Cowboy Bebop and The West

I have a confession to make I love cowboy movies the American frontier of the eighteen hundreds was radically different from the Wild West of Hollywood movies life outside of wars was broadly speaking difficult and uninteresting gold prospecting basically turned up squad for anyone and when I came to earning your keep in living off the land self-reliance wasn't all it was cracked up to be either those who found success were usually already businessmen are lawyers open to exploitation after the Civil War when it came to farming and ranching the industry was dominated by corporate interest run by huge companies like XIT in the Prairie Cattle Company these were often controlled by American and British aristocrats and investors and even in the hands of the extremely powerful this farming industry was susceptible to extreme weather and tenuous water supply a massive drought in 1884 followed by an extreme winter wiped out cattle supplies across the country and as for cowboys they weren't so much heroes as boys who worked with cows less gun-slinging John Wayne and more of a crappy day job a lot of cowboys were black Hispanic in from Native American tribes and that should go without saying but right after the American Civil War people of color weren't being given the cool jobs the term cowboy was going in the late 1870s and from the start they didn't have a glowing reputation a piece from the police Gazette in 1879 states well in town his home is not doing that well in town his home is in the saloons and dance houses he soon gets gloriously drunk and then begins to yell like a wild Indian and shoots off his big revolvers promiscuously into the crowd she's little else - a crazy demon at such times and woe betide the man who crosses his path somebody had a bad and possibly slightly horny cowboy experience but the image of the cowboy and really the West as a whole got something of a glow up at the turn-of-the-century slowly built up from a plethora of writers and artists but perhaps who most especially the writer Owen Wister the artist Frederick Remington and the President Teddy Roosevelt aka big nasty these three men would for political and economic fun and profit ultimately pioneer the image of the West we still have today the Knights of England would be reborn as the Knights of the frontier the Arthurian myth into the Western myth and the rest is history but you know not real history none of the stories that made their way to the papers in Buffalo Bills traveling Roadshow and later to Hollywood films were rooted in any significant reality but that didn't matter because to the people of the East the idea that no matter how bad things get for you the mythical West is always right next door was a comforting one and the people of the West reveled in their new image no one really had the heart to say hey things aren't so great out here it's exactly the same as the east but with more murder and cows so the frontier myth is still the image of the West we have today and were left with two West's one brutal and disappointing but honest and one romantic and inspiring but ultimately Hollow anyway what was I talking about Ma Metal Gear Solid 5 [Music] where's the baby Barry [Music] what cowboy bebop has an incomparable presence for any anime series outside of Japan it's not the first anime to earn popularity and acclaim in the english-speaking world but it's a unique case for its relative popularity seems to eclipse that in its home country there's a wonderful 101 factors to account for this one being that it's really good you guys well not quite of the godlike production quality of the sci-fi and action ovae's of Japan's economic bubble era because nothing ever will be again Cowboy Bebop very much follows in their footsteps and a lot of its production team had that background more than that Cowboy Bebop was in the right place at the right time taking up slots on late-night Cartoon Network in the early 2000s with some of the first generations to grow up with a greater exposure and fondness for Japanese media and pop culture and sporting a super high quality English dub especially for the time bebop was lined up to be the gateway drug the transition for everyone who grew up with Pokemon Totoro and Dragonball and we're looking for something a little bit more mature kin would be about fit that role perfectly and now it's a go-to for anyone looking to share anime with friends and family it's quick and easy proof of this medium can be engaging and moving for an adult non Japanese audience it's taken practically since then to get its live-action American adaptation off the ground really though if any anime deserves that kind of adaptation its Cowboy Bebop but bebop being popular in the West is not inherently wildly interesting what's more impressive to me is that bebop is internally about the role it fills in the real world it's about the west and it's about adulthood it's set in a world where cultural boundaries have dissolved and been replaced by interplanetary ones defined by economic class and to quote the show directly so that I'm not the one responsible for pulling out the c-word here the needless waste created by capitalism lacking philosophy I'm escaping to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism space when you first watch Cowboy Bebop if you're young you'll likely be drawn in by its sense of style you'll appreciate some of the coolest characters ever written and you'll feel the raw emotion of every scene even if you're not necessarily following but as you get older the show will start to take on new meaning you'll see through the facade all the characters put up to cope with their lives and the true tragedy of this world will show itself being pretentious I like to call Cowboy Bebop of the post Western both as it relates to the vague cultural concept of the West but also as it refers to the western genre I love westerns don't you the frontier myth has spent the past century developing our Western stories becoming more mature and self-aware and growing beyond the hands of American storytellers and filmmakers they greatly influenced and in turn were influenced by Japan's own genre films speaking to how easily these stories translate to a different culture with its own sense of pride in its history and myth something bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe has been openly critical of but we'll save that for another life building off the more complex revisionist westerns and neo-noir films of the 60s and 70s the evolution of the West and the Western myth comes to a head with Cowboy Bebop here the frontier is not an untamed wilderness of adventure in conquest but a human society with nowhere left to go stirring in its filth and a solar system destroyed by expansionism it's a fractured wasteland full of broken people trying to get by their own entire worlds defined by what they have what they've lost and what they're willing to do to get by that was a lot to start with a lot of big words I don't know what they mean so we'll slow it down hello I'm steak after YouTube decided it would be funny if a lot of people watched what I would have planned on being my last video and probably the last video any human would have to make I thought an easy comeback would be a cowboy bebop video that's the thing everybody likes I was wrong it turns out this series is very complex and I am very down the rabbit hole fully back at it again at Krispy Kreme but I'll try to make this one fun anyway this video contains spoilers for cowboy bebop and if you haven't seen it none of this is gonna make any sense it's barely gonna make sense if you haven't seen the show it's gonna be like a solid 30 minutes down the drain and you're gonna be pissed and you're gonna come beat this [Music] [Applause] [Music] the difference between right and wrong seems as clear as the white hats that the Cowboys in Hollywood pictures always wore so you'd know right from the beginning who was the good guy integrity morality and democratic values of the resounding themes life wasn't that simple then and it certainly isn't a day but in the words of a noted historian Americans in making their Western myths were not put off by discrepancies with reality Americans believed about the West not so much what was true but what they thought ought to be true with every episode of Cowboy Bebop being more or less a standalone story it can be said that the point of the series is the exploration of its main cast of characters spike jab a favor and Alex the first time you meet them spike Jed and fake come off as a very clear homage is to movie cliches as well as being basically just ripped straight out of loop on 3rd throughout the series an episode will be thrown in that expands on one of their characters putting on display a piece of their history that they're either trying to hide or get back and explaining what makes them act like the self-interested and cool-headed action heroes they want to come off as but there is another element that the series explores in depth that I find can often fall to the wayside in discussions of the show the dog also the setting Cowboy Bebop phenomenal finale that leaves a nice little bow when the three adults arcs and their relationships to one another it's one of the most famous moments in anime for a reason and if you're a big sappy bitch like me it'll likely stick with you for the rest of your life but I think there's room for all the weird stuff in between the beginning and the end at the table to remember old kid how's it going remember the fridge full of smooths and the blaxploitation episode remember the heavy metal Queen chess guy still kid the cowboy in the episode is one of my favorites in the whole series and it's got a 7.1 on IMDB I've never been this angry fuck you those episodes aren't the ones that change your life but they did happen in the same world that spike died on those steps I think they're interesting if I know anything about Shinichi Don watts of obey and I know everything I don't have been Anas I completely fucking don't it's that he sees the value and the unique kinds of art that all artists especially the ones on his team can bring to the table and I think we can always try to see it too as wantanabe put it in 2003 I wanted to create a futuristic world but a world that people actually live in only movie characters could live in the worlds they depict in Star Wars and other science fiction films I wanted to make a world where people live and breathe even if it's just a shot of an empty sidewalk there should be cigarette butts there's some other visible traces that people actually walk through that setting regardless of whether you think having a living breathing world in a sci-fi setting is unique to Bebop it does speak to the intent of the series whereas often in science fiction the details of the world will add flavor and legitimacy to the substance of the stories in Biba if the world is the substance the stories of this world don't wait for the main characters to show up they are already underway at all times it's free for them and overflowing with personality like jazz or Bebop the quintessential genre of free expression in the face of subjugation only as much structure is to let the heart and immense skill of the people behind it come through the Western elements of this world come from the expanse the lawlessness and the stories that mask the harsh realities of the world but the Jazz is the soul of it all it's the humanity that persists despite everything and together the work which becomes a new genre itself will be called Cowboy Bebop you get it it's very sharp these episodes aren't filler there is much the point as anything else so before getting into the main story or spike or any of that stuff I'd like to spend some time with the setting and the fluff in 2022 there was an accident that permanently reshaped the course of human history the first ever astral gate exploded in Earth's orbit it was a device that allows spacecraft to make huge jumps across the galaxy through hyperspace near instantly which is to say it takes a couple minutes so not instantly or really anywhere near the speed of light the explosion of this machine that a number of dramatic effects for one up the moon earth is for the most part uninhabitable and the atmosphere is filled with meteors that constantly fall to the surface and cause massive destruction the apocalyptic event that defines cowboy blue upsetting is unique and plays into some of the themes I'm getting into here in some key ways perhaps the least subtle is that it was literally an interplanetary highway that caused the event the device that would allow humanity to freely expand across the solar system was also responsible for the destruction of our home planet thus unrestrained development expansionism and colonization serves to divide us and cut us off from our shared history but there's a number of details that take things further than that to start with as explored in session 14 one of the lead designers behind the development of the astral gates went on to become a terrorist in 2071 which is the year when Cowboy Bebop takes place a man who would go by the name jazz master hex hex is the first of the criminals from the series that I want to discuss because he really doesn't have that much going on but the things he does have going on are pretty centrally important for one he was right in Cowboy Bebop the criminals the targets of the main characters are often either desperate and seeking the best for themselves or the people they care about or they're trying to prove a point some are just straight-up bad dudes and used as villains but most falls somewhere in a moral gray area but broadly every target of the crew of the bebop has been other left behind by or betrayed by society in the case of chess master hex the corporation that he worked for that had him designing the astral gates ignored his warnings of their instability and fired him corporate greed destroys the world and hex seeks revenge and really he deserves it classic supervillain stuff chess master hex is really only noteworthy for how his story concludes his plan to supply information and instructions for hijacking astral gates to random thugs across the solar system is carried out automatically fifty years after his disappearance by the time he's found in the friend station his mind is totally gone after that yet blackmails to gate CEO to leave him alone and he just drifts off playing chess with a head the man who took vengeance on the company that betrayed him and broke the world and the man aboard that satellite playing chess are two different people he could not even if he wanted to take responsibility for his actions because they belong to someone else so we stumble freely into our theme here the people we used to be how our histories split us into two different people the parts of ourselves we leave behind in the way we care moving forward when you start looking for this you start to see it applied to practically every character in the show Spike's glass eye that only sees the past gets stopped watch phase entire thing god it's the best and it's not the main characters either Stella's blindness makes Rocco take on the side of his life he has to hide from her the face the young hacker has to put on to control the world as his body is unable to move mushroom Samba was a shaft reference or something so it doesn't count in session six the character when is affected by the literal space-time warping effects of the gate accident leaving him physically identical to who he was on the day it happened as he mentally regresses into the monstrous husk we see and become that episode is also silly what I'm saying is that this theme effects the entire world of Cowboy Bebop which is why the astral gate incident is so important to understand it was the moment that divided human history one big punctuation the earth and 2071 we can assume has been more or less like this since the accident the earth isn't gone or uninhabitable or even really all that terribly unpleasant to live on it's just non-static the rocks in the atmosphere that fall to the earth are constantly terraforming the planet not only is it unrecognizable from what it was before the accident it's unrecognizable from what it was five years ago even if you were to try to rebuild some form of stable Society or unearthly civilization that was there before your efforts would be wiped away it's not a matter of if just how long whatever humanity could call its shared history is gone and irreparable so where are we now I'm gonna give you a scenario it's 2071 the solar system has gone to shit entire planets are designated as either slums or war zones and organized crime has exploded in influence with humanity in this state of disarray bounty hunting has become an increasingly popular career for the underprivileged but skilled unwilling to wholly give themselves over to a corrupt system your intent is to profit as an informant to these bounty hunters a public centralized source on all wanted criminals throughout space what form does this service take I think Big Shot is interesting kind of it's goofy it's got a song very similar to a public domain banjo loop playing in the background but it's something that could only exist in Cowboy Bebop there are TV shows in the real world that is similar to Big Show fuck what year is this and in the same way that a show like America's Most Wanted reflects have a general public observes crime big shot kind of says a lot about the role of bounty hunters in this world which is to say cowboy hat howdy howdy howdy the real conceit of this video is that I think it's interesting that real bounty hunters are called Cowboys in a world where the cowboy stereotype exists and culture and bigshot is at the root of that this is how the general tv-watching public views criminal goings-on as a big game of cowboys and Indians and I think it's incredibly funny that you don't just see civilians watching this crap bounty hunters really do watch it as well and they obviously know how stupid it is but they still keep tuning in either because it's the best source of new information which seems unlikely considering that a form of the internet exists or they just want to see their actions recognized on TV they play their part in producing this Wild West picture show it's also worth noting that the show does get a conclusion within the story Alfredo who plays punch announces of the show was cancelled due to poor ratings visa turns out that bounty hunters aren't a terrifically profitable demographic after all there's a lot of them 3 million but that's not like a ton you guys the woman who plays Judy breaks character and loses her shit and then BAM lights out for Big Shot it's a funny way of signaling in the last few episodes have an air of finality to have this goo running gali explode on impact but later and the real folk blues part 1 which is the first half of the two-part finale which is for the most part a really somber and self-serious couple of episodes facies alfred and the Fedak picking his mother up at the spaceport he's out of character and it's not a funny scene he hasn't found a job yet but he's moving in with his mother to take care of her his co-host is also apparently getting married according to him this little scene here sits with me the opening of this episode is the sort of sequence of brooding flashback and action scenes that open the series and that compose many of the more serious episodes particularly those connected to the main story the minds shifts into noir mode and you go okay this is removed from mushroom samba but then the cowboy from TV shows up the comic relief character you could reasonably expect wouldn't show up after his show was comically canceled but here is moving in with his mom and you suddenly say oh that was a real person all of that actually happened and from there the mask falls off every character they drop the whole loop on the third stick and say yes but we don't want you to die please don't do this the cowboy game is over and we lost pal and I think I would expect in a story exploring this theme the disparity between the tough-guy cowboy front and the gooey emotionally vulnerable human core the story would come out on the side of honesty the conclusion being that the front can protect you but it's not worth anything if you can't connect to other people emotional vulnerability is worth it but in Cowboy Bebop it's a little more complicated the myriad characters of Cowboy Bebop vary greatly and how honest or how removed they are from their own emotions they experience very different levels of suffering and consequence and it's not always proportionate to doing the right thing sometimes good people get their happy ending but just as often the kindest people are met with the greatest tragedy because they were the most vulnerable Rocco is directly punished for caring about his sister and Stella is punished for nothing other than going blind and being someone that someone else cared about other times villains are punished for have removed from their true selves they've become when Birla foo and Landis are horribly distorted detached personas and they all get what's coming to them by being hit where they're vulnerable although in LAN disguise his controller was in a vegetative state and desperate to connect with other people so maybe he's more on the other side hey moral gray area and cowboy bebop cool more often than not the message doesn't seem to be be honest with yourself about your emotions vulnerability is worth it because the characters aren't rewarded for that vulnerability instead the messages you are vulnerable it's not a choice no matter how tough you think you are you have a squishy human heart sooner or later you're gonna lose someone and you're gonna pretend it doesn't hurt but it will the way you handle that is not swallowing your emotions it's accepting and processing them and maybe you won't be able to move on and if that's the case Cu space cowboy and that's more or less the tragedy of spike Spiegel the toughest and coolest of us the truest cowboy of all couldn't get over leaving someone behind and it undoes him some of the characters who get off well do a better job of processing their feelings the heavy metal Queen has a pretty concise story of someone with a tough outer shell on account of dealing with some issues the fucking hates Cowboys she won't even tell people her real name but by the end we get the sense that spike has helped her process a little bit and she finds a healthier balance between remaining tough to get along in this world and dealing with her husband's death the characters who get off the actual best - though are funny enough kind of too innocent or oblivious to bother putting up a facade like just master hex he's undoubtedly split into two people but it removes him from his betrayal and desire for vengeance so he can give himself over wholly to kick an ass at his favorite video game hindered a nun concerned with anything else god I wish that were made but of course his chess partners the character who really embodies the theme of innocence radical Edward is pretty similar to Sonny from Metal Gear Solid 4 now that I think about it no you solved for his a video game brilliant hackers symbol of innocence hope for the next generation zoom in and enhance etc Ed's never lost anything because she's got nothing to lose so despite arguably having had the hardest life scrapping around on a wasteland earth without a home she's one of the more jovial characters in the series because she made lemonade spanked Lewis and Feifei merely adopted the darkness she was born in it like them she's tremendously skilled and well suited for the world but unlike them it's not a facade or a coping mechanism it's just how God made her it's how she learned how to survive and in the episode where her past is explored and she eventually finds her family and leaves the be-bop this is juxtapose against Fae reinvestigating her own past trying to figure out who she was when she had that kind of innocence but had it ripped away from her and is the one bright spot and the dry lives of half the characters she interacts with she's the kid that makes you think maybe the world isn't totally lost and when you meet her father he's exactly the same like Ed is nonsensically intelligent mister Appleberry is based on what we've seen a pretty nonsensically strong martial artist putting up with spikes flowing water style by being a boulder in the stream and it's jim with ed he's caring but very distracted and also seems to be basically the only person with any interest in reconstructing the earth on its new terms mapping out everything and taking into account the falling rocks and constant terraforming so a society may have totally burned itself out and destroyed what once they're on it's less a fair set of rules but that ain't mean we can't build something new from nothing all it takes is a new system a new mindset a shall we say unique perspective I love that it gets spiked in jet to take her to her father by essentially outsmarting them and exploiting their role as bounty hunters it's clear she's kind of above them better suited to grow up with people who actually want to change things than people who are just sort of floating by and naturally losing her hurts you know call me call me when part of getting by means relationships with people are defined by acting like you don't care if they stay or go what do you expect how are you supposed to feel when they do ultimately leave but well Edie has quite a bit going on she's not my favorite character to embody finding happiness through obliviousness there's another man may I say BAE a legend who can guide us to true inner peace this video was very nearly just about cowboy Andy and his episode cowboy funk I'm honestly still considering just cutting out everything else cowboy Andy is the greatest take I'm the dark reflection of the protagonists trope in history on account of instead of reflecting spikes darkest traits and his bloody past as that role is already covered by vicious he is the full embodiment of everything shallow about him for how aloof and apathetic spike is through the whole series it says a lot about him that the one thing that really gets on his nerves is a direct challenge to his cowboy hood when I first saw this episode as a teenager the bit where Fay compares spike and Andy really Jones to me off fun fact about teenage boys they really enjoy projecting themselves onto cool anime dudes they have nothing in common with attaching their ego to a very particular skill or trade and they get pretty fucking upset of that connection is challenged or questions I may not be charming intelligent attractive a skilled fighter or even an especially good shape but within my high-school I'm definitely the spike Spiegel of competitive pokémon battling surely the Light Yagami of appreciating electro-swing many grow out of this most don't I didn't anywho there's something incredibly funny to me about spike meeting fraud spike the direct projection of your every insecurities every fear you have about how you look to other people it's like if a white Yagami met me in high school and his funny flying invisible clown said hey bud that's you that edgy dipshit is exactly what you look like I apologize for these references if you haven't read Death Note by the way just know that it is the greatest comedy ever written the fun thing about Andy is that if we're being reasonable it's an incredibly unfair comparison between them because in terms of substance of their character they could not be more different if there exists a real-deal spike Spiegel is it he's broke as fuck good-natured and fights for every scrap he has brilliant martial artist tragic backstory criminal history heart of gold spike lives up to the ideal Andy on the other hand is a boozy moron he's not in the cowboy game as a matter of desperation he's in it because it's fucking cool he wants to ride a horse and shoot a gun and hit on sexy ladies but you know so does spike he's just earned it better I guess and despite being the gentrification of bounty hunting in its entirety and he seems to be literally exactly as qualified for this job the spike is to the guy they're chasing this whole episode these two are effectively the same person for all we know Andy would have caught this guy is spike Adhan been there just like spike would have a fan d-didn't show he's clearly a fucking moron but in terms of property damage and actual results he's apparently just as high on the ladder as spike and in terms of terrorists featured in this terrorist of the week show that Teddy bomber is pretty interesting as well it does help but is clearly directly based on a real fascinating fucking and Prem these three form an interesting little triangle getting quickly wrapped up in a three-way pissing contest and sadly Kaczynski over here draws the shortest flow he's the only one trying to prove a point here he's trying to draw attention to the obvious critical flaw of this world capitalism without philosophy growth and consumption for the sake of itself in the system has crushed this world would I'd hate that fella - we'll see so they are good I need like no paid action and he is repeatedly sidelines for a showdown between two would-be Cowboys as a matter of pride because this town ain't big enough for the both of us in fact on bigshot when they're reading off his manifesto they run out of air time before they can actually explain his message the meaning of his behavior couldn't matter less what matters is that he's a bad guy with a price on his head it's my favorite kind of hellish consumer culture setting it's not one where you can't spread this message of rebellion because the forces and power are trying to silence you it's more like this world is just so worn down that you could be in front of an audience explaining your point in detail and it just wouldn't get through let's say you're right Ted what do you want me to do about it I'm just doing my job buddy I got people to take care of I'm hungry I've been eating bell peppers and beef without any beef for weeks now speaking of food fish mooses our way into a free creative cowboy Andy brand soup so you know that's what's for dinner naturally spike refuses to degrade himself by slurping this full soup why do I write like this and then the final showdown begins it's all about them one way Bayou canot oh come on I'll touch them the final showdown is absolutely godlike even removed from substance it's one of my favorite pieces of animation ever and spike wins the fight more or less by accident and he opens with I will never consider you a real cowboy and two minutes later I see now that you are the real cowboy and again he is correct spike is the real deal but it's a pretty fucking hollow victory to have this Mars class doofus conceded his role as a bounty hunter that he never had any stock in that he was just doing for fun Faden despite bragging and eating andy brand soup pleased as punch about his alpha cowboy status being affirmed all the way above this until he got to be the cool guy and as the bomber's haul off to jail he finally explains his point detail and then BAM call me Musashi how was he so perfect bros [Music] it's hard for me to just brush over handy as a throwaway joke character for one because he is the only in universe character who actually says see you space cowboy that should be enough ladies but the other bit that draws me to thinking about him is that there's already a rival to spike in the series that's vicious and you know what they play comparable roles they both reflect a very particular flaw and Spike Vicious is all of spikes pain and vulnerability he's an ambitious and unforgiving figure from spikes past whose actions force spike back into a role that gets him killed twice he plays on this weakness that spike has his unwillingness to walk away from a dangerous situation or let go of his past Andy does the same thing just in a much dumber way he forces spike to play his ridiculous cowboy game by challenging his pride it's almost the same story twice just of the two different worlds of the series takes place in one a silly goofy cowboy clown parade and the other fucking Greek tragedy that's it that's the show but ladies and gentlemen if you would be so kind as to dream with me for a moment I'd like to talk about spikes third rival that's right the fourth cowboy is he cannon did it really happen who knows they see Nassif isn't Oh dr. Huizenga parts [Music] you cam will be buff the movie aka cowboy bebop knockin on heaven's door was released in September 2001 in Japan in August 2002 in the States it's worth noting here that the song referenced in the title was originally composed by Bob Dylan for Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid this movie is often acknowledged as being good but effectively just a long high budget episode it's got some film quality animations some great action scenes and original songs you can watch it at any time after jamming with Edward and before a hard luck woman it's kind of like the Dragon Ball Z movies when it actually takes place doesn't matter it's just somewhere within the status quo where all the main characters are present but I think that's selling it a little bit short compared to the series this movie has some special qualities that send apart none of the episodes of a two-hour runtime which to expand their story so even the really rich ones don't get to lean on that sort of slow burn where film noir thrives Cowboy Bebop takes full advantage of every minute it has to just sit and let you take in the world and boy oh boy does it use those 90 extra minutes to me this movie lives and dies on it's rich atmosphere swapping between lively and foreboding there's no way of getting around that when you're watching this movie you're watching and knowing how the series ends and what happens to Spike Chad Fey and Ed and after you place that beautiful little bow on top you have to jump back and say here's one more story the Encore and it opens and closes on the exact same quote from spike in the same detective style narration wrapping the whole thing up in a neat little package that you can just place anywhere in the timeline taking its role is just another episode in this world and using it to its advantage if you judge importance on how much it relates to the central plot it's easy to say that knocking on heaven's door doesn't matter but the world of Cowboy Bebop is too interesting for me to ignore a chunk this big the story of the movie introduces a terrorist who in terms of design registers as a mirror match and rival to spike in the same way that vicious and Andy do when the villain of the movie is named Vincent and like vicious he was a soldier in a war on Titan there's very little information given about the apparently two wars on Titan it's mostly just a proxy war between largely undefined forces and it's only relevant and how certain characters were victimized by it either through the direct conflicts or experiments on people and technology to developed because of it for Vincent the experiments done on him under whatever government or private military forces were running the war stripped him of his memories from early life similar to Fey as well as causing him to hallucinate become disconnected from reality so where Andy has spikes masculinity and ego everything shallow about him and vicious is his dark past and vulnerability everything that ends up destroying him Vincent's more like spikes apathy his disconnect from other people in reality he says I showed Akiko choking upon an urban scene authority like Shizuka you mail me to talk it throughout the series spike mentions a bunch of times and he's already died once in reference to faking his own death and leaving Julia behind but here in the movie we know without question that spike is absolutely fated to die for real he's a dead man walking and that's reflected in Vincent's obsession with breaking out of purgatory the whole movie is dripping with imagery reflecting the undead demons and vampires a nanomachine virus that crushes your brain and turns you into a zombie and which Vincent's blood offers you immunity to but will still make you hallucinate a swarm of heavenly butterflies it's set on Halloween folks the whole thing is an air of a dream or illusion like something that would take place in purgatory I don't think that's literally the case like game theory spike is dead in this movie but it's a nice angle from which to explore the series after the ending especially considering Julia's final words to spike that it's all a dream so taking that and making the Encore to the series a classic western standoff with a villain whose trauma has him living in a dream and trying to find heaven is pretty clever it's all the most important notes worth hitting about the series and takes advantage of the fact that it's being tacked on to the series in post if this movie is a Western it's not a rootin tootin one it's one of those really juicy soap opera ones from the 70s [Music] Spyke gets a couple of moments of vulnerability with Elektra that he just doesn't get in the series he expresses that he's looking death in the face and is actually afraid for the first time in a long time and tells her that he used to never fear death until he met Julia it's a few lines but I'll take any really and say the spikes biggle that I can get really though my favorite thing about this movies that it just kind of ends unceremoniously what happens to Vincent on this Tower is similar to spikes ending whereas his life is ending he realizes there is no door to heaven and that his time spend with a lecture was the part that was real and valuable in his life but instead of pulling out while focusing directly on em it plays itself out on a bunch of shots of people returning to the status quo the main characters and recurring guests doing what they do every day with this little events on the tower having no significance to them and the song got a knock a little harder which is this bluesy soul anthem that spells up the themes of the movie and the series plays out over all these shots and the movie says everything that just happened the most important moment of these two characters lives for me it was Tuesday thank you for coming you can move on now and just betrayal and phase breakdown and spikes death we're all the same for however moving they were in that moment the world moves on a mass account believe ups a big trick balancing the challenges of trying to live your own life against the weight of this fully realized post Western world Shinichiro Watanabe based works are famous for how they combine art styles and settings to create something unique and cool but these choices aren't just for style in terms of exploring this particular variety of loneliness the setting could not be more deliberate and whether it's due to him his lead writer his musicians and the artists that brought this world to life it couldn't be more well realized either there's a lot of brain genes that went into the choice to Center the story around Cowboys the Cowboys a symbol of the zeitgeist of his era god I hit the English language and you know heroes always are they display the values people want to embody and an image they want to strive for where is something like a Superman comic is a purely fictional embodiment of heroic values American westerns would love to be at least slightly historical this world of heroes and gunslingers we all know this is fiction but could have happened right this is sort of how things were this is our shared history as Americans if not the stories of the vibe there's no reason not to be proud of it right it's a very human thing to want to populate the story of your history with a bunch of heroes and this is much more blatant in the westerns of the first half of the 20th century a lot of just out-and-out ego stroking and affirmation of manifest destiny it's a projection of how we'd like to think of ourselves which is whitening the clearest examples movies like Blazing Saddles & Brokeback Mountain are transgressive they apply our satirize elements of the frontier that many people might not be comfortable acknowledging as part of history but even the dollars trilogy which is arguably the new quintessential image of the classic Western was a transgressive break from formula for its time and not made in America either so the camera means two different things to two different people and it becomes a symbol of a balancing act between history and fiction reality and pride and that balancing act is something that every person in the world has to come to terms with as they grow up finding the ground between where you wish to be and who you actually are no one is immune to their own ego but no one can ignore their own weaknesses either and to me that broadly is what cowboy bebop is about I mean it's about a lot of things clearly it's about the talking dog from the shell shock but it's a million stories of this balancing everyone faces the disappointments and struggles of reality differently and with different results are you smart or skilled or strong emotionally well-adjusted and mentally stable or are you rich enough that none of that matters no one has the perfect answer and try as you might to be cold and objective it's impossible to fully process all the suffering and loneliness in the world and tragically things will ultimately matter to you the message to take away is if the world is happening out there every minute every second and no matter how hard you try at some point in your life it's gonna become impossible not to care thank you for watching my video sorry this was not what you expected I struggled to make of this video and I'm trying to get my sea legs back because B legs are for bees if you like this video thank you have a good day if you didn't like this video your check is in the mail

Channel: Steak Bentley

Views: 410,692

Keywords: cowboy bebop, western, anime, spike spiegel, video essay, capitalism, noir, cowboy, analysis

Id: -8-GrO25zBQ

Length: 40min 3sec (2403 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Enovalen]

So. much. content.

[u/kosanovskiy]

I have no idea who this YouTuber is but now here I am scrolling through the vids of his. Thanks OP.

[u/[deleted]]

Cool

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