Summary
- Life on Earth in Cowboy Bebop is post-apocalyptic, with decay and sadness. It is not a preferred place to live compared to other planets.
- The gate disaster destroyed Earth and caused a mass immigration to other worlds, leading to the rebirth of the Wild West and the rise of bounty heads.
- The disaster also resulted in the loss of access to humanity's past, stratification of wealth, and an underclass desperate for a better life. Despite the dreary future, humanity shows strength in recovering.
Cowboy Bebop doesn't spend much time on Earth, and what is shown of it reveals that life there isn't all that great there. Things didn't just decay on Earth, however; the whole situation is actually post-apocalyptic. In a solar system full of sadness and heartbreak, Bebop's version of Earth might just be the series' biggest tragedy.
In the world of Cowboy Bebop, the main home of human civilization is actually the terraformed Mars, not Earth. The Bebop and its crew actually visit Mars quite frequently, starting with the very first episode, although Mars doesn't look much like it does today. Beyond Mars there are pockets of human civilization on a number of worlds, including Ganymede and the other Galilean moons of Jupiter, as well as Titan, a moon of Saturn. There are even people shown to be living on Venus, which today is a place far too hot for even a space probe to visit. The question that arises from all of this is, how did Earth get to be so bad that people would prefer to take their chances in a place like Venus?
Cowboy Bebop's Gate Disaster Destroyed Earth
Ed's father in Cowboy Bebop is even shown to be a scientist tracking these impacts. With Earth in such a sad shape, people got out of there as fast as they could, settling wherever they could find a place. Only the poorest remained on Earth, without the resources to rebuild.
There were other consequences of the gate disaster, though. Pieces of lunar debris that were close enough to the gate became soaked in hyperspace energy, creating the sunstones, which factor into Jet's worst episode, "Boogie Woogie Feng Shui." Exposure to the hyperspace energy also caused some people to stop aging, such as Wen from "Sympathy for the Devil". Many things which were once easily available became all but nonexistent, like old technologies and records from the 20th century.
Setting the Stage for Cowboy Bebop
Despite only being discussed indirectly, Cowboy Bebop's gate disaster is what set the stage for the entire series. It forced a mass immigration to the unsettled worlds beyond, like a rebirth of the Wild West, so it's no wonder that like "cowboy" came back into vogue. It cut off humanity's access to its past. It permanently stratified the difference between the wealthy and the poorest. And it created an underclass desperate to get off Earth and form a better life, even if through crime, leading to plenty of bounty heads running around. Yet, even in Cowboy Bebop's dreary view of the future, humanity had the strength to pull itself back from the brink.
