Samurai Champloo

Top to Bottum- Jin, Mugen and Fuu

My two favorite animes by acclaimed director Shinichiro Watanabe. Cowboy Bebop came to America in the mid to late 1990's, which means it's been around for about 15 years give or take if you add the time that it was being developed and the time it was only available in Japan.

Samurai Champloo is a bran new (comparatively speaking) series, one which Watanabe fans have been looking forward to for a long time coming.

While 'Bebop' centered on a group of interplanatary bounty hunters (also reffered to in the series as Cowboys) from Mars, 'Champloo' follows three travellers on a journey through Edo period Japan, two of whom are swordsman vagrants, and the other, an orphen girl keeping them from killing each other.

Cowboy Bebop

Vicious (closer one) and Spike (in the background).