In a cast loaded with unique and iconic characters, no one on the Cowboy Bebop crew is more peculiar than Radical Ed. While fans of the series love her for her wild antics with Ein, the offbeat hacker was actually based on a prominent staff member.
Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivruski IV or as she is more commonly known, Ed, was the last but not least, member of the Bebop crew. She's also an amalgamation of many of the TV tropes used for geeks. Eccentric and quirky, awkward and naive, but "smart as a whip." She was the quintessential nerd. Moreover, as part of a team whose members constantly stretch the boundaries of what is morally right, Ed provided a constant guiding light for the other Bebop crew members Jet, Spike, and Faye that being good, doing good, and "getting paid" are not mutually restricted. As it turns out, Ed's offbeat persona was not a characteristic randomly thought up by one of the show's writers. Rather, it's based on the idiosyncrasies of a valued member of the series' content creation team.
During a June 2003 panel discussing the American premiere of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, director Shinichiro Watanabe, revealed that the inspiration for Ed was the series' musical director and composer Yoko Kanno. Ed, or the idea of an Ed, had been created well before anyone knew there would be a Cowboy Bebop project. According to Watanabe, he had worked with Kanno on the animated series Macros Plus where she proved she could provide an "eclectic" vision to the production. However, it was her eccentricities that really piqued his interest; to the point where he began thinking of how he could "put her in as a character" in his next series. That "next series" was Cowboy Bebop. As luck would have it, Bandai, the series' producers gave Watanabe full creative control over what the Cowboy Bebop story should be, and what characters should star in it, as long as it had plenty of spaceships. With such artistic freedom, Watanabe had the perfect conditions to create a character based on Kanno, whom he hired to be the series' music director, and create a role for her in the story. That role was Ed.
Yoko Kanno Was The Perfect Model For Ed
Watanabe's description of how Ed came to be, and who she was based on is confirmed by character designer Toshiro Kawamoto. In his book Cowboy Bebop Illustration - The Wind, Kawamoto discussed how his original design for Ed in Cowboy Bebop was to make the hacker a boy. Later, Kawamoto writes, he was told by Watanabe that he wanted Ed to be a girl based on Kanno. Consequently, he redrafted Ed largely based on his and Watanabe's observations of Kanno. As Kawamoto admits, at this stage Ed became a girl.
Kawamoto's drawing of Ed is not the only aspect that mirrors Kanno. Indeed, Watanable worked to have her act out, in the series, the quirky habits he saw from Kanno in person, such as "rolling around on the floor", doing strange things, and "making strange" noises on occasion. As any viewer of Cowboy Bebop knows, in addition to her other odd habits, Ed does indeed enjoy rolling on the ground and making strange noises. Similarly, Kanno's breadth of creative skill with music, as demonstrated in Cowboy Bebop's soundtrack is echoed in the series by Ed's otherworldly skill with computers. Watanabe was clearly onto something by including Kanno as Ed. Despite her odd behavior, like Kanno, Ed has gone on to become one of Cowboy Bebop's most beloved elements.
Source: Internet Archive