So I was watching a video about Cowboy Bebop today, and I was reminded of an idea. If I’d been a little better prepared, I wanted to go through Bebop one episode at a time, and talk about each episode in-depth. Tonight I’m going to start doing just that. If you want to watch along, the series is available on Crunchyroll, Funimation and Hulu. I’ll be working with the dubbed version of the show.
Session #1: Asteroid Blues
Original Airdate: October 24, 1998
Written by: Keiko Nobumoto
Title Card Song: “Spokey Dokey” – The version used in the show omits about the first minute of the soundtrack version. The first minute is much faster and more energetic. The remainder of the song gives has a very relaxed, almost lazy vibe.
We cold open to a washed out look at Spike in his yakuza days. This initial scene alternates between Spike walking through the rain as church bells toll in the background and Spike in a shoot out. He’s carrying a bouquet concealing a gun. A rose falls into a puddle as Spike walks away, and as the fight scene intensifies, the rose goes from monochromatic to red. The last image is Spike grinning as blood runs down his face. The song playing during this segment is the music box version of “Memory.” “Memory” is one of the key tracks for the series.
After the intro and the title card, “Spokey Dokey” plays as the camera lazily pans around images of ships in transit. Inside the Bebop, we see Spike exercising in the dark while Jet cooks dinner. Jet turns the light on and calls Spike to eat.
This first scene does a lot to establish Spike and Jet’s relationship and situation. Spike and Jet squabble like an old married couple. Spike is mad because their is no beef in the “bell peppers and beef,” and Jet is obviously already put out with this kind of complaining. Not only is Spike more interested in complaining about the food than in studying up on their new bounty head, he’s the cause of his own misery. Spike’s recklessness in catching their last bounty essentially burned up everything they would have earned from the case.
From this we see that money is an issue for the team, and that they aren’t a perfectly complemented pair. Jet serves as a grouchy paternal figure, and I think him turning the light on for Spike is a subtle way of establishing why Spike needs the rest of the crew when they show up. Spike left alone is in the dark, and its his interactions with Jet and later Faye and Ed that pull him out of the dark.
This intro also portrays Spike as reckless and thoughtless and Jet as grouchy, thoughtful and level-headed. The series will go on to subvert all of this to varying degrees.
After Jet uses the promise of good food to convince Spike to chase the small bounty we get a brief bit of really stellar visual worldbuilding. The Bebop travels through a hyperspace gate, and we get to see how traffic comes into Tijuana, a colonized asteroid. We get a good feel for the sort of sci-fi we’re dealing with in this sequence. I especially like the checkpoint or tollbooth the Bebop travels through. It has a lot of great industrial design work, but it also has this little windowed box. The figures inside show us that the artificial gravity goes in a different direction inside the gate.
Kōichi Yamadera, the Japanese voice actor for Spike, improvised Spike’s whistling. The whistling in the dub is different, also improvised. It’s not clear if Steve Blum, Spike’s English voice, or someone else did the whistling for the dub.
The El Ray bar is taken from Robert Rodriguez’s 1995 movie Desperado. Asimov, this session’s bounty head, and his girlfriend Katerina are visually based on Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek’s characters in that film.
Inside the El Ray, we see the three old men for the first time. To be perfectly honest, I never quite understand the direction of their dialogue, but maybe this will get me closer. Their recurring theme is that they helped build this future through their own blood, sweat and tears, but they seem to be disenfranchised drifters.
Katerina provides a lot of fan service, but the improbable cleavage also serves as a misdirect. Katerina looks pregnant, but when Asimov steps away from the bar to handle his drug deal, she takes a sip of his beer, making it extra apparent that something is a little off besides the “tomato juice.”
I really like the detail of the Bloody Eye applicator. It looks like Asimov is about to jab his own eye with a needle, but instead it mists the drug into his eyes.
Laughing Bull is probably supposed to be a Lakota Sioux elder due to his reverence for Wakan Tanka. The Zona Norte is a real life redlight district in actual Tijuana. Laughing Bull calls Spike the swimming bird, and he says that Spike will meet a woman who will hunt him resulting in his death.
Spike’s apparent luck and willingness to go with the flow comes into play almost immediately after the prophecy from Laughing Bull. Spike stops to fuel up his ship and runs into Asimov and Katerina by accident. The fueling station sequence reveals that Spike is shrewd and capable of magician-style misdirection, but also that he’s capable of some pretty deep empathy. I get the impression that Spike is supposed to see himself in Asimov, a criminal looking to escape the world of crime, but his real regret is for Katerina who has placed so much faith in her drug fueled partner.
Spike puts on his best Clint Eastwood disguise to meet up with Asimov as a prospective client, and he makes it clear that the drugs Asimov has stolen are worth more than Asimov’s life. Asimov is trying to sell the vials of Bloody Eye for millions of Woolong, but the price on his head is only 2.5 million.
The fight and chase sequence reveals a couple of things. First, it shows us that Spike is an incredible threat in hand-to-hand combat. We’ve seen Asimov dodge bullets while using Bloody Eye, but a drugged up Asimov can’t even dodge a punch from Spike. Before the Syndicate’s goons turn it into a chase scene, Spike has Asimov on the ropes.
Second, we learn that Asimov cares more about the Bloody Eye than about Katerina. Katerina isn’t pregnant. Her fake belly conceals the vials of Bloody Eye. When a stray bullet tears her dress causing her to drop a few vials, Asimov screams at her not to lose the drugs.
I love how Spike’s Swordfish interacts with the environment in the chase scene. When he takes off, he knocks over cars and causes loose objects to fly. It would have been easy to animate this on an empty street with just a dust cloud, but the various objects make the world feel lived in and gives the action some real physicality.
The action gives way to tragedy. Katerina realizes that Asimov is a broken man and that their situation is hopeless. The music clues us in that this isn’t a climactic, high adrenaline moment. It’s a moment of despair.
Asimov is berserk and has their ship headed straight for a swarm of police ships up ahead, and Spike is left as a bystander. He pulls up just in time to see that Katerina has killed Asimov and is holding him. Then their stolen ship is destroyed in a hail of bullets from the police.
The episode ends where it began. “Spokey Dokey” plays as Jet serves up bell peppers and beef minus the beef, and Spike continues his exercise, now more clearly a form of meditation. The shared cigarette is a nice touch.
Before the credits, for the very first time we get the iconic “See You Space Cowboy” line.
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