An Oral History Of Cowboy Bebop's English Dub – The Best Anime Dub Ever

"Cowboy Bebop" marked a turning point in anime not just because of its own excellence, but because of how dire things were leading up to it. During the 20th century, anime was not well-regarded in the West; anime dubs, even less so. There was no industry designed around importing anime to American audiences like there is now. American children of the 1980s experienced sliced-up and rewritten shows such as "Voltron" or "Robotech" — Japanese cartoons were just raw materials for American distributors. 

There was no prestige for an actor to do dub work, especially due to low pay (which continues to be a problem to this day). Just as an example, "Neon Genesis Evangelion," now regarded as a modern classic, was first released in the U.S. during the late 1990s on VHS, dubbed by ADV Films with a shoestring budget and a cast mostly made up of the studio's audio crew and recruits from local theater.

Marc Handler ("Cowboy Bebop" ADR writer/translator): I think it's hard for people to sort of go back [and] realize how things were back at that time. Anime was very marginal. Nobody took it seriously in any way, shape, or form. It was just the shows with the people with the big, funny eyes.

Jason DeMarco (co-creator of Toonami/executive at Adult Swim): We [at Toonami] had been anime nerds to the degree you could be in the U.S. in the eighties. [We] had grown up with many different anime shows from "Star Blazers" to what was then called "Robotech" to you name it. [...] We were, at the time, going to rental stores in Atlanta that catered to Asian immigrants. Basically, they carried a lot of anime that was not subtitled. It was just for people that spoke Japanese that lived in Atlanta. We would rent it anyway and watch it just to watch it.

Things started to turn around near the millennium's end. VIZ Media was founded as a manga importer in 1986, prolific anime dubbing company Funimation launched in 1994, and the '90s saw TV breakthroughs like "Dragon Ball Z" and "Pokémon." In the 2000s, Adult Swim and its sister programming block Toonami introduced late Millennials/early Zoomers to dozens of new, high-quality anime — like "Cowboy Bebop" — and the tide hasn't turned back since.

Marc Handler: I think "Bebop," along with some other shows, was part of the turning point where people started to realize that there's something more here, and something worth paying attention to. And now we have filmmakers like James Cameron and Guillermo del Toro giving us films with guys in mobile suits and all these anime tropes.

This shift began in Atlanta, Georgia, the home city of Cartoon Network. In the late '90s, Sean Akins had been tasked by Mike Lazzo (the network's head of programming) to create an "action block" in the afternoon. DeMarco, then working at TNT (one floor separated from Cartoon Network), partnered with Akins to conceive of Toonami, which premiered in 1997. A few years later, Lazzo was given a two-hour block by then-general manager Jim Samples, and the result was Adult Swim, launched in 2001 and produced out of Cartoon Network's home, Williams Street.

True to its name, Adult Swim's programming tended to be more mature (Toonami was conceived more as an "after school" block). However, both blocks' programming included imported and dubbed anime. DeMarco, who played a key role in developing both blocks, acknowledged how that happened.

Jason DeMarco: Part of the plan when we developed Toonami was, how do we talk to, at the time kids, in a way that was different from what we saw that existed in the current television landscape at the time? We just felt like most kids' stuff then, and now actually, but more then, talked down to kids in a way. The packaging, the programming, all of it felt like, "Well, it's kids. Let's just make it real clean and simple." And we were like, "What if we approached it from the point of view of being an older sibling and just being like, 'Here's a really cool thing we want to show you that we think is super cool?'" [...] We just said, "Nobody's doing it like the Japanese."

Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (on the Voice Acting Mastery Field Report podcast): I got a call that Yutaka Maseba, ZRO Limit Productions, had too many shows, not enough directors. And this was after working with them for about three years, and they had a lot of shows, a lot of female directors. And they said, "We have too many shows. We've got this show, we'd like you to take a crack at it. Are you interested?" And I was terrified, and so instantly, I was like "Yes!" because I'm terrified! [...] So I did, and it was a show called 'Cowboy Bebop."

Wendee Lee: At the time, there was a much smaller talent pool, and I sort of was coming into the prime of what I would say were my youthful casting years. And Yutaka [Maseba], the owner of the localization company, and Kevin Seymour, the owner of Animaze, his localization company, had made the decision together on their casting for most of their shows. I think I was about to start directing "Outlaw Star." I had a part on that [which] I petitioned for, Twilight Suzuka, but for "Cowboy Bebop," all I knew is that the producers were experiencing a big boon of growth, so they needed additional directors, and they ended up hiring so many women [...] Often, women do very well in directing roles because we tend to be a bit more sticklers for detail.

Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (interviewed in the documentary "Memo from Bebop: The Dub Sessions Remembered"): I went over to Yutake's house and Kevin was there and we watched the opening, the intro. He showed me "Tank!", he showed me the opening credits of "Bebop," and I said, "Why the hell aren't you directing this? This is gorgeous!" I think he was busy with "Ghost in the Shell" at that point [...] He was too busy, so I lucked out and it was my show to not screw up.

Marc Handler: Someone had recommended me to [Kevin Seymour]. That's why he called me. There were two problems. One was that at that moment, I was planning to leave for a trip to Japan and other Asian countries. Big trip for me, I was breaking away from the U.S. And number two, their rates were too low. I'm not arrogant about that, I appreciate [whenever] someone offers me work. But still, you set your rates, and theirs were too low [...] So he really should have just hung up the phone at that point. "Thanks, maybe next time." But he didn't, for some reason."

He needed a writer who he didn't have to babysit [...] They could walk into the recording studio and record it and not worry about it. He didn't want to have to reread it, fix it, revise it, send it back to me. He didn't have time to go through any of that. So that was his deal. So I said, "Well, how about this? What if I write the first episode at your rate, at the lower rate, and then if you don't like it, okay, we part ways, and if it does what you need, then you pay my rate for the rest of the series?" And he was okay with that.

Beau Billingslea: I started developing a reputation in the voice world. The voice world was very small back then, and so I was asked to [play Jet on "Cowboy Bebop"].

Wendee Lee: All I was told is kind of all the information at once, that I would be directing "Outlaw Star," and that I would also be voicing one of the primary characters on "Cowboy Bebop." And so that's how I jumped into it. It was such a surprise. It was such an honor, too.

Skip Stellrecht (voice of the main villain Vicious, interviewed for "The Dub Sessions Remembered"): I had met Mary Elizabeth on something else, I don't even remember what we were doing, and they were trying to find the role for Vicious, the right voice for it, and I think they were having a little trouble, and she said, "Man, I think you're right for this." She called me up said, "You have to come in an audition for this." [...] Next thing I know, [I'm] doing Vicious and loving it.

Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (during a Reddit AMA): I had nothing to do with [the casting]. Except for the role of Julia. I was so in love with Steve's voice as Spike I asked them if I could play her, should she ever show up.

Melissa Fahn (during a cast reunion interview): The first day of recording, [McGlynn] brought me into a big sound studio and there was a big screen and she said, "Let me just play you the first credits." And I heard the [theme song] and my jaw just dropped and she said, "This is what we're working on," so I said, "OK!"

Fahn wasn't alone in being blown away by "Tank!" Rather than letting "Bebop" languish on DVD and VHS for only hardcore fans or curious kids to ever watch, Bandai recruited Cartoon Network to air it on TV. DeMarco tells me that the series' opening instantly piqued their interest.

Jason DeMarco: We had a very good relationship with Ken Iyadomi, who was a producer for Bandai Visual and now Sunrise [...] He brought us a bunch of shows, but one of the ones he brought us, he said, "I think you should check this show out," because he produced it. He was like, II think it's really good." Actually, the first thing he showed us was literally just the opening. Obviously, that's iconic, but the second we saw it we were like, "We need to see more of that right now."

The dub was in the process of being made at the time, at that exact time. So, he showed us actually a dubbed episode or two and Steve Blum's voice as Spike and Beau Billingslea as Jet, we were just like, "This is so good." And that was actually one of the reasons we ended up getting Steve to voice Tom [the animated host of Toonami]. So, it all dovetailed all at the same time in a weird way. It was like a nexus of Adult Swim and Toonami and Steve Blum, all these things at once.

Steve Blum (at Momocon 2016): Toonami has been such a huge part of my life. When it went off the air I cried, and when it came back, I celebrated with everybody else [...] [Toonami has] brought anime, now, to probably a third generation.

Even though the show was completed, the dub cast experienced it with the same surprise as an audience watching it for the first time.

Steve Blum (in a blog post for the show's 20th anniversary): We never received the scripts in advance and hadn't seen the Japanese version prior to recording. Everything was a cold read.

Marc Handler: I was still leaving the country soon. So we kicked that around, and I said, "Well, maybe I could write the episodes while I'm traveling?" And this was an absolutely new idea. It's not a big deal today, but at that time [...] The internet was new, so I would have to send in the scripts via internet cafe from other countries, which might or might not work.

I was going to have to travel with videotapes, a VCR machine, had to be a special machine with single frame control, front and back, and a monitor. Small monitor, but you had to have one of those, right? Plus the adapters for different electrical connections, different voltages. And [Seymour] had tight deadlines. So again, any other producer would've just said, "Nah, nah, this is too much trouble, it's too iffy." But he hung in there, and eventually we said, "Okay, well, let's give it a try."

So I ended up writing the series while I was traveling in Japan, Thailand, Philippines, Bali, Lombok, Cambodia, Borneo, all these crazy places. So I traveled with a big, hard case luggage full of VCR and all of this stuff [...] And I was doing my best work, because I was really happy. Couldn't be a better life.

Anime dubbing is a team effort, from the actors to the directors to the audio engineers. For the actors, however, recording is a solo performance. The process involves sitting in the booth, watching the original version, and reading their lines to match the animated lip flaps with the translated dialogue. There's no sitting in the recording booth together, as can be the case for original language recording. 

Beau Billingslea: [With voice acting], you have to basically stay in place. You have to be what we call being on mic, so you have to have the mic in front of you. So if you have physical activity, you have to try to do some movement, but you also have to stay on mic. So you're restricted that way and when we're doing anime, it's already been drawn, so we have to fit within the flaps of the character. So there's a certain amount of restriction that we experience when we're doing the voice stuff that we don't have when we're doing on camera. On camera, I have my body and my voice and your characters, they walk differently, they talk differently, they have different physicalizations, and so maybe [it's] a little bit easier to make it your own.

Wendee Lee: Sync is not an easy art form. It's so crazy. It's so right brain and left brain, and it's really combining a technical discipline with artistry and fusing them together so that seamlessly, the viewer, the audience, has an uninterrupted experience of immersion. That's what we're trying to achieve.

Kirk Thornton (voice of "Asteroid Blues" villain Asimov Solensan): I've always been a bit of a technical actor, and there's a lot of technique involved in dubbing anime, or dubbing anything. It's a very difficult art to make it sound real and yet fit it within these really narrow constraints of the lip flaps. In fact, a lot of anime acting and dubs, I think a lot of it's kind of poor, actually, because it is so hard. It's easy to fall into something and just technically hit those lip flaps and not worry as much about your performance as it is sync.

How did any friendships form when the actors were essentially working alone?

Beau Billingslea: We'd cross going in and out of the studio, obviously, and a lot of times you're hanging around, you're waiting, and so you're chatting in the waiting room. And back in the day, we were using paper, right? You remember paper? We weren't using pads or anything. So anyway, we started writing notes to each other by our loops and the script. So I remember one day I went to work and Steve had already worked, and by one of my loops he said he wrote, "Hey, Beau, Jet sucks." So I said, "Oh. Oh, okay. It's like that, is it?" So then I went forward in the script and I found one of his loops and I said, "Hey, Steve, Spike sucks, and the Bebop is my ship!" So yeah, we started a nice camaraderie that way and we'd have lunch together, and so it took a little time. I can't put a time limit on it, but it took a little time.

A dub performer, by nature, is offering their own spin on something that already exists. How much personality can an actor offer within such narrow confines? Quite a bit if you have the resources and ability, as the "Bebop" cast proves. McGlynn initially turned down the audio when first screening the series to many members of her cast. This meant it was the animation that shaped their perception of the characters, and thus their dubbed performances, more than what the original actors sounded like.

Steve Blum (in the aforementioned blog post): Spike was the very antithesis of how I saw myself at the time. He was cool, elusive, confident, and he didn't give a damn about anybody (at least on the outside). I had to learn really quickly how to really act. You have to remember, this was 20 years ago. Back then I was a guy mostly known for creature voices, monsters, screaming, etc. I'd never been expected to invest myself that deeply into a character before. I learned some powerful (life and voiceover) lessons in the process that changed me on a cellular level and altered the course of my life. Spike had to sound authentic, and to get there, I had to find some of his qualities in myself. Some were not easy to admit I possessed. Others, I had to step into his shoes and experience fully. Sometimes it was wildly uncomfortable.

Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (in "The Dub Sessions Remembered"): Steve always said, "Oh, I'm not an actor," and after about three episodes, I just said, "If you say that one more time, I'm going to kick you in the balls, because you have one of the most amazing instruments I've ever heard and your instincts for this character are spot-on. So I don't know who's telling you, 'You can't do this, you're not an actor,' but put them away and just do what is natural to you." [...] We sort of learned it together because I hadn't directed that much, so I had to find a way to make him feel comfortable and confident. As the series went on, he got into some really vulnerable places.

Beau Billingslea (in "The Dub Sessions Remembered"): When [Steve] is in the booth, cause I've seen him doing the fights, he's doing the fights! He's kicking and he's punching and he's twirling, and he's able to stay on mic. Which, it's almost like, his head is there and his body is moving under him, like, how does he do that? [...] It would be fun to have him on camera, for a full session, when he's voicing Spike, because he's so animated.

Steve Blum (in "The Dub Sessions Remembered"): I love Bruce Lee. As a kid, I remember trying to imitate that fighting style, very unsuccessfully, and it was so cool to see that actually fleshed out [...] to hear [Spike] talking about going with the flow and moving like water, that philosophy kind of became, not so much with the fighting [but] going with the flow, sort of became a life philosophy for me later on. I didn't realize that would happen.

Beau Billingslea (in "The Dub Sessions Remembered"): The first session with Mary Elizabeth, we were trying to figure out how did [Jet] sound? We were playing with a Southern accent [...] maybe a little Western accent. Then she said, "You know, let's use your voice." I said, "Well, that's boring." She said, "No, no, no, let's do that," exerted her influence, and luckily for me and all of us, she prevailed. [...] It's a lot easier to just emote and be a character and experience a character's life when you're not concerned about trying to do something that's not really you, and as it turned out, Jet's a lot of me.

Beau Billingslea: It was nice to have an episode ["Ganymede Elegy," episode 10] where we went to [Jet's] backstory, because as actors, what we do is if we're not given a backstory of the character, his history, his life, then we create one, the foundation of the character. But when he goes back to Ganymede, he sees his old girlfriend, and then he puts everything to rest by tossing the watch into the water, that was some pretty real stuff. You don't necessarily think of that as a cartoon. It was real people stuff, real human stuff.

Anime dubbing has come a long way in the 20+ years since "Cowboy Bebop" was translated into English, as DeMarco attests.

Jason DeMarco: Dubbing back then was a whole different ball of wax. They weren't necessarily trying to be — this dub [for "Cowboy Bebop"] was, but most dubs weren't really concerned with being 100% [loyal] to the Japanese material as much as they were like, "What fits the lip flaps and the general vibe of the scene? That's great." Because the dub actors weren't paid anything. They're still not really paid very well now, but they were paid even less then. There's no union. So, it was like just people grinding it out and you almost never got a really quality dub because of these various issues.

Unlike the previous voice acting generation (to which the "Cowboy Bebop" cast belongs) who usually came to anime dubbing by chance, many actors who joined the business in the 2000s and 2010s sought it out because they're anime fans. For instance, Cristina Vee ("Hunter x Hunter") was inspired to do voiceover by watching "Sailor Moon" as a child, while Aleks Le ("Demon Slayer," "Vinland Saga") credits cartoons with helping him to learn English after moving to the U.S.A. as a child.

While dubbing is more often a labor of love than the dregs it was in decades past, resources can still be scarce. In particular, a new phenomenon in anime is "simulcasting." Thanks to streaming, anime fans can legally watch new episodes on services like Crunchyroll once they've aired in Japan, rather than waiting months or years for imports. However, this also means there can be even greater pressure to get English dubs out quickly.

The "Cowboy Bebop" dub was a rare instance where the cast and crew had the right mix of time, autonomy, and affection for the material to do it right.

Wendee Lee: With "Bebop," we were given additional time to go back and review scenes. To get something recorded, take a break, and then come back and watch the whole thing and let it wash over you and see, "Oh wait, let's go back and pick up this line and that line and just kind of tweak it a little more and then review it again." I wish more production companies understood that when you give it that little extra time, it doesn't have to be a ton of time, but you relax the recording schedule just a little, it can have an astounding effect on the overall outcome of quality.

Beau Billingslea: Back when we did "Bebop," they gave us a lot of time. We weren't pressured with the time to hurry up and get it done. So consequently, we could go for the gold. We could really try to get the dub as perfect as possible because we had the time to do it. I remember we were in a session and Mary Elizabeth was directing, and I did a loop, and then I thought, "Wow, I really liked that take." I said, "Really good." She said, "No, Beau, we're going to have to do it again." I said, "What?" She said, "Look, let's watch it." And we looked and it was ever so ... You couldn't even really see it, right? She said, "It's not perfect. It's not perfect so we have to do it again." I said, "Okay, we'll do it again."

Steve Blum (at BoroughCon 2017): On some of the shows, they would sort of leave us alone. On "Bebop," it was Mary and I and an engineer basically, most of the time ... on "Samurai Champloo" [Watanabe's follow-up show, where Blum dubbed lead character Mugen], we had a bunch of the Japanese clients in the room with us and they were analyzing every single line that we did and they wanted to make sure it was exactly like the original Japanese and they would give me really strange direction.

Melissa Fahn (at Animefest 2023): On most animes, it's all done by time. You have to get in and out, you've got to get it done quick, and Mary said, "Oh, we have the luxury of time, they didn't care, we could take as long as we wanted on these scripts."

Jason DeMarco: Once we [at Cartoon Network] heard the quality of the dub, we couldn't really give them much direction because we didn't know where it would air yet, so it felt pointless to try to dig in and make them change lines.

When you're translating between two languages as widely different as Japanese and English, matching accuracy with quality is a challenge. The fundamental question of "how word-for-word should the translation be?" hangs over production for both writers and actors.

Marc Handler: My answer is the middle way. The middle way is a fundamental concept of Confucianism and other Asian thinking as well. And that's the way I work. That's the way we work as a group. We don't just change things because, "Hey, I got a great idea." That's an extreme. Okay? On the other hand, we did not obsess over word-for-word accuracy. That's just as certain to wreck a work as the other extreme. And I have worked with companies that insist on that. They've got a translation, and everything's got to be word-for-word. That's lethal. It's destructive. When you hear anime, and sometimes you hear it in the next room and you go, "What's so weird about that dialogue on the TV?" And you look over and you go, "Oh, it's anime." That's when you get that unnatural, wooden kind of sounding dialogue. You're trying to follow it word-for-word. That does not work either. You have to bring the show to life. You can't turn it into a museum piece, even in the name of, "We respect the creators so much, we don't want to change a word of their work." You're destroying it.

Beau Billingslea: When listening to the original Japanese production, I use that not for my performance so much, but to feel the mood of the scene and what level of energy is required in that scene [...] How projected is it? Is it more intimate?

Melissa Fahn (interviewed for the 20th anniversary of "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie"): You don't want to do something drastically different, but we kind of had free reign to create these characters [on "Cowboy Bebop."]

Beau Billingslea: As an artist, you definitely don't want to be mimicking somebody. That's not enjoyable and it doesn't reflect artistic integrity if you're just going to mimic somebody else's voice.

Kirk Thornton: A lot of it you're pulling from the Japanese, because a lot of times they want you to stay relatively close to the Japanese, and so you take that as a guidepost. And then I always try to Americanize performances as opposed to just doing exactly what the Japanese did, because a lot of times the Japanese, their efforts and reactions tend to be different than we would do. And so I'll try to Americanize it.

Jason DeMarco: Japanese actors and Japanese speakers speak in a different way with the same emotions that they're conveying as an American or English actor. We speak differently because our cultures are profoundly different. In Japanese, you are telegraphing certain emotions in a very different way with a very different set of parameters. And it might be the same emotion you're trying to telegraph in the U.S., but if you did it the way they did it in Japanese, it just wouldn't make sense. So, I think what [the "Cowboy Bebop" dubbing team] did was [they] correctly said, "Look, the intent of the scene, we're not going to change and the characterization we're going to hold onto, but we're going to do it in a way that makes sense to us as English speakers. Because what we are doing ultimately is being produced for an English-speaking audience and needs to make sense to them."

As much as the "Bebop" dub cast revered the original, their interpretations of their characters and how they played them didn't always align with the Japanese cast.

Beau Billingslea (during the "Dinner Aboard the Bebop" cast reunion): One of the distinctions that was made between the original Japanese and our edit, [was] that [Steve Blum's Spike was] sexy, and the Japanese Spike [Kōichi Yamadera] was not.

Steve Blum (at the same reunion): How could Spike not be sexy?

Wendee Lee: It was so surprising to me, the original actress [Megumi Hayashibara], when they asked her what her take of Faye was, her first impression, she said she was very vulgar. And it's so funny because I never saw Faye that way. I saw her as an extrovert, as super confident, as body positive, beyond the confidence I had ever experienced personally. So exploring that confidence through her perspective was liberating. I mean, it was very good for me to be going through that as a woman in my twenties and thirties.

Jason DeMarco: I can tell you that the Japanese dub is what Watanabe wanted, period. Now, that doesn't mean that those characterizations need to be set in stone and it doesn't mean that the English actor's interpretations of those characters are wrong. They're just different.

I get annoyed when people are very anti-dub. People are like, "You're changing all the meanings." And I'm like, "Look man, unless you speak Japanese and you are a native Japanese speaker, you are still getting a translation and someone is making those decisions for you so that you are receiving their interpretation of something." That's just the nature of language. It's not anybody's fault that somebody interpreted something and another person said, "Well, it should have been interpreted a different way."

What does Watanabe himself think of the English dub? There's a longstanding rumor that he prefers the English dub to the Japanese original. It seems like that is just a myth, but he maintains a working relationship with Adult Swim; his next anime, "Lazarus," is being produced with them. DeMarco was able to share insights on Watanabe's feelings.

Jason DeMarco: There are some things about the English dub I think [Watanabe] really, really likes, and then there are other things he doesn't like that they didn't do what he asked for, but I honestly feel like they did the right thing. He doesn't speak English, so sometimes he is like, "More emotion!" in a part where everyone's like, "No, you don't really want more emotion there." But I think he understands that "Bebop" became popular in the West in part because of this great dub that allowed people to access it who might not have seen the subtitled version first. And I think he's profoundly happy that it continues to have the level of awareness and success that it does. I think his biggest gripe is, "Well, I didn't get f***ing paid for any of that." As a creator, as with any Japanese creator, he's like, "Yeah, that's all great, but where's my check?" Which, fair.

Despite his initial reluctance to consider himself an actor, Steve Blum has become prolific. His roles since include Wolverine in many "X-Men" cartoons, the Green Goblin in "The Spectacular Spider-Man," Starscream in "Transformers," Orochimaru in "Naruto," Amon in "The Legend of Korra," Zeb Orrelios in "Star Wars," Roger Smith in "The Big O," Makoto Shishio in "Rurouni Kenshin" (incidentally, Wendee Lee voiced Shishio's lover, Yumi), and more.

He also voiced a key role on the aforementioned "Samurai Champloo," where he worked alongside Kirk Thornton full-time, not just for a single episode. Thornton confirmed to me that he didn't realize how "Champloo" was connected to "Bebop" until later: While "Samurai Champloo" character Mugen (Blum) inherited Spike's looks, another character, Jin (Thornton), got Spike's coolheaded, "flow like water" personality.

In commemoration of his work on "Cowboy Bebop," Blum has the voice print of Spike's final line ("Bang") tattooed down his left arm.

Beau Billingslea continues to have the most diverse filmography of his castmates, mixing voiceover, on-camera work, and stage acting (his "first love"). "You have a live audience out there and they're responding in real-time," he beamed. "If you say something funny and they laugh or you say something sad and they cry, it's just this instant interaction with the audience, this instant exchange of energy, which is a beautiful thing. So that's the reason that I really enjoy stage."

Melissa Fahn has spent time on stage too (see: "Wicked!"), and continues to have a steady voiceover career. Not just in dubbing either: she played Gaz Membrane in "Invader Zim!"

Both Wendee Lee and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn have continued ADR directing in conjunction with their acting. Some of Lee's projects include "Haruhi Suzumiya" (where she acted as the eponymous lead), "Bleach," and "Cyberpunk: Edgerunners," while McGlynn has voice-directed projects including "Naruto," "Digimon," and the "Silent Hill" video game series (where she also put her musical talents to use by singing plenty of the soundtracks).

On a personal note, Steve Blum and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn are now married — Spike and Julia got their happy ending together in at least one universe. The cast also stays in touch even outside organized reunions and conventions (Billingslea tells me they have a text group chat together).

On the production side, Handler's trip to Asia wound up being permanent: He now lives in Cambodia. On top of ADR writing, he got to work on the writing staff of an "Astro Boy" anime reboot in 2003, helping to devise the story alongside Japanese creatives instead of just translating. He recently completed a book, "Collaborative Screenwriting and Story Development," which he says "teaches how to write stories, how to develop stories from a collaborative point of view, because most screenwriting books take the point of view that you're just sitting down at your typewriter and writing a story, and it doesn't work that way anymore. Very few stories get written like that."

Jason DeMarco remains at Cartoon Network (his current title is SVP of Action and Anime, Warner Discovery). In the past couple of decades, he's helped not just import anime series, but develop them, too, e.g. the "FLCL" sequels and Watanabe's forthcoming "Lazarus." He offered me a tease of that series in our interview:

"I can say that Watanabe is 150%, like he's putting all his chips in on this show. And I think he is really hoping this does really well in the U.S. and Japan, because he's purposefully not returned to the sci-fi action genre since 'Bebop' because he didn't want to revisit old ground. But I think after his experience at Netflix and their remake of his show and all of that, I think he feels like he wants to step back in and remind everybody that he's the man, which no one needs reminding, but he feels they do. So, I think he's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder about this show, and I think it's really driving him to make it the best work he's ever done, is what he's trying to do here. So, for me as a Watanabe fan and a fan of all of his work, I'm very, very excited."

As for "Cowboy Bebop" itself, its reputation as the best English anime dub endures even as the quality of dubbing has substantially improved in the years since. Of the cast and crew I was lucky enough to speak to, I asked for their thoughts on that reputation and why they think "Bebop" has endured.

Jason DeMarco: They got really lucky in that they picked a cast that ended up being incredibly talented voice actors who brought way more to the table than a lot of people did at that time. So, that's number one. Number two, the way they were directed was definitely to play it more ... you could tell there was respect for the material [...] I think it was a combination of serendipity and them really caring about the material. And I think Ken. No one ever talks about Ken's involvement, but Ken produced the show with Watanabe in Japan, and Ken was involved with making sure the dub got done correctly.

Beau Billingslea: I feel very proud when the subbers come up and say "Cowboy Bebop" is one of the few dubs that they will watch because they liked the original Japanese. But yeah, I'm very proud of "Cowboy Bebop." I'm proud and feel very fortunate that I was chosen to be a part of the show, and also very proud and thankful that it has endured as it has, and so that I can continue to go to conventions and absorb the love of the fans, which, there's nothing better than that. When you're in the booth doing basically a cartoon, you're not thinking about it having a profound effect on anybody or their lives.

Wendee Lee: ["Bebop" is] one of those iconic shows that has really high quality and also was so based in Western culture that it was an easy fit for us in many ways. It was real easy for us to find nuanced humor and comedy and just dryness and wit and sass and all of those cool elements. I feel like many of the shows I've done are on par with that same quality. It's just not always a show that has all those other special elements. But yeah, I've had many experiences on the series. Certainly, a series that I direct, that's always my goal, to make a seamless adaptation of localizing the material so the viewer is immersed in the experience and gets the biggest bang for their buck.

Marc Handler: Writing ADR is kind of like being the bass player in a band, you know? You don't expect recognition. The singer and the lead guitarist get the recognition. But you don't expect it, and you don't mind that. You're happy to play your part, contribute to the band. But when people do recognize you, it's a surprise, and it's really appreciated. Of course, I have to say, that's how I feel, but I was just part of a team: Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, the director, and the actors, Kevin, and Steve Blum, and Wendee Lee, and Melissa Fahn, and Beau — I think we worked together as a team very well. And we're part of a dubbing community where we kind of all know each other, and work very cooperatively in general. So it really was a team effort.

And then beyond that, you have to say we were just contributing one part of what had been created. That the real credit, of course, goes to Watanabe-san and Nobumoto-san [the late Keiko Nobumoto, a screenwriter for "Cowboy Bebop"] and Yoko Kanno, and all these amazing people. While I'm thinking about that, I can say if I believed in astrology, I'd think the stars were aligned, because our team was really wonderful, but the team in Japan was awesome, that they just came together at the right time to create this amazing series. And it was Watanabe's first series. It was just killer.

***

What else is left to say but, "See you, Space Cowboy."

Mr. Blum and Mr. Stellrecht were not available for comment.

Representatives of Mrs. McGlynn and Mrs. Fahn did not respond for comment.