Cowboy Bebop Rewatch Post

Vincenzo Riccardi

 

I think it's time we blow this scene, get everybody and their stuff together...

As with my Avatar and Lord of the Rings revisit-reviews, there's no real end goal or organization to this. It may or may not go in chronological order. Spoilers ahoy.

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I can't remember when I first watched Cowboy Bebop. The oldest piece of fanart I have saved in Ye Olde Archive of Wonders is dated to 2010, which sounds about right. My last rewatch would have been around 2014-2015.

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The first thing we see in the series (and the last, but we'll get to that when we get to that) is space infrastructure - space stations, orbital mirrors, solar collector arrays, guidance satellites. Our first episode takes place in an O'Neill cylinder inside an asteroid. A couple times in later episodes there are locations just drifting in space near a planet, I tend to imagine them as lagranges. Few are the sci-fi properties that remember things like this.

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I love the signs in Bebop - everywhere you look there's signage, and it changes depending on where you are. Signs on Mars are normally Chinese and English. Signs on Venus add Arabic, French, and Spanish. Signs on Callisto use Cyrillic. Every time there's a tv show shown there's "This program is broadcast in 12 languages". There's a menu in episode 4 that features Futhark runes. In episode 2 there's "PIZZA LANDS" and hell yeah, I'd buy a slice from PIZZA LANDS.

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Over the course of the series, the crew spends 11 episodes on Mars, 6 episodes in the Jovian moons (3 on Ganymede, 2 on Callisto, 1 on Io), 3 episodes on Earth, 2 episodes in the Belt 2 episodes in interplanetary space and 1 episode on Venus.

Several other locations are named but never visited - we know that there was a war on Titan, Europa is settled, that there are scientific outposts around Uranus, and there's a prison on Pluto. Nothing about Mercury though, which is strange. Likely the desolation of Earth has stunted colonization attempts downwell.

The episode where they visit Venus is also a bit of an oddity, because their initial targets (Huey, Dewey and Loiue, ha!) were on their way there on a commercial flight. I can only assume that there's not a whole lot of work to be had in the bounty business on Venus. Clues elsewhere make me think that it's actually the capital planet of the system, rather than Mars, but that's relying on "if there are no bounties it means either enough gov't that it's not needed, or not enough to fund it."

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Laughing Bull is not a sterling representation of Indigenous Americans on screen. Not the worst, but no awards either. But, I think he's vital for what Cowboy Bebop is and a building block of an element that sets it apart from other sci-fi both then and now.

In order to have an old Lakota man in space (His nation is not mentioned, but since he invokes Wakan Tanka I will make this presumption.) you have to have other Lakota in space. Somewhere off screen there's a community. And if there's a Lakota community in space, it's only logical that other nations have enclaves there as well. And if that's the case...everyone is here. And Bebop does that constantly, casually, naturally - with a clear recognition of "well yeah, people like that exist". And in a genre where praise can be meted out for doing actually nothing (Firefly) or for undermining your own point (Star Trek), this is noteworthy. Most everyone else is trying to play catch-up.

Everyone's here, and they brought their culture with them.

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While it's said multiple times that the money's only good if the target is brought in alive, the crew really don't seem to pay attention to that a lot. Maybe that's why they're always broke.

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The fact that, chronologically, I would have gone to college with Faye Valentine has upended my world. Please stand by while I crumble into dust according to the ravages of time.

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An inescapable current in this show is that of poverty, presented with the simple and blunt honesty of "sometimes it's bell peppers and beef with no beef for dinner." It's always there, in rust and peeling paint.

 

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Jet is an enormous loser, and I love that about him. He likes pretending that he's the big man in charge but the moment anyone pushes back, he folds. He'll tell meandering stories with no point to put on airs of wisdom. His one romantic relationship fell apart because he was a condescending paternalist and he's internalized that as "it must be the intrinsic fault of women" - yet still the way he talks about it has some genuine grief.

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Nothing like a really good Ave Maria to tug at the heartstrings.

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Sci-fi aesthetics peaked with 90s anime, this we all know and agree upon. And those gunshot sound effects!

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The 0 G segments in Bebop remain some of the best around. The cleanness and slight exaggeration of the animation allows them to pull off some really appealing acrobatics with thrust and momentum.

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Ha, they make fun of Uri Gellar in the episode with the AI.

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Ed could have been awful, but they remembered the important lesson: gremlin doesn't mean stupid, and it doesn't means "source of everyone's problems". That's a guaranteed way of making someone hate a character, make them responsible for making everything worse by being dumb, and they keep doing it and getting away with it.

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We never get a reason for why there was a war on Titan. I suspect it would either be outside forces fighting over it for colonization rights (which seems less likely, given how each planet seems to be independent) or a colony collapse scenario (more likely, considering how Callisto is falling apart and Io's land rush never seemed to materialize)

Callisto itself, as we see it in "Jupiter Jazz" is a masterpiece of storytelling through setting. Enormous gleaming skyscrapers left half-finished and empty. Towns where it's possible to go six months without seeing a woman because the only folks there are the men who came for work and now there's no more work to be had. It hasn't fallen into anarchy - we see municipal trash collection in one shot - but time are bad and they don't appear to be changing any time soon. An earlier episode mentioned that Ganymede is in a recession, and Io looks to have been expecting a land rush that never came.

There are so many potential stories to living there

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The most gratuitous cheesecake shots we get of Faye are when she's in Gren's apartment - a man who has no sexual interest in her (though he does have his moments of not understanding personal space. Come on, Gren.) Faye uses her body as a tool to get what she wants with gleeful abandon in much of the rest of the show, so the fact that the scene is shot like that in a moment where she explicitly isn't doing that is worth noting.

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Vicious has a Nokia flip phone. Fucking love it.

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"Speak Like a Child" might be my favorite episode in the series now. Looking back at yourself and not recognizing or remembering what was there starts to hit different once it starts happening to you. My appreciation for Faye in general has skyrocketed on this watch - she's been through a lot of shit (brain damage from cryo) and has built up a persona to deal with it. It slips from time to time, and we see who she is / might have been.

Judging by the timeline, Faye's video would have been shot ~2004. I wonder, if I saw video of myself from back then, would I remember what was going on in it? Or would I watch myself on the screen going through actions that have long since melted down into the simmering, fuzzy pool of childhood? Faye doesn't even have that sense of continuity. That tape might as well be a message from the dead. Which, as time goes on and more VHS tapes are lost to damage, decay, or lack of backups, there will be more and more Fayes out there.

Leave it to this show to make a fucking betamax tape a precious thing that keeps us anchored to ourselves.

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Engineered life shows up a couple times in the show, all of it aquatic and most of it on Ganymede. I figure it was part of the colonization push that's been falling in on itself.

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I love the little bit at the end where they see the guy from Big Shot meeting his mom at the airport. The ordinary guy behind the corny act on TV.

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Spike is a real shithead. A loveable one, but he's gone and found himself a niche where no one can effectively counter his aloof coolness + deathwish. Jet is a pushover, Faye can't get through to him. The episode with Andy is noteworthy because of just how angry Spike gets over meeting someone who is like him, a mirror of his great flaws of bullheadedness and assholery.

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"Pierre le Fou" is, of course, a fantastic episode. And a large part of that is the absolute refusal to use music or even traditional scare chords when Pierrot is on screen. In the first encounter it's dead silence in the background until you realize the growing anxious tinnitus drone. In the second, it's all diegetic music from the amusement park rides.

We also get a premonition of the end: Spike's deathwish manifesting itself, Faye being asked up front if she would save him. We saw this play out in the episode with the harmonica kid (which I don't like all that much)

And, interesting to note, Spike is nearly completely absent from the following episode - a welcome breather.

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"Brain Scratch" first aired April 3 1999. The members of Heaven's Gate committed suicide just barely two years prior in march of 97. the Aum Shinrikyo gas attacks were in 95. Time capsule of an era, that episode - less important for its plot than for the look and act of the cult within it. Crude late 90s website and all.

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No one in this show can communicate, no one in this show can form connections. Spike is trapped in his past and refuses to let go and move on. Jet tries to bury his past without ever having to come to terms with the uncomfortable truth. Faye is always looking for her past and finds no comfort in it when she finds it. Ed's probably the most emotionally mature member of the cast - she comes to terms with the fact that she can't stay with the Bebop and its suffocation-of-self, and in heading off is the only one who is able to look towards the future.

"Hard Luck Woman" is just a killer episode. The absurdity of the hard boiled egg chow-down highlighting how Spike and Jet cannot handle any of this maturely is just chef's kiss.

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The ending comes rolling in out of nowhere and vanishing just as sudden. Its big and awkward and empty in places and that fits. With Spike dead and the Bebop inoperable, Jet and Faye are guaranteed to go their own ways. Faye might be able to move on. Jet's probably going to drink himself to death.

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Top songs: "Bad Dog No Biscuits", "Waltz for Zizi", "Gotta Knock a Little Harder", "Call Me, Call Me", "Blue"

 

 

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What else is there to say? Probably more, I have quite a bit more in the notes, but a ramble-review like this needs only so much. 

Let there be impeccable vibes.