Decoding Cowboy Bebop's Immortality

追加: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Should I survive to the year 2071, something I'll be excited to see is what people then think of Cowboy Bebop. Because in between the gigantic question marks about what will happen to the world over the next 45 years, one thing I am certain of is that we will still be watching this show. From its original airing in 1998 to right now, Cowboy Bebop has remained one of the most persistently recommended anime across the world for good reason. Written by Ko Noamoto and directed by Shinichiro Watanab, its unique mix of aesthetic and narrative elements proves to be captivating both immediately and lingeringly. It is both western and science fiction, both futuristic and nostalgic. Its minute-to-minute style is eclectic yet unrivaledly smooth. It is funny, cool, and sad, both one at a time and often all at once. While draped in constant homage to what came before, it is also self assured in its explicit declaration. The work, which becomes a new genre itself, will be called Cowboy Bebop.

[00:01:07]And though its visual and sonic charisma is what draws people in, what really gets the spurs into the audience is the writing. This story grapples with big ideas. It wonders about loyalty and honor, about legacy and death, about camaraderie and belonging, and at least in one particular episode, about immortality. However, Cowboy Bebop is not easy or obvious in its ultimate messages, leaving many questions open and unsettled, demanding effort to define what this story precisely says.

[00:01:40]My contribution today will be to take a very close look at one evocative episode that has been stuck in my mind for over a decade. While the show does have an overarching plot, most of its sessions are self-contained, such as our subject here. It tells a full story with the characters, scenarios, and imagery introduced within not referenced or returned to elsewhere in the show, with one poignant exception.

[00:02:07]by analyzing it scene by scene. In this video, I will present a thorough interpretation of Cowboy Bebop's sixth episode, Sympathy for the Devil. In so doing, I also aim to connect it to some of the broader ideas of the series as a whole, and lastly, provide some contemplation on how it is that art and the people who make it can become immortal.

[00:02:29]3 2 1 Welcome to Hyperfocus.

[00:02:56]Spoiler warning for Cowboy Bebop. While this video focuses on one episode, it also discusses the ending of the whole show. Sorry, that's just the only way it could be. Our main cast is a small crew of bounty hunters who live on a spaceship named the Bbop. Front and center is Spike Spiegel, suave and stylish with a cat-like fighting presence and steady aim. He is naturally charming but intentionally aloof. Next is Jet Black. Older gruffer and boulder.

[00:03:24]Jet owns the ship and prides himself on self-sufficiency and emotional distance.

[00:03:29]He does all the cooking and takes care of the plants. Soon, the duo are joined by FA Valentine, a proudly self-centered gambler who is adept at piloting spacecraft and using clever manipulation to get what she needs. Along the way, they unintentionally adopt a genetically modified genius corgi named Ain. And the core group is completed by adolescent prodigy hacker Radical Edward, but that character doesn't appear until later in the story than the episode in question today. Set in the late 21st century, after Earth has been made broadly uninhabitable, episodes generally feature the crew trying and usually failing to capture some bounty head or another in some unique location within the grungily colonized solar system.

[00:04:07]Bouncing between space station and asteroid, from Mars to Venus to Ganymede, every 23 minutes spent with Cowboy Bebop introduces places and concepts that are normal to the characters but new and strange to us.

[00:04:19]While not every episode quite hits the mark, and not all are quite equally interesting, the general density of unforgettable moments and images across the show is remarkable. These planets are teeming with life and story, but they are also frequently bleak. People are usually shown as living on the edge, poor and desperate. Our main characters are no different. With income so inconsistent or easily spent, they end up in uncomfortable living conditions, always running out of food, though never cigarettes. So, their continued participation in a morally dubious profession is most directly because it's the only way for them to eat. And a match, Spike, Jet, and Fay all like to affect a personal detachment, acting like they are above unnecessary feelings, caring only about survival and self-interest. Cowboy Bebop loves to prove them wrong. Every little story line flows towards something other than the bounty. The characters ending up choosing to act not to chase money, but in accordance with their concealed but everpresent values. They are always better people than they pretend to be.

[00:05:23]And they all came from somewhere. Each crew member is cy about what happened in their past, about how they came to live this sort of life. As the show progresses and details are slowly revealed, it becomes clear that their histories in fact weigh on them constantly, driving everything about who they are and what they do. In session 5, Ballot of Fallen Angels, we learn that Spike is a defector from a major organized crime syndicate. At great personal risk, he abandoned the group 3 years prior. And in this episode, he feels compelled to return and fight against Vicious, a former comrade turned nemesis. The stated reason for this decision is loyalty to people who helped him in the past.

[00:06:04]>> Wait, does this have to do with Mao?

[00:06:07]>> Yeah, I have a debt to pay off.

[00:06:11]>> Let's just say my past is catching up to me.

[00:06:14]>> Vicious, however, sees Spike's return differently as confirmation that they are two of a kind. In his words, >> you have any idea what you look like right at this moment, Spike?

[00:06:26]What a ravenous beast. The same blood runs through both of us.

[00:06:31]>> This battle ends in a stalemate. Both men injured and then out of reach of the other. In the very next episode, things seem to have returned to normal. But the audience knows now that Spike retains commitments to a specific sense of honor and that he is haunted by the past. A close reading of session 6 of Cowboy Bebop starts now.

[00:06:56]We might as well start with the episode's title, Sympathy for the Devil.

[00:07:00]It is a reference to the 1968 song of the same name by the Rolling Stones, whose lyrics are written in first person from the point of view of Satan.

[00:07:08]Throughout the song, the devil describes various atrocities he was present for across the centuries and then concludes with a plea for understanding. Quote, "Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints, as heads is tails, call me Lucifer cuz I'm in need of some restraint. So if you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste."

[00:07:30]The point of the song, as I best understand it, is that evil is not an entity separate from humanity, but something inherent to the whole deal. As we'll see, there are elements that rhyme between this song by the Stones and the anime story that borrows its name. Right after the ever iconic intro, we begin with 45 seconds of a dreamlike operation. Surgeons are removing a man's eye. The patient is naked and seems to be conscious. Above, a mechanical eye twitches and focuses on the camera, and zooming in incredibly close on the reflection in its pupil reveals the man to be Spike. Spike then wakes up gasping in a smoky bar. This scene is quite cryptic, among the most cryptic in the entire show. It was obviously a dream with imagery to match. Real operating rooms rarely have tubes of floating organs, and if they did, wouldn't have fish in them. Eye surgery doesn't require full nudity, and the surgeon's eyes are glowing blue. However, this is also a flashback, a dream that was inspired by a real memory of Spikes.

[00:08:35]Much later in the series, in the final episode, actually, Spike says that one of his eyes is fake. This dream must be him remembering that operation, the eye being an advanced prosthetic that still provides vision. In fact, I cannot prove but do suspect that Spike was surgically enhanced in other ways to make him a better soldier for the syndicate. We know such technology exists in this universe and it would explain the organs here as well as his pre-ternatural reflexes and injury recovery across the show. Regardless of to what extent, Spike was physically changed by the syndicate, and he connects that to the emotional change and trauma of his past.

[00:09:12]In future episodes, images from this surgery join other key memories that he lingers on. Eyes in general are a key motif for Cowboy Bebop as a whole. But what function does this sequence have in this episode specifically? Well, it is overlaid with harmonica music. When Spike jolts awake, we learn that music was diagetic. A child is performing alone on the bar's stage playing the blues beautifully. Spike briefly puts his hand over his right eye, which is the prosthetic one, and watches the performance. The camera lingers on the musician, and from this implies that when Spike dozed off, something about this music conjured that dream in him.

[00:09:52]Thus, there is some connection between his fake eye and this person.

[00:09:57]The next scene is a short one with Fay and aboard the Bbop towel in her hair.

[00:10:02]Fay opens the fridge, barren except a can of dog food. Looking over at Ain and his empty bowl, she with a smirk opens the can and slurps it all down herself.

[00:10:12]Fay verbally justifies this to the dog by saying, >> "If you don't work, you don't eat.

[00:10:16]You're a hunting dog. Hunt up some food."

[00:10:19]>> And that women are, on the other hand, delicate and refined.

[00:10:24]>> She then sees a paper describing a 3 million Woolong bounty and says, >> "I'll just have the boys get it for me."

[00:10:31]This scene shows where Fay is at this point in the story. She's looking out for herself and doesn't feel bad about that. Even at the expense of others, she will do whatever it takes to survive and doesn't really care if what she says is contradicted by her actions. Fay is on the ship because it materially benefits her, providing food and comfort that are otherwise difficult to obtain. But of course, someone who truly had no sympathy for others wouldn't bother talking to Ain at all. We shift now back to the bar where Spike and Jet are watching a man who matches the poster Fay was holding. Jet praises the Harmonica player whose performance just finished and the two banter a bit before Spike's high-tech goggles confirm that man is indeed their bounty head, someone named Giraffe. Their plan of attack, though, is obstructed by the presence of a rival bounty hunter named Fatty River.

[00:11:17]Thinking quickly, Jet loudly greets Fatty to pull his attention away from the target. Giraffe quickly slips out of the bar, but Spike is right on his tail.

[00:11:25]For about a minute, we watch Spike follow Giraffe, and it becomes clear that Giraffe is himself following someone, the young blues musician from the bar, who is accompanied by a man using a wheelchair. He tracks them all the way to their hotel room, where after a deep breath, he storms in, gun in hand. Giraffe yells a couple of disconnected phrases at the pair, who hardly seem to react, >> give it back now, >> zebra.

[00:11:51]>> And then we cut directly to him bursting out of the window. and plummeting to the streets below. The editing of this moment feels disjointed on purpose, indicating the audience only saw a fraction of the full encounter. Spike, who had likely been flying up to the hotel roof to intercept Giraffe, sees the man falling and manages to scoop him out of the air. Upon landing, Spike discovers Giraffe has been shot through the torso and is barely conscious. With his last words, Giraffe urges Spike to quote, "Help him." hands the bounty hunter a ring capped with a large pink gem and then passes away. Spike looks closely at the ring in his palm, which seems to give off its own glistening light. Clearly, Spike has wandered into a conflict he does not understand. Like many episodes of Cowboy Bebop, what started as just business has now become a mystery. We now jump to the crew back on the ship discussing what to do next.

[00:12:44]They pretty much agree that they should just sell the ring for whatever they can get and move on. Fay being the loudest proponent of this idea. After all, Spike was upset at Giraff's death, not out of empathy, but because of the lost reward.

[00:12:56]Bounty hunting is their job, and they need to get their money somehow. With the way they talk, it also seems that they interpret Giraff's help him to mean helping the child musician specifically.

[00:13:06]>> I don't see any reason why we shouldn't keep it.

[00:13:08]>> There is no reason. You're not responsible for that kid. After all, >> Spike does assert that he has no obligation to follow the man's wishes, but is a little more fixated on the ring than you'd expect from someone about to flip it for cash. The scene concludes with Jet handing Fay an invoice for her various expenses. How both men treat Fay rather poorly here indicates they do not fully trust her and think of her as a freeloader. But, you know, if they really wanted her gone, they would be evicting rather than invoicing. Contrary to what they all said though, the next scene features Jet having lunch with Fatty River, asking for more information about Giraffe. So clearly, they decided to investigate further. After all, Jed appears to be paying for the literal 17 pieces of cake on the table in exchange for whatever Fatty knows. One of the slices is patterned like a giraffe, and I do not know what that would mean. It turns out Fatty does have quite a bit to divulge. The harmonica player's name is when supposedly the boy's father, the man in the wheelchair is called Zebra.

[00:14:09]Giraffe and Zebra have history being the former leaders of the so-called self-defense volunteer squad implied to be some sort of paramilitary group. A battle at a research facility splintered the gang 10 years ago, and Fatty has concluded that Zebra double crossed Giraffe to gain full control. Therefore, giraffe must have simply been seeking revenge for that betrayal. So, we have a potential background and motive for the earlier conflict, but it seems incomplete. Why did Zebra go missing for most of a decade? What is the relevance of that ring?

[00:14:41]Fatty River never appears anywhere in Cowboy Bebop outside this episode. He makes a pretty big impression for having under 2 minutes of screen time. A strong example of how carefully Cowboy Bebop can write even its most minor characters to indicate a much larger world beyond the audience's view. He seems like someone who easily could have been a recurring character, but they just don't happen to cross paths again. Fatty is clearly a professional as well. I've always loved this look of frustration he gives when Jet greets him before switching on a dime to over-the-top affability. Even though they are actually friends, they are still competitors, and they are cognizant of both of those things the whole time they interact.

[00:15:20]>> I listened to the blues when I was still in my father's sack, if you know what I mean. The lunch probably functions as an apology from Jet for interfering, but he also has a further motive. In fact, he is not opposed to helping Jet with info, but he did have to receive something material and delectable in return.

[00:15:37]Together, the cafe scene indicates a sort of bounty hunter solidarity, a mutual respect between rivals. It's slick, efficient writing. Even though Fatty barely mentioned when, during the second half of his exposition, the viewer is shown more images of the harmonica performance matching the episode's beginning. These shots are a bit surreal. Everyone in the room a monochrome red besides Spike and Wen.

[00:16:01]Jet isn't visible at all even though he was in the room. It feels slightly abstracted in order to emphasize that there is some kind of connection between these two characters. In the next scene, Spike is following Wen and Zebra through dark alleyways. Moving inside a warehouse, he is surprised by Ebrite light and readies his gun. Looking out of his right eye, when asks who he is and why he's following them with Spike replying that he's fulfilling giraffe's request to help him, what Spike was expecting was to rescue Wen from Zebra or something like that. But as he opens his arms and tries to start a conversation, Wen shoots him in the shoulder.

[00:16:38]This encounter is interspersed with moments of Jet and Fay on the Bbop discussing the situation. Fay shrugs and finds nothing unusual about the idea the giraffe was killed over internal politics. And Jet says something pretty remarkable in response.

[00:16:52]>> Betrayal may come easily to women, but men live by iron codes of honor.

[00:16:56]>> You believe that?

[00:16:58]>> I'm trying to real hard.

[00:17:00]>> Leaving aside the casual sexism, this one line, I'm trying to real hard, is such an honest, concise summation of a major throughine of the whole story.

[00:17:10]Characters across Cowboy Bebop, Jet included, but not the only example, stake their identity and purpose on the idea that people important to them are trustworthy and honorable. They are almost always disappointed. Betrayal is all over this show. Cowboy Bebop knows with certainty that many men do not live by iron codes of honor. Fay knows this.

[00:17:33]Jet knows this, too, but is still trying to believe otherwise. So, in considering this conflict, he senses, or maybe just hopes, that former comrades wouldn't treat each other like this, that there must be more to this story. They then stumble on an old newspaper showing when and a different man in a wheelchair. Fay notices the picture is from 30 years ago.

[00:17:57]Back in the warehouse, Spike clutches his bleeding arm while Wen warns him to back off. After Spike repeatedly refers to him as a kid, Wen starts to monologue, stating that he has been alive for a very long time since way back when everyone lived on Earth. He forms a sinister smile and his pupils sharpen, his eyes resembling those of a cat or perhaps a snake.

[00:18:27]While Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones believes in evil, it also believes in an inherent goodness in humanity. Every sinner's a saint, it says. And through its general lyrical darkness, the song feels primarily upbeat and pleasant to listen to.

[00:18:46]Even though the devil did horrible things, he still deserves sympathy, which is to say, all of us deserve the same.

[00:18:55]After the midpoint of the episode, we shift to a soft pastoral vista. It is painted with gentle watercolors. When plays his harmonica and his parents look on happily as the boy smiles roundly, strange glistening lights float from above. The light grows in intensity until it overwhelms the family.

[00:19:14]Suddenly, the landscape is sharp and lifeless. when crawls from under the charred corpses of his mother and father and looks at the sky. The moon has shattered.

[00:19:26]Referred to as the astral gate accident, the event depicted here is a foundational one to Cowboy Bebop's universe, an experimental technology meant to facilitate quick space travel failed and released an unfathomable amount of energy. A majority of people on Earth were killed and the survivors were forced to either move underground or off the planet entirely. This disaster is referenced many other times across the show, clearly having shaped everything about the society our main characters move through. But this was its first introduction, and it focuses not on the spectacle, but the tragedy that when survived only because his parents shielded him with their bodies, shows in one moment the full heart-wrenching human cost of this catastrophe, of mankind's penchant for destruction.

[00:20:10]Ever since the astral gate accident, when stopped aging altogether, he cannot die. Back in the present, Wen continues his monologue. He says that various people across his life have discovered his immortality and subjected him to experiments, but all of them eventually died. So now, to protect his freedom, when uses people like Zebra as a cover, Spike quickly comes to an understanding, conveyed by brief flashbacks, that the person giraffe had wanted him to help was Zebra after all. When then asks, >> "Now, where's the ring?"

[00:20:43]>> "Ring? What ring?"

[00:20:45]>> And when Spike feains ignorance, opens fire. He is about as good of a shot as most of the show's antagonists, and Spike lively dodges and rolls around the bullets and retrieves his own gun. With a single shot, he disarms Wen, who pivots to making an escape, preventing Spike's pursuit by pushing the zebra down the staircase. After catching the disabled man, Spike tries to shoot Wen down and at the last moment nails him in the forehead.

[00:21:11]But when he goes to look, Spike sees a huge pool of blood and no body. Across the whole show, Spike witnesses a lot of [ __ ] But rarely does he look so unnerved as he does here. What just occurred is genuinely disturbing to him.

[00:21:26]It was true. The boy cannot die.

[00:21:30]when has a striking villainous presence in this scene. He never raises his voice, never panics. He is calm and even condescending in the middle of a gunfight. Clearly, he is not a child.

[00:21:42]The line, "It'd just be a case of casting pearls before swine."

[00:21:45]>> In particular, is a dense, clever piece of dialogue. In one stroke, it enhances the uncanniness of his speech, contrasted with his appearance by him using an idiom no child ever would.

[00:21:56]confirms that the ring is crucial to him in some way and demonstrates that he perceives Spike to be entirely beneath him. Wen does not care about the lives of others. Zebra is nothing more than a tool to him and Spike nothing more than a minor threat to his freedom. If he feels anything at all in this scene, it is a touch of sadism. He seems to relish in relaying the horror of his history and that slight smile lingers on his face. He pauses for a moment to look back and smirk after pushing Zebra.

[00:22:25]Wen's goal is not to hurt people, but it is something he will do gladly if he feels it useful. And what ultimately makes this persona so meaningfully chilling is how directly it is juxtaposed with that watercolor flashback. Even though he still looks 10 years old, he is now obviously a different sort of person. Cowboy Bebop is not portraying a born sociopath, but something scarier. The idea that a kind, happy child could go on to become someone like this. So what happened? The clearest explanation is that he endured extreme cruelty. One can assume the experiments he mentioned were non-consensual and torturous, the product of amoral scientists willing to do anything to understand his longevity.

[00:23:07]Here we can remember the episode's first scene, the frightening dream of Spike's operation. Could this not easily read also as someone being subjected to a cruel experiment? While we never learn exactly what was done to Spike or to what degree he consented, this event from his past is on some level something he shares with when even back in the bar, he subconsciously recognized that harmony. But not everyone with such experiences loses all empathy. So there is a parallel possibility. Maybe it was immortality itself that caused Wen's transformation. That if you cannot die, you were doomed to lose connection with the humanity of others. The next scene is back on the BBOP the following day.

[00:23:48]Jet is patching up Spike's injury and tries to banter a bit like normal, but Spike is tur and doesn't play along.

[00:23:54]They brought Zebra back to the ship as well. And soon after alerts her, Fay notices he is crying. Jet hooks him up to the so-called alpha cat, a machine capable of projecting memories, and together they watch what really happened in the hotel room. Giraffe demands when released zebra before being shot backward out of the window. While shocking to the crew, this is something the viewer likely put together already.

[00:24:18]The biggest new piece of information is how Giraffe wields the ring as leverage, yelling to win that it can return time to him. It also, if just for a moment, centers Zebra as a tragic character, as the biggest victim in all this. Zebra and Giraffe did not deserve for this to be done to them, and they will receive no justice or satisfaction. What is interesting then is with whom the transition to the next scene implies these emotions are shared.

[00:24:51]>> At the moment of the gunshot in the memory, the harmonica begins again.

[00:24:56]After a couple quick shots of giraffe's death and zebra's tears, we learn once again that this music was diagetic. For 15 seconds, we see and hear when playing his harmonica by himself. silhouetted by the Martian sky. I demarcate this as its own separate scene because of the physical separation and also because it is uniquely informative that when plays by himself. This proves that despite his present cruelty and arrogance and duplicity, his music still comes from the soul. Only by knowing when plays without an audience are we certain that what we hear represents inner truth.

[00:25:31]Returning again to the watercolor flashback, look at how the parents are drawn, sketchy and with eyes obscured, while retains full detail. The viewer is not being shown this event exactly as it occurred, but rather when's current blurry memory of it, perhaps exactly as it appeared in his mind while speaking to Spike. This ageless person experienced tremendous loss, and even as his empathy for others has run totally dry, it is apparent from his harmonica that he is still deeply sad.

[00:26:01]Next, we jump forward a few hours and Jet is providing a scientific sounding theory for W's lack of aging when he was irdiated by the explosion. Something circadian rhythm, something melatonin and blah blah blah. It's nonsense. The episode has already made it clear that this is not a biological phenomenon, but a supernatural one. Spike shot him in the forehead, and he still escaped the building within seconds. Like a lobster may live more or less indefinitely, but it still dies when you boil it or shoot it in the forehead. When Jet asks Spike if he understands the theory, he says, "As if." There is no rational explanation for when's immortality. It is perhaps the most magical concept of any Cowboy Bebop episode, matched only by Piro Lefou in session 20. To be clear, that's not a criticism. I see it as a careful choice that accentuates the episode's intentions. During this scene, Spike is obviously preparing for battle.

[00:26:57]His new weapon is a bullet fashioned out of that pink gemstone. This stone was formed by the energy of the astral gate accident, and thus, by some logic, is made of the same stuff that grants W's longevity. Maybe this bullet alone can return time to him. Or maybe Jed admits it will just cause another incredible explosion. Something the episode smoothly glides past is the reason why Spike is going out to fight when at all.

[00:27:23]He has no prior personal connection to any of these characters, and there is no bounty to be gained. It's a huge risk with no clear benefit. Yet, Spike behaves much like he does in his most serious moments, compelled to act by internal beliefs. He is not flippant or overconfident about his chances either.

[00:27:40]Spike says out loud that he doesn't like this setup, and then we cut directly to him flying off. Regardless, his crew mates each react very differently to this decision. Fa thinks it's ridiculous and that he's going to get himself killed. With how she makes a point of saying goodbye and how she looks out the window as he flies off, it clearly upsets her to some degree, demonstrating she has already grown more attached to these people than she would admit out loud or even to herself at this point.

[00:28:05]Jet, on the other hand, seems to tacitly agree with Spike's choice. He puts a cigarette in Spike's mouth before he leaves and lights it. A small moment I'd almost call tender. It reads to me as him wordlessly saying, "You could die, so don't forget this small pleasure first." One could really write an extended essay on the usage of smoking across the show, but I'll have to leave that one to others. Allow me to propose two potential core reasons for why Spike decides to chase down when, and they aren't mutually exclusive. The first is that he was earnestly moved by Giraffe and Zebra's display of loyalty and camaraderie. And this one goes for Jet as well, more so even. The initially presented story of these two characters framed them as simple men seeking power or revenge at the expense of the other, but it turned out they cared about each other instead, and Giraffe was indeed an example of a man acting from a code of honor. Spike and Jet want to believe in loyalty, but are often confronted with men who behave opposite to that ideal, men who really are no more than ravenous beasts. In this case, though, they uncover a surprising respectability.

[00:29:10]Giraffe and zebra are named after beasts after all, but turn out to be herbivores. This revelation may then have fostered an obligation to see their wishes through. The second reason could be that Spike detects a personal similarity between himself and when, and confronting it is necessary. He may not even be conscious of why, but the episode's editing makes it clear that connection does exist. Maybe that's why he had to go alone. Now begins Sympathy for the Devil's final contiguous sequence. To start, Wen hails a taxi and with a slight smile and no hesitation, kills the driver and steals the car, heading off to who knows where. How dangerous and callous Wen has become is really underlined here. This murder was nothing to him, but soon he spots Spike's ship in the side view mirror.

[00:29:58]How Spike found his target so quickly we can leave to imagination. He shoots the back of the car and it carines off the road into an explosive collision.

[00:30:18]When rises to his feet, calm as ever.

[00:30:21]The flames behind him lend a deeply sinister impression, reminding the viewer of hellfire. When shoots at Spike three times, the last bullet grazing his cheek. That the bounty hunter, without moving an inch, allowed when to shoot first like that is powerful. Rather than being confident one would miss, I think Spike was letting the universe decide the outcome. After a brief pensive moment of closing his eyes, Spike takes careful aim and fires.

[00:30:54]His shot is true.

[00:30:57]A few seconds after contact, Wen begins to glow and then transform into a shriveled, decrepit old man. He drops to his knees and the harmonica falls onto the ground. As Wen's breathing steadies, the blues can be heard again. He recognizes that he can finally die and says that he feels both heavy and at ease. In his last moment alive, he asked Spike if he understands.

[00:31:24]>> Do you understand?

[00:31:28]Do you understand?

[00:31:30]Do you?

[00:31:32]>> Spike then picks up the harmonica and blows into it, failing to make a note, and then says, "As if." He throws the instrument into the air and as it slowly spins above him, points at it with a solemn expression and says, "Bang."

[00:31:49]The session is over. See you, space cowboy.

[00:31:54]This ultimate scene leaves a lot to sift through. So, let's start with something clear. The show believes it was good for Spike to kill Wen. And not really because Wen was a murderer, but because this act was a kindness to end his life with sympathy. Immortality, therefore, is wrong and should be corrected.

[00:32:14]Therefore, our lives are only meaningful if they end. Those are the ideas I pull from Wen's fate and the tranquility he expresses through his final words.

[00:32:24]Before I go on, there is an elephant in connecting this episode with the whole story. The timeline doesn't match. The Astrogate accident happened 49 years before the events of the show, and that time frame is stuck to pretty consistently after this. That would make when around 60 years old, not at all an unnaturally long life. Is this what a 60-year-old man looks like? sympathy for the Devil is simply more powerful a story if you ignore the strictly canon timeline of events and imagine the moon exploded like 300 years ago instead.

[00:32:56]That span of time just gives when more weight and I keep it as a sort of head cannon for this episode alone. I digress. Here's the tough question. What does all this mean to Spike? Why couldn't he make a note? What was it he did not understand? It's difficult to impossible to discern from this episode alone. Now we arrive at my secret hidden reason for selecting this session to analyze. It leads necessarily into discussion of the ending of Cowboy Bebop. An ending I have long struggled with. For those who don't know, the final thing that happens in Cowboy Bebop is Spike points at the sky with a slight smile and says, "Bang."

[00:33:38]And then he dies.

[00:33:50]Leading into the story's climax, one thing made very clear is that Spike believes on some meaningful level that he has already died. He suspects that everything from the past 3 years or perhaps longer is some sort of dream or illusion. He is not certain that anything he sees is real. The core tension for the audience then becomes whether Spike will understand that not only is he still alive, he's still young. There is so much time to overcome his trauma, so much life he could still live, there are even other women he could love, should he learn to see the present with both eyes. He's only 27. I just turned 28. I have lived longer than Spike Spiegel ever got to.

[00:34:34]I have also lived longer than Brian Jones, founding member of the Rolling Stones, whose musical talent can still be heard 58 years later on the song Sympathy for the Devil.

[00:34:48]But in Cowboy BBOP's final episode, named The Real Folk Blues Part Two, Spike determines, despite Jed and Fay begging him to reconsider, that the only way he can find out if he's alive is to dive head first into a suicidal final confrontation with Vicious. He does succeed in killing his nemesis, but is mortally wounded in the process. When Spike collapses, though, he is bathed in soft pink light. He is smiling.

[00:35:18]And this is where I get stuck. The show recognizes that his death is sad, but it also seems to think that it is good. By framing this conclusion like it does, it glorifies the choices Spike made that led to him dying young. Every time I watch Cowboy Bebop, I want this to not be the answer. I want Fay to be right, but he does not need to throw his life away. He shouldn't have to die to learn he was alive.

[00:35:45]However, the story just doesn't seem to agree with Fay or with me. Let's take a wider look, though, and examine the various other reasons one could propose for why Spike chose to fight. For one, Vicious just usurped the syndicates leaders and promises to institute an incredibly bloodthirsty regime. So, it is utilitarian to kill him and prevent future violence. But the show is established there are many other syndicates, no shortage of evil men willing to fill that role. I'm not sure Spike actually saved anyone. There is also, of course, the matter of Julia.

[00:36:19]Julia was the woman Spike was deeply in love with for the whole story, whom he perceived abandoned him when he left the syndicate, and said abandonment is the very largest factor in his inability to live in the present. Early in the last episode, he learned that had never been the case, that Julia still loved him back and disappeared to protect him.

[00:36:37]They reunite, but she is killed not long after. So, we could understand the climax as Spike seeking revenge for Julia's death. But that doesn't work for me either because he explicitly denies that idea to Jet, saying that he can't do anything for her now, and he had already decided to fight rather than run before Julia was killed. In fact, you could easily argue that decision was the most immediate cause of her death.

[00:37:01]Cowboy Bebop still agrees with it. You could say that Spike was simply compelled to fight by a sense of loyalty and justice that neither he nor the audience could ever fully define. Then the final battle becomes believing in something versus believing in nothing.

[00:37:18]There is nothing in this world to believe in.

[00:37:20]>> That one feels to me true. A point such as that is definitely made by Vicious dying first. I even toy with the idea that Spike is content in death because he showed that even Vicious does believe in something after all. Proven by the moment when he kicks Spike's gun back to him. But even this reading, fairly strong to my ear, does not encompass everything. It does not explain the bang. For all the rational reasons one can imagine for Spike's choice, you still have to deal with what he told us.

[00:37:51]He said, "I'm not going there to die.

[00:37:56]I'm going to find out if I'm really alive.

[00:37:59]>> If throwing himself into a near certain death were necessary for responsibility or revenge or honor, that would still be tragic, but more comprehensibly so. But if Spike's heart of heart's motivation is to find out whether he's alive, there were other ways to know.

[00:38:16]Knowing that Spike was always driven by such an idea helps us return to sympathy for the devil and afterwards back to the pink staircase. The scene of him leaving to fight Wen in session 6 functions as foreshadowing for that similar heavier scene in the real folk blues part two, especially with Fay's identical positioning. I'd say he is asking the same question in both moments. Something we can see plainly is that Cowboy Bbop believes when is though not by choice someone who has lived too long. We also know that Spike believes himself to have lived too long and that may be the similarity he perceived between them.

[00:38:55]After when's shots miss, this moment with his eyes closed may be a recognition that his question will remain unanswered for now. He has to wait longer to know. Spike's inability to play the harmonica it follows proves he still lacks something that Wen has that they are not the same at least for now. He does not understand what Wen was asking him. Much later in his final conscious seconds, Spike smirks before recreating this exact moment. The difference, it would seem, is that now he does understand. Somewhere between the 6th and 26th episode, Spike became able to understand. That idea is what the bang accomplishes. Still though, we need the final jigsaw of what made the difference. The harmonica was representative of when's sadness, all the weight of what he had endured and what he had lost. While when is dying, it falls to the ground, showing he is now free of that weight and only could be freed by death. In Sympathy for the Devil, Spike failing to play that note shows he does not comprehend the harmonica, which is to say he does not carry that same sort of weight. A different version of this character could have learned here that he has not lost everything and is in fact still alive, unlike when it is not time for him to die. But Spike fails to grasp that lesson.

[00:40:20]After Julia's death, however, Spike now has truly experienced the sort of loss heavy enough for death to bring relief.

[00:40:28]Cowboy Bebop's very final image, you're going to carry that weight. Therefore, contains three more unwritten words until you die. Through all this effort, that is my best understanding of Cowboy Bebop's ideas about death and immortality.

[00:40:45]I still don't like it. It pains me that a story that contains so muchiv that believes so fervently in human resilience and compassion could think it's anything but horrible when someone leaves early. My favorite part of watching the movie is even though it occurs canonically in the middle of the timeline, it feels like an alternative where Spike let his past fade away and started looking with both eyes at a future. It is cathartic to imagine him living on, but he doesn't. Unavoidably, Cowboy Bebop will always kill Spike, and it will always tell me that his death was good. I still don't like it. I think I will always disagree with the story's ideas about death. Yet, I am eternally grateful that I got to have this conversation at all.

[00:41:38]In December 2021, Cowboy Bebop's primary screenwriter, Kiko Noamoto, died of esophageal cancer. She was only 57 years old. Before her death, she made major creative contributions to the new project directed by her longtime collaborator Shinichiro Watanab.

[00:41:55]Lazarus, eventually released in 2025, and following its final episodes credits, it reads, "Koamoto, may her soul rest in peace, next to a flower that saves the world." I think her name should come up in discussion of Cowboy Bebop a lot more often than it currently does.

[00:42:13]Even though Namoto is gone, you and I and anyone who cares can still talk with her. Art is a wonderfully dense form of speech. If you keep listening carefully, more and more of the creators interests and anxieties and predilctions and fixations become audible. If you want to hear more of Watonabe's ideas about culture and diversity and human energy, watch Samurai Champloo. If you want to hear more of his worries about isolation and pain and geopolitics, watch Lazarus.

[00:42:42]If you, like me, want to hear more of Noamoto's perspective on pride and loyalty and eternity and death and see a bunch more close-ups of eyes, watch Wolf's Rain. Really, more people should watch Wolf's Rain. While flawed, it is a remarkably unusual, haunting, and beautiful experience unlike anything else, and brings out so much of Noamoto's resonant, authoral voice.

[00:43:05]Watching Wolf's reign, I think, demonstrates that many, if not most, of BBOP's strangest and saddest intricacies, can be traced directly to her. Give it a shot. And all these discussions, while always remaining true, will vary dramatically depending on the interests and anxieties of every individual reader. There are yet more possibilities for how to interpret Spike's death. There's a real case to be made that he smiled because he learned or thought he learned that it was all a dream, which would change the meaning of the story so profoundly that the thought is a little overwhelming at this late hour. And I didn't even mention how some people consider it ambiguous whether he died at all. Today's was only one of endless potential conversations you or I could choose to have with Cowboy Bebop anytime we wish. It's all talking. And the more you talk back, the more contours are revealed by the echoes.

[00:43:58]In writing Sympathy for the Devil, Ko Noamoto made Audible a belief that immortality would be a nightmare. And yet, more than 4 years after her death, her work is still speaking with me, gifting me this fascinating conversation. She is in part immortal.

[00:44:14]Anyway, we are still talking with Cowboy Bebop in 2026. We still will be in 2046 and 2071 and 2371.

[00:44:25]We will still be talking with her until the last star goes out.

[00:44:36]Hello. Thank you so much for watching to the end. This video was supported by my patrons with a special thanks to Cass V.

[00:44:44]You can join the names on screen for $1 a month. This was an episode of my series Hyperfocus, where I take a very close look at one portion or aspect of a larger story, which complements my other series, Reconstructed, where I aim for a comprehensive analysis of the work in question. If you enjoyed, please do like and subscribe and maybe even press the hype button. Still don't know quite what that one does, if anything, but maybe we can find out. I mean, I'm not sure the like button actually does anything either. Also consider sharing it around on Reddit, Blue Sky, Discord, or maybe graffiti the URL into a dive bar bathroom stall. That feels like plenty of calls to action for now. Thank you sincerely for spending time with my words. It means the world. There are many more videos to come. Stay strong and stay safe. I've been Skyhoppers and I'll see you in the next one.