Gren Quotes

2 quotes from Cowboy Bebop, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.

One session's worth of screen time, spent largely on somebody else's memory. The show's habit in miniature: the people it kills get a taste of resolution and never the thing itself.

Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.

“I get it now. You're the one, aren't you? You're Spike. Julia was always talking about you. Your eyes are different colors. I remember her saying that. Said you get a strange feeling if you keep looking straight into his eyes.”

Julia has not appeared on screen at this point in the series, and this is how she is built: at second hand, by a stranger repeating what she once said about somebody else's eyes. The technique keeps her a rumour for twenty sessions, which is why she works as a destination rather than a character, and why the show can put an entire ending on the far side of her.

Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.

“Right on the corner bar stool. She'd slip in when I wasn't looking. And she'd ask me to play the same song every time she came in. Strange lilting tune, and then she would smile. Ohh, what a smile. So sad... so beautiful.”

A saxophone player describing a regular, in a session that is otherwise about betrayal, war trauma and a body that no longer settles into one sex. Gren gets one flashback's worth of screen time and spends part of it on someone else's memory, which is the show's habit in miniature: the people it kills off are given a taste before they go, and never a resolution.

Read Gren's story from the start

Every line above is a fragment. The manga is where the fragments come from, and the print edition is the one this site checks its quotes against.

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