Cowboy Bebop Callisto Soul Television 

Five Thoughts on Cowboy Bebop’s “Callisto Soul”

By | December 6th, 2021
Posted in Television | % Comments

It’s been a few episodes since we last saw Faye, so it’s time to catch up with her. At the same time, we’re seeing the live action version of a group of eco terrorists, and a little more from Vicious and Julia’s far-too-ongoing subplot. Let’s begin.

1. Faye’s Story

Last episode, I noted how the Earth’s devastation being a far more recent event meant that Faye’s backstory might not fit in the live action version. Well, so far it seems like they’re mostly sticking with it.

We see Faye meet up with the doctor who un-froze her from her cryogenic sleep, as part of a scam. From the sound of things, he unfreezes people, reunites them with their “mother” (another con artist) then they steal everything and leave.

This is similar to what happened to Faye in the anime, with a few exceptions. For starters, it wasn’t a fake mother; she fell in love with (supposed) attorney Whitney Haggis Matsumoto, who faked his death to make her inherit his debt (which was added to her already massive debt from the cryogenic sleep). Of course, the doctor was in on the scam then as well.

The fake mother is still “W.H. Matsumoto,” so it seems like they’re changing the character around while maintaining the core scam and its impact on Faye.

But how that will fit in with the timeline has yet to be seen.

However, I also feel like they introduced this plot point too early on. In the anime, we got to know Faye more before we discovered what caused her to be the way she is and how she accumulated her debt, as well as the mystery about her memories. By bringing it into the series this early, it answers questions before we have them.

On the other hand, it also introduces a new question: who is this cosmonaut that Spike and Jet say Faye reminds them of? Faye asks, but Spike doesn’t bother answering, so maybe that’ll come into play later.

2. Callisto Liberation Front

Alright, let’s talk about the bounty of the episode: Maria Murdock and the Callisto Liberation Front. In the anime, they were known as the “Space Warriors,” but overall this is another case where the little details are changed while the overall idea remains the same.

For instance, in the anime, the Space Warriors threatened to launch a virus that transforms people into apes at Ganymede if they didn’t outlaw the hunting of Ganymede Sea Rats. In this version, they’ve weaponized the pollen bombs used for terraforming planets, and targeted the CEO of a corporation that’s deforesting Callisto. The Ganymede Sea Rats are already extinct.

In both cases, they’re viewed as a somewhat goofy group of eco terrorists, but ones that still manage to pose an actual threat. It’s definitely something that works better in the anime, but it’s a decent adaptation. And while they both end up as victims of their own bio weapons, in the anime it was more of an accident, whereas in the live action version it’s an intentional choice – better to die a tree than to live locked up in jail with “Mother.”

So all in all, a pretty faithful adaptation of the group with a few key changes, but still something that seems sillier in live action than anime.

But even though the contributed to the plot, the group itself is secondary to the character arcs that take up the forefront of the episode. In that regard, they work to proper the story while giving the characters chances to go through their stories and growth.

3. Julia’s Plan

Now back to the weakest part of this series: the whole subplot with Vicious and Julia. Now we get to the part where Vicious starts planning to overthrow the Elders of the Syndicate, and it continues to be less than impressive.

First, Vicious wants to just go to war against the Elders, not for power or because he thinks they’re ineffectual, but because he doesn’t like how they made him almost shoot Julia. Then Julia’s the one to convince him to change his approach and work with the other Syndicate heads to pull a coup instead, and even goes as far as to speak with Ana about setting up a meeting.

Continued below

So I guess Julia’s pulling the strings now? And Vicious continues to be less than impressive. When his coup goes off, assuming it even works in this series, will it have the same impact as when he killed Mao and took over the Red Dragon Syndicate in the anime?

These two characters are absolutely a case where “less is more.”

And then there’s also the matter of Gren, who is completely unrecognizable from the anime, but that’s a character we’ll get to another, more relevant time.

4. Welcome to the Bebop, Faye

To say the Bebop crew had a rough start with Faye would be an understatement. In fact, they made a running joke over how much Spike wants to just shoot her. Faye didn’t help matters by betraying them at any given opportunity, including stealing both the Swordfish and Ein.

Also, the fact that she manages to find the two in the middle of a random diner right after the attack feels like the plot had to throw them together, rather than there being any actual reason for her to look for and find them. And Faye spends a lot of time with a bullet in her shoulder this episode to no ill effects.

Still, after all that, they do have to work together to stop the Callisto Liberation Front, and Faye willingly crashes her ship into a missile filled with the pollen bombs to stop it. As she crashes, she repeats her name to herself in a desperate hope to remember in case she gets frozen again, and alright, that explains why her backstory was brought up earlier in the episode. I get it, even if it’s not the best.

But sacrificing her ship and risking her life is enough to earn Faye a place on the Bebop, at least for now. So she’s officially part of the main cast, and we’ll see how her chemistry with the rest of the crew develops as we go.

5. Okay, about the bidet conversation…

Alright, so this episode features a scene I saw passed around social media a lot, as people used it to complain about the overall quality of the show. And yeah, it was pretty bad. Jet spends a lot of time talking about how much he likes bidets. And he doesn’t even realize bidets are meant for cleaning one’s ass, not their feet (that last bit is sometimes cut from the shared clips). It doesn’t do the scene any favors.

However, I will also state that it’s not as bad as the posts about it made it out to be; it was meant to be another conversation between Jet and Spike to build on their character dynamics and set the scene before Faye comes in with the plot. Even in the original anime, they didn’t talk about philosophy while waiting around at a diner.

The diner scene even helped establish some world building, like how artificial meat is pretty common, compared to the far more expensive actual meat. Even with all the terraforming going on across the solar system, there’s still clearly a shortage of animals aside from dogs. It’s a little touch that adds to our understanding of this universe.

So once more, the episode has some hits and misses. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of that as we go on, so until then: see you, space cowboy.


//TAGS | Cowboy Bebop

Robbie Pleasant

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