Next month, Netflix will premiere their live-action adaptation of the massively popular space Western anime, Cowboy Bebop. Now, the streaming platform has officially acquired the rights to the original series, with all 26 episodes arriving on October 21st. Watch the announcement trailer below. Cowboy Bebop first came to the US via Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim in 2001, quickly becoming a favorite of anime junkies. Directed by Shinichirō Watanabe, it follows bounty hunters Spike Spiegel (Kôichi Yamadera), Faye Valentine (Megumi Hayashibara), and Jet Black (Unshô Ishizuka) as they track down criminals around the solar system in their spaceship, Bebop. Screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, mechanical designer Kimitoshi Yamane, and composer Yoko Kanno also worked o...
Netflix has unveiled the opening credits to its highly-anticipated adaptation of Cowboy Bebop. Watch the intro below. Taking cues from the beloved original anime series, the colorful sequence is equal parts comic book ka-pow and live action noir as it introduces viewers to the show’s titular gang of interstellar bounty hunters over a jazzy rendition of the anime’s original theme song — “Tank!” by composer Yoko Kanno‘s band Seatbelts. “I think it’s time we blow this thing/ Get everybody and their stuff together/ OK, 3, 2, 1, let’s jam,” pronounces a male voice, kicking the action off over a jumping bassline and the blast of a full horn section. Cowboy Bebop stars John Cho as Spike Siegel, Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine, Elena Satine as Julia, and Alex Hassell...
Tokyo Machine‘s latest remix flips a song used in one of the most iconic anime series of all-time. Released on Friday was the beloved electronic music producer’s remix of “Silhouette” by Japanese rock band KANA-BOON. While the song and group are internationally renowned on their own accord, many fans of the wildly popular anime series Naruto: Shippuden may remember it as one of the show’s many theme songs. Swapping the guitars from the original, Tokyo Machine opts for high-energy synths, pounding drums, and twinkly keys akin to a bustling arcade. Combining the distinct vocals of KANA-BOON, the final result is a song that remains true to the fabric of the original while infusing electronic flair for listeners who gravitate towards dance music. Recommended Artic...
90’s kids: grab some Capri Sun, dump it into your morning coffee, and get ready to time-travel back to 2003, when “Bring Me To Life” was soundtracking cry-ragers from NY to LA. Bass music producer HVDES has tapped into Evanescence’s generational rock anthem, flipping the gothic nu-metal tune into a wild drum & bass rendition. Tonal growls and neurofunk bass patches are at the heart of the remix, which uses frenetic drum programming to drive the arrangement home for a proper 2021 electronic makeover. The remix also comes paired with an Ergo Proxy anime audiovisual, which, well, brings the remix to life with its cyberpunk vibes. Check out the clip below. You can download HVDES’ “Bring Me to Life” remix here. Recommended ...
Adult Swim and Crunchyroll have unveiled fresh details for Blade Runner: Black Lotus, the new anime inspired by the Blade Runner film franchise. Due out later this year, Black Lotus will appear on Adult Swim in English and on Crunchyroll in Japanese with subtitles. The 13-episode season is co-directed by Shinji Aramaki and Kenji Kamiyama, with Cowboy Bebop auteur Shinichiro Watanabe servicing as creative producer. The plot seems to follow Elle, who according to a press release is a “female replicant created for a secret and unknown purpose.” Elle will be voiced in English by Jessica Henwick, a rising 28-year-old British-Chinese actress who recently starred in Underwater and will soon be appearing in The Matrix 4 and Knives Ou...
EDM and video games go together like peanut butter and jelly—and their relationship is about to get a whole lot cozier with the newly rebranded “Sakura Chill Beats” YouTube channel. Launched this month by Sony Music Japan, the first-of-its-kind project will be a hub for official electronic remixes of anime and video game theme songs, with new selections available every Saturday at 1AM PT (4AM ET). The first track released on Sakura Chill Beats was RetroVision‘s remix of “Ashiato -Footprints-” by the peggies, out June 19th. Bright and upbeat, the original song was the ending theme of the anime television show My Hero Academia. RetroVision transformed the indie rock anthem into an electronic banger with soaring synths and a scintillating future h...
The Lord of the Rings franchise is expanding with a new anime movie titled The War of the Rohirrim. New Line Cinema is teaming with Warner Bros. Animation to produce the new addition to J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy world. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim will be directed by anime veteran Kenji Kamiyama, who helmed the TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Blade Runner: Black Lotus. Kamiyama’s frequent collaborator Joseph Chou is set to produce. The script is penned by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, who created Netflix’s Emmy-winning series, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. Consulting on the project is Oscar-winner Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote the live-action Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies with filmmaker Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. Per The H...
<span class="localtime" data-ltformat="F j, Y | g:ia" data-lttime="2021-06-09T00:25:41+00:00“>June 8, 2021 | 8:25pm ET Netflix has been working on a live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop for years now and the pandemic delayed it ever further, but thankfully the series is finally set premiere later this year. Perhaps even more exciting, the streamer revealed that Yoko Kanno, the original composer who worked on the classic anime series, will return to score the upcoming version. Kanno will create the soundtrack for the new series as she sees fit, which means fans can likely expect a faithful homage to the original’s music with a couple modern updates that suit it thrown in, too. Because shooting wrapped up earlier this year, it’s likely that she’s w...
Steve Aoki is back with another anime-inspired collaboration. Following the release of his second Naruto merchandise collection from last month, comes a new venture featuring his flagship record label, Dim Mak, and Inuyasha. For the unfamiliar, Inuyasha is a very popular anime and manga series that ran from the mid-90s to the late-00s. As you may know, Aoki is a big fan of the internationally-popular animation forms. On Twitter, the dance music producer and DJ shared a picture of himself modeling some of the Inuyasha-branded clothing. Fans of both Dim Mak and the series can take home 13 different items of clothing, including eight t-shirts, two long-sleeve shirts, and three hoodies. Most of the gear is currently in stock, aside from a pink and blue tie-dyed tee. With recent...
A new distortion plugin that features sexually explicit anime imagery has the music production community divided. The Nani production tool was developed by Los Angeles-based company WXAudio, who has called it “the first obscene anime distortion plugin.” It features six modes of distortion with drive and color controls and a depiction of a female hentai (an overtly sexualized style of anime and manga) character. In a similar style to Dada Life’s infamous Sausage Fattener plugin, the character depicted in Nani reacts to performance on its digital knob control. As the drive knob is turned up on the plugin, the character loses more and more of her clothes, and if turned all the way up, her breasts become fully exposed. Naturally, the plugin has sparked some ...