At last, the greatest character in Cowboy Bebop has arrived. If the title is any indication, you know exactly who I’m talking about. But that’s a thought for later on, so let’s take it one thought at a time (and with some spoilers along the way).
1. Hakim and World-Building
This episode’s bounty is Abdul Hakim, who in the anime was a notorious pet thief who kidnaps and sells animals for a profit. In this episode, while he does still steal pets, his motivations are significantly different.
In this case, he attacks wealthy families who left Earth when it was wrecked and kidnaps their dogs, not for a profit, but for revenge. His victims are the kinds of people who left the poor and working class, like his family, behind on a dying world but took their pets with them.
(And look, I’m not saying they were justified in anything, but I mean… if I was in their position, I’d do anything it takes to save my dog too.)
In doing so, it gives us plenty of world building. This establishes that the Earth was ruined when a space gate exploded, but also that it was a pretty recent event – it happened at least within a recent generation, unlike in the anime. This is a change that could significantly alter Faye’s backstory.
It also shows us that dogs (and presumably other pets) are a rarity in this future. Spike and Jet remark that they’d never seen one before, and Jet’s ex says that owning a dog comes with massive taxes. (And all I can say is that if the future is one without dogs, you can count me out.)
Hakim’s use of a face changer also establishes certain kinds of technology that exist in Cowboy Bebop, and how they’re used primarily for, well, sex work (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
And we also see how the police in Cowboy Bebop will prioritize the rich over everyone else and will absolutely shoot someone with the minimal excuse for a cause. So some things never change.
2. Jet’s Family Drama
Throughout the past two episodes, Jet was complaining about trying to find an expensive doll for his daughter’s birthday. So that plot point gets resolved this episode, and it’s… in about as cliche a manner as you’d expect.
He finds a scalper charging over three times the market price, then the doll gets destroyed in the course of the bounty hunt (in no less than three separate ways), so he’s all out of money and doesn’t have a doll to show for it.
And look, I like seeing Jet trying to be in his daughter’s life, and showing him meeting (and arguing with) his ex-wife at least adds to this character arc we’ve been following. It’s one of the least original things about this remake, but at least Jet is getting more to do alongside Spike. Plus, we also get a bit from him about how his old partner betrayed him, and his thoughts on revenge. So we get some character work out of it.
3. The Good, the Bad, and the Not Nearly as Sexy as Hoped
This episode was… uncomfortably horny. It’s like one of the writers realized “Hey, this is going to be on Netflix, we don’t have to worry about cable network censors,” and decided to use it for all it’s worth.
Jet reaches out to an old contact named Woodcock, who hits on him pretty aggressively. Her response to Jet’s line about her blackmailing him for dinner of “Because you are black and you are male” in an incredibly thirsty tone was, well, a bad line delivered with way too much ham. And it wasn’t even blackmail, she wasn’t holding any compromising material over him. That’s a whole scene that could have used another round of editing before the script was approved.
Similarly, Hakim’s face changer comes from a brothel, so a good portion of the episode takes place there. Not only is there plenty of background partial nudity, but we also get a scene where they ask a dominatrix with a heavy German accent about Hakim while she’s busy with a client.
On the other hand, it was pretty amusing seeing how knowledgeable Spike was about everything that goes on there, including this hilarious exchange:
Continued below“Are you a cheap bastard?”
“Not by choice, mistress.”
But on a less hilarious and significantly less sexy note, we also get some full nudity when Vicious goes to shut down the Red Eye operation. We see the people making the Red Eye… and they’re all working in the nude, as well as with their eyes sewn shut. That’s more than a little disturbing, and while tasteful nudity is all well and good, it didn’t do the scene any favors this episode.
Besides, Vicious and his crew gun them all down anyways, so I’m not sure what they were trying to get out of it other than nudity for the sake of nudity. I get they don’t want the people working there to smuggle out any Red Eye, and the lack of clothes is to dehumanize them, but it still felt all too gratuitous.
4. Ein is here!
Yes, this is the character I’ve been waiting for: Ein the data dog.
It was at this point that the notes I take on each episode devolved into just notes about how adorable the corgi is and how he’s so fluffy. That means it’s a perfect casting. Who could resist such a cute little dog?
In fact, this episode had no shortage of great dogs, which is always a plus in my book (as long as the dogs are unharmed).
But putting aside how cute Ein is, let’s look at some story and adaptation points.
The episode did not establish that Ein is a “data dog.” In the anime, he’s a hyper-intelligent corgi whose intelligence was enhanced by a less-than-legal research facility. However, we still get some hints to it in this episode: first as Ein escapes an electronic dog carrying case, then when we see his collar appears to have the logo of some sort of corporation on it, and the name tag looks more like “E1N” than “EIN,” suggesting he’s some sort of test subject. (Or maybe I’m just seeing things.)
And while it is sad to see that Jet’s daughter can’t keep Ein, the fact that she’ll stay in touch with her dad more even if just to see the dog still works out for Jet. So I’ll call it a win.
Now let’s just take another moment to appreciate how cute this dog is.
5. It’s Getting Even Harder to Take Vicious Seriously
I think one of the things that made Vicious work in the anime was how infrequently he was used. He was a key part of Spike’s past, and when he appeared, death followed. So if an episode opens and Vicious is there, you know it’s going to be a story-important episode and characters are going to get hurt.
Not so much in this version. He’s appeared in every episode so far, and while there is still some violence in his wake, every moment we see him get angry and struggle makes it harder to take him seriously.
I think that moment is perfectly encapsulated by the last scene in this episode. Now, when I watch an episode, I take notes so I can save important quotes, keep track of themes and story beats, and generally jot down my thoughts as I have them so I can create a proper review afterwards. I think it’s important that this point of the review includes the exact sentence I wrote in my notes during this part of the episode:
“Spike calls Vicious, who answers the phone with a ‘moshi moshi’ like some sort of weeaboo.” (And I say that as someone who jokingly calls myself a “freaking weeb” whenever my friends and I geek out over anime.)
Well, seeing Spike decide to give Vicious a chance to walk away rather than kill him is all well and good for his character arc and tying in to the conversation he had with Jet about his old partner. But Vicious’ own reaction, first by claiming that he’s untouchable, then by freaking out when his bulletproof window gets shot, only makes the character less impressive.
The way he shouted “Fearless!” afterwards, with all the drama of a “Next time, Gadget! Next time!” didn’t do him any favors either.
So… some good moments, some bad, and some utterly inexplicable. That seems to be a common theme for these episodes so far, but who knows how things will change in the next episode. So until then: see you, space cowboy.
