Vicious
Age: 27
Birthplace: Mars
Weapon of Choice: katanaSeiyuu: Norio Wakamoto
Julia
Seiyuu - Gara Takashima
Jet: "Vicious, Julia. To me, both those names sound nothing but ominous. Just like a magic spell that opens a door that shouldn't be opened."
Many stories have peripheral characters who show up now and again and cause a minor ripple in the plot, but Cowbe has two peripheral characters who are also main characters. Vicious is the main villain and Julia is one of the female leads and yet they appear in very few sessions.
So why am I giving them top billing? Because without them there is no Spike and without Spike there is no Bebop Crew, ergo no show.
Together they are Spike's raison d'etre and this is proven in the last two sessions called Real Folk Blues. Spike could no more walk away from challenging Vicious's villainy than he could resist falling in love with Julia.
Even when he could run -- and Julia does ask him to -- he continues to gear up for battle. When Julia is gone and he is back on the Bebop, both Jet and Faye beg him to stay, but he cannot, he must seek Vicious, his darker self.
Vicious is Spike's age, though it does not seem so. It is important to note that Vicious looks older and not just because of his long white hair. His skin is very pale and somewhat lined and haggard looking. He is not unappealing, but there is an ugliness to him and may be that is best explained through the presence of his "pet" the black peacock, which looks a lot like a vulture.
The Clan Elders, who are bad guys themselves, consider Vicious to have a heart colder than the worst winter day on Callisto. They refer to him as a snake throughout and are constantly reminding him that a snake cannot eat a dragon.
The Elders also seem to take a lot of pleasure in reminding him that he does not have permission to make his own decisions.
"In this world there is nothing to believe in."
It is important to that Vicious has gray eyes and gray-white hair. He bears the colors of neutrality, which is not to say that he is not a really bad guy, because he is. The neutral colors support the idea that Vicious believes in nothing.
With his dark clothes, general pallor, and great long sword, Vicious could be seen as an aspect of Death -- a thing that Spike has eluded despite many deadly encounters and situations.
When Spike tells the story of the tiger-stripped cat who dies a million deaths and is reborn a million times, he is talking about himself. The tiger-stripped cat finds a mate, but Death takes her. The tiger-stripped cat screams a million cries and dies. Death takes him too finally.
The analogy belongs to the three of them, who were once good friends.
The story, this bounty hunter's opus, is really about the tiger-stripped cat, a white cat, and Death. The adventures of the crew and what they learn about each other and themselves frame that story.
I've already explained why Vicious is a villain par excellence, but let's get a little more specific. Vicious is a high member of the Martian tong, the Red Dragon, but he is by no means at the highest echelon. This means that, despite his little vendettas, he still has to answer to and take orders from the Elders of the Clan.
Vicious wants that power. He's neither greedy nor grasping, but he does see a different way of running the business. He is told that times have changed and the syndicate can't survive alone any more. His mentor, Mao Yenrai, tells him this, just before Vicious slits his throat without regret.
Vicious sits the very dead body of Mao Yenrai in his usual box seat at the opera on Mars. Mao is gray and dried blood coats his throat and lower face. All of this is an elaborate ruse to trap Spike.
"If only Spike had returned, someone like you …" said Mao Yenrai before his death and in a last statement recreating an old relationship, an old conflict. The juxtaposition is there, Vicious and his vision versus Spike and a vision that could have been, if Vicious had not forced him out.
Vicious's way of handling business is displayed clearly in the corridor leading to Yenrai's office overlooking the beautiful city of Tharsis -- dead men line the walls and blood is everywhere.
Vicious: "Spike. Do you know what your face looks like right now?"
Spike: "What?"
Vicious: "The same blood runs in you, that runs in me, the blood of a beast who wanders desiring the blood of others."
Spike: "I've bled all that blood away."
Vicious: "Then why are you still alive?"Vicious isn't into life or happiness or love, he doesn't believe in any of it and he thinks a person pathetic and weak when he or she does believe in the possibility of those things.
Julia was his first.
Spike first saw her as he was playing billiards when she entered looking stunning in black leather. And still the three hung out with each other. They were very close.
But Vicious warned Spike not to trust "that woman". Vicious's feeling of betrayal because of their love is understandable, but his reaction is purely his own.
Vicious holds a gun to Julia's head.
Vicious: "Are you going to betray me? Are you going to leave this world? Even if it's a dream, that's an impossibility."
Julia: "Are you going to kill him?"
Vicious: "Yes … with your hands." He sets the guns on the table before her. "You must stay alive or you both will die. Your choice."Julia doesn't kill Spike and she cannot kill herself, so she runs and Vicious pursues her all over the Solar System. Julia is on the run when she goes to the Jupiter moon of Callisto, where only men live. She meets Gren and they find that they have Vicious in common, another allusion to Vicious as Death.
Vicious set Gren up to take the fall for his misdeeds, but Gren doesn't figure that out until Julia shows up and explains that nothing Vicious does any more is out of friendship or for the greater good. If Vicious was fighting in a battle, then he was doing it for the Red Dragons or for his own gains. If Vicious gave him a little music box, then he wanted Gren to have it for a reason other than camaraderie.
 |
 |
 |
Vicious tells a young associate, Lin, who deeply believes in the Red Dragon, to move and think beyond the rules or he won't survive.
Vicious to Lin: "Such old-fashioned thinking nauseates me."
And it is because of this attitude and his nihilism that the Elders of the Clan refuse to make him the heir apparent to the running of the tong.
Elder: "What a foolish act you have committed. The fortuneteller told us thus, 'The night of the red moon, the snake will slither horribly and quickly to make use of its venomous fangs."
Elder: "You look so pitiful Vicious."
Elder: "We have informed you of our decision that you cannot be our successor."
Vicious: "The Syndicate does not need corpses who cannot even fight."
Elder: "That arrogance of yours will ruin everything in the end." ...
Vicious: "Don't forget, a snake's venom poisons slowly after the bite."The Elders sought to clear away the stain that Vicious created with his attempted coup by erasing all those who stood against them. This list included those who are pretending to be dead, like Spike.
One thing that is always true of Vicious is that he never starts a fight alone, so the odds are always in his favor. Even against the Clan elders, his nontraditional, more determined vision of the future of the syndicate is preferred by most of the tong members.
Of Julia, the strongest words that can be said are that she dreams incessantly of freedom, but is burdened with her love for Spike and his love for her.
Spike: "When this is over, I'm leaving the syndicate."
Julia: "You'll be killed."
Spike: "I'll let them say I'm dead." He hands her a note. "I'll be waiting at the graveyard. Of course, I will be alive."
Julia: "I … can't come with you."
Spike: "Come with me. We'll leave here … We'll escape from his world."She could have killed Spike and freed herself, but Vicious set the task before her knowing she would fail.
Description of Julia for Faye: "A beautiful, dangerous, but normal woman, the type you can't leave alone. Like a devilish angel or an angelic devil."
Julia also seems older than Spike, though her age is unknown -- ah, a woman's prerogative. She is seen in flashbacks and referenced by other characters, but she isn't actually seen until the last two sessions.
And when we meet her for the first time, she has a harder edge than the blonde humming in Spike's memories lets on. She's a cross between Spike and Vicious -- cunning, cruel, reckless, intelligent, skilled, thoughtful, capable, determined -- and she is a major element in what keeps both men going at each other.
When she and Faye are fighting the bad guys together, the level of energy in the session rises. For a moment you think Thelma and Louise, because a moment is all you have with them as partners.
And then you wonder, as they look each other over, if they know how the other feels about Spike. They do know. The intensity is there. And you can hear Faye's words in your mind coming back to haunt her:
Faye: "You're totally wrong if you think your old woman still thinks about you."
Spike: "You're totally wrong yourself if you think every other woman thinks like you."
Faye: "Really men are hopeless romantics."Julia does not think like her. If anything, she has a harder line about love, because she wants Spike to live. For three years she and Spike denied themselves only to meet once again in the rain.
 |
 |
 |