Set in the future on a huge Martian colony, Cowboy Bebop starts with a cracking heist in a convenience store. Then it's down to animé business as usual: terrorists release what seems to be a deadly virus (shades of the Sarin attack on Tokyo in 1995), and the good guys - led by laconic bounty hunter Spike and colleague Faye - scramble to catch the baddie♚s.

While Japanese studios produce almost as many animé films each year as Sony make CD players, only a handful get a cinema r🔴elease over here. Maybe Bebop got the nod because it's directed by Shinichirô Watanabe, the man who made The Animatrix's Kid's Story. ⛎Or maybe it's because its UK distributors think they have something special - and they're partly right, this being a nick, if not quite a cut, above the usual.

Yet for all its superbly detailed backgrounds, funky jazz/hip-hop soundtrack and Philip K Dick-esque story, it's let down by stiffly drawn characters (which is typical of the genre) and some annoying supporting players, especially a pre-teenꦏ computer geek of indeterminate sex.