NFB Re-Watches Cowboy Bebop: “The Real Folk Blues (Part One)”

Just like watching a dream…

Air Date: 16/04/1999

Director: Ikurō Satō

Writer: Keiko Nobumoto

Synopsis: After a failed coup attempt led by Vicious, the Red Dragon Syndicate attempts to clean house, with Spike, the Bebop crew and Julia in their sights.

Review

Alright, here we are, 24 sessions down, and just the final story to be told (and the movie: we’ll get to it). Having concluded most of Faye’s emotional journey and sent Ed and Ein on their way in “Hard Luck Woman”, “The Real Folk Blues (Part One)” brings right back around to the man who we started out with, as Spike’s arc, that ran through “Asteroid Blues”, “Ballad Of Fallen Angels”, “Jupiter Jazz (Part One)” and “Jupiter Jazz (Part Two)” comes to its conclusion, with fateful reunions, lives on the line and a definitive final act for the character. The first part of the story is very much about facing up to your past when it comes to the point where you can’t run anymore: Spike and Julia have spent a long time running, but no more.

The session doesn’t wait around much. In the opening moments, we get the return of Vicious and an attempt to seize control of the Red Dragon syndicate as bloodily as possible, only for Vicious to seemingly be overthrown. The tension of the final story is established right from the off, as we experience an apparent moment where Vicious has bitten off more than he can chew, with anyone who was ever connected to him, even if they are now enemies, to pay the price. But of course there is enough in that overthrow for us to realise that Vicious is playing a longer game, and is unlikely to go as quietly as the Van think that he will.

Things escalate from their very quickly. We only get a few seconds of Spike and Jet drinking their sorrows over the departure of Ed and Ein (and the apparent departure of Faye) before they are the targets for a hit job, with the first major combat scene of the episode a hard-hitting one that, in its location and style, almost calls back a bit to the first major combat sequence of “Asteroid Blues”. The syndicate is cleaning house, and no one is going to get off lightly: the wound to Jet’s leg here, and the look in the eyes of Spike as he drags his friend away from the carnage, tells us that.

If Cowboy Bebop has frequently been about the past becoming the present, something we have seen in episodes like “Ballad Of Fallen Angels”, “Black Dog Serenade” and “My Funny Valentine”, then we might get the apex of it in “The Real Folk Blues (Part One)”. Finally, the blanks of Spike’s backstory get filled in, in a series of flashbacks intercut with the present that make it clear that, for all that things have changed they have stayed the same in a lot of fundamental ways too. Spike wanted to run off with Julia, Vicious got wind of this and presented Julia with a choice: kill Spike herself, or they both died. She opted to run away by herself, but the consequences of that entanglement were only ever deferred, nor obliterated. Now, however many years later, Julia is still running, Spike is still looking for her, and Vicious is still looking to kill them both. This can’t continue, and moreover all three of these characters seem to know this at an almost meta level.

Before the first half of the session is done though, we are also re-introduced to Faye, once again out on her own and once again wondering about finding a place for herself in this universe. Before we can get more than a moment of her contemplating this, Spike, and then Julia, enter her narrative arc like a bulldozer. Cowboy Bebop has often been at pains to draw a line between Faye and Julia in our minds, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that they get literally thrown together just like this, but it still makes a serious impression when it finally does happen. The fact that Faye, without a moments hesitation, aids in Julia’s escape from the syndicate goons despite not really knowing who she is, the fact that Julia wordlessly invites Faye to come with her, it all points to something that we might call pre-destined.

Of course it isn’t really, with later scenes involving the pair indicating that Julia knows exactly who Faye is – though how goes unelaborated upon – and wants her to deliver a message. Faye briefly thinks that she has found a kindred spirit, another chance for belonging, but as soon as she finds out Julia’s name, she is fully aware that she is once again part of something bigger than herself. For all of her efforts to forge her own path and find a home, Faye is being drawn back to the Bebop, and back to Spike specifically.

Much of the second half of this episode is a reflective exercise, the deep breath before the plunge. Jet’s story about the man who survives with a wound on a hunt just long enough to ruminate on where he was heading in the first place is a major moment, one of two in the overall story being told, where Jet takes on the mantle of a sort of sooth-sayer. He tells Spike to not become obsessed with his past as he nears a possible end, to turn back before it is too late. But Jet is in the wrong kind of show for that kind of thinking to last for too long, having largely failed to take his own advice on more than one occasion. Spike isn’t just looking to his past as death approaches, he’s always been looking to the past, ever since Julia failed to arrive at the rendezvous that he planned. Faye facilitates him being able to step almost directly back into that past by telling him that Julia is waiting, and Spike is not the kind of man who can just let that go.

The session reaches a climax with a really great confluence of drama and violence. As the Bebop comes under attack by the syndicate, all of the remaining crewmembers are in serious peril, but Jet has heard enough from Spike to encourage him to go off and find whatever it is that he has been missing. Julia flees one more time. And Vicious turns the tables on the Van decisively, and with ruthless determination, his venomous bite now becoming lethal. We cut between these various plots, these various forms of combat, and we begin to really understand the depth of the connections that are playing out, as well as the realisation that none of it going to end until some or all of the people involved are dead.

All that’s left for this opening half is for Spike to meet Julia again, the moment we have been waiting for since he start of the show really. Suitably the location is a graveyard, a place where Spike’s previous life came to an end. First time viewers might not be sure of what to expect, and I would venture that Julia flashing a gun would be a surprise to anyone: she can’t possibly think that Vicious’ offer from so many years ago still stands. But maybe she is just that desperate to try. We end on that image, these two lovers potentially facing a deadly conclusion to the affair that has caused so much pain.

As you would expect, there is a lot to talk about on a character level. I’d like to start with Julia, if only because the episode is pretty much framed around her: she opens the piece, and she closes it too. For a long time Julia has been an enigma to the viewer, with only Gren’s musings on what she was like from “Jupiter Jazz (Part Two)” there to fill in the large gaps that exist in our knowledge. The picture that we get from “The Real Folk Blues (Part One)” is of a capable woman not easily cowed: she has lived on the run successfully for some time, and when the past catches up with her she blasts back with no hesitation. But she still holds a candle for Spike, the man she ran away from all those years ago in order to save his life. Now, with the syndicate closing in, it seems she thinks she has nothing to lose: either to meet up with Spike and run like they planned to before, or kill him and take her chances with the Van.

For Spike, it’s a case of the past coming back with a serious vengeance. Obviously that has happened to him before in the show’s run, and there have also been plenty of moments when his final days have been effectively foreshadowed. But here, it’s a bit different: Spike sees the conclusion coming and, realising that he can’t run anymore, chooses to face into it very deliberately. That’s why he takes Jet’s advice and abandons the Bebop, and that’s why he meets with Julia again. Whatever happens, happens: Spike is done letting the past stay in the past, and he and Julia are going to face into their end, if that is what it is, together.

Between Spike and Julia is Vicious. His coup of the syndicate is foreshadowed effectively in the flashbacks that feature him and Julia: in both instances Vicious enacts a cruel plan based on deception in order to get what he wants, where his target is oblivious to the danger that they are in. The Van dramatically overestimate their own power – and underestimate Vicious, an especially foolish thing to do – and the end result is a bloodbath, and Vicious standing tall at the conclusion, now in possession of everything he ever wanted. What he will do with that power is a scary proposition.

Faye finds herself at the crossroads, having lost her past completely and having departed from the Bebop, seemingly for good. It would take something special for her to come back, and that something special really isn’t Jet getting shot in the leg. It’s the encounter with Julia, the woman that Faye has been tied to in ways she doesn’t even realise. “The Real Folk Blues (Part One)” really makes it clear that the two women are very much alike, before Julia decides to use Faye as her own personal messenger. One could write reams of just what might be going through Faye’s head as she delivers that message to Spike, with much of it based on an assumed attraction that she feels towards the man: it will be for the second half of the story to offer some firmer answers on that score.

Lastly, there is Jet. He’s a bit side-lined in the session, spending most of it either hobbled by a gunshot to the leg or dodging missiles in the Bebop. His main involvement is to try and come to an understanding of Spike: to fully contemplate why Spike is not willing to totally walk away from his past, when running towards it involves so much pain. In the end, Spike’s insistence that Julia is a part of him that he lost that he cannot abandon seemingly does the trick, with Jet perhaps thinking of Alyssa as he urges Spike to get clear of the syndicate hit on the Bebop and find Julia again. More than any of that, I am struck by Jet’s pleading with Spike, indicating a greater degree of friendship between the two than might have sometimes been apparent.

Funny to think, for all the greatness evident elsewhere in the episode, I wouldn’t say that it is especially spectacular from a visual perspective. There are a few neat moments: the way that Julia is animated against her backgrounds; the extra bloody aspect of the violence that takes place, most notably that dished out by Vicious; the unusually desperate dogfight at the conclusion of the session, with the Bebop badly beset; and indeed the while confluence at the conclusion, as we cut between Spike, Julia and Vicious in the same moment. Those adverse to blood will certainly not find much in “The Real Folk Blues (Part One)” to endear it to them, but I will admit that the overabundance of it adds something in my view, really making you realise the depths that the Van and Vicious are willing to go and the consequences that might result. But on a general level, and not to say that there is something lacking, I’m somewhat surprised at the average nature of the animation for this episode: Cowboy Bebop has done a lot more in earlier sessions, or even as recently as “Hard Luck Woman”. Perhaps it’s just because this episode is so literally dark that there is less opportunity for stunning backdrops or a good use of light.

Musically, there is a significant amount of repetition again, but I was less bothered by it in this instance as the songs really fitted the scenes they were applied to and, in one case, were so appropriate for the moment that you couldn’t really say that it was wrong to place them there. Julia enters the scene with “Adieu”, whose wistfulness really adds to the scene. “Waltz For Zizi” returns in the right place, a quiet moment where Jet tries to reach out and connect with Spike. And “Memory” is in its rightful place, the theme tune to the entire Spike/Julia relationship, back again as the two come face-to-face once more. Another re-run is “Road To The West”, a soulful saxophone tune, last heard all the way back at the conclusion of “Asteroid Blues”: it serves almost as twin bookends in that way. For a session that is soaked in nostalgia and memory of the past, you can’t say that they didn’t make the correct choice in looking backwards for the musical accompaniment. It all adds up to giving “The Real Folk Blues (Part One)” the perfect ambiance as we barrel towards a final conclusion.

I’m looking for a bounty hunter.

Notes

-The opening is set to “Adieu”, I think last heard in “Speak Like A Child”. A wistful tune, it fits here.

-Some great animation in this opening scene, with Julia standing out in a big way amidst the rain-swept street. Just that hair alone does it.

-Vicious’ attempt to off the Van is literally vicious, with the blazing sub-machine guns and the destroyed environment. He’s not messing around this time,

-Seemingly foiled, Vicious is still full of scorn for the Van: “The syndicate doesn’t need corpses who can’t fight, who have lost their taste for blood”. No matter what else, Vicious would be a terrible prospect as leader of this group.

-Vicious perhaps overeggs things a bit when he remarks “a serpents venom poisons slowly after the bite”. He might as well say “Remember, I wanted to be captured because my scheme is a long con”.

-Some malfunctioning neon make the place where Spike and Jet are drinking stand out a little too much really: “LOSER BAR”.

-I do love the very brief moments where Spike, then Jet, realise what is about to happen in the bar. These are no easily taken care of characters.

-A nice bit of animation as Spike chucks the cocktail shaker out of his cover, perhaps like the distraction move he pulled in “Pierrot Le Fou”, and we see it change trajectory after he hits the bottom of it.

– I do always groan when we are introduced to Lin’s brother, named…Shin. Come on now.

-Just love the look on Spike’s face as he carries Jet away, a silent determination. He knows that the reckoning has come.

-Jet is perhaps a bit too obtuse when he refers to the name “Julia ” as like “a magic spell that unlocks an old door, a door that should stay closed”. I suppose he is thinking of the brief rift between him and Spike at the mention of that name in “Jupiter Jazz (Part One)”.

-Even Spike’s memories of Julia emphasise the contrast between her beauty and life against the drabber backgrounds that she is placed in.

-Spike spins a vision of what life might be like if he and Julia run off together, something that will be “like watching a dream”. Even here Spike’s somnambulism is being used within dialogue to infer certain things.

-Vicious’ cruelty in giving Julia the choice that he does shouldn’t surprise us by this point, but it’s still brutal. It’s not enough to kill Spike, he has to gain his vengeance as awfully as possible.

-Here, the flower petals we have seen in flashes so many times are revealed to actually be bits of paper, the location of Spike’s planned rendezvous with Julia that she literally tosses out the window.

-The woman in the airport waiting for her son – the Big Shot host – is an interesting addition to things. Faye is obviously struck by witnessing this encounter, perhaps seeing a similar person to her, who refuses to live with others or to be a burden, but then rejoices in a companionship that Faye seems unable to find.

-Spike gets straight with Faye, in a moment where the subtitles actually make a better point: “I’m telling you to stop wandering round so much, and just come back”. The subtext seems to be a clear invitation to come home to the Bebop, with a big emphasis on “home”.

-Faye, in her turn, insists that she has her “own place to go back to” but of course she doesn’t. I doubt Faye has the slightest idea where she is going next, and that’s the point.

-Faye takes out two cars with just two shots, in moments that might call back to the finale of “Sympathy For The Devil”.

-It’s really quite sad that Faye seems to be looking for connection again straight away, suggesting that she and Julia team up only a few minutes after they have first met.

-All it takes is for Julia to say that she is looking for a bounty hunter, and Faye seems to realise who she is. It’s just too much of a coincidence I suppose.

-Faye asks herself and I have to as well: How does Julia know about Faye? I don’t think that is ever explained.

-Jet’s story, related to the strains of “Waltz For Zizi”, is a very clipped retelling of Ernest Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and is certainly very striking. His own ambivalence on the point of the story only adds to the impression.

-Jet outlines the meaning of his story, in a derisive manner, criticising the idea of men “looking frantically for proof that they were alive” before they face their end. I suppose he has grown himself, from the events of sessions like “Ganymede Elegy” and “Black Dog Serenade”.

-Spike says a lot when he describes Julia as “the part that I’ve been missing, the part I’ve been longing for”. She’s far more than just some woman he was once besotted with.

-Jet gets a belated warning from his cop friends, but the syndicate is already closing in: “Too late to run”.

-Faye and Spike get to share a brief pregnant moment before the shooting starts. She’s almost flirtatious in asking what Spike can share for her information, then gives it up anyway. Her hesitance is plain: is it fear that Spike is going to run off and get killed, or fear that he’ll end up back with Julia?

-“Road To The West” plays over the ensuing fight scene, which seems like it might be a nod back to the last time it was used, as Asimov and Katerina fled from the police in “Asteroid Blues”. Are we take a similar message of hopeless conflict for this encounter too?

-It is a great confluence that emerges all the same, as we cut between Spike and Faye dodging missiles, Vicious brutally taking control of the syndicate and Julia on the run. All connected, and all heading to one fateful reunion.

-The Bebop gets properly rocked in this combat scene, missiles making impact. This is not some light cruiser, it’s a fishing vessel.

-At least one last use of Vicious’ bird as a foreshadowing of doom here, a very imminent foreshadowing in this case.

-Vicious declares that the Van will cry “tears of scarlet” and lets them have it across the eyes with his sword. A brutal moment.

-What are we to make of Jet’s insistence that Spike flee the scene, that he “find what you lost and get it back!” Is Jet really so confident that the Bebop will survive this attack, or is he willing to accept death or injury so Spike can gain fulfilment?

-And of course the final scenes are to the simple tune of “Memory”, which has been one of the main pieces of music for the whole show really.

-Quite the cliff-hanger here, one soaked in emotion: nothing flashy, just Julia pulling a gun on Spike and an audience waiting for resolution.

-Our penultimate unique title card is pretty straightforward: “To be continued”.

Final Verdict: As with the last two-part story, I will reserve full judgement until we hit the very last episode, as it is all one story. But on its own merits I enjoyed “The Real Folk Blues (Part One)”. It doesn’t stray too far into the typical trap of first parts in being entirely about set-up, containing within itself key plot developments for Spike, Faye, Julia and Vicious, with Vicious’ story constituting an arc all of its own. Through the cliff-hanger and the all of the events that led to it, it whets the appetite in a serious way for the finale, and rare is the person I think who didn’t keep watching. Up next, we find out just what that title means.

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