It may be time to blow this scene, so everyone get your stuff together.
Three.
Two.
One.
Let’s jam.
1. A Thesis Statement
Although it’s missing more than half its cast “Asteroid Blues” serves as a thesis statement to everything Cowboy Bebop. From its ridiculously cool soundtrack, meticulously crafted set pieces, snide humor, cryptic histories, beaten-down characters, philosophical script, and impeccable pacing, it’s everything the show’s about all wrapped in a 22-minute episode. On top of all that, it’s so very cinematic. Series director, Shinichirō Watanabe, blends Kurosawa, Leone, George Lucas, and Robert Rodriguez, injecting the story with so much style and grace it’s hard not to be blown away.
I mean, so much of Cowboy Bebop has been aped for other media (often for the worse, see: Firefly) since it debuted in English in 2001 on Adult Swim, but it’s own confidence and precision, its own sense of cool and empathy, consistently keeps it surprising and engrossing.
2. So What’s It About, Anyway?
“Asteroid Blues,” like many a Bebop episode, is built on a fairly basic plot: Spike Spiegel and Jet Black are bounty hunters, traversing across the solar system searching for their targets; their ship, the Bebop. This time they’re hunting down a low-level crook named Asimov Solensan, who’s stolen this high-powered drug called Red Eye. Solensan is tearing through town, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, trying to get off planet and head for Mars with his girlfriend, all the while adding more and more to his bounty. There’s fistfights, shootouts, and a spaceship chase.
But there’s also a lot of hinting at a larger and unknowable world. For instance, “Asteroid Blues” starts with a prologue, a bullet-ridden black-and-white fight scene with all sorts of meaningful images, dripping blood, and the wounded and the dead. Throughout the course of the series, Wantanabe will keep flashing back to this, but at the moment we don’t even know if it is a flashback. It doesn’t come up for the rest of this episode, but we recognize Spike right away and are left thinking, just who is this guy, and was what we just watched part of his past or some look into his future?
We also get to see how Spike and Jet handle various obstacles. There’s Spike’s aloof approach, his what will be will be attitude, constantly at odds with Jet’s more reactionary and dramatic responses. It’s not a lot to go on for who these two guys are, but it’s enough for us to become invested in this week’s situation.
3. A Broken Frontier
Watanabe has said he was allowed to do anything he wanted as long as it involved spaceships (the whole show was planned to help sell toys), and he ended up doubling down on the Western element. What he turned out is almost like the anti-Star Trek, where the desire of exploration and the settling of the frontier backfired on everyone, and humanity has now been left with its few remaining pieces.
One of Cowboy Bebop’s more admirable decisions was to present its science fiction universe as realistically as possible. Yes, it takes place in 2071; yes, it features spaceships and hyperspace lanes; yes, the terraforming on the other planets leans more toward convenience rather than physics; and yes, a lot of the exterior space play forgets about the whole soundless vacuum thing (we see this more in later episodes), but there aren’t extra-terrestrials, the setting is relegated to our solar system, and the characters still use guns. Not blasters or phasers or laser beams, but straight-up bullets and gunpowder. Everything is dingy, gritty, beat the hell, and down-trodden. Hyperspace isn’t something you can achieve by plugging in some numbers on a nav-computer, but rather by taking these highly advanced toll lanes, which maybe are not the most structurally sound installations. There’s only a few hints about a past disaster in “Asteroid Blues,” which we don’t see for a few more episodes, but it’s something that lingers over the characters and they reference frequently in passing. If there’s something seemingly magical — like Asimov’s superhuman abilities — there’s an explanation (spoiler, drugs; it’s almost always drugs) to lend it plausibility.
Continued belowBy giving themselves limits, Sunrise, the animation company responsible for the show, are able to give Spike and Jet more involved obstacles and dilemmas and more creative ways to find their way out of one situation or another. They’re also able to dress them in all sorts of ridiculous disguises, like that sombrero and poncho number Spike dawns at one point, but that’s really just an added bonus.
4. That Choreography!
“Asteroid Blues,” like any pilot, acts as the real selling point to the series. Sunrise seemed to have given the episode their all to make sure it hit it out of the part. There’s a confidence and grace to the action sequences. Watanabe lets his shots linger, giving you time to absorb every movement, to know everyone’s place within the environment. He keeps the figures bouncing around the frame, allowing the camera to drift over the sweeping and swooping set pieces.
It’s not even in these big sequences, but also in the conversations between Jet and Spike, in how they stand when they’re talking to each other, how Spike reacts to having bell peppers and beef without any beef. It’s in Spike’s pause at the end of his workout routine, as he takes a long drag on his cigarette and spends a moment looking out over the stars. Every movement, every story beat has clearly been carefully plotted and executed, but it’s delivered casually and patiently. By allowing it to build, the more energetic parts are that much more exciting. Try skipping over the three geezers arguing about what they’ve accomplished before each fight scene, and you get a sequence that plays dramatically differently and not at all better.
Overall, the entire series might feel loose and improvisational, but on an episode-to-episode basis, the cause-and-effect, the buildup-and-execution are so tight barely any air can get through.
5. See You, Space Cowboy
“Asteroid Blues” is an introduction, a preview of the space adventures to come. It plays a lot of its cards close to the chest and dazzles us with its spectacle to keep us coming back. Undoubtedly, the show gets better as Ein, Faye, and Ed show up, but for something to get you excited and intrigued by the series, it’s hard to find a stronger debut than this.
As we go on through the series’s 26 episodes (and movie? maybe, we’ll have to see), I think there are some questions that’ll have to come up. Some are purely technical, like sub vs. dub? I’ll tell you here that I’m covering the dubbed version. I’ve seen many of these episodes with both soundtracks and they each are strong in their own ways. There’s the rhythm and beat of the Japanese original, but there’s the cowboy swagger and alienation that the American recording captures much better. That being said, I would love to hear which you prefer, or if you think one soundtrack works better for one scene, while the other works better for a different scene. Others might be thematic, such as how does the show handle any of the existential themes it’s constantly presenting? Does it even believe in these things or does it treat them as another way for people to distract themselves or be able to sleep at night? Some might be structural, especially when Watanable, Sunrise, and crew start presenting the backstories of the Bebop crew and how that not only gives us insight into them but as to the larger world this show takes place in.
If you can think of anymore, feel free to sound them off in the comments, because each episode has a lot to unpack and admire, and what better way is there to do it than all together?
