Cowboy BeBop

It had to happen, though.

Ack, but the whole "it's all a dream" thing? That's just just downright......... it's just sand in my eye, okay?

Oh my gosh, I love this show! It's probely the greatest anime of all time imo! Everything,from the charecters,the humor,the music,the tears,to the stories, was all handled perfectly! Another thing I like about it is that, while spike is a badass, he get's owned alot. Not enough to downgrade his badassery,but just enough to show that he's not invinceble.Plus,we don't hear to much about his past, so we kinda have to fill in the blanks of what we don't know.I really don't think that any anime will ever top this masterpiece.

BTW, I think spike might still be alive. Why? Because while he did get fucked up pretty badly in the final fight, it's been said that he got into a similer fight with the red dragons before the series begain, and was thought to have died at the end of the battle,but he survied and came back, much to everyone's suprise.Plus, even though he did alot of damage to them, I don't think the red dragon crime syndticte would let him die or kill him themselves because A.They don't have a leader anymore due to The deaths of vicious and the elder crime lords,thus spike is their last chance at staying active, and B.If they still wanted to kill him after the final battle, why didn't they shoot him at the end of the series {other then the fact that it woulden't be as cool as what we got instead}?

One last thing, I think it's safe to say that vicious is dead, because that last shot spike fired seemed to tear his cold heart to piecies, not to mention that he looked dead during the brief time we see his face after the shot.

I don't think it's entirely unlikely that Spike lived. I mean, it's what I want to believe, so I will believe it.

You're in the minority on that one. Which is funny, because Bebop is the Sunrise series where the stance on the protagonist's survival is a Shrug of God, while meanwhile, in Code Geass, where Word of God is that he's dead, everybody still insists he's alive.

edited 5th Oct '11 9:34:40 AM by Sporkaganza

Ahem. Please spoiler tag that.

Darth Vader is Luke's father.

I was actually going to watch Code Geass. I don't care how much of an It Was His Sled moment it was, I still don't want to know.

It does you no good for me to put that in spoiler tags now.

My bad, sorry. Don't worry. That's not even close to the only thing I could possibly spoil in that series.

edited 5th Oct '11 9:34:56 AM by Sporkaganza

I actually think that it makes more sense, thematically, for Spike to have survived. The entire series is about dealing with your past, isn't it? Jet's mostly put his past behind him already, so he can move on (ie, live his life as a bounty hunter). Faye has no past, so feels like she has no future — it's only after she rediscovers her past that she starts looking forward. Ed was abandoned in her past — and when she finally reconnects with her father, she makes a clean break with her present to go on to something new.

So basically, everyone in the series deals with their past before moving forward. Spike mentions more than once that he actually considers himself dead due to his unfinished business with Vicious and Julia. (One of his opening lines in the first episode is "I was killed once before by a woman".) When he finally, finally resolves that situation, then what else could he be but alive again?

The thing is, death implies irreversibility. Even after defeating Vicious, I don't know if there would be anything left for him, just an empty heart.

Indeed, Spike does believe in tomorrow, he just knows he won't be there for it.

And yet the same conversation talks about him dying "again", so clearly it's not quite that final.

Another conversation that I think is relevant: at one point when Spike and Vicious are fighting (in The Ballad of Fallen Angels), Vicious says that both of them have the same kind of blood running through their veins, the blood of a ravenous beast. Spike says that he's bled all of that kind of blood away, and Vicious asks how he's still alive if that's true. Vicious can't/won't let go of his past, while Spike is at least trying to change.

Other random bits of dialogue: just before the final battle, while Spike is gearing up, Faye asks him why he's throwing his life away. Spike says he's not going there to die, he's going to find out if he's still alive. He hasn't given up on life, he's not trying to get revenge on Vicious at all costs — he's going to deal with his past so he can move on.

There's also the thing with Spike's eyes that comes up a few times. One of his eyes is artificial, and he claims that it can only see the present, while his real eye only sees the past. Not directly related to the idea of his survival, but it's definitely an indication that he thinks he's stuck with no future because he's held back by his past — which, after killing Vicious, would no longer be the case.

/1 Kexruct19th Jun 2011 06:31:51 PM Alright, I'll get the conversation started by asking a question: Who is your favorite character on the show?/

Spike. He's the epitome of cool with a Bruce Lee-like philosophy.