OK! THREE, TWO, ONE -- LET'S JAM!

 

A NEW VISION of the SCIENCE FICTION FUTURE

Cowboy Bebop is smartly different from the way we usually visualize the science fiction future. Yes, they use jump gates, but the gates cost major cash to use. In Asteroid Blues, it cost Jet and Spike 7500 woolongs to get the Bebop Earthside.

While the large ships have onboard computer systems, smaller ships like the Swordfish II need hand held keys to start up the engines. These smaller ships also use hand controls and foot pedals for flight control. Faye's ship, the Redtail, can be started and piloted remotely by the password "Showtime yo!"

Thanks to the little things, there is never a feeling that this kind of technology is too far beyond our present state. In 2071, you will encounter interstellar truckers who have personally modified rigs to make the long haul a little more pleasant for them. You will encounter "NO DUMPING" signs out there in space and of course that area will be completely littered with trash. And you'll always find people smoking where they're not supposed to be smoking.

In every town you'll find the signs and streetlights and vehicles and the local constabulary.

In this science fiction future, language is not forgotten or reduced to "common." Signs are everywhere and in every language. Announcements over the satellite news or at jump gates are spoken in most major tongues.

So the idea of specific cultures is not lost nor pushed to the side, as say the Star Trek future does.

The idea of fuel is close to home too. They still use fuel -- though not likely your basic fossil-based stuff -- dinosaurs being Earth-creatures and the Earth now fairly inaccessible from the surface and people now living underground and all that. Fuel is likely harvested on another planet. And why not call that stuff gas too?

You will find derelict stations and ships floating in space, like cars abandoned on the side of a road. And make sure you keep an eye on your gas gauge, because if you run out of fuel while you're out there, you are truly out of luck. But before you go out, maybe you should study up on astrophysics and familiarize yourself with the laws of hyperspace.

"Matter that gets enclosed in hyperspace can be seen, but will never interact with matter in this reality again." -- Jet Black

This world is not too far from where we are now in many darker aspects of our global society. People still do the wrong things and take up with the wrong people. People gamble. People smoke. People drink. People do drugs. People lie. People cheat. People carry weapons. People kill. Even the good guys.

In some respects, it sounds as if I'm talking about Spike again. OK, let's face it, Spike would never see eye to eye with the Women's Christian Temperance Union. He drinks. He gets drunk. He suffers from hang overs. In Asteroid Blues, he tells Asimov to leave the water running in the sink, because Asimov looks like he's suffering from the effects of too much Mariachi Tequila.

And later, in Heavy Metal Queen, he gets into a fight with a bunch of bounty hunters, when someone pushes into him and knocks the raw egg for his Prairie Oyster -- a surefire cure for a hang over -- into his lap.

People ridicule or fight others because they appear different or because they are strangers. There are still socioeconomic gaps. There is drug abuse and drug trafficking. There are street toughs and there is organized crime. And helping another person out can get you killed.

Just one more reason why there are Bounty Hunters and the I.S.S.P.

And there is the miracle of modern medicine, where plastic surgery is more plastic than ever. A decent surgeon can change skin textures and complexions and create a new you so different from your old self that only sophisticated software can detect who you once were. Not even animals are immune to the growth of science for science's sake.

Spike has a cyber eye and Jet has a mechanical arm -- and those are only basic surgical procedures.

But finding medical help often costs a lot of credits. Sometimes desperate people do desperate things for the people they love. And sometimes that kind of desperation leads a person down the wrong path. Spike walked that road not too long ago.

Spike: "I might be one of these bad people [Roco] hangs out with.
Stella: "Maybe. Maybe you are. But you're different. I can tell. Both you and Roco have something beautiful deep inside you. It's hard to tell, but it's there. I can see it. That's why I'm offering you tea like this."
Spike: "Something beautiful, huh? I probably lost that long, long ago."

THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Asteroid Belt	Venus	Mars	Jupiter

It is the year 2071. The planets are linked by a series of jump gates, allowing the inhabitants of the solar system to travel freely -- but not for free. Using a jump gate to get to earth can cost about 7500 woolongs these days.

Back in the day, an accident occurred during the construction of a jump gate, which left the Earth in a ravaged state. The Earth is now surrounded by a ring of satellites and the shattered moon.

Since the jump gate accident 50 years ago, which drastically changed the climate, the people of the Earth migrated underground. Moon rocks fall randomly to the Earth. For these underground Earthlings, the thick ring of satellites or the "space network" is necessary for them to stay in contact with those living in space.

As the saying goes, nothing of value is produced on the Earth these days.

If you're rich, you'll want to go to Mars. And Route 66 will get you there. That's the place for the beautiful people and high culture. And of course there is also the wretchedly poor -- but if you're rich enough, you won't see them.

Mars is also the seat of organized crime in the solar system. You want to find something on the black market, you'll find it here. You want to fence ill-gotten booty, then this is your place. If you want illegal drugs or "adult" magazines or to simply get lost in the crowd, then you want to be on Mars.

Mars is the height of the scientific and medical community, as there are plenty of the beautiful who wish to stay that way and plenty of the criminal element who want to change their identity. And among the science community, there are scientists working on datadogs

Well, there's always Venus. It has a lot of helium in it's atmosphere, so without a pill to cure the side effects, you'll end up sounding like Mickey Mouse when you speak.

When you travel to Venus, the first thing you'll notice are the great islands floating above the ground. Plants for terraforming are cultivated on these islands. When the plants are in bloom, spores fall down from the sky like snow. But don't be too taken with the beauty of a shower of downy spores, because in some unfortunate souls they produce an allergic reaction that can cause more than a bit of sneezing from Terran hayfever.

You can be poor on Venus, just don't get sick.

See the moons of Jupiter, where you can experience the fine cuisine of the Ganymede searat (Yum!). And if you're really in an adventurous mood, go Earthside to Tijuana -- it's well worth the price of a jump gate.

And beyond the choice of planets and moons, you have space stations that offer anything from a rest stop for truckers to casinos. isit a fine space station along the asteroid belt, created to service your every need.

WANTED FOR BOUNTY

Spike grew up poor on Mars. His sleight of hand tricks were developed through years of necessary theft. Is there any wonder that the benefits of such groups as the Red Dragon seem to outweigh the dangers, brutality, and hopelessness of organized crime?

Jet: "It's a trap."
Spike: "I owe him from before."
Jet: "This arm. It's the price I paid for being overspirited and running ahead of the game. You understand?"
Spike: "I don't want to go either."
Jet: "Then--"
Spike: "Let's just say these are the duties of the life I live."

Spike Spiegel and Jet Black are a bounty hunting duo who have more heart than cash. In the style of the Man With No Name, they travel about the system dispensing justice and collecting bounties.

But men like Spike and Jet live by their own rules, their own kind of honor. Their past warrants this personal code, because it's the only way to heal the psychological and emotional wounds. But these two don't allow the troubles of the past to dominate them. Somehow they've managed to get beyond the people they once were to become who they are now.

Oddly enough, if the old Jet had met the old Spike those years ago, death would have been the likely result. For Spike was once an executive member of the Red Dragon tong on Mars and Jet was a lauded member of the I.S.S.P., the Inter Solar Systems Police.

Faye: "Survival of the Fittest is the law of the land. To fool and to be fooled are the reasons we live."

Organized crime does not necessarily mean yakuza in this time. The Universal Environmental Protection Society -- or Space Warriors -- are organized and they are criminals. They kill hundreds in an attempt to protect endangered species, most notably the sea rat of Ganymede, which is no longer endangered. According to Jet, the Space Warriors used to do good work until their leadership changed in 2069.

"Now this group is even worse than a lot of syndicates out there."

But organized crime in the true sense of the word exists in 2071. Mars is rife with it. The tong, which once doubled as Spike's family, is now in the hands of Vicious. But Vicious must answer to higher ups, who now and again try to trim his claws.

Vicious is a man who has no room for sentimentality. For him, there is no such thing as debt or duty or giri to a person who saved your life in the past. Don't grow complacent or desire a new life or a little bit of peace around him, because if you do, you may end up dead. In his mind, a beast who loses his fangs must die.

Vicious considers himself to have the blood of the beast running through his veins, a beast who awakens desiring the blood of others. Though he wants Spike dead, he still believes that the blood of the beast is in Spike as well.

Jet: "Spike, you're deliberately avoiding the subject. Are you hiding something from me?"
Spike: "So, what happened to that arm of yours?"
Jet: "What does that have to do with anything?"
Spike: "Nothing."
Jet: "So, you have no intention of telling me?"
Spike: "I could ask the same of you."

EYE CATCH

Cowboy Bebop has nice little touches in detail that may not be necessary to drive the story, but are important to setting the scene and the mood. The tragic villain in Asteroid Blues, Asimov, wears spurs on his boots.

A Bounty Hunter called Cowboy Andy wears the full gear, even down to the chaps, and rides a horse. And by the way, Andy is nothing like Spike!! Andy is what Spike could have been without his self-control and intelligence.

Both fashion and the utility of clothing is not missed in this series. Didn't it always bother you that on ST: Next Generation no one bothered to put on a coat when they went down to some unknown planet, to say nothing of not wearing a space suit.

Well, in Cowbe, people were space suits. People get sick because of the spores in the atmosphere. People stil take madicine and sometimes they use "folk" remedies when they would be better off going to a doctor.

When Spike goes to the cold climes of Callisto, he takes a parka and Jet wears a shapka, a Russian hat. And the reason why Faye wasn't covered properly was because she ran away from the Bebop and was not exactly prepared for the weather or the single sex lifestyle of the city of Blue Crow.

And when Spike washes the Swordfish II, he changes out of his suit. Jet usually dresses fairly snazzy when he goes out somewhere as does Faye.

Look at it this way, Cowbe is drawn and it's a lot harder to change a character's garb when you have to draw and in-between him for production, than it is for an actor to throw on a jacket or pull on a hat. So the little things done in this anime are more than for the eye, but mind-candy as well.

An absolutely sweet touch comes from Speak Like A Child, when the Bebop crew receives a video tape and no one has no idea what it is. Spike and Jet end up hunting around abandoned department stores to find a VCR that will play the tape.

Or incidental actions that have no consequence, but draw the imagination. Such as in Sympathy for the Devil when Spike runs around a corner and bumps into a guy, who is just walking along a street. Spike throws up his hands in apology and keeps running.

Another nice touch is the subtle explanation of why Spike and the others on the Bebop wear the same clothes from session to session. There's a small washing machine on board the Bebop and a convenient are for hanging out the wash.

Most Americans probably don't wash clothes every day or hang out the wash to dry. But washing the clothes daily and hanging them out are common practices in Japan.

Jet: "We were wasting our free time. It sounds good to call the bounty-hunting job a freelance job, but all that means is that we're self-employed. When we have no jobs, we have none at all."

If the crew of the Bebop is any indication of the daily struggle for a meal, then people often go hungry in this time. And here's why food can be scarce on the Bebop. They are bounty hunters, so they live off the money gained from each capture. By the way, a dead bounty nets you nothing.

But you also have to take into account the little things. A ship must be maintained. The Bebop crew has to keep up four very different ships. Jump gates have to be paid for. Fuel has to be purchased. Sometimes you damage another vehicle or a building or such in a chase -- you gotta pay for that stuff, too.

Consider, too, that you may work with a bounty hunter like Spike, who prefers dangerous gigs, like flying by the seat of his pants through enemy weaponry or jumping around space without a space suit because he's dealing with people who are around with explosives .

Say you work with the kind of guy who scoffs at the tedious, but less dangerous hacker stuff. You're gonna have to shell out the woolongs. And sometimes you may cut a corner here or there. But remember when you're buying recycled ammo or poor quality missiles, you get what you pay for. There are also medical expenses, which must always be factored into the equation.

So finding your bounty is more than just a matter of increasing your reputation, it's the difference between eating dog food, eating hallucination-inducing mushrooms, eating a costly Ganymede sea rat, or eating nothing.

Spiritual Paths

The spiritual side of this interstellar community manifests itself in various ways throughout the series, most of them small and unobtrusive.

music

Jet: "Damn, blues harp music is good. It's just as good as I thought."
Spike: "I thought you were fond of jazz."
Jet: "Don't be stupid. I even warbled when I was sucking on my mother's milk!"
Spike: "You were a pretty thoughtful kid."

 

Music is important to the sessions in Cowboy Bebop. Not just the session's score, but the idea and acceptance of music as a cultural mainstay. If you've ever watched one of the many Star Trek shows, you'll find that in their vision of the science fiction future, only classical music has any kind of place and yet no real importance.

Then there is the idea that Cowboy Bebop itself was inspired by American jazz music -- hence you'll now notice the use of "sessions" instead of "episodes".

Spike: "A prophecy, ne?"
Jet: "Charlie said, 'Only hands can wash hands. If you want to receive you must first give.' Doesn't that mean Charlie is telling us to go for it?"
Spike: "Do you think Charlie Parker would quote Goethe?"
Jet: "Oh, come on, it's all a part of the dream I had."

Bebop was a new type of jazz that emerged in the 50s to counter the now acceptable and very popular types of jazz like Swing. Bebop broke the rules and then reinvented them, with musicians playing for the sheer sake of the music and the sound, not for a popular audience. The audience, which one of these new music's sought, was the ear of a fellow musician.

So the bebop of Cowboy Bebop is describing a new vision and approach to anime and to storytelling in general.

Imagine Faye's encounter with Vicious in a Martian opera house without Ave Maria being sung on stage.

Or better yet, imagine Spike falling to the ground with shards of stained glass, as he thinks back to his life on Mars with Julia and Vicious. Now picture this scene without the haunting music of Green Bird. I can't.

Ballad of the Fallen Angels is one of the best episodes of anything I've ever seen. And that one scene grabs me and holds me like no other. "So and so and so ..."

philosophy

Throughout the ages, martial excellence has been coupled with a philosophy on a way to live. We think of Sun Tzu, Sun Pin, Musashi Miyamoto, Machiavelli, or such people. Well, Spike has a philosophy on martial excellence as well.

"Yeah, I'm like the water."

When Spike is conned into giving a few pointers to a kid named Roco Bonnaro, he also reveals his Way of fighting, his way of living.

Spike: "I'm telling you not to tense up."
Roco: "But you can't defend against enemies that way."
Spike: "The flow is more important, not the power. You have to be like the water. You get it?"
Roco: "Not one bit."
Spike: "That's what I thought. All right, come at me with a knife."
Roco: "You'll get hurt."
Spike: "Just do it."

Roco does as he is told and goes after him with a knife. Spike steps out just as Roco nears with his blade. Roco's momentum carries him past Spike and he ends up on his backside.

Spike: "I'm not tensing up anywhere. I'm just using your excessive force. I control the flow of power and to do that, I have to relax the whole body to be able to react to any movement. Yeah, I become like the water .... Water can take any form. It can flow along lowly or beat down aggressively, right?"

Men like Vicious have a philosophy of life, too: that man is a beast of prey. Those who are weak must be culled from the populace or at least placed in a menial position.

religion

Child: "The star fell, Bull."
Bull: "That is no ordinary star. That is the tear of a warrior."
Child:" What is a warrior?"
Bull: "One who has finished his battle somewhere in this planet.
A pitiful soul who could not believe in the Great Spirit."

If you are looking for a vision of the future, you may want to look up your local Native American shaman. But others find comfort and hope in others forms. Jet's religion is jazz.

Relics of western religion exist as well. Back on Mars, a well-known meeting place for members of the Red Dragon was a towering cathedral set in a hill outside of the city.

The gothic building has stained-glass windows and walls lined with tall statues of monks holding books. The spacious nave shows signs of neglect and deterioration, with debris covering the chessboard-like marble. Whoever the parishioners once were, they were wealthy.

FIVE

COWBE UNIVERSE

Blue

Real Folk Blues

Knockin' on Heaven's Door

MAVERICKS

MAM'SELLES

MISCREANTS

ANIME

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