The episodes are in the original airing order. You can use this episode group to get the intended order.

Hi! The original airing order is indeed the one in the episode group you linked. Why is this one not the default one then? The default one is wrong :)

No, the original order wasn't the one listed in the episode group.

TV Tokyo first aired some of the episodes in wrong order.

You're right, but they only didn't air all the episodes.

This is what wikipedia says: "Cowboy Bebop debuted on TV Tokyo, one of the main broadcasters of anime in Japan, airing from April 3 until June 26, 1998. Due to its 6:00 PM timeslot and depictions of graphic violence, the show's first run only included episodes 2, 3, 7 to 15, 18 and a special. Later that year, the series was shown in its entirety from October 24 until April 24, 1999, on satellite network Wowow."

So it doesn't really make sense to use this as the default order. Asteroid Blues is not the 13th episode. It is the 1st episode but was aired only later when they re-aired the entire show.

It's really not a big deal :) But I think the default order in TMBD should be correct order of the episodes as they were intended and created by the show runner :)

The reason why this can be important is for some services (e.g. Plex) using TMDB to get shows information. It will only use the default order.

All the series should be listed in the order of their first broadcast. There are no exception.

If your software doesn't support the episode groups, you need to ask his creator to add the support for them.

I'm not gonna do that of course since I think the issue is at the root (the TMDB database).

TMDB database says that Asteroid blues is the 13th episode which is simply not true. It is not the 13th episode at all, it is the first episode, but it was censured on tv at the first airing. The first episode of the series IS "Asteroid Blues", there is nothing that will ever change that. The fact that it has been censured on tv doesn't change the fact that this is the first episode of the show. And same for all the other episodes that were initially censured (example: Gateway Shuffle, although released later, is still episode 4, not 14). The blu-rays kept the correct order also.

I acknowledge it can be useful to give the information of the first airing date, but the number of the episodes should be the correct ones for this database to make any sense and be logical, and useful.

This is actually what the TVDB do, and it is so much more logical, and makes so much more sense: https://thetvdb.com/series/cowboy-bebop/seasons/official/1. They still give the information of when the episode was first aired, but they don't give the wrong episode numbers.

I'm not expecting any answer now because I understood you don't even consider there is anything wrong here, and that's ok. But -although I love that a database like TMDB exists, and I think folks working on it are doing an incredible job- I still think this is a flaw in this database.

Thanks for your answers!