Ask John: How Controversial Was Cowboy Bebop in Japan?

Question:
I was looking at the official Cowboy Bebop website and read some of the show descriptions. A lot of them ended with, “Did not air in the original broadcast run,” or “was considered to risque for television- did not air.” Now, I’ve seen Japanese television, so believe me, I’ve seen crazy stuff. Is (or was) Cowboy Bebop popular in Japan like it is in the States? Also, was it more controversial there, or just not as accepted?

Answer:
It may be that some of the Cowboy Bebop episodes were considered too mature for normal broadcast television, but not for Japanese television entirely. 13 episodes of Cowboy Bebop were broadcast on normal public broadcast television in Japan in 1998. Almost immediately afterwards, all 26 episodes plus a 27th re-cap episode were broadcast on Japanese satellite TV network WOWOW. Cowboy Bebop was not a controversial show, and was quite popular in Japan. You have to consider Cowboy Bebop successful because it was popular enough to get a theatrical film. By comparison, series from around the same time period like Outlaw Star and Trigun were apparently not popular enough in Japan to get OAVs or theatrical films. You may also be interested to know that during the same year that Cowboy Bebop was broadcast, WOWOW also broadcast series including Berserk and Devilman Lady, which included scenes of attempted child rape, extensive graphic nudity, rape by demon (in Berserk) and by demonic tentacles (in Devilman Lady), implied male homosexuality (in Berserk) and graphic female homosexuality (in Devilman Lady), extreme, bloody graphic violence & dismemberment (in both shows) and various other examples of significantly more adult content than anything in any Cowboy Bebop animation, including the movie. If shows with this degree of adult content were broadcast unedited on Japanese television, it’s reasonable to say that Cowboy Bebop was a relatively tame TV anime series by comparison.