Job #41: 1990's Fighter - Spike Spiegel
- Series: Cowboy Bebop
- Original Network: TV Tokyo (this is a exclusion from "Publisher" as the anime came first)
- Character Theme: Tank! (in his reveal/gameplay trailer, we'll probably use the short/opening version)
- First Appearance:
- Anime - Asteroid Blues (April 3rd/October 24th, 1998 - TV Tokyo/Wowow broadcasts)
- Manga - You Only Live Twice (Chapter 1 of Cowboy Bebop: Shooting Star - May 1998)
Spike Spiegel is the main protagonist of a neo-noir science fiction anime series
Cowboy Bebop, which was created and animated by
Sunrise (currently Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc.) under
Shinichiro Watanabe's direction and originally ran from April 3rd to June 26th, 1998 on TV Tokyo, before it's full entirety was shown from October 24th, 1998 to April 24th, 1999 on a satellite network
Wowow.
The show takes place at the future in 2071, centering on a crew of bounty hunters that work from
the spaceship Bebop and pursue criminals across the
Solar System; Spike Spiegel and
Jet Black, who were respective former hitman/
ISSP officer and later joined by an amnesiac con artist who was put into cryogenic freeze 54 years back (
Faye Valentine), an eccentric girl who is skilled in hacking (
Edward; or "Radical Ed") and a genetically-engineered intelligent dog (
Ein), as they end up on disastrous mishaps and confront faces & events from their past, with the main story arc involving Spike's deadly rivalry with
Vicious, a criminal and old rival from
the Red Dragon Syndicate, who seeks to kill him after the former was exiled and faked his death upon falling in love with
Julia (who he was in search of).
Inspired by Lupin the Third, Cowboy Bebop has been declared as one of the greatest and beloved animated television series made in Japan of all time, having become a success in international markets (especially the United States, which's dub has been regarded as one of the best anime dubs) and garnered several awards & praises for it's various aspects like style, characters, story and
phenomenal soundtrack, even having helped on introducing anime to a Western audience in the early 2000's. The show received a 2001 film (
Knockin' on Heaven's Door) that sets between
Episodes 22 and
23, two
manga adaptations &
video games on
PlayStation consoles and a short-lived
live-action Netflix adaptation, also making
a surprising guest appearance in the video game
Super Robot Wars T (series' first debut alongside
Leiji Matsumoto's legendary
Captain Harlock on
his Arcadia ship, who
in turn inspired Vicious -
a match-up people waited for and
rest in peace).
In Anime FighterZ, Spike's moveset is specifically a mixture of
Jeet Kune Do martial arts and marksman skills through usage of various weapons like his trusty Jericho 941 handgun (also
used dual pistols in various instances, potentially a Level 1 super attack akin to Deadpool's), a futuristic
Thompson/Center Contender (which shoots a special rare mineral-built bullet which took down a biologically immortal enemy in
Episode 6), M67 hand grenades,
a net gun that can trap Spike's opponent when hit, gas grenades to slowly deplete their health for a while and
a flamethrower. He can also use
throwing daggers,
a broom for the melee attack and sleight-of-hand technique by dropping down a grenade to the opponent before it blows up (possibly a counter-based move or Special Skill). His spacecraft, the
Swordfish II (which was a high-speed
MONO racer that Doohan converted into a fighter-ship for space combat), may obviously appear in Spike's Level 3/Destructive Finish super which he pilots while blowing up the opponent off with it's plasma cannon, machine guns and missiles. Jet and Faye can also show up to help him out in one of his normal super attacks/moves.