Cowboy Bebop: History

[branchandroot]

Easy Money

Everyone’s got a history in here. Spike’s is the most obvious, but Faye and Jet, and even Ed and Ein, contribute their own searches to this theme. In addition to the page song, I have chosen theme songs for each character, linked to the section headings.

Banish Misfortune / Open Paw

Forget Faye, the real mystery character in here is Ein. We know next to nothing about him. We know he’s a “data dog” produced in a covert lab by illegal means. We know he understands how to manipulate technology–both mechanically as in opening car doors and turning on and off communicators and also virtually by way of a holographic system as he does in “Brain Scratch.” He’s pretty darn good at it, too, seeing how fast he breaks into Scratch and traces every branch of it down to the hospice.

We also know he has a sense of humor. Recall “Wild Horses” wherein Ed is working to clean a virus out of the Bebop. She finishes her program and makes a flourishing production of hitting the Enter key–and Ein cuts her off by pressing it himself with no fanfare at all. This causes her to growl at him, of course. That was also the episode where he cut off Faye’s complaints over the com. You can almost see him grin as he looks back at Jet. In fact, Ein seems to contribute most of the subtler humor to the show.

Given this, I suppose it isn’t surprising that he likes to play with Ed, as when she breaks out the hose to “water” Jet’s bonsai. Nor that he chooses to go with her when she leaves. Besides, maybe he can keep her out of trouble.

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Ed Wants a Rock

Ed’s departure, while rather depressing, does fit in with her history such as we know it. Ed is another character who doesn’t seem to have much, but in this case it seems less a function of a non-speaking character as with Ein. Ed has little history because she exists in the moment. Like her speech, Ed is only loosely connected to the stolid, linear world most of the rest of the characters inhabit.

We were primed, in “Hard Luck Woman,” to see her departure not as a rejection of the Bebop crew, but as part of who she is. The nun she leads Faye to tells us that Ed wandered in one day and wandered out two years later, only to pop up again after a three year absence. That episode also makes it clear that Ed comes by this habit fair and square from her father. He dashes about mapping asteroid strikes, she drifts about hacking into anything that catches her fancy and they keep a desultory eye out for each other.

That’s the episode that also points up Ed’s resilience. She’s paralleled with Faye, who regains her memories and takes off to find their source. She tells Ed, at that time, that Ed also has somewhere she belongs and someone waiting for her, and that she should also look for it. So she does, planting a false bounty to snooker the guys into finding Appledelhi for her. Faye’s belonging is now a crater. Ed’s, in the person of her father, takes of as soon as she finds him. While Ed takes leave of the Bebop in somewhat the same way Faye does, she seems less perturbed than Faye and has less trouble moving on. It’s hard to say why Ed chooses this time to leave the Bebop, but if we carry the parallel further we might have a clue. Faye stays away from the Bebop until she has overwhelming reasons to go back: she’s adrift, Jet’s injured and Spike has a message from Julia. Faye comes back when she decides that the Bebop is where she belongs after all. Perhaps Ed is going to look some more for her father (icon of belonging). All we have is what she says to Ein, that she is going somewhere very far away. But the tag line of the show, “See you cowgirl, someday, somewhere!”, suggests that she, too, will be back eventually–that the Bebop will turn out to be one of the places she belongs as well.

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Red Dirt Boy

I deal with the Vicious/Julia part of Spike’s past on Spike, Julia & Vicious: When She Drives. What I want to deal with here are the things we learn about Spike by association. Eyes are a major meaning exchange in this story, and the times when we get other characters associated with Spike via his eyes are enlightening.

“Sympathy for the Devil,” for instance, starts with a montage of Spike’s memories from when his eye was installed. They’re colored neon green and fluorescent blue. The general impression, what with the jars of organs and things and the shots of Spike’s eyelids being held back, is gruesome–rather mad-scientist-ish. The shot zooms in on his right eye area (which could indicate that his right eye is the artificial one, except that in “Real Folk Blues II” he says that the eye replaced was “destroyed in an accident”; the memory shots in “Sympathy” show his right eye intact. I examine the further implications of all this ambiguity on The End: Luck of the Draw). And then Spike starts awake and looks at Wen. As we start to find out about Wen’s age and non-ageing we get the statement, horrible in its simplicity, “The men who took an interest and experimented on me all died before me.” As in “Pierrot le Fou” the connected imagery aligns Spike with one who is out of balance with time (an ancient in a child’s body or an adult with the mind of a child), as well as with those who have found themselves largely helpless in face of a ruthless power (medical) and are now really pissed off about it.

Why does Spike go after Wen? There’s no indication that Wen might try to strike at him, or do anything but run and establish another new life. I suggest that it is, as the title suggests, sympathy. Spike has already shot Wen in the head and seen the pool of blood and Wen’s prints walking away from it. His expression at that moment is fairly horrified. When Wen, dying, says to Spike, “I feel so heavy–by I feel so at ease now” Spike claims not to understand any more than he understands hyperphysics. But we are offered two strong images to suggest that he isn’t entirely truthful. One is that Wen’s eyes are the same green as Spike’s memories; in fact his suit echoes that green and blue both. The other is Spike’s gesture at the very end, throwing the harmonica into the air and “firing” his hand at it. He makes the same gesture in the last episode, as he dies himself. If he didn’t understand at the time of “Sympathy,” I think he does by the time of “Real Folk Blues.” Certainly those two episodes are also linked by Faye waiting at the door as Spike leaves because she doesn’t think, on either occasion, that he’ll be coming back. The second time she’s right.

Then there’s “Jamming with Edward” which starts out with a shot of an eye that looks remarkably like Spike’s, and a voice saying “always alone.” We quickly find out that this is a satellite AI, but it did make me think. This AI maneuvers the things around it to draw huge eye-catching pictures. Spike, you recall, understands exactly why and when Jet asks why the AI would draw like that says quite accurately that it was lonely. I think we’re meant to take the AI as another parallel to Spike, who is certainly making himself eyecatching as far as Red Dragon is concerned. I mean, come on, he’s a bounty hunter whose home base is on Mars just like the syndicate’s is.

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Mohammed’s Radio

The whole issue of loneliness, of course, is a hot one between Spike and Jet. “Jupiter Jazz” demonstrates that for us, with their tiff over Spike’s decision to abandon Faye (and bankroll) to search for Julia. Jet gets pretty indignant that Spike might think he was lonely for company when Jet thought Spike was the lonely one. Both of them rather eat their words at the end of those two episodes. After Jet has said that there won’t be a place for Spike on the Bebop, and then said he’ll let Spike back in if Spike catches Gren (and after Spike has said fine and taken off anyway) we see Spike sending Gren off toward Europa and catching up to hover over the Bebop. A perfectly deadpan exchange follows, Jet asking what Spike’s got, Spike telling him “Nothing” and Jet telling him to hurry up and land because they’re leaving. The undercurrent of things unspoken here is enough to sink ships, especially against the backdrop of camaraderie, loyalty and betrayal that “Jazz” examines. The tag line at the end (do you have a comrade?) points up the fact that, while none of them will ever admit it in so many words, the crew of the Bebop are indeed comrades and will fight with and forgive and support each other accordingly.

After all, Jet probably was lonely too. He’s a team player. His history is the most transparent of all the characters. Practically every other episode we meet another old co-worker of Jet’s that he can lean on for information. From them we get the picture of a man who may cut his friends and fellows some slack, as we see when he reminds Bob of all the confiscated eyedrops whose disappearance he didn’t mention (“Shuffle”), but the very same scene shows that Jet remembers things like that and saves them up to use when needed.

“Ganymede Elegy” shows us the determined side of Jet, and highlights the extent to which he ordered his life by and around a sense of duty. I find it significant that the word used, when Spike and Faye talk about Jet’s sense of justice and duty is bushi rather than giri. Jet’s sense of duty is a highly personal one, not one that’s part of a network of obligations. Spike tells him his old lover’s new flame is a bounty, and Jet says that he will bring this one in. Spike asks, “You’re not going to let him go, are you?” and Jet says that he will deal with this crime in the place where he used to be a cop. Even if it is going to tear up his ex to do so.

In “Black Dog Serenade” we see what that tenacity cost him. Here, again, we also see the writers’ taste for irony. Jet’s old partner, Fad, was the one who worked with Udai and one of the syndicates to trap Jet and shoot him. Now Fad, probably though not explicitly working on behalf of the syndicate to erase Udai who has become obsolete, coaxes Jet into partnering with him again to do so. We, as viewers, are prepared for Fad’s corruption. We are given the blond prisoner in the ship who admits to having been a cop and when razzed about now being a lifer says “Cops are human too.” We also have Fad’s slip when Jet suggests Udai will head back ‘home’ to Europa; Fad knows that Udai is persona non grata with his home syndicate and almost says so. We are readied for the reverse of who shoots who by the similar geographic set-up of this second Udai-hunt. Just as Fad, the first time, says he will go around the building and meet Jet, Jet, this time, says he will come around the other side of the ship.

Jet is given no such lead time. Udai hits him cold with the information that his partner shot off his arm, and immediately afterward said partner saves him by shooting Udai and then not only allows Jet to shoot him but hoodwinks Jet into doing it. Jet has kept his honor and fulfilled his duty. He has not succumbed to corruption like his partner, nor is he dead as Fad says most of the other uncorruptables are. Instead he is alone.

In many ways, Jet’s history and Ed’s history set each other off. Ed lives in the moment; Jet, as Alisa points out, lives in the past. Of course, Alisa also points out that Jet can be pretty difficult to live with precisely because of his unbending ethics and personal certainty. “You were like this back then too,” she says. “You decided everything. And you were always right. When I was with you, I never had to do anything. All I had to do was hang on to your arm like a child, with no cares in the world. I wanted to decide how to live my life by myself…even if that was a mistake” (10). When Jet, in the course of still apprehending her boyfriend tells him to “be strong and protect her,” Alisa seems to realize that Jet either hasn’t heard a word she’s said or has heard it and still considers her a child. All things considered, it’s probably good for Jet to have three partners who do exactly as they please.

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I Feel So Good–Home Again

I think Faye’s history is the most poignant. It’s certainly the one with the greatest contrast between past and present, thus her two theme songs; I couldn’t find a single song that fit both sides. She and Spike are foils, on this score, in the same way Jet and Ed are foils to each other. Recall when Spike tells Faye she thinks too much about the past and Faye retorts that he only thinks so because he has a past (15). They are both trapped by their pasts, he by the presence of his and she by the absence of hers.

Most of the time we see Faye as a pretty classic femme fatale. Her behavior on Callisto, of baiting a bunch of thugs into following her so she can beat them up to relieve her frustration is typical. Of course, her initial behavior, of stealing the Bebop’s cash so that the others would, as Jet so cogently remarks, be sure to come after her, is also typical. I think Gren has her number on that one when he says that she distanced herself because she’s afraid of losing them. Not that she’s unwilling to reciprocate rescues, as we see in “Pierrot Le Fou.” She tries to keep le Fou’s ‘invitation’ from Spike, at first. When he sees it he teases her by saying that this one might be the end of him and, when she looks apprehensive, adding “Just kidding!” and asking if she would come rescue him if he said that. She only responds “Baka.” But she does come.

In stunning contrast, “My Funny Valentine” shows her as a vulnerable (even gullible) young woman distressed by losing her past and rather shyly taken with the gallant chivalry of her lawyer cum knight. “Speak Like A Child” cranks up the contrast even more by showing us Faye as a child, gentle and cheerful, if mischievous judging by her remarks about probably being a bother to someone (at which point we see a shot of Spike and Jet). The end of this episode is where Faye’s story takes a sharp turn toward the poignant. The cheer Young Faye does for herself is “Ganbare atashi”; ganbare (or ganbaru or ganbatte) is often translated as good luck, but in this case the slightly more accurate translation of don’t lose is appropriate (what it actually indicates is to endure, persist or stand firm, from the root ganban or bedrock I believe). This is especially so since it gives what I suspect is the intended double meaning “don’t lose, me” and “don’t lose me.” Because that’s precisely what has happened. Faye’s whisper during this cheer is “I don’t remember.” She has lost her.

Small wonder that Faye is so overset when she does remember. We may note that her memories are the only ones in full color, albeit faded; that implies that her memories are, in some way, the only complete ones to be had among these characters (“Hard Luck”). The final implication is harsher, given that when Faye does go back where she now feels/knows she belongs she finds only a crater. Perhaps Faye’s memories are the most complete because she is the only one whose past is so thoroughly gone.

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The title soundtrack here is “Easy Money” by Rickie Lee Jones, off Rickie Lee Jones. The sense of humor struck me as very Cowboy Bebop, and the issue of money, easy and otherwise, does rather permeate everyone’s history here. All the same, I chose the sound of this song for contrast more than for consonance with our characters’ histories.

“Banish Misfortune/Open Hand” is an instrumental piece by Patty Larkin off Angels Running. “We Want a Rock” is by They Might be Giants, off Flood. “Red Dirt Girl” is by Emmy Lou Harris off the album of the same name. “Mohammed’s Radio” is by Linda Ronstadt, off Living in the USA. “I Feel So Good” is by Richard Thompson and this particular version (my most favorite) came off A Rare Thing; “Home Again in Eireann” is performed by Sharon Murphy and Whisp, my copy coming off Women of the World Celtic II.