Cowboy Bebop (1998): Cowboy Bebop: Jupiter Jazz (Part I)

October 12, 2014 6:55 AM - Season 1, Episode 12

In the 12th session of Cowboy Bebop, Faye cleans out the crew's safe and leaves the Bebop, heading to frigid Jupter. While Jet chases after her, Spike decides to follow some references to a woman named Julia instead, which leads him to another confrontation with Vicious and his old comrade Lin. Meanwhile, Faye meets a sax player named Gren who also knows Julia. [WARNING: brief scenes animated female nudity]
posted by filthy light thief (1 comment total)

Just catching up with this one now. Although the reveal of Gren's secret at the end of the session does form a suitable cliffhanger for the two-parter, I think both episodes really need to be considered as a whole, so I'll confine my comments here to just the stuff that specifically pertains to this half, and tie it all together in the Part II thread.

IIRC, this is the second appearance of Laughing Bull, the Native American shaman that Spike visits in S1: "Asteroid Blues". Although it's hard to square this scene (which presumably takes place on Mars) with the rest of the episode, it makes much more sense when it comes up a second time, repeated verbatim, at the end of Part II.

This is also our introduction to the Red Dragons' primary leadership, the Van, which sets up events towards the end of the series. The relationship seen here between Vicious and Lin is interesting to note, in that it presumably mirrors Vicious and Spike's relationship years earlier. When Vicious tells Lin that he may need to betray him to survive, he's speaking from experience.

Faye's latest scam -- sabotaging the Bebop and making off with the contents of the safe -- seems like an obvious cry for attention. For that matter, so does Spike storming off to chase the supposed "Julia", as does Jet's angry good-riddance speech to Spike. It's all a circle of denial, as the Spike/Faye/Jet triumvirate are unable to admit that they truly do care about each other. In any case, since Faye "escaped" to the same tiny moon that the Bebop is currently orbiting, she must know that she'll eventually be found -- a fact that Gren intuitively picks up on towards the end of Part I.

Once again, several years of watching my Adult Swim tapes before buying the DVDs has given me a swiss-cheese memory about certain aspects of this episode -- specifically the uncensored nudity when Faye bursts in on Gren in the shower. (The AS version adds some digital "steam" to obscure it) Given that CB's overall level of sex and violence is actually pretty light compared to certain other anime series, I have to suspect that there were a number of otaku who deeply chagrined to finally see naked boobs on the show, only to have them belong to a man.

On to Part II!
posted by Strange Interlude at 4:13 PM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]