In the anime and manga industry, where new-gen fans only follow names like Masashi Kishimoto, Eiichiro Oda, Kohei Horikoshi, and many more, Shinichiro Watanabe is the name that will make you fall in love with the art. The mangaka is the creator of Cowboy Bebop and several sci-fi shows that will not only make you laugh out loud but also enjoy his distinct art style and characters.
The artist is put in the same category as Hayao Miyazaki, as he directly rivals the founder of Studio Ghibli in terms of superbly crafted stories and meticulously built words.
However, Watanabe-Sensei is also known for his anime work titled Space Dandy. The show is an original one, but the creator has a strong belief that his work resembles a popular franchise in Kevin Feige’s MCU, which also happens to be another titan of the superhero universe!
Cowboy Bebop’s Creator Believes His One Anime Work Resembles Marvel’s GOTG
Even though Shinichiro Watanabe’s most popular sci-fi anime series is Cowboy Bebop, he has other exciting titles that have made him one of the many legendary artists in the industry.
The Samurai Champloo creator was speaking to IGN at Melbourne’s Madman Anime Festival in 2017.
The creator opened up about his works where he talked about how Space Dandy, one of his many works, had a striking similarity with James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The show was made in the same year when a ton of people believed that both projects were “quite similar” in nature.
He commented,
I had a lot of people tell me Space Dandy was like Guardians of the Galaxy. However, they were actually created around the same time and after I got to watch Guardians of the Galaxy after Dandy was finished and completed, I realised, ‘oh yeah, they actually have a similar feeling, they’re actually quite similar.’
One of the key reasons that Space Dandy was compared to the Marvel film was because the title focused more on being entertaining than anything else.
Gunn took a similar approach, focusing the film on being more entertaining, which became its distinguishing feature. As a result, the first film was a smash hit, grossing $770.8 million at the global box office, according to The Numbers.
Shinichiro Watanabe Detested Cowboy Bebop’s Live-Action Adaptation
In 2023, Forbes decided to interview Watanabe-Sensei, where he got candid about his journey in the industry. The interviewer asked him a number of questions ranging from his works, favorite projects, and his opinion about the live-action adaptation released back in 2021.
Unlike Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, the project was a massive failure, where Watanabe-Sensei detested the work so much that he could not bear to move past the opening scene. He said,
For the new Netflix live-action adaptation, they sent me a video to review and check. It started with a scene in a casino, which made it very tough for me to continue. I stopped there and so only saw that opening scene.
However, the creator felt that had he been involved with the adaptation, the final outcome would have been significantly better, and the anime’s popularity would have been at an all-time high.
He said,
It was clearly not Cowboy Bebop and I realized at that point that if I wasn’t involved, it would not be Cowboy Bebop. I felt that maybe I should have done this. Although the value of the original anime is somehow far higher now.
The disappointment following the show was understandable because Cowboy Bebop is the show that is synonymous with the artist’s name, and fans hope that they get to see an adaptation or a spin-off of the original show.
Space Dandy can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
