Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky, an anomaly too complex for simple words. But, at her core, she longs to have - but probably never will - a home.

"Ed was originally going to be two characters. One was going to be a little girl who most likely was an alien, and a boy that was a wiz kid hacker. We figured there was no reason to have two characters, so we put the qualities of those two characters into one and came up with the strange character known as Ed. I don't know about America, but in Japan there are still a lot of people who can't get near a computer. In the 'Bebop' era, computers are just an ordinary tool or toy for kids - this electronic world is a place where kids are just used to. Even now in Japan there are kids who play computer games at the age of two or three. Some play before they even learn how to speak. Kids are being raised in an entirely different way. We wanted to show the position of a child in this world."

And though "Bebop's" dynamism and originality shines through decisions like this, its self-conscious simplicity drives the work.

"Each episode of 'Cowboy Bebop' is actually pretty orthodox," Minami explains. "In order to keep an audience watching each week we would bring the elements together a little differently, but basically it's pretty orthodox as far as story telling is concerned. Watanabe is an orthodox and very technically fluent director. He has a solid base of skill upon which he creates images. However, he doesn't want to be pinned down or labeled with any particular medium of expression. His work at this point just happens to be animation, but he's capable of creating images in many other mediums. Because Watanabe isn't pinned into animation, he creates characters that are really alive. The staff had a really hard time. They often dropped their jaws at some of the demands he made of them."

Compounding images into a discernibly simple story, "Cowboy Bebop" is different in just how familiar it can be.

"The set designer Isam Imakake constructed the world of 'Bebop' by using an internal stock of images he'd stored up in his head over the years. Today's young people are born into a world of images, they're exposed to various film genres, music videos, etc., so they have a highly sophisticated visual sense. I think 'Cowboy Bebop's' different from other anime and movies in that visually it's appeal is aimed at this generation."

The quintessence of the video culture - a form of entertainment authored with a vocabulary of kitsch, allusion and flare, culled from what was once marginalized as pop-culture but now must be accept as the culture of a new generation of artists - "Cowboy Bebop" is itself a genre.

And mounting the millennial divide like a colossus - the television show imbedded in the twentieth century and the movie firmly planted in the twenty-first - "Cowboy Bebop's" fate will be left to the whim of American broadcasting and distribution executives. Rumors fly about the series getting a run on network or cable television and the highly anticipated movie getting a theatrical release.

"Our domestic distributor is Sony Pictures Entertainment. Sony has a connection with Columbia Pictures. If Columbia releases it we'll be very happy. It's something that the distributors have to decide. We get a lot of questions about the movie from foreign countries on our official site. The domestic release is planned for the end of August."

Titled "Knocking on Heaven's Door," the movie has some high expectations to satiate.

"The title of the movie is very symbolic of what's going to happen in the film. You'll just have to wait and see. However, the series dealt primarily with life and death, and the film definitely continues in that vein."

The Bones creative team has developed a series that punctuates the unbearable lightness of hopelessness while dazzling its audience with style, a combination that, if anything, speaks to an audience reared on flash but longing for substance.

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Cowboy Bebop © Sunrise / Bandai Ent.