Cowboy Bebop Session #6: Sympathy For The Devil

I swear I could look longingly at this amazing specimen of a woman all day long. She's absolutely hands down a smokin' hottie and she's not even bloody real! How I love Faye, let me count the ways.

Cowboy Bebop has that whole bad ass, sexy-cool thing going for it. The more I listen to the music and see those seductive opening credits, the more I think love the score by Yoko Kanno. Here we are with Cowboy Bebop, Session #6, Sympathy For The Devil. Could it possibly top Session #5? I somehow doubt it.

The mood is certainly there with the harmonica-laden blues. Spike is dreaming in flashback of some weird experiment while on the hunt for their next bounty, Giraffe. Faye continues to bust Ein's balls as she peels back a can of his food and eats it. Those two really have a very combative realtionship thus far. Anyway, Giraffe is killed by a wheelchair-bound fellow named Zebra who is accompanied by a harmonica-playing young prodigy named Wen. Giraffe falls from a window and Spike brings the swordfish underneath with some pretty fancy flying. Yeah right, not likely to happen.
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Spike hears the man's final dying words along the lines of 'Help him.' He hands Spike a gem stone of some kind. Apparently Zebra and Giraffe were part of of the Self-Defense Volunteer Squad. The two were involved in some kind of doublecross.
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Why is it characters in anime always wear the same outfits day after day? Well, I suppose one could argue the casts in Stargate, Babylon 5, Doctor Who or Star Trek didn't do much better.
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Spike follows the young boy and the man called Zebra into an abandoned building. The boy is a dead shot and stuns Spike knocking the gun from his hand. In reality, you see, the kid is actually much older than his body would suggest. His parents died years ago in a freak space accident when a hyperspace gate blew. The incident caused the boy to stop aging. Now the little freak uses people to be his surrogate parents. Giraffe wanted Spike to help Zebra.
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Terrific cel art for the action to unfold.

The boy runs and Spike fires several rounds. At first I thought it was a little odd Spike wasn't hitting his target, that was until he hit him square between the eyes and into the forehead. SPLAT! Only the wee devil child just won't seem to die.

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Spike takes the gem and places it on the tip of a bullet to be shot directly into the child. He hits him square once again where he ages instantly and dies of old age. Spike, in a sense, has given the boy freedom rescuing him from his eternal imprisonment or as the title suggests, sympathy for the devil himself. It's easy to be a prodigy child when you live forever and never age.
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The devil is in the details.

This one was weird. It had an Akira vibe to it. All in all, it was a bit bizarre for my taste. I do like the final moments when the boy is "at ease." He asks Spike "do you understand?" Spike attempts to blow into the harmonica, but pushes nothing but air and indicates he understands "as if." My feeling was that Spike couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't take such a gift, the gift of immortality and let go. Great ending to an okay story.

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Sympathy For The Devil: B-

Cast: Spike/ Jet/ Faye/ Ein