(An abstract I will forever wish I had written: “Who knew that Cowboy Bebop was basing its characters on Proto-Indo-European mythology? French philologist Georges Dumézil, that’s who!” My heart.)Īnd, more importantly, its interest is in timeless questions and emotions. As a keen-eyed and heady critic has made clear, the show is just as interested in the one-armed (well, one-natural-armed) Jet’s mythological link to the Norse god Tyr, and the one-eyed (well, one-natural-eyed) Spike’s mythological link to the Norse god Odin, as it is in jazz or the frontier.
Cowboy Bebop was, by most accounts, the first anime to truly break through into American culture, in part because it was so rooted in American culture itself.īut it’s not just American (or indigenous American) culture and pop culture it pilfers. He’s also pretty clearly a caricature.ĭoes this sound derivative? It’s not derivative! I mean, it’s a pastiche, so it kind of is, but it’s more synthetically nuanced than just derivative, and that’s the point.
Laughing Bull, only referred to as “Old Man Bull,” is a fan favorite for lots of good reasons. It contains, in roughly chronological order, a Sitting Bull medicine man stereotype stand-in, a yakuza plot, a drug deal, a black-clad villainous cipher (or cipherous villain, take your pick) with a monotone rasp and a way-too-faithful henchman, that thing that happens in lots of animes where multiple old folks of high rank dress the same and speak in unison (if anyone actually knows the name for this trope - does it come from the noh or kabuki theater traditions? - please tell me), sepia-toned flashbacks, an ice planet, financial depression, quiet desperation, caricatured drag queen prostitutes, a smoky cool jazz bar, a charming and beautiful musician boy, goons in goggles and face masks, a femme fatale, a twist on the femme fatale, a psychologically tense shower sequence, a hero death fake-out, symbolic crows, a war buddy subplot, a military prison and crooked pharmaceutical company subplot, a betrayal by a former war buddy subplot, the line “death does not frighten me,” a kidnapping, more sepia-toned flashbacks, another femme fatale avec twist, a woman in a white dress and veil, a twist on a woman in a white dress and veil, lots of intense shots of people pointing their pistols directly into the camera, deadly loyalty, a spaceship dogfight, poetic justice by way of explosion, a moving and untimely death of a now-beloved character in which our hero learns just too little, and, finally, the return of the Sitting Bull medicine man stereotype stand-in, whose final lines are the same as his first and are now even more significant, as their prescience has been proved. “Jupiter Jazz,” the show’s two-part mid-series finale, is no exception. Sometimes I like to think of director Shinichirō Watanabe and screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto as cups awaiting rain, settled together in Sunrise Studios or maybe Studio Bones in 1998, endlessly flipping between channels playing Blade Runner and Chinatown and Enter the Dragon and Once Upon a Time in Mexico on loop, filling their ready heads to the brim with whatever pop culture trope brilliance might drip their way. Its debts to both Western and Eastern films are enormous in terms of what it reveres, what it skewers, and what it simply collects. Not sure where we’ll fit it in the genre pile of categorization, but we’ll see what we can do.Ĭowboy Bebop is often called, both lovingly and correctly, a cinematic pastiche. Cyberpunk? Kung fu flicks too? Sure, add ’em in. from Bop Meridian, by Cowpoke McMarsJoke 1 & 2įor one month, The Dot and Line is publishing essays, interviews, and discussions about each episode of Cowboy Bebop, which turns 20 this April.
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