VIDEO: The Legacy of Cowboy Bebop Writer Keiko Nobumoto – The Anime Writer Who CHANGED My Life

The legacy of a screenwriter is often overlooked in the wake of popular directors and animation studios, but it is one of the most pivotal jobs in the industry. This is best exemplified through the work of Keiko Nobumoto. A gone-too-soon scriptwriter and series compositor that deserves to be remembered for her work on iconic classic anime.

Huge respect to Bella B and ANN for the article “The Humanist Legacy of Keiko Nobumoto” which I used as a jumping off point to discover more about Keiko Nobumoto’s life and career. I highly suggest reading the article for a more profound look at Nobumoto’s life and legacy (see Sources Referenced).

Video Transcript:

Keiko Nobumoto grew up in Asahikawa City, Hokkaido, where she went to school for nursing and worked as a nurse for several years. Until in 1987, she moved to Tokyo and attended Anime Scenario House run by Takao Koyama, screenwriter for Dragon Ball and Captain Tsubasa. There she learned about screen and scenario writing that she later used to work on TV dramas, going on to win the third Fuji Television Young Scenario Award.

Nobumoto went on to work on several TV dramas in the early 90s, even penning her own romance drama titled Those Were the Days in 1995, and later landing her first anime screenwriting role for the First Train Ran to Hiroshima, a short animation made in production with NHK. Later working on Macross Plus alongside storyboarder for the series Shinichiro Watanabe, who both would go on to create a beloved franchise that has made anime history.

A Mecha Love Triangle (Macross Plus)

But first, glancing over Macross Plus and Nobumoto’s work in it would be a sin that I wouldn’t want to commit again. Macross Plus follows a cocky pilot named Isamu Dyson, who returns to his home planet Eden, pitted against his once friend, now rival, Guld Gua Bowman. At the center is the girl he left behind, Myung Fang Lone, the girl his rival loves, and her secret of being the emotional stand-in for the most advanced AI yet. Honestly, SZA’s ghost in the machine fits this story better than it does Ghost in the shell in my opinion.

And I just want to throw in this random tangent about how beautiful this scene with a black woman and her family is for a series made in 1995. Mecha has really been out here representing us for a long time. Macross plus isn’t Nobumoto’s first anime screenplay, but it is her most notable and part of that maybe because of the boom of OVA’s that existed in the 80s and 90s. During that time, a lot more stake went into making OVA and the success of them as compared to today, OVA or OAD or ONA, as sometimes referred to today, are often used as extra animated material to feature side stories of TV anime. They are sometimes now sold with Blu-ray releases or a manga box set release of the series.

OVA of the late 20th century were often experimental animations that often consisted of alternative stories based off of the original television anime, usually different enough to be their own thing. And Macross Plus is a good example of this. Following the wake of the successful mecha series Super Dimension Fortress Macross, which some might be familiar with as Robotech, which is a series that compiled multiple anime into one for US syndication. Macross Plus is a spinoff to Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Nobumoto wrote the screenplay for the four part OVA series, working alongside Shinichiro Watanabe, who created storyboards, and this is their earliest known collaboration.

This is speculation, but because Macross Plus was an OVA, it seemed like Nobumoto and the team behind it had more freedom to stretch their creative wings a little, which is more common than you might think for an OVA in the 80s and 90s. Since many of the OVAs were original speculative works that weren’t defined by the boundaries of TV or movie production. Because these were straight to video releases, they were allowed to be more mature, which may be the reason for Macross Plus’s more adult characters. But don’t let the pretty fighter jet action scenes in Macross Plus fool you. They are not the heart of the story.

The trio of old friends and their strained relationships take center stage amongst the mecha heavy universe of Macross Plus. It allows us an early glimpse at Nobumoto’s ability to weave intricate, intimate stories within the anime space Guld and Isamu the main male characters in the series, are childish and are constantly bickering and trying to one up each other for dominance. The entire four part series, their hot headedness subtly speaks to the fact that these men never had to change in order to chase their dreams of being pilots, while, in contrast, Myung wanted to be a singer, but she states at one point that she had to change her idealism in exchange for reality. So instead she lent her emotions and voice to an AI named Sharon, who then becomes the equivalent of an AI siren that manipulates men, which is both timely as of 2024 and dreadfully dystopian.

Many fans of Macross Plus praise its advanced thinking about futurism, but also the intricate story with a woman at the center and the difficulties she has to face in this world where war and violence and men are at the forefront. She is fighting the demon that she’s created with in an AI. Though the character dynamics in Macross Plus are not nearly as smooth as other dynamics that we’re going to see in Nobumoto’s future screenplays, it still provided an early glimpse of what would become her legacy to craft character driven stories in animation that were grounded in humanity.

The Space Opera Western (Cowboy Bebop)

It’s no secret Shinichiro Watanabe’s directorial works tend to focus on misfit characters, thrust together by circumstance. Cowboy Bebop may star the Bruce Lee inspired space bounty hunter Spike Spiegel, but it’s nothing without the cast of characters he meets along the way. Cowboy Bebop may be a sci-fi, action packed adventure, but at its core, it’s a story about its characters. What makes the characters of Cowboy Bebop and their relationships so believable is often thanks to the writing and oversight of Keiko Nobumoto herself.

Nobumoto’s name may not be on every episode of the series, which is surprising since she is credited as the screenplay creator for Cowboy Bebop and the movie. But I did learn that though she was not credited with writing every episode, she was still in charge of supervising. This is because of her position not only as a screenplay writer, but also as a series compositor, which is a title that is often lost on casual anime fans like myself, but actually plays a crucial role in anime production. A Crunchyroll article titled “The Building Blocks of Anime” states that a series compositor, or a series kousei as “the person who oversees the narrative and script writing aspects of an anime series, while also managing a team of writers underneath them who will handle the episode by episode scripts.”

A series compositor (series kousei) is a person who oversees the narrative and script writing aspects of an anime series, while also managing a team of writers underneath them who will handle the episode by episode scripts.

-Crunchyroll

Essentially, they are tasked with ensuring that a series hits its narrative beats and aligns with the visions of the creator, director, producers, and writers. A good series compositor can make or break how well a series is able to keep its pacing and stay true to the initial story, meaning that Keiko Nobumoto’s watchful eye is what kept every episode of Cowboy Bebop on task by reinforcing the actions and dialog of the characters so that they remained believable even amongst the purposely chaotic narrative.

“The fact that we went out for drinks every week had a big influence. We ate, talked, and the way we spoke on the spot was fed back into the recording session” says Yumi Hayashibara, voice of Faye Valentine. The fact that the team of Cowboy Bebop worked so much together and even would go out drinking with one another to talk about the production and come up with ideas that later would become parts of the series, just shows how much comradery existed in the Cowboy Bebop space and its creation and production.

And in the episodes Nobumoto did write, Nobumoto’s ability to craft interesting characters that draw you in from the beginning sets the tone for the rest of the series. For example, in the pilot episode Asteroid Blues, we learn about Spike’s personality, not through his internal dialog, omnipresent narration, or the perspective of another character, but through his own actions. This scene alone tells us that Spike trusts women too easily, while this one reveals that he is metaphysically lost and searching for answers while also trying to make a living. And even the one off character Catarina is an example of the tragedy of the robust yet flawed women that exists throughout the rest of the series. But it’s not just Spike and his introduction that Nobumoto crafted with care. In one of my favorite episodes titled My Funny Valentine, we learn about the series of misfortunes that make up Faye’s past, turning her into the trickster she’s introduced as. An episode that seems to reflect the psyche of a young, lost woman who’s found herself alone in a new world. And, of course, the final two episodes of Cowboy Bebop titled The Real Folk Blues One and Two. In them, we see the combination of the effects each character has on Spike as a character. Leading up to his final confrontation with the syndicate and with his final iconic word, “Bang.”

Nobumoto stated in a French interview with Journal du Japon, “I like it when the group is fully assembled in the bebop versions of ordinary life,” she expressed. And this is clear throughout every episode, and even in the movie. The chaos of all the cast on the Bebop is an enjoyable part of the show. Without their wacky interactions, it wouldn’t be the same to watch.

Keiko Nobumoto is also the reason that Cowboy Bebop got its absurdly iconic name. The team behind Bebop, including Dai Sato, Shinichiro Watanabe, and Kimitoshi Yamane, wanted to represent the musical influence on the series as well as the idea of a space opera. So bebop was already a part of the title, but it was Nobumoto who threw the term cowboy into play. An interview with Anime News Network on the 20th anniversary of Cowboy Bebop Nobumoto says, “I had heard about the song Space Cowboy by an artist, and in my mind, Space and Cowboy were compatible terms, so it’s natural to think of Cowboy Bebop.”Nobumoto would continue to provide her scripts to several other Watanabe directed series, not to the same extent as she did with Cowboy Bebop, but still in a notable way. In the follow up of sorts to Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo. Episode 16, titled Lullabies of the Lost Verse One finds the trio Fuu, Mugen, and Jin splitting up after an argument. Each of them run into trouble, and amongst it all they meet a man named Okuru, who is being hunted down, but ends up helping each of the main cast in his own way. It’s an episode that introduces us to an important side character. They also built upon the foundation that the series already set of the characters being the trio that traveled together for the past 16 episodes and splitting them up. The themes of “Lullabies of the Lost” makes us not only confront the past of the main characters, but also the past of Japan itself, and it all culminates beautifully together in this first lead up to a two part series within the show. Another series is Space Dandy, directed by Shinichiro Watanabe. Nobumoto penned one episode for season one and three episodes of season two for the series. Though I’m not as familiar with Space Dandy. I did read an article by David Lynn who states that Nobumoto’s episodes grounded the mostly comedic anthology series by isolating the main cast, adding context to deserving background characters, and forcing the hero to face mortality. Nobumoto’s most recent and last possible venture into writing for anime series was penning an episode of Carole and Tuesday. Episode 15, titled “God Only Knows,” has the titular duo meeting a famous, reclusive musician named Desmond. Though Desmond’s non-binary sexuality being explained away as a side effect of living on Mars, a theme previously visited in Cowboy Bebop with another character named Gren, is questionable. The purpose of their character is to act as a reminder of the fleeting feeling of life, love, and the power of connection through music.

Something I didn’t learn until recently is that Nobumoto also served as the scenario supervisor for the beloved Kingdom Hearts franchise. Bringing her talent for keeping consistent and honest depictions of central characters in various scenarios throughout the game cohesive among the main scenario writers of the early franchise. And if you know anything about the dynamic of Sora, Kairi, and Riku in the game, you’d understand how the connections between them play an important role in the story for the game. And even though Nobumoto’s role seems to have been less writing and more supervising, there’s still elements of her use of keeping friendships and dynamics relevant throughout the story. And I think that the main reason that friendship and heartbreak and connection between the main characters in the story is so well portrayed has to do with Nobumoto’s work on the series.

A Coincidental Christmas Tale (Tokyo Godfathers)

Shinichiro Watanabe and the work that she did at Kingdom Hearts wouldn’t be Nobumoto’s biggest work however. She was also personally requested by a revolutionary filmmaker and director that people may know today as creating the movies Perfect Blue and Paprika, among many others. Satoshi Kon. Before I talk about the heartwarming film that Kon and Nobumoto created, I think it’s important to also discuss the work that Nobumoto and Kon did on a movie. A live action movie titled World Apartment Horror. World Apartment Horror is a Satoshi Kon novel turned into an experimental movie by the critically acclaimed Katsuhiro Otomo who is the creator and director of the anime movie Akira. World Apartment Horror is co-written by Nobumoto.

Though relatively obscure in the West, World Apartment Horror is about a Japanese yakuza member tasked with evicting foreigners from a Japanese apartment. An alternative comedy horror look at how these three notable creators, writers, and directors spoke to the underlying issues of xenophobia, anti-immigration and Japan’s own erasure of non-Japanese people within its history, which surprisingly ended up being a fitting lead up to Kon and Nobumoto working together on Tokyo Godfathers. Despite World Apartment Horror being made well over a decade before. After World Apartment Horror, Kon actually reached out to Nobumoto to have her work on his movie Perfect Blue. But Nobumoto was swamped with work for Cowboy Bebop at the time, and so they weren’t able to collaborate on that project. And even though Nobumoto working on the critically acclaimed Perfect Blue would have added a layer of depth and intrigue that I think would have been even more groundbreaking than the story already is. We didn’t get to see that. However, we did see instead Nobumoto lend her talents to a tonally different yet still very impactful story known as Tokyo Godfathers.

Tokyo Godfathers is a Christmas movie that is somehow fitting, yet so different from any other Christmas movie that you’ll ever see. It follows three homeless people who discover a baby in the trash and take on the responsibility of finding the child’s parents. Each of the characters were written and created by Nobumoto, according to Kon, who said in an interview about Tokyo Godfathers quote, “There are no role models for the three main characters. All of this was created by Keiko Nobumoto, who co-wrote the screenplay with me.” Satoshi Kon describes the process of Tokyo Godfathers and how it came to be in a 2002 interview stating, quote, “My preference for tricky and even cowardly topics and structures and Nobumoto-san’s personality which creates characters with a warm yet gentle gaze blended well, resulting in a truly weird story.”

It’s a story that roots itself in family, not the ones we’re born with, but the ones we sometimes stumble into, which can end up being just as imperfect. Not too dissimilar to World Apartment Horror, Tokyo Godfathers comedy is also used as a vehicle to relay really important, impactful messages about society. This time about the climate of unhoused people living in Tokyo in the early 2000’s, Kon says, quote, “Since Keiko Nobumoto joined us on the script, the characters have gained more depth and the mood has become brighter and more lively. But our goals haven’t changed from the beginning. When you get down to it, it’s all about delivering the baby you picked up to its parents. So I don’t think the story is rigged or twisted in any way, but rather the perspective is twisted.”

The slapstick comedy and coincidental nature of events makes swallowing the pill of reality the story is based on, easier to digest. Highlighting these people’s stories where oftentimes their voices would be disregarded or ignored. The baby kind of represents what each individual of the trio is seeking in their lives, or has run from. For Hana, the baby represents her desire to have a child and her identity as a trans woman. For Shin it’s the family he couldn’t care for and the daughter he left behind. And for Miyuki, it’s missing the love of the family she ran away from. Though this work isn’t steeped in blurring dreams or the past with current reality, like many of Kon’s other works, there’s still a layer of mysticism that exists within it. Especially in the perfectly accidental nature of all of the events that happen in the story. Spending an hour and a half with this trio shows how they were living and the struggles they faced and how utterly caring they are about one another. And it forces us to acknowledge humans who are on the fringe of society in a reality that forces us to ignore them. The ability to make the complexity of human nature into a digestible but never simplified storytelling is seen most in this story, of course, also noting Nobumoto’s ability to make three distinct characters who wouldn’t normally be together interact in an honest way, despite their differences, is also quintessential of her writing. Paired with the directorial genius of Satoshi Kon and his own knack for putting his audience into the shoes of his characters, the two made a film that deeply resonated with audiences across cultures and boundaries.

Beautiful Wolf Boys in Dystopia (Wolf’s Rain)

What would this retrospective be, however, if I didn’t talk about Keiko Nobumoto’s magnum opus. Her one true anime creation. Wolf’s Rain. Though the series is technically directed by Tensei Okamura, Nobumoto was the creator and a writer for it. Okumura even admitted that the rules of production were a bit blurred, and Nobumoto took a lot of the reins and credit for the story and how it was created. In an interview with Okumura by ANN he says this; “Well, I was the director on Wolf’s Rain, but the story writer was Keiko Nobumoto. However, I’m not sure we had a very full communication about all that.” And Okumura even admits to not really understanding what was happening in the series, or even really understanding Nobumoto’s intentions with the story.

Wolf’s Rain is the reason I came to know about Nobumoto and her work in Cowboy Bebop, Tokyo Godfathers, and so on. As a kid, I used to sneak into my sister’s room to watch Toonami late at night, and Wolf’s Rain was one of the shows that I stumbled upon. I absolutely fell in love with it, mostly because of the really pretty anime wolf boys and my obsession with wolves at the time. Like most anime I found at that age, the themes of the series went way over my head, and it wasn’t until I was older and rewatched the series that I began to understand the complexities of what the story was even trying to address. And I only say began because even now, I and other people who have watched Wolf’s Rain can attest to the fact that it is a really complicated story that takes several rewatches. And even then, you may still not get everything that it’s trying to convey.

Wolf’s Rain is the story of a guy named Kiba, who is a shapeshifting wolf who teams up with the last of the dying wolf population in search for the elusive Paradise, an ephemeral dream that is their only sense of hope in an apocalyptic Earth destroyed by humans. Wolf’s Rain is at once a sci-fi apocalyptic message and a whimsical fairy tale combined. And this series being Nobumoto’s own creation, is arguably the best way to see into what she thought about topics such as environmentalism, anti-war, and humanity’s self-destruction. Okumura says, “When Nobumoto wrote the story, she was sort of intrigued by the two different aspects of wolves. Being noble, you know, the dignified existence of wolves in folklore and the very violent character of real wolves, and how it’s a conflicting characterization.”

The Flower Maiden and the wolves of Wolf’s Rain are representative of nature, the consumption of it, and the violence of it against that of humanity’s own greed and violence, and how the two clash together to the bitter end. There are rarely happy moments in the story, yet the story is still full of episodes about the characters and what they’re searching for and what they are seeking in the end. Which allows the audience to grow attached to this haphazard group of wolves and their imperfect connections with one another and with humanity. As well as their desire to find nature in a world that is so far removed from it that they literally have to recreate it within a lab. But even more captivating is the fairytale-like perception of nature that humans have within the series.

Nobumoto seems to have taken common fairy tale elements like big bad wolves, flowers and damsels in distress of a sort and put them into this dark, futuristic setting. Shamelessly combining two utterly different story genres and putting them together is no easy feat. And many who have watched Wolf’s Rain will say how convoluted and kind of conflicting its messages and ideals get within the story, because it’s trying to convey so much, while also not really explaining a lot of what it’s trying to convey through words or dialog or monologue, but instead through cryptic messages and incredible visuals.

Not to mention the production issues that plagued the series. Where, if you watch Wolf’s Rain, which is now available on Crunchyroll, you’ll notice that there’s a huge chunk of it that is recap episodes of what happened in the first half of the season. And when you come to the end of the season, you’ll realize that the story isn’t finished, and this is because they had to finish the rest of it in a 3 or 4 part OVA that Crunchyroll now doesn’t have, but does exist on Funimation until, which is now gone for good. And it also has a huge part to play in how we view the story. Especially since most people will watch it and not be able to see the final ending of it.

Regardless of that, though, I consider Wolf’s Rain to be Nobumoto’s magnum opus. It is the one work that she was in charge of, and that she put so much of her ideals and writing abilities into after many years of working with other creators and writing screenplays while honing her craft and skills.

Honoring Nobumoto’s Legacy

Though Keiko Nobumoto is gone I don’t believe that her legacy is forgotten. Especially in the wake of her death, it has reignited a conversation about screenplay writers and people behind the scenes in anime and how important their works are. People who work with Shinichiro Watanabe and Watanabe himself have kept Nobumoto’s legacy alive by doing special screenings in honor of her and her work, as well as mentioning her often in other series. Watanabe revealed that her legacy will continue in his work Lazarus, in which Nobumoto was a part of the early planning stages before passing away.

We rarely get to hear from Nobumoto in her own words about how she viewed her works. Many of the quotes I gathered from this video are from directors and creators who worked alongside her. But like many creators whose voices are seldom heard, a lot of her works speak for her. Through the delicate screenplay she wrote depicting the humanity in the characters she was tasked with giving tone and life. The subtle way she made relationships amongst groups of characters believable. To her own imperfect series that combined philosophy and fairy tale into a story about humanity and the environment. There are hundreds of things Nobumoto expressed through the many stories that she created, more so than any interview could express.

I also believe that Keiko Nobumoto’s legacy is to remind us to give people flowers while they’re here. If you’ve been on the show for a while, you’d notice another video I made about Keiko Nobumoto two years ago, and I actually made that video right before I found out that she had passed away. And it was really sad to me because I had just found out about her and her work and how influential her work was to me not knowing who she was. It broke my heart to hear, as I was making this video praising her, that she had passed away. I recently just looked back at that video and I thought I didn’t do a good job talking about Nobumoto’s full life and legacy and other works that she did, in a way that I was proud of. So I wanted to recreate that in a better way, also with better editing. I just wanted to create something that was better for her legacy.

It reminds us that even recently, with the passing of Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z and that entire franchise and spinoff series, I want to be able to talk about these creators who have done so much in their lives and may not get the recognition that they deserve for it. Talk about people while they’re here, praise them while they’re here for the things that they do. Support them while they’re here. You know what I mean?

I often criticize series and directors and creators on this channel, and I want to kind of balance that out with creators like Keiko Nobumoto, who I think deserve mostly to be seen in a positive light for the works that they’ve created. I will forever remember Keiko Nobumoto’s legacy as a writer, and how her involvement in works elevated them to their highest potential. And I hope that now that you know who she is, who she was, you can also do the same.

Nobumoto shows us that storytelling can be just as much of a protest as a form of art, and that it can also simply be a gift and that’s what I think Nobumoto has given us through her work.

Thank you so much for watching. If you want to hear me talk more about other anime creators, watch one of the videos that pop up over here. Remember to appreciate the people who inspire you while they’re around, and try to show them that you care about the works that they’ve created and how they have inspired you to be a better artist or person.

Sources Referenced

Humanist Legacy of Keiko Nobumoto: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2021-12-11/the-humanist-legacy-of-keiko-nobumoto/.180511

Macross Plus Internet Archive: [https://archive.org/details/macross-plus-english-dub-master/Macross+Plus+-+Episode+1+[English+Dubbed]+(1997+Manga+Entertainment+Home+Video+Master+Tape)+[Betacam+SP+Transfer].mpg](https://archive.org/details/macross-plus-english-dub-master/Macross+Plus+-+Episode+1+%5BEnglish+Dubbed%5D+(1997+Manga+Entertainment+Home+Video+Master+Tape)+%5BBetacam+SP+Transfer%5D.mpg)

Learn About the Building Blocks of Anime: https://www.crunchyroll.com/news/deep-dives/2023/3/21/feature-learn-about-the-building-blocks-of-anime

Series Composition: https://blog.sakugabooru.com/glossary/series-composition/#:~:text=Series%20Composition%20

Robotech vs Macross Guide: https://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/topic/228-guide-to-the-differences-between-macross-robotech/

OVA article:

https://www.cbr.com/anime-ova-explained

World Apartment Horror Movie (Internet Archive):

https://archive.org/details/1991-v-8-yeonlp-d-0

World Apartment Horror Review: https://afistfuloffilm.com/2020/04/14/world-apartment-horror-1991-otomos-hidden-gem/

Tensai Okumura (Wolf’s Rain Director) Interview: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2017-08-09/interview-tensai-okamura/.119921