Presumed Age: 27. The mysterious woman in Spike's dreams who is later revealed to be a lost lover that he's searching for. Because she's constantly being pursued by the Red Dragon syndicate, she doesn't stay in one place for long. However, it seems as if she still has collaborators within Red Dragon.
Life is a cruel thing.
The person she was destined to be with, a dear friend of her lover, ended up shortening her life.
One day, she met Spike, the person she was destined to be with. He was a friend of her lover, Vicious. What happened between them afterwards is unclear, but she ultimately chose to be with Spike and the two decided to leave the syndicate. However, as a result, her former lover forced her to choose between killing her new lover or dying alongside him. However, she was unable to decide and ultimately chose to run.
Three years later, Vicious overthrows the leadership of the Red Dragon, leading to her and Spike being targeted. And so, she decides that she and Spike have to flee together. However…
Shin: Age: 24. A member of the Red Dragon syndicate and the twin brother of Lin, who died in Session 13. He has secretly been helping Julia run from the syndicate. Though he rescues Spike from the elders' attempt to kill him, he doesn't appear to be part of Vicious's faction either, putting him in a peculiar position. In the final battle, he, just as his brother before him, dies a premature death while fighting alongside Spike.
Alfred's Mother: The mother of Alfred, the man who plays Punch on "Big Shot." Though she seemed to be nagging her son a little, it's undeniable that both seemed happy to be together.
Julia's Car: The car Julia used to flee. The color and style of this convertible definitely scream "getaway car." By the way, despite the fact that fossil fuels seem to have fallen out of favor in 2071, this car's engine sound is identical to an OHV V8's for some reason.
Julia's Gun: A Colt Combat Commander. This famous pistol uses .45 ACP ammunition and provides high stopping power with surprisingly little recoil.
Executioners' Assault Rifle: A Heckler and Koch G3-A1. The precursor to the MP5, this assault rifle boasts firing stability that elevated H&K above its competition.
You’re Gonna Carry That Weight.
After seeing the ending, I wondered what this weight was, though it took some time for it to sink in for me.
Immediately after seeing the ending, I thought “This is wrong.”
It felt as if everything Bebop had spent 26 sessions cultivating all added up to nothing.
Even for Spike, who always kept his distance, the relationships between the four people on “The Bebop” should have gradually grown as time passed. He should have changed. When he’s knocked out by a tranquilizer gun in “Jupiter Jazz,” he has his usual dream about the past, but in “Ballad of Fallen Angels,” Faye is by his side instead. After the two women leave “The Bebop” in “Hard Luck Woman,” Spike and Jet silently devour enough boiled eggs to feed four people. Even Spike, who barely feels attached to reality, must have felt life on the Bebop shift from a fleeting fantasy to something real.
If Spike were to set aside these carefully drawn relationships to die entangled with Vicious and Julia, all would be for naught. In the end, Spike gained nothing, didn’t grow, and had essentially died three years prior. It all just feels too sad, doesn’t it?
Personally, I think the last scene should have mirrored the ending of “Ballad of Fallen Angels.” After defeating Vicious, an injured Spike wakes up covered in bandages on “The Bebop’s” sofa. In his usual dream, he hears humming, as always. But when he looks up, the once-monotone world now has color and Faye has replaced Julia.
It’d be best if things returned to an ordinary everyday, with Spike truly alive for the first time in three years, finally free to begin living. Instead, however, his life ends. That is the true “weight” of “The Real Folk Blues.”
Before departing The Bebop, Spike gives Faye a glimpse into his heart for the first time:“Look at my eyes, Faye. One of them is fake because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I’ve been seeing the past in one eye, and the present in the other, so I thought I could only see patches of reality, never the whole picture.”
To him, perhaps, what he saw with one of those eyes was reality. I believe it’s his artificial one. Having lost any sense of time, he throws himself into a meaningless and deadly battle as casually as one would go to the local convenience store. He’s not at all attached to his lifestyle.
When you put in contact lenses for the first time, you expect things to look the same, but they always seem slightly off until you’ve adjusted. Nothing has physically changed, but something seems different on a spiritual level. In Spike’s case, however, his life and his memories have lost all color. Though he might someday acclimate, perhaps he’ll be forced to live with that incongruity.
His time on the Bebop should have become his reality. That’s why he returned to the ship before settling things with Vicious. Perhaps he was confirming his “position,” just like Faye, who realized that the Bebop was where she belonged after her memories returned.
“I’m not going there to die; I’m going to find out if I’m really alive.”
I think Spike began thinking that way when he returned to the Bebop. With Julia dead, the faint strings connecting him to Vicious were completely severed.
But settling things with Vicious would avenge Annie! And Mao! And Julia! Well, maybe not. After regaining Julia, his “missing piece,” Spike is finally able to see the real world and could find a new life. And in doing so, he betrayed Vicious. Spike was supposed to be dead and Vicious was the devil, but to Vicious, perhaps Spike appeared that way. Regardless, that “missing piece” has been lost forever. He could now move on and choose a new life. However, in order to have a proper ending, he would have to "atone" for what he'd done.
In his fight with Vicious, blood flows into one of his eyes, blinding him by the final scene. The eye that’s still open is his artificial one. His visions of the past were washed away by the blood. After defeating Vicious, Spike’s eyes are the same as they were when he fell from that stained glass window in “Ballad of Fallen Angels,” the eyes of someone who lost something big. And all of it ended in a flood of blood. Perhaps “a dream you can’t wake up from” isn’t living in the past, but is actually the sadness of the desire to live in a dream.
Are Spike’s eyes as he descends the staircase the eyes of someone who’s lost something big? I didn’t see it that way. As he faced the Red Dragon Syndicate members and uttered “Bang,” Spike was acting tough and proof that he’d returned to reality. While the price was great, perhaps he did atone after all.
Should he have lived? Should he have died? At this point, I don’t think that matters any longer. Perhaps another answer will emerge as we continue to live on. Other people are a contradiction - they’re both very real and yet also abstract. They play many roles and take many forms, yet they’re also easy to reduce to signifiers. To live in an endless dream is to see other humans as abstractions.
Therefore, people dream. Good dreams and bad dreams. Either way, as long as people are living in the real world, the world will dream.
In these sessions, we finally get the complete picture of the visions that Spike sees in “Ballad of Fallen Angels” and “Jupiter Jazz.”
After meeting Julia and falling in love, Spike decides to leave the Syndicate with Julia. “You’ll be killed,” she tells him. “It doesn’t matter if I die,” she says as he hands her a note instructing her to meet him at the cemetery. Learning of Spike’s betrayal, Vicious instructs Julia to kill Spike, though she ultimately decides to instead flee instead of going through with it. His flashbacks show his first encounter with Julia, his battle to “die,” and his separation from Julia. After “dying” once, Spike would come back to life and live with Julia in peace. Or so they thought. Julia never appeared at the cemetery and all that remained was an empty, dream-like reality that swallowed Spike.
When Spike is stopped by Faye on the Bebop, he tells her that the endless dream he’d been living ended at some point. Undoubtedly,
Masaaki Okajima
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Multilingual Sign: The sign, which features multiple languages on it, demonstrates the chaotic nature of Alba City.
Highway on the Water: The long bridge connecting the mainland to the city is meant to resemble Manhattan Island.
Alba City's Surroundings: Alba City is a city that floats within a crater that's been filled with water.
Finally, we must touch on one final possibility that we have yet to address: Could Spike possibly be alive?
The truth is, series director Shinichiro Watanabe had some interesting thoughts on this subject when he spoke with Mr. Minoru Takahashi in Esquire Magazine Japan’s My Sweet Anime, suggesting two possibilities.
The first is that the second half of the final episode is a dream that Julia is having while she dies from her gunshot wound. The other is that the staircase scene at the end is all a dream that Spike is having after defeating Vicious. Of course, all of this is left open to interpretation by the original work. What matters is the “weight” left behind in your chest after watching this scene. If the Spike within you is enjoying “the present” with his friends, then perhaps that weight is real.