Thousands of miles from where the movie was made, the creative team
for the Cowboy Bebop film gathered at an Anime Expo New York panel discussion,
the day after they had appeared at the Big Apple Anime Fest debut of the
dubbed version of the movie. Composer Yoko Kanno, director Shinichiro Watanabe
and character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto had fun with the fans and each
other. How much fun? When a costumed fan asked a question to the trio,
Kanno replied that the fan "looks really good in that Spike outfit."
Kanno was asked about her composing secrets. "I have no idea where
my inspiration comes from. I'm just sitting in some big white box waiting
for something to fall on me. One fan had heard that Kanno, like many classical
composers, associates key signatures with colors. "I want to keep it a
trade secret," she relied. Also, Kanno, who got some of the conventions'
biggest cheers of the weekend, was asked abut her favorite characters in
the series. "I love Spike but I hate Julia." Kano answered to cheers.
Watanabe was asked if there will be more Cowboy Bebop episodes after
the original series' apparently definitive finish. "We knew that it would
be a hit and it would be a really big hit," he answered, "so that we were
thinking that people would say `make a new series' and it would end up
as something like Star Trek. I thought it would be a problem if I kept
creating new Cowboy Bebop series for the next 30 years until I'm an old
man. I thought that if I made the finish really final, I wouldn't have
to draw any more."
Kawamoto got an unique question: what about his design for Jet Black?
"I'm really glad that someone likes Jet," he replied. "I haven't had too
many people ask for me for sketeches of Jet, compared to the other
characters. Since Jet was Spike's partner I wanted the physique to be different.
While Spike is the lightweight boxer, I wanted Jet to be the heavyweight
boxer. While Spike is wearing a suit and tie, the opposite is to have someone
wearing casual cothing. So I made all of the characters they opposites,
and you have a contrast."
