“It was the first time that he really got vulnerable,” Blum says, crediting that moment as the deepest and most open Spike ever is. For the first time the idea of death began to scare me.” But then I met a certain woman and it changed. “I didn’t have the slightest fear of dying. “When I was younger, I wasn’t afraid of anything,” Spike says to Elektra in the movie. As Elektra shares her past romantic connection with Vincent, Spike shares a bit of his own history in the murderous Syndicate mob. “I think the most profound moment for me was in the movie when he was talking to Electra about the pain that he was experiencing and his loss and damage.”īlum’s referring to one of the movie’s quieter moments in which he’s stuck in a prison with Elektra Ovirowa - voiced by the Commander Shepard, Jennifer Hale.

Steve Blum, voice of Spike Spiegel, agrees. “I actually got emotional regarding Spike’s experience,” Beau Billingslea, voice actor for Jet Black, says of the movie in an interview with The Verge. For the English voice cast of the show, the movie contains some of their most memorable moments. Every episode of Cowboy Bebop gives you the tiniest glimpse into what makes each character tick, and in the movie, that glimpse widens into a window through which we are allowed to see the characters as never before. It’s the villain’s tragedy that makes Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door so crucial to Cowboy Bebop’s narrative. And at the end, the bad guy is tragically relatable. There’s an absolutely bitchin’ spaceship battle underscored by Yoko Kanno’s soul-stealing soundtrack. Every character gets a moment to let their unique talents save the day. The movie hits on all the little things that make a typical Cowboy Bebop episode great. In Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, the gang are unwittingly sucked into a bio-terrorism plot, forced to stop the evil Vincent Volaju before he unleashes a deadly storm of nanobots on Mars.

However, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door transcends the trope of the inconsequential anime movie and is critical to the conversation surrounding the show’s cultural impact. Most anime movies don’t impact the overall arc of the show, featuring enemies, allies, and plot points that are rarely ever acknowledged outside the movie’s quarantine zone. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, known in Japan by the much better name Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, was released in 2001 and takes place during the show’s final handful of episodes.

Cowboy bebop series dub