The Best Anime Like Cowboy Bebop

Shinichirō Watanabe has been blazing a sci-fi trail since his co-direction stint on the popular Macross franchise, Macross Plus. Over his 35 year career he has created some of the most beloved and influential series like Cowboy Bebop, his jazz-infused magnum opus which follows a ragtag group of badass space adventurers as they neo-noir their way through deep space. Cowboy Bebop's iconic score by Yoko Kanno is part of what has made the series feel so timeless and has helped it stay in the public consciousness, through live performances, soundtrack rereleases and more.

The renowned science fiction show has long been shaping cinema and storytelling with creators like Star Wars' Rian Johnson, Avatar: The Last Airbender's Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and Victor And Valentino's Diego Molano citing Cowboy Bebop as massively influential on their work.

Cowboy Bebop also stands as one of the few anime series that many non-anime fans have taken the time to check out. All of those reasons and more make it one of the most vital and long-lasting entries into the anime canon, so if you're wondering what to watch after your latest (or first) Cowboy Bebop binge we're here with a list of the best space-faring, globe-trotting, morally-ambiguous anime that you can dive into next.

Lazarus

Our first recommendation is Watanabe's newest series, Lazarus, the first episode of which arrived on Adult Swim at midnight on April 5th. Produced by MAPPA and Sola Entertainment, with John Wick director Chad Stahelski in charge of art and original compositions from Kamasi Washington, Floating Points, and Bonobos, Lazarus comes with more hype than maybe any other anime release of the year. Lazarus is a great stylistic companion to Cowboy Bebop, a return to the grungier underdog sci-fi of that series — compared to his newer series like Carole & Tuesday —that feels shockingly relevant in 2025.

The events of the series follow the invention of a life-saving miracle drug that reveals itself as fatal three years after its use, putting millions of people at the risk of sudden death. Here enters our hero, regular-convict and jail breaker Axel who has to put a team together to find the enigmatic doctor who created the drug and enlist him to make an antidote in just 30 days. So start the countdown and lock in for a darkly wild ride.

Terminator Zero

Keeping with the more grounded and bleak takes on sci-fi, next up is this impressive addition to Terminator lore from director Masashi Kudō, Production IG, and creator Mattson Tomlin (director of the Netflix, Jamie Foxx vehicle Project Power). Though it's more serious than Bebop — and much of Watanabe's work — it has a stylistic flair to the action and impeccable gun-work that will sate that particular hunger and fill the Cowboy Bebop shaped hole in your action-anime viewing life.

When it comes to up to date sci-fi reckonings with the technology and culture of our current times, Terminator Zero is second to none, making it a must watch in 2025. Plus, if you're looking for an aesthetically pleasing contemporary anime to watch — that's just as easy on the eye as Cowboy Bebop — you'll struggle to do better than this stunningly slick, boundary pushing series that tells the story of the Terminator franchise's Judgement Day through a distinctly Japan lens for the very first time.

Space Dandy

This addition to the Shinichirō Watanabe catalog saw the trailblazer stepping back to serve as general director to Shingo Natsume's director on this hilarious serialized space opera brought to screens by Japanese animation studio Bones. If you want an easy, breezy throwback to classic Saturday morning cartoon fare that'll make you just as nostalgic as Cowboy Bebop, then this is a fantastic pick.

Filled with nods to tons of classic sci-fi and anime, this charming adventure follows the titular Dandy, an outer space bounty hunter whose entire purpose is to discover and register new alien lifeforms. He's just as stylish as Spike and Faye Valentine and has enough swagger to save the world. While it sounds like a simplistic setup the show goes to unexpected and existential places as Dandy discovers the truths of the universe and his own existence while hunting for aliens alongside his cute crew of a robot and a cat. While it might not have had the same global reach and massive success as Cowboy Bebop, it is deeply rewatchable, beautiful to look at, and incredibly fun.

Lupin 3rd

If you’re looking for a series that will fill you with the same adventurous joy and feeling of unlimited potential as Cowboy Bebop, then look no further than the delightfully fun crime caper Lupin III. Since its debut in 1965 — written by Kazuhiko Katō using the pseudonym Monkey Punch —, the charming franchise has expanded over manga, anime, video games, and multiple cinematic releases. But when it comes to on-screen adaptations, the best place to start is the 1971 anime adaption of the same name that introduced audiences to Lupin, a uniquely laid back criminal whose creation was a spin on the legendary and fictional gentleman thief Arsene Lupin.

The first season runs 23 episodes and features directors like Masaaki Ōsumi, and soon to be Studio Ghibli legends Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. It's a great place to explore the best of what Lupin III has to offer and the good news is, if you're a fan then you have five decades of stories, movies, and shows to dive into next.

Samurai Champloo

Samurai Champloo is the spiritual successor to Cowboy Bepob. The series started to take form while Shinichirō Watanabe began work on Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, which you can feel in the art style, structure, and storytelling of Champloo. That said, it might surprise you that this is a historical action tale rather than the sci-fi that he's best known for. While the genre might be different thematically, the series is just as concerned with life, the cost of living free, and the battle to overcome and eventually accept mortality.

Like much of Watanabe’s other work, the story centers on a ragtag group of morally-compromised heroes, this time an outlaw called Mugen, a tea server Fuu, and as with any good Edo period set tale, a ronin named Jin. One of the standout things about this series is that, due to the period setting, Watanabe was inspired to add an ahead of his time focus on the importance of inclusion and tolerance to avoid nationalistic overtones.

Trigun

If the thing that gets you most excited about Cowboy Bebop is the stylistic action and the hook of a morally complex anti-hero against the world, then Trigun is likely going to be your next favorite anime. The series was adapted from the hit manga of the same name by Yasuhiro Nightow that originally ran in Monthly Shonen Captain. It debuted in Japan in 1998 and in the US three years later at the cusp of the new millennium.

The series is, like Cowboy Bebop, a noir-inspired space western, but with amped up stakes as it follows Vash, a man with an immense bounty on his head due to some out of control superpowers that led to him accidentally destroying a city. As we learn about the man they want to kill, we also learn about those trying to kill him, setting up a great conflict that would launch the anime onto multiple best of the year lists, and would make the manga it was based on so successful that it would go onto sell out in the US.

Rosie Knight is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything from anime to comic books to kaiju to kids movies to horror flicks. She has over half a decade of experience in entertainment journalism with bylines at Nerdist, Den of Geek, Polygon, and more.