COWBOY BEBOP: THE MOVIE (2001)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

After the original anime TV series COWBOY BEBOP ended in 1999, the show's four offbeat characters-- Spike, Jet, Faye and Edward-- got one more outing in this theatrical film, made by all or most of the same team that worked on the teleseries. 

Wiki describes the show as a "neo-noir space western." The most "noirish" thing about the TV show was its pacing, which eschewed the breakneck rush of the average space opera. The four heroes are quirky bounty hunters whose original motivation is almost always that of catching some wanted scumbag in order to grab a big payoff. More moralistic narratives might insist that bounty hunters should blow off their moneymaking trade in order to undertake some altruistic mission, but I don't think these bounty hunters ever do.

BEBOP-- which name in this essay I'll apply only to the movie-- mirrors the main disposition of the heroes. They usually start out their cases just lazing around their HQ, men and women of action who are intensely bored when they don't have something to do. (The exception is for daffy young Edward, a pre-teen girl with a boy's name and formidable computer hacking skills, for she's always annoyingly cheerful.) Spike is the handsome asskicker, Jet is the older, seasoned pro, and Faye is the hot but often unpredictable tough girl. They live in anticipation of some big score, but they never seem capable of monetizing their bounties. On some level they're adrenaline junkies who always end up benefiting society by capturing bad guys, though they'd never think of themselves as "heroes."

It happens to be future-Halloween when the Bebop crew goes after Volaju, a terrorist who threatens all of humanity with a nanotech virus. The season allows for some supernatural images along with those of the mundane western and the noir thriller, but I didn't think any of the story-tropes were developed enough to form epistemological patterns as such. Even the name of the terrorist's sometimes lover, "Elektra," doesn't seem to connect to anything about the classical Greek character-- or even the Marvel superhero, aside from the fact that both are martially skilled females. Both Volaju and Elektra are castoffs of past space-battles, and both get involved with ruthless designers of bio-tech weapons, which is how Volaju gets access to the nano-virus. There is some good tech-talk about how these artificial microbes operate, and some "traumatized soldier" tropes, but none of these receive much development.

Though all four regulars get things to do, Spike is clearly the focus of the story, since he handles most of the leg-work and ends up engaging in battles with both Elektra and Volaju. This "cowboy," as bounty hunters are termed in this future-verse, even loses a shootout with Volaju and takes a tumble into a river. Yet the river deposits Cowboy Spike into the hands of what appear to be a tribe of future-Indians-- the only ones I ever recall seeing anything resembling a Native American in this "space western."

The longer run-time allows better staging of both the violent interludes and the character-study scenes, making BEBOP THE MOVIE a worthy conclusion to a cult anime series.