage and unconscious influence is inevitable. When a creator encounters interesting personalities and envisions them in a new setting, we may notice, but we still accept the new concept with little objection because Japan’s own anime community shows little objection. If the anime community insisted upon strict originality, we wouldn’t have remotely as much anime and manga as we do. The act of borrowing ideas and re-envisioning characters and concepts is such an established tradition that it’s now accepted and largely overlooked.