Another member of the Bebop makes her debut as Faye Valentine enters the scene. She’s smart. She’s sexy. She knows how to navigate chaos. And, much like the other characters here, she has a secret past she’s running from.
1. You Know the First Rule of Combat?
“Honky Tonk Women” revolves around Faye Valentine. As the session starts, she’s been abducted by some casino gangsters and blackmailed into helping them make an exchange. Kind of like with Ein in the last episode, they’ve consolidated all data and programming onto a casino chip, which need to be convolutedly passed from the source to the gangsters. The crew of the Bebop enters the narrative, and things immediately got to hell. In any event, Spike and Jet end up capturing Faye and chaining her up in the bathroom while they debate whether it’s worth it turning her over for the bounty for handing her over to the gangsters instead.
2. Shoot Them Before They Shoot You
In true Cowboy Bebop fashion, Spike and Jet are thrown into the middle of another ongoing narrative as they continue to try running from their own ongoing narratives. There’s some business with hackers and the solar system police force — ISSP — and legends about Faye being over 200 years old (which we learn turn out to be sort of true?). But the characters all repeatedly tell each other they don’t care one way or another. This series is a bunch of lives occasionally intersecting with one another, often ending with a fuck-ton of property damage. For instance, how many locations get shot up in this session alone?
3. Well, That’s a Sight, All Right
Is it somewhat reassuring that casinos in the future are still relatively tacky? A good portion of “Honky Tonk Women” is set on this casino ship with a giant spinning roulette wheel attached to it. We got a 3D image for our space casino, and it might be the late-’90s computer graphics or something, but the presentation is ridiculously distracting. I mean, I get what Sunrise was going for with the design, and that spinning roulette wheel makes for some cool interior visuals, and with so many moving components it may have been more difficult to animate traditionally, but when it first appeared, I thought we were watching something through the TV.
The animation in Cowboy Bebop is typically anime/television: during conversations, mouths might be the only thing that move; movement in general is based around gesture than fluidity; most of the budget is saved for the chase sequences. That being said, there’s a grit to Bebop, a rough around the edges approach boosted by some innovative camera work that puts the show above other animes. The 3D casino ship is too clean and sparkly and distracting to be totally engrossing.
4. Space Walk
The coolest part of the session is when Spike dons his space gear and goes out to make an exchange with the gangsters. It’s not just the sexy outfit with all the cool gadgets, but it’s also how Watanabe takes his time to establish location and develop tension by allowing Spike to just float along for some precious seconds.
5. Enter Faye
“Honky Tonk Women” adds another member to the Bebop crew with Faye Valentine. Okay, so she actually escapes at the end of the episode, but you know she’s going to be coming back. I’m not entirely sure how we can start talking about Faye: she’s a conscious femme fatale and she uses her sexuality to help get what she wants. So there’s the tight clothes and the constantly forward breasts and the constant posturing, but we also get a character who can quickly think her way out of a situation, who knows how to play a room, and, most importantly, knows when to sit back and let events play out before making her next move.
I can’t help but feel the show has a complicated relationship with her, however. Spike, for instance, shows little to no interest in her sexually at all. In fact, he only registers her presence as a person when she confronts him later about the chip and, even then, he shrugs off her cheating in their game. Neither he nor Jet try to take advantage of her for anything more than a bounty and, as becomes obvious in future sessions, they don’t ever develop a romantic attachment. That being said, the camera lingers over her body far longer than is comfortable in many sequences, and by the second half, when she’s on the Bebop, Faye’s kind of made into a joke. Not even a comic character, but a joke.
Continued belowFor those of you who have finished the whole series, this dynamic continues for a while, but I think we can also understand the context of this. Twenty years is a long time and representation and presentation changed dramatically therein. Faye has a lot of toneless moments, but I think it’s ultimately ruled out within the course of her arc.
Also, the show gets a better footing and grounding once she comes onboard. Faye brings in a new perspective and new types of stories Watanabe, Sunrise, and company can spin.
What do you think? How do you feel about Faye? How is her introduction compared with the other three members of the Bebop crew? Let us know in the comments and tune in next week for a “Gateway Shuffle.”
