COWBOY BEBOP: TENGOKU NO TOBIRA

COWBOY BEBOP: TENGOKU NO TOBIRA (vt, NetFlix: COWBOY BEBOP: THE MOVIE, 2002). Shinichirô Watanabe, dir. Marc Handler, Keiko Nobumoto, script; Hajime Yatate, story. Japan/USA: Bandai Visual Co. et al. (prod.) / Columbia TriStar (dist.), 2001. 116 min. See IMDb for additional filmographic information, including various vts.[1]

IMDb brief summary by "The Unknown Bounty" (Jan. 2007) reads, "A terrorist explosion releases a deadly virus on the masses, and it's up the bounty-hunting Bebop crew to catch the cold-blooded culprit"; significant here, the virus is the product of nanotechnology: apparently self-replicating micro-robots that eventually destroy victims' brains, although giving them a near-beatific vision of beautiful butterflies shortly before death. Note also unstressed image of cyberspace when we are given glimpses of the computer screen of "Ed," the hacker of the Bebop bounty hunters, when she is hacking. See the Wikipedia entry (Jan. 2007): [2].

5. DRAMA, RDE, 08/I/07 RDE, Title, 20Aug19