10 Coolest Sci-Fi Movie & TV Worlds
9. Earth - Cowboy Bebop
It's one thing to come up with a completely different planet and alien race, but how do you portray humanity of the future? This is one of the first hurdles any good sci-fi story should be able to cross. In the world of Cowboy Bebop's case, humanity, and the planet Earth in general, is stubborn, but scarred.
Space travel in Cowboy Bebop is accomplished through interstellar gates that warp ships between planets. As you can imagine, that takes a LOT of energy, so when it explodes, it's never pretty. Earth in this show has suffered one such catastrophe, and has never really recovered. Mostly due to the fact that the explosion shredded the ozone and atmosphere (stupid gate that's HUMANITY'S job!), so meteors are constantly falling down to Earth and tearing up the place.
We don't see Earth that often, only like 2 or 3 episodes. But what we see pretty much sums up everything about Cowboy Bebop's aesthetic. The entirety of humanity is portrayed, from religions, to ethnicity, to sexual orientations (all of which are HUGE themes in director Shinichiro Watanabe's work), all surviving despite this catastrophe.
Like with the previous entry, you don't spend a lot of time on this version of Earth, but by the time it makes its last appearance you feel like you know everything about it.