Cowboy Bebop - Session 8: Waltz for Venus

There are a few themes worth keeping track of throughout Cowboy Bebop, but I consider only two to be central to what the series is all about. First is the subject of time -- particularly one's past and its relationship with the present -- which we have thus far seen primarily through Spike's eyes. This will eventually become an important concern for every principal character in some way after we get a much clearer look at the histories of Faye, Jet, and the rest.

The other element, critical though it is, doesn't really surface until Waltz for Venus. It's the ultimate futility of it all, which benefits greatly from the information about the character's pasts given ostensibly in service of the other theme. I'm sure I must be quoting someone, though I can't determine who or how loosely this is paraphrased, but, in essence, "there is no sadness without memory". In other words, for this futility to have any impact, it helps to get a little perspective via backstory. It's still far too early to say anything definitive about how anything or anyone winds up at the end of Bebop, but this episode does provide a nice preview, in miniature, of what is to come.

As gloomy as that may sound, Venus doesn't start out as a drag. In fact, after a successful bounty collection by the on-again team of Spike and Faye, the Bebop crew is temporary flush with a little cash. To celebrate, Faye seizes the opportunity to resume being broke by way of the casino and Ein gets a nice meal. On the whole, though, their lives don’t really change much for the better after this rare victory, even temporarily. Shortly after the bounty is turned in and the reward has been distributed among the crew, Jet is already looking for the next bounty to start the whole process over again.

And now that we’ve seen the meager rewards for success in their work, it raises the question of why they even bother doing it at all. Considering the risks involved and, perhaps more importantly, their constant failures, it is surprising that they’re able to earn enough money to survive. They must be cashing in on some bounties between episodes, because the available evidence does not suggest that they could last this long otherwise. Leaving Faye and her gambling aside, if the money they get from turning in bounties goes towards food and other basic necessities plus ship maintenance and fuel, the purpose of which is to allow them to continue hunting bounties, well, the entire thing seems basically pointless.

To clear the air of existential funk, this episode introduces Roco and Stella, a brother and sister living on Venus whose motivations are much easier to define. They represent a solid sibling relationship with the older brother being willing to do anything to help the younger sister, who in turn loves her older brother unconditionally. This relative simplicity gives them a certain innocence that sets them apart from most of the other people we meet in this universe. It manifests itself first in the way they are both surprisingly quick to put a great deal of trust in Spike, even doing so independently from each other and under circumstances that wouldn't exactly justify it.

Although Roco does so partly out of desperation and necessity, Stella's intuitive judgment of character stems from her blindness, caused by an uncommon reaction to the plants used to terraform the planet. She tells Spike that she can understand things more easily because she is blind, which is how she can quickly tell that Spike is basically a good person, even if that goodness is buried. She compares him to her brother, who is still good even though he is doing bad things with bad people, because he is just using them as a way to get the cure for her blindness.

One way to interpret Stella is through a zen sort of filter which allows her blindness to be the strength by which she can ignore the superficial things that get in the way of understanding. I think the sad reality, though, is that she’s a kind, well-meaning person who is cut off from the world and therefore rather naive as to how it works. Roco is similarly naive, but since he doesn’t have the excuse of being holed up in the desert, I think he is more likely to come across as mostly foolish. None of this is meant to imply that these two are pitiful or stupid, only that their innocence leads them to do some foolish things.

This is most obvious in the way Roco tries to use the criminal gang as a way to secure the rare Grey Ash plant that will cure his sister. In this respect, he’s a little like Faye and her gambling in that he is taking a big risk in hopes that a big payoff will follow, despite the odds being decidedly against that outcome. In his mind, he must have imagined that he could get what he wanted from them and escape, not quite realizing how good they would be at keeping that from happening.

The defining moment in this episode comes during the showdown with the gang when Roco finally succeeds in throwing an attacker the way Spike had showed him. As he smiles to Spike and gets a thumbs up in response, he is shot, without warning, through the chest. As he falls so does the Grey Ash, which withers and dies seconds after its protective glass case is broken. This scene, to be echoed later in the series, makes it achingly clear that not only can life end in an instant, but every important thing gained in that life can disappear just as quickly.

The bitterness of this outcome is sweetened somewhat when Stella is still able to be cured by way of the Grey Ash seeds Roco had smuggled to her earlier without her knowledge. This ending removes much of the futile edge from Roco's life and death, but it also says something about how this series intends to treat earnest though naive people. Specifically, it gives some support to "loss of innocence" as one of the other minor themes worth keeping an eye on as we progress. Its contributions to the overall futility of the series pay off spectacularly.


Side Note:
Faye’s lone-wolf bounty hunting story gets almost no time but is still worth a mention. Mainly because she is in no-nonsense badass mode which is all kicking down doors and shoving pistols into dude’s mouths. I think part of her knows that she’s been making a poor seductress and so she tries the more aggressive stance we’ve hardly seen since her machinegun-accented introduction in the second episode. It’s a great time for her to use this tactic, too, because it puts her in clear opposition to Spike’s Bruce Lee-inspired “like water” style that simply redirects the aggression of his attacker.