Cowboy Bebop has many classic episodes due to the series’ overall quality, although one such episode was almost completely different in the original pitch. The final version of the episode, “Wild Horses,” was actually banned for a brief time on Adult Swim, but it might not have been if the story had followed the first vision.
“Wild Horses” is the Cowboy Bebop episode featuring the Space Shuttle Columbia, which was pulled from airing in 2003 after the real life Space Shuttle Columbia was tragically destroyed during reentry. While they couldn’t have known at the time the episode was made, it actually makes for a nice tribute to the first shuttle to reach space, giving the old girl one last adventure, even if it’s only in animated form. However, it turns out that this episode may not have originally had anything to do with space shuttles at all.
In fact, the episode as originally pitched would’ve introduced a bizarre new element to Cowboy Bebop fairly late in the game: Giant Mecha.
Cowboy Bebop Almost Had a Giant Robot Episode
Mechas in Cowboy Bebop is Difficult to Imagine
In an interview hosted on Forbes, Cowboy Bebop‘s spaceship designer, Kimitoshi Yamane, spoke a bit about “Wild Horses,” stating that he was the one who suggested the episode feature a real-life space shuttle. Describing the initial pitch to him, Yamane said, “In terms of episode ideas for Cowboy Bebop, the one with the space shuttle was mine. I wrote an initial plot and asked one of the writers to flesh it out. The director initially asked for a mecha-type episode, but I didn’t want to design a robot, as I thought real-world vehicles would be more interesting.”
While the term “mecha” is generally broader in Japan than it is in the Western anime fandom, including all kinds of machines and not just giant robots, Yamane’s statement indicates that he was specifically asked to design a robot for the series. In the final version of the series, no giant robots ever appear, so suddenly introducing them in episode 19 of 26 would’ve been quite a surprise, to say the least. Giant robots just don’t seem to fit very well into Cowboy Bebop‘s relatively hard sci-fi world, so the idea of an entire episode centered around such a robot is truly a bizarre one.
Of course, Cowboy Bebop did enjoy mixing genres and subverting expectations, so perhaps a Bebop episode about giant robots would’ve actually been interesting. Given the episode fans actually got, however, it seems the series was better off adhering to Yamane’s pitch, as the refurbished space shuttle also provided a look into Spike’s past and how he obtained his own ship, the Swordfish II. “Wild Horses” is a classic episode that has taken on new meaning in the years since it was made, and the series would be left without that had the giant robot episode actually gone forward.
It’s surprising to learn just how close Cowboy Bebop got to featuring an episode built around Mecha, but the series is probably better off that this strange idea never came to fruition.
