Session 07: Heavy Metal Queen
For one month, The Dot and Line is publishing essays, interviews, and discussions about each episode of Cowboy Bebop, which turns 20 this April.
For the 20 years of its existence (and the first 24 of mine) I had never watched a single episode of Cowboy Bebop. Growing up, I would see its name pop up on my TV guide and use that as my cue to switch from Cartoon Network to Nickelodeon. I think I was worried I wouldn’t…understand it? I don’t know. As a kid, anime never really clicked with me. I always felt like I didn’t speak the right storytelling language to appreciate it.
Well, I started Bebop, and I now realize it’s the animated Rosetta Stone I’d always needed.
It’s striking how obviously influential Bebop feels. And while it indulges in the same tropes as a lot of other action cartoons (like the Saul Bass–style title sequence with the jazz theme that Archer art director Neal Holman swears wasn’t stolen from Bebop…), it also resists them in such unique and interesting ways.
Session seven of Cowboy Bebop, “Heavy Metal Queen,” is chock full of clever riffs on established tropes. First of all, like the majority of the show’s episodes, it’s a neat little standalone episode that revolves around a one-off character, the grizzled trucker and titular heavy metal queen, VT. And instead of the episode’s plot rising and falling with her little character arc as if she’s a guest star on Law and Order, VT opens up a window to a part of the Bebop universe we wouldn’t have otherwise seen: the space trucking industry and the people who work in it. It’s a brief montage, but VT’s space-CB radio calls with her fellow long-haul drivers shine a spotlight on a group of straight-and-narrow walkers that we don’t get to see in a show about rogue bounty hunters chasing criminals.
And this isn’t to say Bebop completely bucks trends and tropes. The show introduces VT and develops her character largely by showing her enjoying the thrash metal music that follows her from scene to scene. But in 1998, that probably seemed…really cool? Grunge had just cooled down after a few years of fever pitch and Metallica had not yet sued Napster. Being a lady metalhead meant something specific, and it didn’t take long to understand that in the Bebop universe, it meant you drove a space truck and got into bar fights.
In fact, there’s a moment in “Heavy Metal Queen” that’s almost eye-roll-inducing, that’s how played out it feels. Our bounty hunting hero, Spike, is jumping from his ship to VT’s truck and they do the close up on the hands. You know the one, you’ve seen it a thousand times before. It’s the God/Adam shot. But just when you think VT is about to pull Spike aboard, they miss contact, and Spike continues drifting off. That’s when he pulls out his gun and blasts himself to firm ground before space-jumping into VT’s vehicle—all of which I’m pretty sure neither God nor Adam did in any part of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes.
After watching “Heavy Metal Queen,” I was hit with a wave of a feeling that I’ve seen this sort of standalone story told by countless other shows in countless other animation styles. It’s clear to me now that all of them either borrow directly from Bebop or at least borrow from the same places Bebop did because Bebop made those places cool. Can one season of TV be a teachable moment for the entire world of animation? If that season is as high quality as Cowboy Bebop, then I think yes. It just has so much to teach.
Watching “Heavy Metal Queen” left me personally with an important lesson learned: I should have started this show a long time ago.
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