The Rio Theatre’s Friday Late Night Movie series continues on May 20, when the crew of everyone’s favourite bounty hunting spaceship hits our screen in Shinichirō Watanabe‘s complex, genre-blending and aesthetically rich COWBOY BEBOP: THE MOVIE.

Set in the late 21st century, it jumps into the series’ story line just prior to its conclusion, with the bounty hunting crew of the interstellar craft Bebop chasing a hacker aboard a tanker into a major city on Mars. As crew member Faye Valentine closes in on the tanker, she witnesses its catastrophic explosion, which soon appears to be a viral terrorist attack as the death toll continues to mount in the days following. Furthermore, Faye caught a glimpse of the person responsible for the blast and is thus the only surviving witness of the crime. After the government puts out a large bounty for the perpetrator’s capture, the Bebop gang — slacker Spike Spiegel, former policeman Jet Black, and hacker girl genius Edward — begin their own hunt for the mass murderer, who is eventually revealed to be one Vincent Volaju. Vincent, it turns out, was the lone survivor of a governmental medical test and now seeks revenge by unleashing the same microscopic robotic virus used in the tanker explosion on the unsuspecting city. The Bebop crew must scramble to prevent Vincent from carrying out his plan, as well as try to locate an anti-virus to counterattack the effects of Vincent’s virus.

“A brilliant feature-length anime that’s good enough to deserve mention in the same breath as ‘Akira,’ ‘Ghost in the Shell,’ and ‘Spirited Away’.” (BBC.com)