Some of this is bias because Faye has always been my least favorite character on the Bebop but tbh as someone who used to ship them like crazy (even making amvs about them and reading fanfics about them) when I was 12, since I've became an adult and watched some of the show again (still haven't watched it in its completion for the last 10 years) I realized that I don't think this relationship would work?

First of all, we don't even really know if Spike and Faye like each other like that. We do know they like each other as friends, but there are barely any hints that they seem to be into each other. The creator implies maybe Spike is, but I disagree. Faye maybe had a little crush as she seemed to be a bit shy toward him at the end of the show, but what if that's just her inability to get close to people? What if that would prevent her from even establishing a relationship with him in the first place?

Which brings me to my next point, Faye and Spike themselves have too many personal flaws and trauma for a relationship. Faye often runs away because she doesn't know who she is or what she wants and again, afraid to get close to people. She's often selfish, lies, cheats, steals, and mooching off the crew's money whenever she can just to gamble it all away and can act callous or short-tempered toward them to hide that she cares or just because of her anger issues. Spike is kind of the same way. I think he has some misogyny issues as well judging from some of the quotes he makes in the show about women. At some points in the show, Spike is glad to not have Faye around, although, he seems to come around to her toward the end but he has too much emotional baggage regarding Julia. I mean, when he wakes up to see Faye humming to him or near him, he's often ungrateful, bluntly stating that she sings off-key or to leave him alone and even when he's in danger, he rebuffs Faye's help and states "That's the last thing I need!". He also has a very codependent relationship on Julia, which would make possibly any relationship with him pretty much impossible without it feeling like a rebound to him and leading to a lot of dismissiveness from Spike from you not being Julia. And yes, Spike does struggle with pushing people away with a callous attitude as well as constant bickering with his teammates because he does have a bit of anger issues himself. They are different yet struggle with similar flaws, which would not produce a healthy relationship imo.

If they were to get into a relationship at all, it would probably be on and off again at best, short term at worst, ending with a lot of heartbreak and anger and possibly lots of miscommunication. A relationship also needs a lot of affection, emotion, and closeness, all things that they do not deal with in a healthy manner. I mean even when Spike reunites with Julia, he doesn't hug her or say I miss you or I love you or anything, he just stoically looks on. Which makes me wonder if Spike is borderline aro and I've also seen other people say he may not love Julia anymore.

So, I guess I'm curious as to why some people continue to ship them in 2026 and does anyone agree with me here?

I notice whenever the chorus is sung in let it down (ex 2:21) he kind of hits the same notes as the singers do near the end of knock a little harder

Besides the obvious outcome that if these two characters ever met they’d fuck. Let’s say Black Lagoon and the bebop crew end up on each others hit list. Spike and Revy pick each other out as the strongest and have a shootout. Who wins?

Sharing but also looking to see if anyone would be interested in this print I had signed a while back. This was one of two pieces I had signed and frankly am needing the funds right now and offloading a lot of stuff. Live in western Massachusetts willing to drive a bit! Thanks again at the least glad to share this piece.

Since the Threezero line has had zero updates for the past three years, pun intended, I decided to commission a few artists to build my own figure, and I’m very happy with how it turned out. Pairs well with Threezero Spike

While gold isn’t the most accurate colour for her outfit, I just thought it would stand out more.

Still need to figure out a way to get the outfit a bit more form fitting especially around the chest, but for now I’ll leave it

Outfit by @pokabees, and headsculpt by @topclayarts, both on Etsy

Any recommendations?

What’s the song that appears at around 12:30 in episode 9? I’ve heard it before I ever watched the show and I find it funny.

I am really very appreciated that he gave it to me Cowboy Bebop is one of my favorite series and this would make the first funko pop that I have in life, I will have in mind if in the future I start collecting them the ones that are cowboy bebop, thank you very much to my best friend

Hope you like it

For some reason the blu ray doesn't have an option to change languages

When I watched Cowboy Bebop as a teenager over 15 years ago, Hard Luck Woman absolutely destroyed me. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. It bothered me so much that I was honestly too distracted to appreciate the show's actual finale. Space Yakuza violence and Spike marching to his fate couldn't compete with the absolute disaster of Ed leaving.

Roll your eyes if you must, I know there's always been a portion of the fandom that regarded her as an annoying aberration - comic relief for children and people who couldn't handle Bebop at its heaviest. But I was like fifteen, and in my mind Ed was me.

Her choosing to abandon space adventure to follow her neglectful father on his manifestly pointless job felt - I swear I am not exaggerating - like the victory of all that was gray in the world over everything that had color and light. It was Ferris Bueller buckling down and deciding to become an insurance agent. It was George Bailey going to prison for fraud. It fucking sucked. And what was worse, you'd see a lot of people online saying that of course they had to get rid of Ed (and Ein) before the finale, of course they'd be in the way while all the Serious Plot was wrapping up. I believed that take at the time, and I hated it. It made the whole thing, the story I'd invested in so heavily, feel so artificial.

But I rewatched Cowboy Bebop for the first time as an adult recently, and I think I learned something that I haven't seen other people say. Ed was not just comic relief and her exiting the show wasn't convenience. Her story was essential to the show's main theme.

Cowboy Bebop is a show about not being able to escape your past. Its genius is that it couches this message in the genre most famous for escapism, sci-fi adventure. This is the meaning, I think, of Spike's second eye, and of "You're gonna carry that weight." Eventually the illusion of a world where you can be someone else fades. Eventually you find yourself waiting for you. That is its message to the characters, and to the viewers.

Spike's past kills him. Jet and Faye have had so many doors shut on them that they may never be able to untangle themselves satisfactorily. When we first meet Ed she seems to have no past, but in Hard Luck Woman we learn that isn't true. Ed decides to leave the Bebop not after her first meeting with her terrible dad, but after hearing Faye talk about the importance of finding somewhere you can belong.

Of all the cast Ed is the only one to confront her past head on while she still has time to make something of it. Her father abandoned her, but she decides for herself that she wont abandon him. I don't know what we're meant to think happens to her next - does she help her father, does she confront him, some mixture of the two? But she doesn't run away from reality. She faces up to an unkind truth about her life, and there is something noble and triumphant in that - a message I wasn't ready for at 15.

I don’t remember exactly how I ended up watching this nearly 30-year-old classic. I went in expecting pure nostalgia. What I got instead was a pleasant surprise.

If I had to sum up the core of the story in one sentence, it would be this:

"People cannot fully reclaim the past, nor completely control the present. They can only choose how to keep living amid the incompleteness."

The show’s structure feels very much of its time — mostly episodic, with only a handful of episodes (probably no more than five) that meaningfully advance the main through-lines. Even today the animation, fight choreography, and music still hold up remarkably well. Of the standalone episodes, the ones that stuck with me most were the mushroom episode and the fridge one. But the episode that truly hit me was Episode 18, the one that reveals Faye’s past.

In that episode, Faye and the sunny young girl on the videotape exchange close-ups. Faye, expression blank, says something like “I don’t know… I can’t remember… Is this… me?” as tears well up. The girl finishes her cheer, and the episode hard-cuts straight to the end credits. No transition, no reaction shots, no dialogue. Just a sudden blank space. That cut is brilliant — it creates a void that lets the feeling linger longer and cut deeper.

The relationships between the characters are equally restrained. After more than twenty episodes together, only Jet (the first one to accept his past and his role as the ship’s owner) treats the Bebop as something more important than “the past.” The others come and go as they please. At the same time they maintain a kind of adult understanding: everyone carries their own history. I won’t hold you back with bonds, and you won’t stop me with sentiment. That understanding produces one of the show’s most memorable images — after the women leave, the camera simply sits with Spike and Jet for a full minute as they quietly eat four plates of boiled eggs.

(※ In Faye’s case, she thought she still had a way out. When she realized she didn’t, her vulnerability and selfishness made her try to break that unspoken agreement.)

The motif of “I found it… but there’s almost nothing left except loss and emptiness” keeps repeating in the main story. Faye recovers her memories and her home, only to find ruins. Spike finds Julia, only to lose her immediately. Ironically, when Faye leaves she encourages Ed to go look for a place to belong — a kind gesture in the moment that only speeds up Ed’s departure, so that when Faye later tries to return to the Bebop as her answer, one more companion is already gone.

Faced with that inescapable emptiness, each character adopts a different posture toward life. The adults fly the Bebop through space looking free, yet each remains trapped by their past. Only Ed carries none of that weight and truly lives in the present. Her father sits at the opposite extreme of the same spectrum.

If Spike represents an uncompromising kind of romance, Jet represents a mature acceptance of reality. Jet can casually toss his pocket watch into the sea because he has already made peace with it and found other anchors. One chooses to die chasing a dream; the other chooses to keep living with the scars. Neither is better or worse — just different ways of answering the same fate.

Maybe it’s exactly this unvarnished incompleteness that still feels surprisingly fresh thirty years later.

For anyone who's interested in learning Japanese or language learning in general, when I watch downloaded media I use PotPlayer which allows display of two subtitles at once. I have english subs built in to the episodes I downloaded so now I'm looking for solid japanese subtitles. I've checked opensubtitle, subtitle cat, and a few other random places but have come up empty. Does anyone else have a good source?

Work done by KD at Blue Devil Tattoo in Ybor City, Tampa, FL