About
Cowboy Bebop Opening Credits Parodies are a series of spoof videos based on the opening sequence of the anime series Cowboy Bebop. The parodies usually consists of a visual montage illustrated in the style of the original Cowboy Bebop and a remix version of the original theme song “Tank!”.
Origin
Cowboy Bebop[1] is a sci-fi action anime created by Japanese animation studio Sunrise[2] in 1998. Set in the year 2071, the series details the lives of four bounty hunters whose dark pasts are revealed as the story progresses. The title animation was inspired by the aesthetics of the 1966 film Tokyo Drifter[6] and the pop art of the 1950s – 60s[7], using squares and rectangles of various sizes with the silhouettes of the main characters.
The theme song “Tank!”[4] was composed by Yoko Kanno and performed by her jazz band, the Seatbelts.[3] The song is mainly instrumental, utilizing a double bass and bongo drums for a Latin flavor, except for one line of lyrics spoken by Tim Jensen. One of the earliest parodies of the Cowboy Bebop opening theme was uploaded to the Newgrounds[9] Flash portal on November 10th, 2002, which was originally designed as a Flash-based introduction to the now-defunct website Fantasy Realm.
Spread
On May 11th, 2006, YTMND user SirLemming created a parody site titled “Cosby Bebop,"[5] featuring a silhouette montage of American actor Bill Cosby and a remix edition of Cowboy Bebop’s opening theme song. On June 5th, 2010, a video adaptation of SirLemming’s original YTMND site was uploaded to the YouTube channel YTMND2012. As of May 2013, the YTMND site and the YouTube clip have received more than 1.1 million views and 178,000 views respectively.
Two months later in July 2006, YTMND user moheevi submitted another remix of Tank! [8] featuring the soundbites of The Tourette’s Guy. That November, YouTuber jehuty212K uploaded an original parody video titled “EvaBebop,” incorporating several characters from the 1990s anime series Evangelion (shown below, left). In May 2008, Quigley Films released a live-action parody (shown below, right) in support of their 2009 fan film Alfred Leebop.[11]
Notable Parodies
As of May 2013, there are more than 16,000 search results on YouTube[10] for “Cowboy Bebop parodies,” however not all of these results involve the opening theme.
Search Interest
External References
[1]Wikipedia – Cowboy Bebop
fn3, Wikipedia – Seatbelts
[4]Wikipedia – Music of Cowboy Bebop
[5]YTMND– Cosby Bebop
[6]Wikipedia – Tokyo Drifter
[7]Art of the Title – Cowboy Bebop (1998)
[8]YTMND– (nsfw) Tourettes Guy Bebop
[9]Newgrounds – Cowboy Bebop Intro Parody
[10]YouTube – Search results for “cowboy bebop parody”
[11]Quigley Films – Alfred Leebop