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>Vicious (not his syrupy brother Viscous), the villain, was Spike's friend and partner in crime! He kills his friend! Thanks for the spelling correction, but I

>Vicious (not his syrupy brother Viscous), the villain, was Spike's friend and partner in crime! He kills his friend! Thanks for the spelling correction, but I have to disagree with the moral ambiguity here. The guy's name is literally Vicious. He kills innocent people indiscriminately, like Julia. >They hunt down and kill people across the galaxy, sometimes solely for the crime of being rival criminals! Most of the people with bounties are actually doing bad things, and bounty hunting itself isn't illegal in the setting. >the original series is drenched in moral ambiguity Spike was a bad person, but then he turned his back on that old way of life, then started a new one where he uses his skills in a legitimate way. This is a common trope told in shonen-oriented manga and anime. Ruroni Kenshin is very similar - the Battosai was an expert killer like Fearless, but then he switched from evil to good and became Kenshin like Fearless became Spike. They then go on to fight the good fight, and things get dicey when their past catches up with them. Similarly, there's Inuyasha, who was destined to become a terrible demon until his commitment to Kikyo/Kagome made him change. They fight the good fight, and sometimes you wonder if they are going to revert to their old ways, but they keep making the right choice. Even if Spike wants to seem careless, he still knows what's right and wrong. This trope appears repeatedly in these kinds of shows. The original Cowboy Bebop has it, but it's less pronounced in the Netflix live-action.

woodruffw 5y ago
> The guy's name is literally Vicious. He kills innocent people indiscriminately, like Julia. I'm not saying he isn't unambiguously bad, at least in terms of events contemporaneous. I'm saying that the main characters in Bebop exhibit moral ambiguity, even (and especially!) if they eventually do the morally right thing from the viewer's perspective. Their journey towards the right thing is, after all, what makes them interesting to us; Bebop would be a lot less interesting if the characters didn't struggle with their histories, impulses, &c. (Another example of moral ambiguity I just remembered: Spike's personality and design are an explicit reference to Lupin III, the platonic anime anti-hero.) > Most of the people with bounties are actually doing bad things, and bounty hunting itself isn't illegal in the setting. Illegal is one thing, and morally ambiguous is another: being a bounty hunter is perfectly legal in the US, but I think most people would consider it a morally ambiguous job.
- 1MachineElf 5y ago
  As with bounty hunters, the samurai protagonists of Japan, and cowboy protagonists of the US, are all technically morally ambiguous, but it's widely understood their stories are about a hero.

woodruffw 5y ago

> The guy's name is literally Vicious. He kills innocent people indiscriminately, like Julia. I'm not saying he isn't unambiguously bad, at least in terms of events contemporaneous. I'm saying that the main characters in Bebop exhibit moral ambiguity, even (and especially!) if they eventually do the morally right thing from the viewer's perspective. Their journey towards the right thing is, after all, what makes them interesting to us; Bebop would be a lot less interesting if the characters didn't struggle with their histories, impulses, &c. (Another example of moral ambiguity I just remembered: Spike's personality and design are an explicit reference to Lupin III, the platonic anime anti-hero.) > Most of the people with bounties are actually doing bad things, and bounty hunting itself isn't illegal in the setting. Illegal is one thing, and morally ambiguous is another: being a bounty hunter is perfectly legal in the US, but I think most people would consider it a morally ambiguous job.

1MachineElf 5y ago
As with bounty hunters, the samurai protagonists of Japan, and cowboy protagonists of the US, are all technically morally ambiguous, but it's widely understood their stories are about a hero.