Episode One: Tempestuous Temperaments
All I remember of this show from my initial viewing is the episode in the poppy fields where they're all tripping balls and a few nice-looking shots in the final episode, which I seem to recall made me feel some feeling of some kind. I mean, I know all the basic parameters of the story; I just don't remember the actual episodes.
Watching the first one again for this, I seem to recall why: a lot of the episode storylines were, like this one, deliberately casual, more like encounters than stories with really deliberate architecture to them. And the overarching narrative elements (who these characters are, what's the deal with the sunflower samurai) are kept very vague for most of the runtime. I remember the two samurai Mugen and Jin getting the lion's share of the interesting moments, and the girl (Fuu) getting short shrift. I remember it trying to follow the drift of Cowboy Bebop fairly precisely, save for the addition of a more deliberate journey driving the story. Still, based on this first episode, that journey doesn't have much urgency––and so the feel if close to Bebop. We watch these oddball losers fumble their way around the margins of a society with some very palpable inequalities going on. We see them struggle to keep their heads above water, in spite of the ways they excel (little comment is made on how these people come to excel, or to be motivated to do it, or what they expect to get out of it––nor is there much explanation of the figures who seem less capable of excelling––like Fuu, like Faye Valentine, victims struggling to master hard fates handed to them without the benefit of extraordinary fighting prowess or special backgrounds in combat excellence).
On first watch, I didn't appreciate all the indicators of "remixing" we see throughout the episode. But this time the fast-winding to present day really caught my eye. I feel like this is a clear indication to think of the events we're seeing as being set in the present-day, making later anachronisms––like the sh*thead failson of the local lord having frosted hair, and the remixed cross-cutting of the flashbacks of Jin and Mugen fighting their way to encounter one another, like the hip-hop hypemen in later episodes––cut up remnants reminding us that this is the approach. I'm reminded of the way Miyamoto Musashi's "Book of Five Rings" was treated in the 80s––with a photo and title implying some link between the modern-day businessman and the samurai of the past.
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Question being, I suppose, how far are we supposed to take this analogy? To what degree are we meant to see the feudal principalities in comparison or contrast to our own world? Who do Jin and Mugen and Fuu represent in this analogy? As I recall, the later episodes frequently reference
Admiral Perry's black ships.
Is the series some sort of analogy for
Will the show continue to honor this suggestion of contemporaneous analogy, or is it going to fall back into the world of the past without pushing this idea any farther?
I don't really remember any of that, so I suppose it will be interesting to see if these suggestions of a direction develop at all. I just remember these characters bumming around for episode upon episode, and I recall not feeling like the revelation of the sunflower samurai was really worth the wait. I do remember feeling like Kids on the Slope and Terror in Resonance were a relief in the ways they departed from the formula of Cowboy Bebop––as compared to Champloo, which is distinguished from other Watanabe projects maybe by how closely it cleaves to the Cowboy Bebop format. I remember really loving Kids on the Slope, as well. So far I like this one only vaguely.
Something else worth remarking on is the art. It suffers in comparison to Cowboy Bebop and Kids on the Slope, from the aughts-era transition to digital. A lot of shows from this era really suffer from this move, from unprcedented disasters like Shangri-La to my beloved, generally well-done El Cazador de la Bruja. There's often more minimal, contained animated movement in these 2000s-era shows than there is in the pre-2000 hand-drawn series, and the layouts often look especially anorexic. Compared to El Cazador de la Bruja, for instance, the same filmmakers' earlier Noir looks far more dynamic, with more robust layouts and more demonstrative movement. The compositions in this show look very awkward; the show has a lot of difficulty merging the murky, amorphous backdrops with the heavily graphic, weirdly distorted foreground characters.
Episode Two: Redeye Reprisal
"I'm a samurai in name only"
The most striking aspect of this second episode is the weird play of sympathy made amongst the episode's supporting cast. We're meant to extend sympathy at first to the meek country samurai, and then to give none to the brutish giant who can crush people's head with his bare hands. Then, as the episode goes on, identities of these characters shift markedly, and we're gradually encouraged to retract sympathy for the country samurai and extend it to the giant. The upshot is largely what extending sympathy to the giant does to our sympathy for Mugen when he
kills the giant, after the giant kills the villain, lays down his weapon, and surrenders.
The "country samurai" is a little more complex, and I'm really worried all the things laid out for him in this episode won't be ideas we return to later in the series (though he promises a return later, which I only vaguely recall, merely as something that probably did occur). First, there's the country samurai's gay pass at Jin, which falls a bit short of a full-blown "gay panic" cliche, but which does advance the question of Jin's sexuality. As I recall, sexuality is something Watanabe prefers to keep ambiguous, but it would be decently interesting if Jin were gay. Unfortunately, the pass is neither reciprocated, nor is it taken at face value by the story––it's meant to be a lure. The cross-cutting between Mugen and Jin in the first episode shows their equal contempt for authority; in this second episode, the cross-cutting seems to be puting them in equivalent honey trap situations. So the pass isn't genuine, and Jin never takes it as such. Still, Jin kind of leaves the question hanging in the air, and I have a funny feeling that is going to be where the question stays, hovering around in permanent ambiguity. I seem to recall the Gren character in Cowboy Bebop being given a similar sort of low-key but mostly ambiguous treatment. Gren doesn't get to fully express any feelings towards Viscious, and what we get here with Jin is very similar.
Also dropped by the deception, however, is this rich initial opportunity to explore this intriguing aspect of the economy of the samurai (see Goyokin or Harakiri for more interesting explorations into this, for instance). The country samurai tells us he's a samurai "in name only," implying a profound difference between the scope of his own life and interests and that of Jin's (Mugen is already being heavily-typed as the amateur in the mold of Kikuchiyo, the Toshiro Mifune poser character from Seven Samurai). Just as there's different origins for these samurai, there are different roles for the different kinds, and they provide differing disappointments, too. The bystanders at the inn are disappointed in the country samurai's apparent skittishness int he face of swordplay. Perhaps not coincidentally, Mugen disappoints Fuu at the end as well,
killing the giant even when the giant has a change of heart and saves Fuu.
The series really doesn't seem overly concerned so far with any expositing of a take on the samurai, any particular critical lens. So far, representation of the samurai seems pretty diffuse and unfocused. I feel like there was an opportunity here to show us a difference between the countryside and the socio-cultural centers––through the different samurai they produce, for instance. But I don't feel that Watanabe is strongly engaging the idea of the samurai. By this point in Cowboy Bebop, I think we were already cottoning on to the way Watanabe thought about bounty hunting.
Another thing that is hard for me to parse; this endless sawing on with the low-level food comedy. Bebop and Space Dandy both do this too, if I recall. The characters begin tons of episodes starving. This is a springboard into adventure, and then the pursuit of food is just dropped. We rarely ever get to see the characters eat their fill (presumably Mugen does here, but the others don't). Are the characters okay? This has never, ever sat right with me. I just want to see them finally eating.
I thought Watanabe might bring this up as an exploration of potential politics of hunger, because he frequently hints at anticapitalist expressions in his work. There's a way in which the constant drone of hunger does serve as a critique of capitalism (what if the travelers in Champloo or the bounty hunters in Bebop were able to disconnect their hunger from their labor, as in, say, Star Trek?). But I wish he'd really ever follow up on the characters hunger in any of his scenarios. I feel like there's more to say here.
So far, the big takeaways for me are the things I want to be more supported, more focused, better drawn. I think the cliches of the stories aren't doing the show any favors right now. The cliches play a lot heavier on the ground than the genre tropes cycled through in Bebop––maybe because Bebop's plots seem more unexpected in lots of places, and more inventive, lighter experience as a result.
