Characters / Cowboy Bebop: Bebop Crew

Cowboy Bebop character index
The Bebop Crew | The Red Dragon Crime Syndicate | Others

The Bebop Crew

In General

The Bebop Crew

Clockwise from top left: Ed, Spike, Jet, Faye and Ein.

The crew of the starship Bebop, a Ragtag Band of Misfits that make a living as bounty hunters. Initially only a duo of Spike and Jet, Faye, Ed and Ein join over the course of the show.

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• Anti-Hero Team: Their primary motivation is money, though oftentimes their positive traits shine through and they perform altruistic acts over a monetary reward.
• Badass Crew: Spike, Jet and Faye can all gun down criminals like there's no tomorrow, Ed has the capabilities to hack a damn ship and fly it around like a remote control toy and Ein is an experimental biological supercomputer dog that's secretly more genius than everyone else.
• Bounty Hunter: The whole crew. It is their job.
• Foil: Pretty much the entire crew are foils to each other multiple times over, in terms of personality, outlook, character arc, and ultimately in how their individual stories resolve. Ein is the major exception, as he's a dog.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Jet and Spike are male, and Faye and Ed are female. Ein is presumably male but is also a dog so it isn't really applicable.
• Growling Gut: Heard often when the crew of the Bebop is starving — which comes up a lot.
  • Spike in "Toys In The Attic".
  • Faye in "My Funny Valentine".
  • Everyone in "Mushroom Samba". The latter has Ed biting down on the metal shelf inside the empty fridge. Meanwhile Faye ends up dealing with stomach pains worse than starving, after eating the ship's emergency rations... which had been expired for a year.
• Hyper-Awareness: The members of the Bebop crew are great at knowing when someone's out to get them or lie to them by picking up on a few details. It's how they survive gunfights in bars and attempted robberies by gang members.
• Nerves of Steel: When faced with danger, the Bebop crew hardly panics and all of them are good at thinking on their feet. It's how they manage to trump several of their foes with nothing but some fast hands and fast wits.
• Numerical Theme Naming: The residents of the Bebop's names tend to denote their importance to the story by how many letters they have in them.
  • Spike, the main character, whose past receives the most focus, has 5 letters.
  • Faye, who has a lot of character development and the second most backstory of the cast, has 4.
  • Jet, whose episodes are often conclusions to stories that have already resolved, and often stays on the ship during bounties, has 3. And his birthday is on December 3rd.
  • Ed, who only really has one episode about her history and is mostly the team's hacker/comedy relief, has 2.
  • Ein, who is an admittedly very smart dog, has a name that means "One" in German.
• Perpetual Poverty: Either circumstances conspire to prevent capture of the bounty or there's so much collateral damage that, after all is said and done, they break even. It would be easier to name the episodes in which the crew does have money in which they don't. Hence the title of Yoko Kanno's slow acoustic guitar theme Forever Broke, played when the crew of the Bebop find themselves deep in the red and, more often than not, starving.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: A former member of a Chinese mafia-cum-hitman, a retired police officer, an amnesiac gambler with an unknown past, an androgynous Child Prodigy hacker, and a mentally enhanced Welsh Corgi.
  Jet: Just wandering around with some weirdos...
• Three Plus Two: Ed and Ein are still members of the crew.
• True Companions: Faye describes the crew to be this close as early as episode 5. It isn't really the case until episode 13.
• Two Guys and a Girl: Spike, Jet and Faye form the core trio of the Bebop's crew. They are the ones who receive the most attention.

Spike Spiegel

Spike Spiegel

Voiced by: Kōichi Yamadera (JPN), Steve Blum (ENG), Genaro Vásquez (SPN-LA), Yamil Atala (SPN-LA, movie), Joan Pera (SPN-EU), Alejandro García (SPN-EU, movie)

"Whatever happens, happens."

Spike is a slightly lazy, big eating, easy-going sort who has used his skills honed from years as an assassin, gangster, and martial artist to become a bounty hunter. He's the type that always takes life easy except for when the adrenaline kicks in while taking down a bounty. And he certainly doesn't take anything personally or all that seriously... in fact, about the only thing that can spark an emotional reaction from him are the names Julia and Vicious. In truth, Spike has endured so much heartache over the years that there's practically nothing left for him to care about but living from one pay-day to the next. Even a look into his eyes betrays his mellow exterior and reveals something deeply wrong under the surface.

Much of the story is a series of slow revelations about Spike's past, why he has the skills that he does, who Julia and Vicious are, why Spike has a ruthless enemy that will stop at nothing to kill him, and whether, in the end, he can truly leave that life behind.

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• Ace Pilot: No one can pilot the Swordfish II better than Spike.
• Aesop Amnesia: In the movie. Spike's increasing regret over bystanders and bounty heads is undone at the start of the film, which is said to take place late in the series. This seems to have been done so they could fit in some character development. This is possibly justified, in that one of the common interpretations of the movie is that it's a dream Spike is having. As such it would make sense that it would compress all his character development from the series into the movie.
• Age Lift: Spike is canonically 27 years old, but the European Spanish dub of the series has him voiced by an actor that sounds and acts about twice that number. It looks like they interpreted Spike's jaded attitude as him being a really athletic middle-aged man rather than a really cynic young man.
• Alliterative Name: Spike Spiegel.
• Amazon Chaser: In The Movie, he says so while flirting with/fighting Electra.
  Spike: I love the kind of woman that can kick my ass.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Spike has a surname that is quite common among Jewish people, a stereotypically (in the US, anyway) Jewish haircut, and carries an Israeli-made Jericho 941 pistol. When asked about it, the series' creators once said he wasn't Jewish and his hair was modeled after the actor Yusaku Matsuda◊, and they just picked "Spiegel" as his name because they thought it sounded cool. On the other hand, when asked directly whether Spike was meant to be of Jewish descent in another interview, the series creator said it's entirely possible he could be Jewish. Similarly, Spike is referred to as "Asian" in a manga, but the two traits are not mutually exclusive.
• Animal Motifs: Cats. He's a laidback, deceptively mellow person who's much faster and more of a huntsman than he lets on. He triggers Tongpu due to his resemblance to the cat in the lab he escaped from, and he tells Jet the story of a tiger-striped cat to help summarize his life. Fittingly, he claims to hate dogs and is Vitriolic Best Buds with Jet, "the Black Dog".
• Badass in a Nice Suit: One of the best examples in anime is his iconic blue suit.
• Badass Normal: He's without a doubt the biggest badass in a series full of people with military training, police training, genetic enhancements from experiments or accidents. He has none of these; he's just a man with a gun, experience, martial arts skill, and a hell of a lot of willpower and endurance. And a cybernetic eye, but it seems only to act like a regular eye.
• Badass Longcoat: There seems to be something special about Spike's longcoat as well. He was seen wearing it often during his Syndicate days, but only dons it to fight Vicious after he leaves. It seems like his way of acknowledging he's fighting a war.
• Baritone of Strength: Spike has Steve Blum using a calm yet deep voice and he's a Badass Normal One-Man Army.
• Berserk Button:
  • Make sure you never confuse him with his Arch-Enemy, Vicious. If you call him by that name, he'll flip out and open a can of whoopass on you and your entire gang.
  • Don't insult Julia. The leader of a gang of thugs from Callisto makes these two mistakes... and pays dearly for it.
  • Don't make him drop his egg. He needs that egg.
• Big Eater: He has a large appetite but unfortunately he and Jet can't afford it.
• Blood Knight:
  • Nothing makes his face light up more than a decent fight.
  • He doesn't like "small fry" bounties like drug dealers and petty thieves, and only goes after big ones.
• Bounty Hunter: He's very good at the "hunter" half though he rarely receives any bounty money.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Despite being a lazy, big-eating "lunkhead", Spike has been able to outwit the entire Syndicate, nearly beat Jet in shogi, stay a step ahead of all of his bounties, and think his way out of every situation. The hard part is finding a reason for him to give a damn.
• Broken Ace: He's very skilled, and he's usually calm and confident — until his Dark and Troubled Past comes up.
• Bruce Lee Clone: Downplayed. Spike is a big fan of Mr. Lee, practicing Jeet Kune Do and his philosophy.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: At first glance, he seems lazy and dense, but rest assured — this man is one of the biggest badasses around and was formerly feared enforcer for the Red Dragon crime syndicate. Word of God states this was intentional, to make him seem more badass when he kicked into gear.
• But Now I Must Go: He leaves the Bebop one final time (much to Faye's dismay) to confront his past and Vicious, all the while knowing that he will likely not come back.
• Byronic Hero: Despite being our hero, his actions for most of the show cause a lot of collateral damage and bystander injury. Not to mention he's not the nicest or most caring guy. However, in the inside, he's a broken man who longs for the woman he fell in love with and wants to leave his chaotic life and troubled past behind.
• Character Development:
  • Cares more and more about innocent bystanders and collateral casualties as the series goes on. The biggest catalysts were Rocco and Gren.
  • Redoes the entire development, condensed and accelerated, in The Movie, where he goes from perfectly willing to let an elderly hostage die to suicide-rushing Vincent in a last ditch effort to save Mars from the nano plague.
• Chick Magnet: Spike has a knack for bringing out affection and a softer side of women he comes across such as Faye, Julia, Katrina, Muriel, Stella, and Electra. He rarely notices or responds to their interest, however.
• Child Hater: Spike claims he does not like kids (or pets, or women with attitude) in the second episode, which he furiously brings up again when Ed muscles her way into the crew. Spike never actively antagonizes Ed, but he is the most averse to interacting with her, virtually never doing more than bemusedly watching her antics from a distance. He seems to be over this by "Cowboy Funk", as he gifts Ed the hat he got from Cowboy Andy, and later acts genuinely broken up by her departure in "Hard Luck Woman". Spike even tapes the pinwheel she'd given him to the front of the Bebop in a rare display of sentimentality.
• Combat Pragmatist: Like any self-respecting Jeet Kune Do practitioner, Spike follows the philosophy of 'whatever works' by fighting with inventive and underhanded tactics. "Waltz for Venus" has him teaching small time thief Roco about how to trip somebody by using their momentum against them. This is after he acted sleepy while fighting a bounty target to confuse them into not attacking.
• Confusion Fu: Spike Spiegel's interpretation of Jeet Kune Do is essentially this. Spike will do anything to distract his opponent — flipping coins, twirling pens, fencing with brooms, kneeling down and looking at nothing to make his opponent try to see what it is, pretending to be asleep or listening to music, even popping open party favors to get a slight edge in a fight. His footwork is fluid and almost prescient, and sometimes even his simple everyday movements like picking up objects seem impossible or like magic. His arms and legs can't be tracked by the eyes, or as he puts it,
  Spike: You're not a Chameleon, you know. Can't see everywhere at once.
• Crazy-Prepared: While he's not much of a thinker, Spike's smart enough to keep a few surprises on hand. Funnily enough, these surprises are mostly connected to food as he's hidden grenades in the Bebop's fridge and stashed some booze behind the same fridge. If a gun doesn't work out, he's also got a throwing knife on him.
• Dark and Troubled Past: In the past Spike was a top assassin for the Red Dragon Syndicate, a criminal organization. An unstoppable killer, Spike was practically a One-Man Army, and was only more dangerous when paired with his equally dangerous partner, Vicious. Then something happened. Spike met Vicious' girlfriend, Julia, and Spike and Julia fell in love. (Indeed, one shot that shows Spike's reaction to seeing her hints it might even have been Love at First Sight, at least on his end). Although the details from this time are sketchy, it appears that Vicious soon found out. Around the same time, Spike had also decided to leave the organization, and it's unclear which of these Vicious perceived as the greater betrayal. He gave Julia a deadly order: kill Spike, or be killed herself before she could run. Somehow, Spike faked his death well enough that almost everyone believed he was dead, but Julia didn't leave with him. Instead Spike simply disappeared, and began a life of drifting until meeting Jet and forming their partnership.
• Deadpan Snarker: Often speaks in dry and tired wit.
• Death Glare: If you're Vicious or someone who has really gotten on his bad side (especially if you mistake him for Vicious), the sheer and utter hatred that may fill Spike's eyes indicate that you're probably a dead man. It says something that besides during Shin's sacrifice and his post-victory before the collapse, the final battle has Spike in a perpetual state of death glare due to Julia dying.
• Death Seeker: He's really too eager to charge into absurdly dangerous situations. After Julia's death, he immediately decides to storm the Red Dragon fortress in order to kill Vicious, accepting without regret that he would not come back.
  Spike: I'm not going there to die. I'm going to find out if I'm really alive.
• Despair Event Horizon: In the final episode, after Julia is killed by the Syndicate, it's very subtle but his eyes are weary, more narrow than usual and have noticeable shadowing. It resembles someone who's cried a lot or is in depression, and the expressions he makes during the entire Syndicate raid are like nothing in the series besides the last time he had to deal with Vicious as he marches off to his presumed death.
• Destructive Savior: Every time he tries to bring in a bounty, buildings are destroyed. In the first episode, Jet angrily says that the reason they don't have enough money for food is because the bounties he collects are always drained paying for all the damage he causes.
• Determinator: He doesn't give up on bounties or his score with Vicious, no matter how long it takes or how many armed men stand in his way or how badly injured he becomes.
• Dub Personality Change: In the original, Spike was presented much like a typical anime character who uses Obfuscating Stupidity with a goofy voice and mannerisms much of the time and then a stereotypically gruff and hardboiled voice in action scenes or serious, dramatic moments. In contrast, his English dub voice has a gruff-voice to begin with, and voices Spike with a more subtle personality and less change in his voice tone/personality between comedic and serious moments, presenting Spike as having an undertone of world-weariness at all times. His European Spanish voice actor also goes for the same, base tone all of the time, adding also traits of Spike being much, much older than he looks.
• Dying Dream: Spike holds this opinion on life, at times vacillating on whether he's truly alive at all or if he died during his last job for the Red Dragon. It takes Julia getting killed in front of him to "awaken" from that attitude.
• Electronic Eye: One of his eyes is artificial and a slightly different color.
• Establishing Character Moment: In the first episode, Spike seems to be completely unfocused and easily overwhelmed by the bounty at the gas station, until he is revealed to have picked his pocket and stolen his vial of "Bloody Eye" combat enhancer. In the climactic fight, Spike easily takes down Asimov (who has previously been shown to dodge bullets and take down squads of gun-toting goons while under the influence of Bloody Eye) while wearing a serape in a reconstruction of one of Bruce Lee's most famous scenes.
• Expy: Of Elliot Gould as a fellow laid-back, laconic law-for-hire Phillip Marlowe in Robert Altman's adaptation◊ of The Long Goodbye◊.
• Face Death with Dignity: In "Wild Horses", he is told that his deactivated ship has been caught in Earth's gravitational pull and will burn up in the atmosphere in about five minutes. His only reaction is to fire up a cigarette and tell Jet where he kept the booze that he wants Jet to inherit.
• Fatal Flaw: Spike is incapable of letting go of his past. When his past finally catches up to him at the end of the series, it results in him going on a suicide mission to prove to himself that his whole life, as he puts it, wasn't just a dream.
• Glass Eye: Spike's right eye is an artificial replacement, and is of a lighter shade of brown.
• Go Out with a Smile: Assuming he did die of his injuries in the final episode, he's finally at peace with himself, having broken with his past, avenging Julia and proving to himself he was different from Vicious. Of course, he might not actually be dead.
• Guns Akimbo: He prefers using a Jericho 941 pistol, with two whenever shit hits the fan.
• Heartbroken Badass: He lost Julia. Even more so after he loses her once more, this time for good.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Probably intentionally, Spike occasionally makes some memorably rude comments about women, since he doesn't want to get involved with one after what happened with Julia. In fairness, he seems to treat women with enough respect in practice, only (initially) having issues with Faye because of her bad attitude.
• The Hero Dies: Eventually, Spike's past catches up with him big time. Vicious does confirm that Spike is alive, and it turns into a full on hunt as Vicious tries to take over the Red Dragon Syndicate. Spike and Julia reconcile and plan on running away, but before they can, she dies in a shootout with Vicious' men. After saying goodbye to Jet and Faye, Spike decides to go Storming the Castle and cuts a swath through The Syndicate to get to Vicious. The two wound each other, with Vicious dying right away, while Spike lives long enough to see the dawn, walk back downstairs, and whisper "Bang," to the stunned members of the Syndicate before collapsing. ...If that was indeed his death.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Played with. Spike says he hates animals (and kids), but part of how you can tell he's not really a bad guy is that the worst he ever does is a little offhand snark to Jet. They don't exactly bond, but Spike risks his life, and loses the bounty on Hakim, to save Ein from falling in "Stray Dog Strut". Plus they seem to get along in the non-canon previews, which helps.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: He really does care, even if he's reluctant to admit it.
• Hidden Depths: Underneath the "cool guy" exterior is a past of heartbreak and regret.
• Hideous Hangover Cure: He drinks prairie oysters — a raw egg yolk with hot sauce and pepper and a little Hair of the Dog.
• Hypocrite: Spike tells Faye that there is no point living in the past after she finds that there is nothing left of her past from 70 years ago. Then he goes off to probably die in a suicide mission for revenge because he cannot let go of his past. Faye bitterly brings this up as he prepares to leave.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: He loses Julia for good in the finale. After this, Spike gives up on everything and goes to settle things with Vicious once and for all.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Is remarkably proficient at shooting people right between the eyes.
• Indy Ploy: Thinking on his feet is definitely one of Spike's strong suits. Just look at his plan in "Heavy Metal Queen," which involved him going into space without a suit before using the recoil from his pistol to course correct himself to safety aboard another ship. "Honky Tonk Women" also has him in space again where he avoids getting shot by taking advantage of zero gravity, hopping into the air before jumping at a gangster.
• Informed Flaw: His misogyny becomes this in the Italian Dub, where he really doesn't have any real chauvinistic lines like in the other versions yet, in "The Real Folks Blues, Part 2", Jet (who has more than one sexist line himself in the dub) still claims that Spike hates women and the two share a laugh about it.
• In Harm's Way: Nothing excites him more than danger and fighting.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Why he left Julia, as Vicious wanted to hunt both down.
• I Will Find You: Spike's major quest throughout the anime is to reunite with Julia again.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He may talk a lot about being a bounty hunter only in it for the money, but anytime he has to choose between catching a bounty and saving lives, you can bet your bottom woolong that he'd rather save that life and end up with empty pockets.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: His past is told in such a fashion; snatches of conversation, flashbacks, etc., all of which are only small pieces to a full picture. One has to watch all of the series, perhaps more than once, before the whole thing starts to fully make sense.
• Lightning Bruiser: Spike, the best fighter in the Bebop crew, is this compared to his crew members and most of the enemies he encounters. Despite Jet's larger build and Faye's leaner figure, Spike is the strongest, fastest and toughest person in the crew. Throughout the series, Spike demonstrates his Jeet Kune Do skills as well as being able to take on whole groups of armed men all the while enduring staggering amounts of pain.
• Looks Like Cesare: Possibly the most handsome a Cesare homage will ever look. Rail-thin, pale with a skin tone that almost looks yellowish at times, and with a head of dark, weirdly greenish Messy Hair. All he's missing are the Creepy Shadowed Undereyes, that he at least partially gets when things truly get serious, such as the entirety of his Roaring Rampage of Revenge at the end of "The Real Folks Blues, Part 2". It's an indicator that Spike is a walking corpse, as Anastasia lampshades in "Ballad of Fallen Angels".
• Loveable Rogue: An Anti-hero bounty hunter (not a criminal) who makes a surprising amount of friends despite his Straw Nihilist worldview.
• Love Redeems: It's heavily implied that his relationship with Julia was what compelled him to bail on the Syndicate. Unfortunately, Julia didn't follow.
• Made of Iron: During one episode he is; shot, stabbed, sliced, thrown through a stained glass window and falls at least four stories down to a paved street. He lives.
• Mellow Fellow: Generally speaking, Spike can be very laid back when things aren't going down. Much to Jet's fury, he'll often be just as laid back even when shit is hitting the fan to lethal degrees.
• Mr. Fanservice: Tall, muscular, and certainly easy on the eyes. He's had a Shirtless Scene or two.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Despite his tall and lean frame, Spike is able to effortlessly take on groups of similarly sized or larger attackers. In-universe, this is justified with how Spike's fighting style is like water and he uses his opponents' strength against them, as he teaches Roco. The biggest (and perhaps only) exception to this in the series is when Spike faces off against Appledelhi and no amount of martial art skills proves effective against the sheer monstrous strength and resilience that Appledelhi possesses.
• Noble Bigot with a Badge: While a bounty hunter rather than police, Spike sometimes mutters misogynistic comments under his breath or just loud enough for Faye to hear. He's still more than willing to help women who need it along the way, such as Roco's sister.
• Not Afraid to Die: One of Spike's defining character traits is how blasé he is about the prospect of dying. He states several times that he's already dead and is just watching a bad dream until he's ready to "wake up" into death (or alternatively into another, better reality. Spike does not seem to know which will actually happen). Encountering Tongpu temporarily drives the cool away from him, but in all other instances (including in several episodes and The Movie that took place chronologically later) Spike never seems afraid of death. Depending on how you interpret the ending, the last minutes of the series may be the defining example.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: On several occasions in both the series and the movie, he acts clueless, clumsy, distracted or sleepy and is underestimated long enough that he kicks someone's ass hard, or picks their pockets. It is not clear how much of this is an act or being genuinely relaxed even in dangerous situations, but his efficiency indicates that this at least partially a deliberate trick.
• One-Man Army: Episodes 5, 11 and 26 show him going up against large numbers of armed men and coming out victorious.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Spike usually takes pain, up to and including multiple gunshot wounds, relatively in stride. In the movie, during his first fight with Vincent, the movie's Big Bad, Vincent shoves his fingertips into Spike's chest and twists, breaking his ribs. All Spike can do after that is curl up and gasp for air, establishing Vincent as a serious and sadistic threat.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Some occasionally asinine woman-bashing comes out of his mouth. Possibly an intentional attempt to keep up with his tough guy persona, plus to keep any woman from trying to be romantically involved with him and vice-versa given how badly romance went for him before.
• Prodigal Hero: While he has left his past life of crime, his attachments to Julia and Vicious force him to become the savior of the Red Dragon Syndicate.
• Rebellious Spirit: He likes to play by his own rules.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Spike is the red to Jet's blue; it's an odd case, because he's less prone to shouting and visible shows of emotion, which you often get from Jet himself, but he's more reckless and Jet very often tries (emphasis on "tries") to talk sense into him when Spike jumps straight into suicide missions or endangers civilians.
  • He is this to Vicious' blue as well, being much more of an improviser with a "whatever happens, happens" MO and very flexible goals when he pursues a bounty, whereas Vicious, while still a Straw Nihilist, is much more of The Chessmaster and has the very concrete goal of taking over as the Red Dragon leader.
• Retired Monster: A former Triad hitman, Spike never shows much regret for his former life or attempts to face up to any parts of it until events outside his control force his hand. This is another point in which he's contrasted with Jet.
• Running Gag: Several times he pulls out a cigarette (or already has one lit), only to be told or see a sign that says "No smoking". Depending on the episode, he ignores it, spits the cigarette out, irritated, or on one occasion, swallows it whole.
• Smoking Is Cool: Probably the most famous example in anime. He's even the current trope image.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Julia; the Red Dragon Syndicate is what separated them.
• Strong and Skilled: Spike is undeniably athletic and tough but he backs it up with an extremely precise, technical and unpredictable style of Jeet Kune Do where he uses an opponent's momentum against them.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  Spike: I'm not a criminal. Oh, that makes me seem even more like a criminal, doesn't it?
• Tired of Running: After Julia dies, Spike does this and assaults the Red Dragon directly to end his feud with Vicious.
• Trademark Favorite Food: A subtle example. Seems to have a preference for lobster. When he tries to order the most expensive thing on a fancy restaurant's menu, he pointedly chooses "lobster miso stew" over the more trendy "Ganymede sea rat." He mocks Twinkle Murdock by telling her that her 25 million bounty is gonna buy a lot of lobster stew. Then there's the entire episode kickstarted by Spike apparently hiding a Ganymede rock lobster in the fridge aboard the Bebop.
• Tragic Hero: A man with a tragic past who may or may not have died coming to terms with that past after losing his true love.
• Tranquil Fury: Occasionally, like when he found Faye knocked out by Londes in "Brain Scratch" and during his raid on the Syndicate.
• Uncertain Doom: The ending has Spike, grievously wounded, collapsing in front of what remains of Vicious's gang. The director said that whether he lives or dies is entirely up to the viewer.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Faye. Although it appears one-sided on her part, Word of God once stated "Spike may have feelings for Faye, he's just not one to outwardly express them."
• Unscrupulous Hero: Spike's the type of guy who'll help someone in need every now and then even if there's nothing in it for him. He's also not particularly ruthless in his quests to capture his bounty, perfectly willing to capture a bounty head alive, though he does cause serious property damage whenever he goes after them. That said, as a former assassin and a current bounty hunter, he's still a former bad guy (who ultimately turned good, but still does some questionable things) and has a darker side that comes out when Vicious is around. Spike has occasionally shown moments of apathy and outright disregard for other people, caring only for his mission or reward. "Ballad of Fallen Angels" shows Spike unhesitatingly shooting the head of the man who had Faye at gunpoint, as if he cared more about killing him than rescuing Faye (though the fact that he did try to save her at all before going after Vicious is worth noting.)
  Spike: Well, that's a real shame, but we're not cops and we're not from some charity organization. Sorry, lady, but we don't protect or serve. This is strictly business.
• We Used to Be Friends: He and Vicious used to be Bash Brothers.
• Younger Than They Look: Spike is 27 at the time of the series, in reference to the many musicians who have died young at that age from drugs, fights, or suicide, but appears to resemble a handsome man in his mid or late thirties. In part this is due to the stock age-related anime trope of every main character above their teens being a twenty-something prodigy, but in part this can also be justified by his rough and world-weary lifestyle.

Jet Black

Jet Black

Voiced by: Unshō Ishizuka (JPN), Taiten Kusunoki (JPN, live-action series dub), Beau Billingslea (ENG), Alfonso Ramírez (SPN-LA), Francesc Belda (SPN-SP), Juan Fernández (SPN-SP, movie)

"It’s just like Charlie said in my dream: if you want to receive, you have to give."

The owner of the Bebop and perhaps the group's nominal leader, Jet Black is an ex-cop turn bounty hunter and by far the most old-fashioned, level-headed, and responsible member of the Bebop crew. He tends to come off as gruff (and his height, muscular appearance and beard only add to the impression), but he's a softie underneath with a surprising number of cultured hobbies. (Including raising bonsai trees, listening to jazz/blues music, cooking, and reading classic literature.)

The heart and conscience of the crew, Jet has a tendency to do the right thing in all circumstances, even at cost to his own happiness. He can be old-fashioned and controlling, a fact that caused his lover Alisa to leave him during his days as a cop and which sometimes makes him less than popular with the rest of the Bebop crew. A retiring sort of person for good reason, Jet carries a few battle scars, most notably a robotic arm resulting from a brutal confrontation that cost him the original.

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• Anger Born of Worry: Often — it's one of the things that make him Team Dad. He's usually The Stoic, but does a lot of yelling at Spike, Faye, and Ed, mostly since he doesn't think they can take care of themselves. Given that they'd probably all starve to death without him at the helm, he's got a point.
• Animal Motifs: Fitting his constant back and forth with the "tiger-striped cat" Spike, Jet was "the Black Dog" back in his police years. On top of his fame for never letting go when he bites, he's also dog-like in how much he values loyalty and how he's capable of being a true Gentle Giant. He also immediately warmed up to Ein when Spike first brought him to the ship, further driving the motif home.
• Anti-Hero: Type 2. He has a temper and a cynical streak, but he's a good guy, and more heroic than the others.
• Artificial Limbs: His left arm is robotic.
• Badass Boast:
  Jet: I'm the Black Dog, and when I bite I don't let go.
• Bald Head of Toughness: His hairless scalp acts as a good signifier of how he's the toughest and roughest member of the crew.
• Baritone of Strength: Beau Billingslea gives Jet a rough and deep voice to highlight his Cultured Badass status.
• Big Brother Instinct: He is protective like a Papa Wolf but he also has the playful protectiveness of an older brother as well.
• The Big Guy: He's the biggest and he has a robotic arm.
• Born in the Wrong Century: Part of what makes him seem older than he actually is. And what's more, it's implied that the kind of old-fashioned morality he wants to believe in never really existed in the first place.
• Bounty Hunter: He'll go after anybody, big or small, to pay the bills.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: A musclebound cyborg, but also a cultured, sensitive bonsai enthusiast who has a soft spot for kids and animals.
• The Captain: As he likes to remind the rest of the crew, he is the ship's captain, and thus the one in charge. Spike and Faye don't care.
• Combat Pragmatist: Not a martial arts practitioner like Spike, but he's still able to go toe-to-toe with some pretty nasty characters using his own brutal brand of pugilism; headbutts, bear bottles, sucker punches... anything's fair game in his book.
• Cool Old Guy: There is no doubt that he is the nicest guy in the series.
• Cultured Badass: Loves classic literature, tending bonsai, jazz and the blues. Is also the ship's cook, although how cultured that makes him might be contested by the rest of the crew. Hard to say, though, thanks to the general lack of ingredients on Bebop.
  Jet: Damn, that blues-harp sounds sweet. I knew it would.
  Spike: Heh... I thought you like jazz.
  Jet: Don't be dense. I started wailing the blues when the doctor whacked my bottom on the day I was born.
  Spike: A baby hipster, very cool.
• Dark and Troubled Past: An ex-cop who was known as the "Black Dog" during his time as an officer because of his stubbornness and relentlessness in chasing down suspects. During his days as a cop Jet refused to go on the take or play the game until this finally got him ambushed by a syndicate, and his own partner, resulting in a wound that cost him his arm and made him turn in his badge. Between his wound and his lover Elisa walking out on him some time earlier, Jet decided it was time to move on and try his luck in other parts of the solar system, leading him to purchase the Bebop (and name it after his longtime love of jazz music), becoming a freelance bounty hunter and forming a partnership with Spike.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being an intimidating, musclebound, angular, hairy, bald, cybernetically enhanced ex-cop whose name is Jet Black, he's a genuinely heroic, selfless sort who only left the force because he was too incorruptible for the increasingly murky world of future law enforcement. For reference, lovable goofball Spike is a former yakuza enforcer, and despite her sunny choice of wardrobe Faye was, and is, a con artist and thief.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Ganymede Elegy", "Black Dog Serenade", and "Boogie-Woogie Feng Shui" all explore different aspects of his past.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not as much as Spike or Faye, but he gets a few one-liners in.
• Determinator: To say Jet is relentless would be an understatement, when you're his target he will not stop until he catches you. He even says as much himself — see the quote at the top of this entry.
• Do Not Go Gentle: One of the major bones of contention between him and Spike is the latter's fatalism, unusual in The Hero: Spike often speaks of the things he "must" do, the way in which his life feels like a dream, out of his control. Every time it happens, we see the normally stoic Jet go off on a tirade, trying to talk Spike away from the ledge.
  Jet: A man injures his leg during a hunt. He's in the middle of the savanna. No means to treat the wound. The leg rots and death approaches. Last minute, he's picked up by an airplane. He looks down and sees a land of pure white below him, glistening in the light. It's the summit of a snow-capped mountain. The mountain is Kilimanjaro. As he gazes down, he feels the life flowing out of him and then, he thinks, "That's where I was headed."
  Spike: ..And?
  Jet: I hate stories like that. Men only think of their past right before their death, as if they were searching frantically for proof that they were alive.
• Establishing Character Moment: Despite his musclebound frame, Jet is a thinker and an observer. When the two goons show up in the shot-up bar in the first episode, Jet hides behind the counter and gets the drop on them — then threatens one of them with a broken bottle while squeezing him with his metal arm, showing that he's not afraid to get his hands dirty or fall back on his intimidating appearance, either.
• Foil: He looks brutal and dangerous, but he's actually a teddy bear and By-the-Book Cop under the surface. It's actually the seemingly goofy, lazy, lunkheaded Spike you'd really have to watch out for in a fight.
• Genius Bruiser: Badass and the wisest member of the Bebop crew. He fixes their gear, gathers bounty information and is the only one with a sense for money and supplies.
• Gentle Giant: To some extent. As big and gruff as he looks, he's mostly a Nice Guy underneath.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Jet has a large vertical scar running above his right eye.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Played entirely straight. It might have started out just as a way of getting under Spike's skin, but Jet comes to realize he was happy having a dog to take care of.
• Hidden Depths: Explored in "Ganymede Elegy" where he reflects on his past as a cop.
• Honor Before Reason: He manages to make this a Reconstruction. He has a strong moral code, but it has cost him, mainly his career as a police detective (since he refused to become a Dirty Cop for the syndicate and was betrayed by his partner). It also drew a wedge between him and his lover (she grew to resent how he always seem to know better and thus, felt she had no real freedom since all she had to do was listen to him.) Despite this, he remains through and true on his path. On the other hand, his devotion to his code has spared him from worse fates. His partner regrets betraying Jet because he's a good man and the syndicates are slowly dying out anyway (by the end of the series, the biggest one of Mars is pretty much gone.) Additionally, his ex-lover and her new beau end up in trouble that Jet manages to help them get out of (namely, that by catching the man, he is able to dictate the terms, such as the fact that his crime of murder was self-defense, instead of leaving him and possibly her at the hands of a less scrupulous bounty hunter.) In the long run, being a good man has its advantages.
• Ironic Name: "Jet Black" is more of a knight in shining armor at heart, despite appearances and the strange turns his life has taken. He's also comes across as more of a dork than his hulking appearance first suggests.
• Keeping the Handicap: In "Black Dog Serenade", Faye asks him why he doesn't get an organic arm replacement since, in the future of the series, organs can be cultivated and easily replace missing limbs. However Jet opts for the artificial one, largely as a reminder of the day he lost his real arm via a trap the mob and his partner, Fad, who was on their dime, lured him into and not to get too careless as he did in the past.
• Knight in Sour Armor: More of the second type. Cynicism born of experience, not by nature. He was a disillusioned cop who decided to turn neutral. Played with in that believes this is more honest than remaining with the police, which should tell you something about the state of law enforcement in 2071.
• The Last DJ: Jet's refusal to turn Dirty Cop or ease up on the syndicates running Ganymede ended with him being ambushed and nearly killed. At the hands of his own partner, who was dirty, no less.
• The Leader: The authority figure on the ship, the one who chooses their missions and decides where the ship is going, though this tends to make him Mission Control and a put-upon Team Dad more it does The Hero.
• May–December Romance: Spike and Faye say he has a crush on Meifa, the daughter of an old colleague of his from when he was a cop. He insists it's a Big Brother Instinct thing — she thinks of him as more of a Cool Uncle at most.
• Mechanical Muscles: His prosthetic arm, and the joints in particular◊ look like more muscular than mechanical.
• Mighty Glacier: He's big and strong and tough but slower than his crewmates.
• Mr. Fixit: Jet is the only one who bothers to do any maintenance on the ships.
• My Greatest Failure: The incident that cost him his left arm. He failed to realize his partner was in league with the Syndicate and walked right into a trap.
• New Old Flame: Elisa. She and Jet were a couple pre-series, back before Jet moved to Mars.
• Nice Guy: Easily the friendliest, most approachable, and heroic of the Bebop gang.
• Not So Stoic: Mostly Anger Born of Worry and being completely at sea when it it comes to women and kids.
• Odd Friendship: He and Spike have completely opposite temperaments — not to mention Jet being a former cop, while Spike used to be a hitman and enforcer for the notorious Red Dragon Syndicate.
• The One That Got Away: Elisa, his old flame from when he still lived on Ganymede. She walked out on him without a word, and he's been hung up on her for years. In "Ganymede Elegy", it turns out his code of honor — his responsibility, his need to do the right thing — made her feel like she never had the freedom to make her own mistakes. Knowing this, he's able to let her go, to wait for her new flame Rhint. We never see any of the woman in his life other than her.
• Only Sane Man: The most levelheaded and responsible member of the crew.
• Our Product Sucks: Contributes a lot of Self-Deprecating Humor in the episode previews.
• Papa Wolf: It doesn't matter which member of the crew it is; he will chase after them and make sure they're safe if they leave or go missing. As the one adult on the Bebop who comes from a relatively stable past, he's incredibly protective of Spike and Faye, who didn't.
• Parental Substitute: As the Team Dad, he takes this role towards Ed most of the time. He was also this for Meifa (though he insists it's Big Brother Instinct).
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Very, very downplayed, but while Jet tends towards being chivalrous and gentle with women, he also voices some questionable opinions about them.
  Jet: Betrayal may come easily to women, but men live by iron-clad codes of honor.
  Jet: Women don't work on reason.
• Punny Name: First name Jet, last name Black.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Calls out Spike and Faye on their reckless behavior and wonders why he bothers with them, but lets them back in every time.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Spike's red; it's an odd case in that despite his louder personality he's more levelheaded and cautious than Spike.
• Red Baron: "The Black Dog".
• The Reliable One: He's the one that keeps the Bebop running and its crew fed.
• Renaissance Man: An ex-detective who knows mechanics, cooking, cultivates bonsai trees, is a decent Shogi player, is knowledgeable about hacking and cyberwarfare (although nowhere as good as Ed or Ein), apparently knows something about geology, and is a fan of both several music genres and classic literature (both eastern and western). He's also not a bad starship pilot on top of it.
• Rugged Scar: Has a scar over his eye and a piece of metal bolted to his face below it.
• Scars Are Forever: He suffered a massive laceration across his right eye that was so deep, he needed a metal brace implanted to keep part of his face from distending.
• Self-Deprecating Humor: Jet, when he's talking to friends his own age. He's more The Comically Serious when he's around the misbehaving children of Bebop's crew.
• Sore Loser: In the movie, he's playing shogi with Spike and spends an extremely long time between moves planning ahead. Spike, by contrast, has no apparent strategy and moves instantly and unpredictably. Without admitting that he doesn't know what to do about the move Spike just made, he starts bitching about Spike's lack of planning until Ein steps in to save him.
• Stealthy Colossus: Would you believe that in a sting operation involving a convenience store shakedown, he's the guy crawling through the vents to get the drop on the distracted perps?
• The Stoic: He's a calm, controlled Zen Survivor in a fight, and a gentlemanly Gentle Giant out of one. He's also, whether he likes it or not, a warm, fatherly sort of figure who's easily tripped up by women. His protective instincts also lend themselves to him doing a lot of yelling.
• The Stoner: Implied. During Cowboy Funk, Jet is shown disguised as a hippy wearing a marijuana t-shirt. On top of that, he often has a dazed look in his eyes when he’s shown smoking.
• Straight Man: Comedy results from his frustration with Spike, Faye and Ed's antics.
• Straw Misogynist: Subverted. He does make some questionable comments about women, but overall Jet treats them with respect. Meifa and Elisa are good examples of this.
• Team Chef: Not a terribly good one (given the ingredients he's forced to work with- he obviously knows how to cook but when all you've got is a basket of shitaki mushrooms or bell peppers, there's only so much you can do), but he's still the Bebop's cook because Spike, Faye and Ed definitely can't.
• Team Dad: Most obvious in his interactions with Ed, where he often takes on a distinctly more parental tone than his usual gruff demeanour. The story he tells her at the beginning of "Speak Like a Child" is the most obvious example, but it crops up in more subtle ways throughout the show.
• Token Good Cop: He used to be a cop with a strong sense of justice and integrity, but unfortunately for him, virtually the entire rest of the force was on the Syndicate's payroll. This led to him getting ambushed by his own partner and losing his arm. Fed up with how things were and his inability to change them on his own, he quit the force to become a bounty hunter.
• Token Good Teammate: Downplayed, as while Spike and Faye aren't necessarily bad people, they have very noticeable vices compared to Jet, who is quite kind and reasonable.
• You Keep Telling Yourself That: Jet wants to believe in honor and justice despite being disappointed time and time again. He's aware of this, but if anything it drives him to hold himself to his principles, if no one else.
  Jet: Betrayal may come easily to women, but men live by ironclad codes of honor.
  Faye: You really believe that?
  Jet: I'm trying to, real hard.
• Younger Than They Look: He's only 36, but has the appearance and demeanor of someone well into his forties. This is acknowledged in more than one episode.
• Zen Survivor: Especially when the fighting breaks out — Jet is cool, focused, and cautious in all the ways Spike is not. Fairly literally, in fact: his whole life basically fell apart after he lost the arm, but he's still practicing bonsai, listening to jazz, taking life one day at a time.

Faye Valentine

Faye Valentine

Voiced by: Megumi Hayashibara (JPN), Wendee Lee (ENG), Elsa Covián (SPN-LA), Carmen Ambrós (SPN-SP), Yolanda Quesada (SPN-SP, movie)

"Some promises are meant to be broken. In fact, most of them are!"

The first person to join Spike and Jet on the Bebop, unless we're counting Ein. Spike and Jet first encountered Faye when she was working as part of a smuggling operation at a casino, posing as a dealer. Her job was to make it look legit when her contact would slide her a very special poker chip, but unfortunately there was a mix up when she mistook Spike for her contact, and hilarity quickly ensued. Sometime later in the following episode Faye became a permanent part of the Bebop crew, despite much grumbling from both Spike and Jet.

Faye always approaches the world from an angle: she believes the world and other people are out to hurt, use and exploit you, so it's best if you do it to them first. Anything can be an advantage, and everything must be made so, including cunning, trickery, abusing the trust of others, her sexy good looks, and when all else fails, a ship loaded with machine guns and missiles. Despite her preference for deception, in a straight-up fight Faye is quite competent, being a capable pilot, markswoman, and even her punch packs a wallop despite her slim frame. Her background is mysterious, and when pressed for answers about it she simply throws out one story after another, each more improbable than the last, and one wonders if she even knows what she's saying. When not taking down bounties, she tends to waste all her money gambling in an effort to get rich quick and pay off her enormous debts, as mysterious in origin as anything else about her. However, it's easy to see that Faye has led a sad life and been reduced to broken pieces that she's desperately trying to hold together.

---

• Ace Pilot: Probably second only to Spike, and even then she's managed to get the better of him on occasion.
• Action Girl: While she isn’t as action packed as Spike, Faye has been shown a few times she can handle things on her own despite her looks. She is introduced in a gunfight and demonstrates cool under fire throughout the series — at least when things are going according to plan. While she's an Ace Pilot and sharpshooter no matter what, she tends to get a little hysterical in the face of the unexpected — interestingly, this is especially the case when she's forced to act in the interest of others, such as when they're trying to save Ganymede from an incoming missile attack, the similar situation with Vincent's bombs in the movie, and when she's trying to save Whitney from the cops, over his protests. She also is pretty good in a physical fight, kicking the ass of a thug on Callisto until Gren pulls her away from the mob. With her reaction toward the group of thugs she encountered on Callisto, it’s implied she has no problem taking on a crowd.
• Amnesiac Hero: Turns out she has a touch of amnesia about her history prior to waking up after being frozen for decades. She's trying to find out who she is and where she came from. She eventually regains her memory and goes to find her home, only to find that there's nothing left of it.
• Bathing Beauty: She loves showering and soaking in a bath. Many episodes feature Faye in - or just coming out of - the tub, or her Sexy Silhouette showering behind a curtain. When she first pushes her way onto the Bebop crew, the first thing she does is hit the shower. Spike tiredly walks in after her moments later with the intent of telling her she isn't welcome - only for us to hear her opening fire on him for the intrusion.
• Big Eater: She demolished the contents of Spike and Jet's fridge in "Gateway Shuffle". This also happens in "My Funny Valentine" when she wakes up from being in stasis for over fifty years.
• Broken Bird: A Fish out of Temporal Water ...who's scammed and heartbroken immediately after waking up. Her Dark and Troubled Past all but wiped out her faith in humanity.
• The Bus Came Back: Very quickly. She stays on Earth at the end of Session 24, effectively leaving the crew at the same time as Ed and Ein, but she returns and rejoins the crew over the course of the final two episodes.
• Byronic Heroine: For beginners, she's a con artist, selfish, impulsive, self-centered, rude and manipulative. She's also lonely, heartbroken, wounded, and desperately searching for her place in the universe.
• Card Sharp: Uses the alias "Poker Alice" — which is a lie, the real Poker Alice would be about 200 years old — but she's skilled at dealing, and cheating, with cards.
• Character Development: Wait for it... While the main recurring theme of the show is coming to terms with the past, Faye comes the furthest and changes the most by the end of the series, although it probably takes the longest for those changes to become noticeable. She's spent years on the run from a past she doesn't even remember, and it takes seeing her past self speaking to her to begin to reclaim her humanity.
• Con Man: She makes ends meet by tricking them out of other people. Like what happened to her when she woke up in the current time period.
• Combat Pragmatist: Faye does whatever is necessary to make it out alive. Her first appearance has her hiding a machine gun in groceries before opening fire on gangsters from inside a shop.
• Cool Big Sis: Edward sees her as her best buddy next to Ein. Although it takes a while, Faye eventually warms up to her.
• Crying Wolf: She lies, cheats, and steals constantly, so Spike and Jet are prepared to always believe the worst of her. Spike won't even put it past her to lie about her past even if she thought the only person she was telling is Ein.
• Cryo Sickness: She was killed by explosive decompression during the Gate Disaster, and frozen until medicine caught up with it. She's thawed-out amnesiac, with only her creditor's word for it that she's named "Faye Valentine" at all.
• Damsel in Distress: She gets captured and tied up more than once.
• Decoy Backstory: The first time Faye appears, in "Honky Tonk Woman", she claims to be a Romani. Later episodes will show a very different background for her: she grew up on Earth and was made a Human Popsicle before the Lunar Hypergate exploded and caused Apocalypse How.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: She pours on the sugar when she wants something, but it's a transparent act for a calculating career con. Fitting, since she's also a Human Popsicle. It's a defense mechanism, however, and she gradually begins to realize she actually has found a group of people she can trust. Too little too late, however, given how the series eventually ends.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Unsurprisingly, given her inability to trust anyone. Eventually it turns out that Faye was actually born in the 20th century. In her late teens she barely survived an accident (that by all appearances took the lives of her parents) and was cryogenically frozen until being revived more than 50 years later. After waking up with no memories or knowledge of who, where and when she was, she was tricked into assuming the massive debts (which, she admits, were little more than a drop in the bucket compared to her own truly massive health-care bill) of her supposed savior, a con man she had begun to fall for.
• A Day in the Limelight: Introduced in "Honky Tonk Women". "My Funny Valentine", "Speak Like a Child", and "Hard Luck Woman" explore her backstory.
• Deadpan Snarker: She can go toe-to-toe with Spike in this department.
• Did Not Get The Guy: Her Unresolved Sexual Tension with Spike stays that way; the last shot of Faye is her on the verge of tears as Spike flies off.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Her outfit is deliberately chosen to invoke this, to aid in her con artistry.
• Dude Magnet: And she knows it. She draws tons of male attention nearly wherever she goes. This is ironic considering her past or that it doesn't help her with Spike.
• Establishing Character Moment: Flaunts her body in front of an old shopkeeper shortly before a small army of gangsters drive up on the place, then pulls out a submachine gun and shoots the shop and car to pieces... which looks flashy and intimidating, but doesn't actually get her out of the mess she's in.
• Eye Twitch: "Wild Horses" and "Pierrot le Fou", in the wake of her Negated Moments of Awesome, and in "Hard Luck Woman", when she learns Ed led her to the orphanage just to get some good food.
• The Face: Faye is the traditional variety; she plays up her feminine charm and is certainly more social than the others.
• Feet-First Introduction: In her trademark white boots.
• Femme Fatale: Has a few moments. Her initial relations with Jet and Spike were rough because of it.
• Fling a Light into the Future: A betamax cassette, of all things, ends up having a significant impact on Faye's entire sense of self since it's a recording of herself she put in a time capsule back in high school which has been floating around the solar system for decades.
  Teenage Faye: [on recording] In your time, I'm no longer here. But I am here today, and I'll always be cheering for you right here. Cheering for you, my only self.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Eventually comes into play when her backstory is revealed. She was frozen for 54 years and woke up in the main narrative. She fails to properly identify several basic appliances just after being unfrozen. Later, she regains the memories of her past life and tries to go back home. After more than half a century. Yeah, it doesn't go well.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: She accentuates her voluptuous figure with a skin-tight top, short shorts, and Zettai Ryouiki.
• Fragile Speedster: Leaner and faster than the others but also more fragile.
• Had to Be Sharp: She tends to act this way, what with her massive debts and life of crime. Not without reason, given that she was thrown into a future she didn't understand, watched the only person she knew die in front of her, and left alone in insurmountable debt with no memories or close ties. It takes most of the series for her to be able to start trusting others again.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: A tough-talking compulsive gambler.
• Head-Turning Beauty: She often turns heads in a new area.
• Heartbroken Badass: His name was Whitney. She fell in love with the lawyer who explained her situation to her when she woke up from cryosleep... who saddled her with his own debts after dying in a car wreck... except, as it later turns out, he wasn't a lawyer, and he wasn't dead. He was a con artist who faked his death and only woke her up to trick her into assuming his own massive debt. Although, as Faye herself eventually realizes, his debts were nothing compared to the debt she already possessed from her decades in suspended animation. She eventually becomes philosophical about it.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Conspicuously averted. How you know Faye's not a very nice person: she can't be guilted into feeding Ein, even when she's eating a can of his (dog) food right in front of him. How you know she's not all bad: Ein still kind of likes her anyway.
• Heroic BSoD: When she sees her old home in Singapore has been razed down to the foundations, all she can do is lie down in the middle of the rubble and stare up at the sky with tears in her eyes.
• "Hey, You!" Haymaker: The first-person shot of Faye throwing the punch that knocks out Teddy Bomber is one of the most iconic shots of the entire series, almost guaranteed to show up in any trailer or syndication ad at some point.
• Hidden Depths: She has a surprisingly tragic past. The plucky schoolgirl who sends a video time capsule to her future self is basically unrecognizable to the Faye of the present, but seeing that recording is what allows her to finally start opening up again after years of walling herself off. Too bad it's just in time for Ed and Ein to leave the ship, followed shortly by Spike going off to his almost-certain death against Vicious.
• Holiday Motif: Her name hints at her troubled past which included betrayal and heartbreak. However, it isn't her real name. The doctor responsible for waking her from cryosleep named her after his favorite song, "My Funny Valentine." Except that this too turns out to be a lie, as she eventually regains enough of her memories to return to her home on Earth and encounters a childhood friend who's now an old woman that barely remembers her.
• Human Popsicle: Fitting, because she's also a Defrosting Ice Queen. She spent decades frozen after being involved in an accident aboard what appears to have been a commercial space shuttle.
• Hypocritical Humor: Frequently, as part of being an every-woman-for-herself career con artist.
  • When she says she needs greater creature comforts because she's used to the finer things in life:
    Faye: We girls are different. We have to be pampered because we're delicate and refined. [wolfs down an entire can of dog food in seconds]
  • She claims to be a tough, independent woman, but when she thinks she's dying after being bitten by the monster in "Toys In The Attic", or any other time when she's lost the upper hand and can't lie, shoot, sneak, run, or shoot her way out, she resorts to Inelegant Blubbering.
    Faye: I haven't committed any crimes... Well, at least no really bad ones... [sobbing] I'm still young and full of life! [throws herself on the floor] Life is so unfair! Poor me!
• In Harm's Way: Natch. At one point, she gleefully prepares to fight against a pack of would-be rapists by asking for some time to put her gloves on. A brawl's no reason to ruin a perfectly good manicure. Granted, she was drunk at the time, but still.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: When Faye is serious, she's a great shot who can disarm a whole room of men in a few seconds.
• Irony: When Faye finally recovers her memories upon seeing the neighborhood she grew up in, the audience finds that Faye's family was actually considerably wealthy, as evident by the gated walls that enclosed a massive now-empty lot that used to be her home. The Gate Accident literally took everything away from her, and learning that she used to be rich after all her efforts to deal with a massive financial debt that she will never truly be able to pay off is only rubbing salt into the wound.
• It's All About Me: In the episode Toys In The Attic, Faye's internal monologue regards a Social Darwinist philosophy of deceive or get deceived and those foolish enough to get suckered have it coming. But the second she's attacked by the mysterious creature, Faye breaks down in self pity crying how unfair it is and that she hadn't done anything to deserve it.
• I Work Alone: Or so she wants to think; she's actually desperate for companionship.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Beneath the scheming and bitterness there's a pretty Nice Girl.
• Leg Focus: Our introduction to her involves a slow pan over them.
• Male Gaze: Whenever she is onscreen, pretty much, with extra emphasis on her long legs.
• Mukokuseki: While the entire cast fits this (seriously, claim Spike is Jewish in a fan forum and stand back), Faye is the most prominent. Early on as part of a con she claims to be Roma, an ethnic group from Europe and the Middle East. Later on, however, it's revealed that she's actually from Singapore and most likely ethnically Chinese.
• More Dakka: Her ship, the Red Tail, is easily the most heavily armed, especially for its size, outfitted with homing missiles and dual miniguns. In her introduction, she empties a submachine gun at the gangsters chasing her, tearing a herbal remedy shop to pieces in the process.
• Ms. Fanservice: Had a sunbathing episode along with being Stripperific. Notably, she does this intentionally and In-Universe, since it helps her take people off their guard.
• Multiple-Choice Past: At first. One of Faye's early lies about herself is that she's Roma. The place she thinks might be her home is apparently Singapore, given the Merlion statue.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: She has her moments when she wears outfits with plunging necklines that reach her midriff.
• The Nicknamer: She calls Gren "Mr. Saxophone."
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When she finally remembers her childhood home while taking a shower, she emerges in a daze and is almost speechless. When Spike bumps into her, she is barely able to string a sentence together and quickly bolts instead of making one of her typical snarky or rude comments. Spike himself almost instantly realizes that something is up.
• Older Than They Look: Technically true, as she has been cryogenically frozen for at least 50 years and still looks 23.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Faye Valentine isn't her real name. Or is it? The crooked doctor who awakened her claims to have given her a false name, but he may have just been a jerk. It seems possible "Faye", at least, may be her real name since two 50 year old packages addressed to her are delivered to the Bebop (COD, no less) and a elderly woman who claims to be a high school classmate addresses her as Faye.
• Pet the Dog: Faye, who is presented as far less heroic than Jet and Spike, has a tendency to do this later on in the series.
• Pimped-Out Dress: She wears one to the masquerade ball in "Cowboy Funk" which also features ridiculous amounts of cleavage.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: She pleads this to Spike in the Grand Finale before he flies off to get his revenge on Vicious. It doesn't work.
• Plucky Girl: Decidedly not Faye in the present, but back in high school, the sweet girl Faye used to be made a cheer to her future self on camera, complete with pompoms.
• Pragmatic Hero: She lies, schemes and manipulates, but is a good person deep down.
• Pretty Freeloaders: Subverted. Jet gives her a bill. Then double subverted because she doesn't pay it.
• Quest for Identity: She wants to learn about her real identity and past.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: She has pale skin and dark purple hair, although it's probably meant to be black. She's also not adverse to using her good looks to lower men's guards down before she shows what she can do.
• Roguish Romani: She uses her beauty to aid in her con artistry. Her false claim of Romani descent invokes the seductive and dishonest Romani stereotypes.
• Sci-Fi Bob Haircut: Her hairstyle. It's also purple, for some reason.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Her overall character arc is one really. Over the course of the show, she is trying to learn more about her history that she cannot remember, at one point even receiving a tape that she recorded as a teenager. At the end, she finds her hometown on earth, but only one of her friends is apparently still alive, and she's a very old lady, and Faye's house has been completely demolished, leaving nothing left for her on earth. And THEN Ed and Ein leave the crew and Spike goes off to his (possible) death, leaving Faye with basically no one save for Jet, whom she doesn't really connect with, after deciding she has to live for the present. To rub salt in the wound, Spike told her there was nothing to be gained in the past even though he cannot let go of his own.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Faye is already very beautiful and the Ms. Fanservice in the series, but in "Cowboy Funk", she wears a Pimped-Out Dress with a lot of cleavage shown.
• Ship Tease: With Spike, who she has feelings for. Word of God teasing the subject helps.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Her ship, Red Tail, is the most heavily armed of the three, and she's been known to point the onboard cannons at people's heads.
• The Social Darwinist: Likes to pretend she's this, which of course flies in the face of her gambling habit.
  Faye: [narrating] Survival of the fittest is the law of nature. We deceive, or we are deceived. Thus, we flourish or perish.
• Stock Phrases: Faye often resorts to speaking in clichés, since her lost memory means she has a very weak sense of her own personality, and most of the memories she does have are bad ones.
  • Her narration in the Post-Episode Trailer previewing her introductory episode, "Honky Tonk Women", for example:
    Faye: Show no mercy, for when it comes to high rollers, that's the way the game is played. The bell tolls even for the great ones, for they too must fall one day. Money makes the world go round, but before you know it, you can be buried under a mountain of debt.
  • Contrast with her voiceover for "My Funny Valentine", accompanied by Spike and Jet's hilariously unbelieving reactions. Sad but funny: the story she tells in the next episode turns out to be the unvarnished truth... but only because she thought the only one she was telling was Ein.
    Faye: [emphatically] Love is to believe in everything! Love is the heart that gives to all! Love is the heart that accepts everything! Whitney, you love me that much...
    Jet: [scoffing] You really can't trust the previews on this one.
  • Her final narration is her repeating a series of tautologies ("The past is the past, the future is the future, the present is the present, I am who I am...") as a kind of Survival Mantra, because in the next (and final) episode, Spike goes off to what is likely to be his death, leaving Faye alone, or so she thinks, all over again.
• Stripperific: Hotpants, a cleavage heavy top, Stocking Filler, and a shawl; that's it.
• Too Clever by Half: Faye might be one hell of a smooth talker and is good at thinking on her feet, but her tendency to overestimate her own competence and act before she thinks often gets her into situations where she finds herself in way over her head.
• Tsundere: Great at charming men she doesn't actually care about. Usually a jerk to anyone who tries to get close to her, but she starts to care about Spike in spite of herself as early as "Ballad of Fallen Angels".
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Spike, probably because he's never shown much interest in her charms.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: In "Speak Like a Child", everyone (including Faye) watches, dumbfounded, at the video message left by her bubbly, innocent, slightly awkward younger self.
• Vague Age: She's actually only twenty-three (biologically, that is — chronologically, she was born over seventy years ago). With her jaded, been there, done that attitude and (occasional) sophistication she comes across as at least thirty. Jet errs on the older side, and gets a high heel jammed into his foot for his trouble.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Just how does Faye conceal a full-sized handgun in that skimpy outfit?
• You Can't Go Home Again: She does eventually find her old home, but it's been in ruins for decades, razed down to the foundations. She also encounters one of her childhood friends, now an old woman, who still vaguely remembers her from before her accident.

Radical Ed

Edward "Radical Ed" Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV (possible real name: Françoise Appledelhi)

Voiced by: Aoi Tada (JPN), Melissa Fahn (ENG), Isabel Martiñón (SPN-LA), Diana de Guzmán (SPN-SP), Inma Gallego (SPN-SP, movie)

"Ed will introduce Ed. Full name — Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky the 4th... Ed made up that name for Ed, isn't it cooool?"

Oh Ed, Ed, Ed... where to even start with Ed? Ed is probably the system's foremost hacker, and is not shy about using her talents to cause mischief. Those who meet her in person would be justified to think she's a monkey in human form because she's insanely wacky and ceaselessly energetic. All that prowess comes from a rambunctious goofball who shows up to the party in aviator goggles, a very loose-fitting tank top, and violet compression shorts. Ed prefers to run around in bare feet, mostly just for fun, but also because her toes are just as dexterous at a keyboard as her fingers and she can make good use of all twenty digits to outpace just about any other hackers she might bump into.

A 13-year-old demented genius, Ed was living alone on Earth and occasionally being hunted by the police when she first encountered the Bebop crew. The crew was chasing a bounty in a case where someone was believed to have hacked into an old Kill Sat and started using it to carve designs into the planet. Naturally, Ed was the prime suspect, but since Ed was aware of the Bebop crew and was a fan of theirs (oddly enough, since the crew manages to blow every bounty and live in Perpetual Poverty because of it), she let them in on a secret: the real perpetrator was the satellite itself, whose program had a degree of awareness, a fact that Ed had recently discovered. In return for this information and helping them deal with the rogue satellite, Ed only asked to become a member of the Bebop crew, a proposition Faye agreed to without telling anyone and later tried to back out on. Unfortunately for Faye, hacking the Bebop's computer, controlling it by remote, and getting it to land where she wants is not exactly a difficult task for Ed.

After this Ed's legendary computer skills would be at the disposal of the Bebop crew, and it would come in handy in several cases. Ed would also get her day in the limelight during the show's Mushroom Samba episode.

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• Ambiguously Brown: We know nothing for certain about Ed's racial background, and she is a coppery skinned redhead. Given her father's name, it's implied she might be Turkish.
• Ambiguously Human: In an interview with IGN, Shinichiro Watanabe said he sometimes wonders if Ed isn't human and thinks she might be from outer space.
• Animal Motifs: Orangutans. She has long, lanky arms, frequently climbs randomly onto things, and engage in several other common behaviors from them such as using her feet like they're hands, wearing random items as hats and doing random cartwheels, and she has red hair to top it off
• Barefoot Loon: A really quirky teenage genius Playful Hacker girl with a prominent aversion to shoes. The only time she puts on socks, she quickly loses balance and falls.
• Beware the Silly Ones: She's childish, extremely eccentric, and provides the show with a lot of comic relief, but underestimating her is a mistake, no matter how flighty she may seem.
• Big Eater: Oh boy, she can eat ANYTHING without getting fat.
• Blush Sticker: She has this permanently.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: A truly odd child with spectacular hacking skills.
• But Now I Must Go: Leaves the Bebop for good in "Hard Luck Woman", ostensibly to catch up with her father, but who really knows with Ed. Ein goes with her.
• Captain Crash: Manages to crash the Bebop and at at least one other ship by remote control — but without much more than superficial damage in the Bebop's case, as a subversion. She also manages to have the ship crash precisely where she wants it, to within inches of herself and later within inches of her father.
• Characterization Marches On: In her introductory episode, she is noticeably much more talkative and intelligible than in the rest of the series, as well as definitely more proactive. In contrast, most of her time in the Bebop is spent not doing anything useful unless explicitly asked and only communicating through brief non-sequiturs. This doesn't change even in her last episode.
• Cheerful Child: Perpetually upbeat in contrast to the jaded adults on the ship.
• Child Prodigy: She can outhack people literally twice her age, and is implied to have been at it for at least few years.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: She pretends to be a dog, says random things, and carves massive smiley faces on land masses using orbital lasers.
• Cloudcuckoolanguage: Has very weird speech patterns, and refers to herself in the third person.
• Confusion Fu: Half the time, people are just too baffled by her to even fight back:
  Ed: Alright, hit-and-run driver! This is a bust! [raises two water pistols] Stinky gas!
• Cute Clumsy Girl: She's not the most graceful lady and she's especially a klutz when she puts on socks.
• The Cutie: Quirky tendencies aside, she is an adorable girl with a sweet heart.
• A Day in the Limelight: Has three: her introductory episode, "Jamming With Edward", "Mushroom Samba", and "Hard Luck Woman, where she leaves the crew with Ein.
• Depending on the Artist: Becomes The Noseless in most non-profile shots in the Nakamura Pro-animated episodes. The other animators seem to have no clear idea about her nose either, as it changes shape between episodes otherwise.
• Drugs Are Bad: Ed learns a valuable lesson, after dosing the rest of the crew.
  Ed: Bad mushrooms?
• Dub Name Change: Zig-zagged. The Spanish dub of the series addresses her as both "Eddo" (like the Japanese pronunciation) and "Ed", though seemingly as if the former was her real nickname and the latter an affectionate shortened form given by her crewmates.
• Establishing Character Moment: Gives a delightfully eccentric introduction to herself in the preview from the previous episode. In her introductory episode proper, she manages to hack a police shuttle, piloting it by remote control... before crashing it through an abandoned building.
• Feet-First Introduction: To help point out that she's barefoot on arrival.
• Fiery Redhead: Averted. The closest she gets to 'fiery' is 'perky'.
• The Fool: Ed is insanely lucky and acts like nothing dangerous or fatal will ever happen to her. She has yet to be proven wrong.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: She wears skintight shorts, though since she's a child, they're not played for fanservice - instead, they serve to emphasize her cartoonishly lanky, noodly silhouette.
• Free-Range Children: About as free-range as you can get. She spent time with other stray children in an orphanage, but that's as fixed as her abode's ever been. And it wasn't that fixed.
• Gender-Blender Name: Edward is a man's name, but she's a girl. This is of probably of her own choosing, as seen in Only Known by Their Nickname.
• Gender Reveal: Faye is heard when she discovers Ed is a girl at the end of her introductory episode, but we don't get to see how or why she found it out.
• Genius Ditz: You'd never guess this crazy little girl is an expert hacker.
• Genki Girl: Nothing (from the few things that ever get close enough to do some damage) gets her down. The girl has so much high energy.
• A Girl and Her X: A girl and her unusually clever dog.
• Given Name Reveal: Zig-Zagged. Her father calls her Françoise in "Hard Luck Woman", but had earlier been established to be seemingly incapable of remembering names, so it's left ambiguous whether it's her real name or not.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: She uses them to surf the web.
• Hackette: When asked about her, everyone had a different idea on who she was, from a Hindu guru to a drag queen alien.
• Handy Feet: She can type with her toes. Hell, she even claps her feet a few times.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Instantly becomes BFFs with Team Pet Ein.
• Journey to Find Oneself: Ed and Faye simultaneously begin closing in on chasing down their pasts, in Ed's case partly through Faye's encouragement that finding the place where you belong is the best thing a person can do. To that end Ed posts a fake bounty on her ditzy father, but he abandons her once again. Ed then leaves the Bebop, wandering off into the sunset accompanied only by Ein to find him again.
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: To the point that when she finally dresses like a girl, she looks like she's crossdressing. Even her father has trouble remembering her gender.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Wacky and goofy though she may be, she and Ein manage to catch a drug kingpin on Europa by themselves. It's only through them needing food a lot more than money that she chooses to let him go in exchange for (harmless) mushrooms.
• Loon with a Heart of Gold: Sure, it's buried underneath numerous layers of comical craziness, but deep down Ed is a very sweet and caring girl.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Not as noticeable as other examples, but while most characters in the show have realistic hair colors and facial features, Ed has a wild head of fiery red hair, permanent Blush Stickers, big, expressive anime eyes, and is sometimes drawn without a nose, Depending on the Artist, and it's likely she's designed this way to accentuate her oddness compared to everyone else. Even the green shading in Spike's hair and the blue in Faye's are dark enough to appear black (or in Spike's case, more of a grayish black) in some scenes, and might even be that color In-Universe.
• No Social Skills: Most of Ed's childhood was spent either alone or at the orphanage where she sometimes stayed. As a result, she is socially awkward and sometimes comes across as feral.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Ed finally drops her cutesy act trying to convince Ein not to follow when she leaves.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV is her screen name. Her father calls her Françoise, possibly making her real name Françoise Appledehli. Given her father's established inability to remember names, it should be taken with a grain of salt.
• Overly Long Name: Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV. Assuming for a moment it is her real name, Françoise Appledelhi isn't exactly short either.
• Parental Abandonment: Her father good-naturedly and absentmindedly abandoned her years before. (Well, maybe more like left her with someone and half-forgot that she ever existed). The two briefly reunite, but Ed hesitates at joining him, and good old dad starts running off again.
• Playful Hacker: Hacking satellites to carve smiley faces or crash someone's ship.
• The Quiet One: After Characterization Marches On, she alternates between this and The Unintelligible, speaking very little and only doing so through nonsensical short sentences.
• The Reliable One: Yes, really. When you look at her actions throughout the show, she never abandons the Bebop unless she is assigned to do something until she leaves for good. She is always using her skills to help the crew and never wants more than a souvenir for her efforts. She will even help them without being asked; for instance when Spike first told the crew about Andy, everyone laughed at him except for Ed who looked him up to prove he was real. And in the movie, after Faye loses sight of a bounty, she searches through the entire city to find him (and does).
• Rhymes on a Dime: Cheerful chanting is one of her many forms of communication.
• Riding into the Sunset: It is a western, of sorts, after all. Ed gets her chance to pull this off along with Ein at the end of "Hard Luck Woman", when they leave the Bebop together after Ed decides it's time for her to move along.
• Samus Is a Girl: Not just a girl but a thirteen-year-old Child Prodigy.
• She's a Man in Japan: The Spanish dub of the movie managed to mistake her for a boy (or at least she's called by male pronouns) despite Ed herself saying outright she's a girl in a scene. Apparently the translators thought it was just one of "his" shenanigans.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: She departs the crew with Ein in tow just in time for the tragic finale.
• Shrouded in Myth: Based on the word on the street, Jet can be forgiven for gathering the following in his investigations:
  Jet: [sarcastically] Radical Edward's profile: he's a seven-foot-tall ex-basketball pro Hindu guru drag queen alien.
• Sigil Spam: Her symbol; a cheeky smiley face with Blush Stickers just like her, which she has on her hacking equipment and in her programs, and which she also sends as a playful taunt to anyone who falls victim to her hacks.
• Silly Walk: One for every occasion. Skipping, waving her arms, doing handstands, crawling on all fours, holding onto her ankles and rolling continuously, just try and find a shot of her walking quote-unquote "normally."
• Some Call Me "Tim": Her full name (which she made up) is extremely long, so she tells people to simply call her Ed.
• Squishy Wizard: Subverted. Ed is not a physical fighter, but she is far from being unathletic either, as she routinely does handwalks and other relatively complex acrobatics.
• The Smart Girl: Secondary to the Data Dog.
• Tagalong Kid: Serves as one on the Bebop. Seriously, this was her condition for helping the crew in her debut episode; Faye had to promise to let her tagalong on their future adventures.
• Third-Person Person: She refers to herself in third person.
• Token Good Teammate: She's easily the least gruff and lethal member of the Bebop, considering that she's only ever gone hunting for a bounty one time and purely out of survival (the rest of the crew was drugged and all of them were hungry).
• Tomboyish Name: This, along with her androgynous appearance, makes it hard to guess her gender.
• Verbal Tic: Repeating words twice, such as "Faye-Faye", among others.
• Wild Child: Having been abandoned by her father in the wilderness has left in a borderline feral state. She has little idea how to act in proper social situations (and honestly doesn't care that she doesn't), moves around in erratic ways, tends to act like a dog, and before encountering the Bebop crew, seemed to spend most of her time wandering around aimlessly

Ein

Ein

Voiced by: Kōichi Yamadera

"I hate kids and pets. They’re all a royal pain in the butt!"

— Spike

Encountered in the second episode, Ein is a genetically engineered "data dog". Initially Ein was just supposed to be bait to catch the episode's bounty, but eventually, much to Spike's chagrin, Jet and Spike wound up keeping the corgi around the ship after the hunt didn't quite work out. Exactly what a data dog is goes unexplained, but Ein certainly has greater than normal intelligence for a dog. It's hinted that Ein has a full understanding of the human languages and world around him, and may in fact be the smartest member of the crew. Ein becomes closest to Ed, and they become the go-to comedic duo of the series.

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• But Now I Must Go: Leaves the Bebop with Ed an episode before the finale, in "Hard Luck Woman".
• Dub Name Change: For some incomprehensible reason, the Spanish dub of the anime (though not the one of the movie) changed his name to Strut, just like his introductory episode's title.
• Even the Rats Won't Touch It: He shares Spike's distaste for Jet's cooking, and would prefer to be fed regular dog food.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Frequently, such as sniffing out the presence of the monster in "Toy in the Attic".
  • He also growls at the SCRATCH assimilation software in Brain Scratch, and even bites Jet, hard enough to draw blood, to snap him out of the trance.
• Fun with Subtitles: In "Mushroom Samba," Ein talks to a cow.
• Heroic Dog: He saves the crew a few times and has considerable intelligence for what appears to be a simple dog.
• Intellectual Animal: It's never explained just how intelligent he is, but he's definitely smarter than the average dog, and probably smarter than everyone else on the Bebop. He hacks Scratch when Ed couldn't.
• Loyal Animal Companion: Mostly to Ed.
• Meaningful Name: A twofer! Ein means "One" in German, which may be an indicator of his experiment number. It is also a diminutive of Einstein, which certainly applies to his intelligence.
• Not Now, Kiddo: The crew of the Bebop could probably spare themselves a lot of trouble if they paid more attention to the dog. In their defense, they have little clue on what Ein is regarding being a "data dog" and even less of an idea of what that entails.
• Precious Puppy: Is the one of the most adorable puts to come from an animated tv series.
• Riding into the Sunset: Along with Ed at the end of "Hard Luck Woman", when Ed leaves without so much as a goodbye, Ein is the only one who realizes at the time that she's leaving for good, and manages to persuade her to take him along just in time to Shoo Out the Clowns ahead of "The Real Folk Blues".
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: An adorable Welsh Corgi.
• The Smart Guy: Ed tried to use the Bebop's computer to hack into the Brain Dream and failed. Ein managed to do it in mere moments after putting the interactive helmet on his head.
• Super-Intelligence: Once given a computer interface he's able to use, Ein's is able to vastly exceed even Ed's hacking abilities, suggesting intelligence, or at least computing skills, far beyond what any human is capable of.
• Team Pet: A dog sort of adopted by the crew. He mostly serves as a vehicle for Animal Reaction Shots, though he does get one notable chance to help the team out near the end of the series.
• Wetware CPU: He was stated to be genetically engineered to be a "data dog", which seems to be some sort of biological supercomputer. He is shown to be much more intelligent than the average dog and even the most intelligent member of the Bebop. Further supporting this is how after hours of trying, Ed was unable to hack the SCRATCH software despite her vast intelligence. Ein hacked into it within moments of having the helmet on him.

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