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| “ | When angels are forced out of Heaven, they become devils. You agree, don't you, Spike? | „ |
| ~ Vicious to Spike in "Ballad of Fallen Angels". |
| “ | The leadership of the Red Dragons has now changed hands. From this time forward, my power is the only power. | „ |
| ~ Vicious taking over the Red Dragons Syndicate. |
| “ | So, you're finally awake... I told you before, Spike. I'm the only one who can kill you and set you free. | „ |
| ~ Vicious' last confrontation with Spike before their final battle. |
Vicious is the main antagonist of the anime series Cowboy Bebop.
Often referred to as a venomous snake, he is an ambitious criminal mastermind who started out as a high-level enforcer for the Red Dragon Crime Syndicate on Mars before later usurping control of the organization as it's new leader. He is also the former best friend-turned-sworn archenemy of Spike Spiegel, with the two having a long and very complicated in which they started out as close companions before becoming bitter enemies after an incident involving a woman named Julia.
He was voiced by Norio Wakamoto in Japanese (who also voiced Cell from Dragon Ball Z, Xemnas from the Kingdom Hearts series, Charles zi Britannia from the Code Geass series, Dracula from Castlevania, Nobunaga Oda from Sengoku Basara, Black Shadow from F-Zero: Legend of Falcon, Alexander Anderson in Hellsing, M. Bison in Street Fighter series, Father Balder in Bayonetta) and Skip Stellrecht in English.
Biography[]
Not much is known about Vicious' past as he is a man shrouded in mystery. However, from what the audience knew about Vicious, he was a partner of the protagonist Spike Spiegel during his tenure as a mercenary of the Red Dragon Crime Syndicate. Despite the two being partners, things changed after both Spike and Vicious fell in love with the same beautiful woman named Julia.
Catching Spike and Julia having an affair with each other, Vicious then forced Julia to make a sadistic choice; either she had to kill Spike or he would personally kill both of them. This resulted in Spike faking his own death and abandoning the syndicate in order to save himself while having his own dark past haunting him until this day.
After Spike left the Syndicate, Vicious then enlisted himself as a soldier to participate in a war around 2068 known as the Titan War. There, he met a soldier named Gren and became friends with him after Gren complimented the musical box Vicious had possessed that made him reminisce about Julia, as if the cold, distant planet and its war-zone were simply the most appropriate climate for grief. Notably, that scene portrays the only suggestion of sentimentality toward Julia that Vicious displays during the series.
Despite their "friendship", after the Titan War, Vicious framed Gren for spying with his own testimony, which raised the possibility that he himself might have been involved in military espionage on behalf of the Syndicate and chose to pin it on his admirer. Because Vicious betrayed Gren during the war by incriminating him, he was given an experimental drug that boosted his estrogen to the point he developed gynecomastia and a vendetta against Vicious until the present day.
Vicious makes his first appearance in the present day during Episode 5 where he was appalled after seeing one of the members of Red Dragon Crime Syndicate who is revealed to be a mentor of both Spike and Vicious, Mao Yenrai, forming a truce with a rival gang, White Tiger. Because of this, Vicious then sabotaged the White Tiger ship which kills the representative of said gang and his own men while also killing Mao and his underlings after the incident, suggesting that Mao has lost his own claws and is not worthy of running the syndicate.
After killing Mao Yenrai, he pinned an uncertain crime on him while putting his dead body in an opera theater in order to lure Spike out of hiding. After finding out that it wasn't Spike who came to the opera theater, but one of his companions, Faye Valentine, instead, Vicious then kidnaps her and takes her into an abandoned cathedral to lure Spike. Finding out about Faye getting kidnapped by Vicious, he went into the abandoned cathedral to save Faye and settle the score with Vicious but he was ambushed by Vicious's henchmen. After the intense duel between the two, Vicious then threw Spike out of the cathedral while Spike retaliated by throwing a grenade at him. Both of them survived the ordeal, but Spike was seriously wounded because of the incident.
Reappearing again in Episode 12, he was tasked by the trio elders of The Red Dragon Syndicate known as "The Van" to send a drug known as Red Eye to planet Callisto because there is a person who requested it, revealed to be none other than his former lover, Julia. During the mission, he was accompanied by one of the Red Dragon Syndicate members, Lin and before they departed, Vicious told Lin that if he needed to survive, Lin had to betray Vicious. However, when Lin refused due to him upholding the honor that he possessed, Vicious was appalled by it.
It is soon revealed that despite Julia staying at Planet Callisto for a while, she had since moved on from said planet, and it was really a trap set by his former admirer, Gren. Encountering his former friend again in the present day, Gren asked Vicious why he betrayed him during the Titan War in the first place despite looking up to and believing in him. Vicious responds by saying that there is nothing to believe in and when Lin sacrifices his life to protect Vicious from Spike, he dismissed his death without a second thought and responded by repeating his nihilistic statement.
When Spike called him out on this, Vicious only responded by saying that Lin was merely protecting the order. After Gren participates in the fight alongside Spike in order to stop Vicious, Vicious then shot his aircraft, which resulted in Gren getting fatally injured and succumbing to his wounds before asking Spike to bury his body on Titan.
Vicious re-appears again in the last two episodes of the series where he attempted to stage a failed coup against the Van and will be executed soon by his own superiors. This resulted in the leaders of The Red Dragon Syndicate trying to target anyone who is connected towards Vicious, including Spike and Julia. However, due to his guile and charisma, Vicious managed to persuade several of the Red Dragon Syndicate members to mercilessly slaughter the Van and their men who protected them and then assume his position at the top of the food chain as the leader of the Red Dragon Syndicate. As he overtook the seat, he still ordered his men to murder both Spike and Julia in order to satiate his vengeance for what happened in the past much to the disgust of the brother of Lin, Shin, who overhears the order from Vicious.
In the meantime, when Spike reunites with Julia in a graveyard in which the latter attempts to kill him because of the unsettled score in the past, both of them notice that Vicious is after them by sending his own men. After they attempted to take a refuge in the bar that was run by the former member of the Red Dragon Syndicate, Anastasia, they found out that the bar was ransacked and Anastasia was mortally wounded by Vicious's men, saying that they became ruthless after Vicious took control over the syndicate. After Anastasia succumbed to her wounds, Vicious's men attempt to ambush them as Spike and Julia try to run away.
Unfortunately, as they attempted to escape, Julia was shot by one of Vicious's men which resulted in her meeting her demise. Because of this, Spike seemed to lose everything, even the meaning of life, as Julia is revealed to be the lost fragment of his own life. Before going to The Red Dragon headquarters to settle the score with Vicious once and for all, Spike then ate his last meal alongside his own companions while telling an interesting story towards one of them, Jet Black, about a relationship between a Tiger Striped cat and the white cat which is an allegory of him losing Julia.
After parting ways with his companions and going into the Red Dragon headquarters by himself, he was ambushed by Vicious' henchmen before getting some help from Shin in which he tells Spike where Vicious is as well as sacrificing himself for Spike. Realizing that Vicious needs to be stopped, he then proceeds to take down each of the remaining men working for Vicious who prevent him from facing his adversary. He then finally reaches the top floor while Vicious, knowing that Spike was coming for him, prepared in advance with his weapon as Spike reaches the roof of the building where he confronts Vicious for the last time where the two then engage in a final duel. Spike then begins trying to shoot Vicious, but due to his vision becoming blurry due to his wounds, Vicious has time to react. He then throws his knife towards Spike as he was getting towards him and knocks Spike from behind when he was trying to shoot at him. He then draws out his katana only for it to be blocked by Spike's pistol as Spike shoots at Vicious only for one of the bullets to strike his face. Vicious then uses his katana to slash one of Spike's legs, weakening him and the two ended up disarming each other as their weapons fall to the floor. The fight pauses for a little bit as Spike mentions Julia one last time to Vicious before agreeing to finishing their battle. Vicious solemnly accepts and the two then quickly pass each other's weapons only for Spike to get the upper hand and shoot Vicious, instantly killing him but not before managing to slice spike's abdomen.
Shortly after Vicious' death, Spike - who is heavily wounded from the injuries he sustained from Vicious - was starting to make his down the staircase, covered in blood. As the surviving Dragon Syndicate members witness him, Spike decides to form a gesture of a gun in front of all of them before succumbing to his wounds and presumably perishing in the end.
Appearance[]
Vicious is a tall and thin man, with untamed, shoulder length gray hair. He always wears black and carries a katana as his weapon of choice. He uses two katanas throughout the series. In his first confrontation with Spike, he uses a katana with a traditionally wrapped handle. It is replaced with a sword with a bound handle and a shell-shaped pommel. Early on, Vicious is seen with a black bird on his shoulder. Though he is even shown feeding it in one scene, he eventually hides explosives in its stomach and detonates it as a distraction during an escape.
Vicious' real age is twenty-seven, making him the same age as Spike, although he appears to be much older. He seems older due to the heavy, ever-present bags under his eyes and his grey hair. His elderly appearance at his young age could possibly be attributed to heavy drug use, the events on Titan, or some event linked to it. Also, a few flashbacks in the series show him smiling, which is a major contrast to the usual scowl that is most commonly shown plastered on his face.
Personality[]
| “ | There is nothing to believe in. There is no need to believe. | „ |
| ~ Vicious displaying his nihilistic personality towards his own former admirer, Gren. |
Being a ruthless and cold-hearted mercenary, Vicious lives up to his own name. He is described as a merciless, cunning and bloodthirsty killer consumed by his own vengeance who serves as a dark foil to Spike and is also a rather ambitious person, willing to commit considerable atrocities in order to get what he wants such as forcing Julia to kill Spike or initiating a coup d'etat against The Van. Another major personality trait that Vicious exhibits is his willingness to backstab people if it benefits him such as when he betrays his admirer, Gren, by incriminating him after the Titan War. This was best described by The Van as they perceived Vicious as nothing but a treacherous and poisonous snake.
In addition to all of this, Vicious himself is a straw nihilist who also embodies Spike's cynicism towards the world, but was cranked up to eleven, believing that there is nothing in the world to believe in and views the world as a dog-eat-dog scenario where everyone needed to betray someone for their own gain. This was shown where he gave one of his companions, Lin, some advice by saying that if he wanted to survive, he needed to betray Vicious himself and was appalled when seeing Lin refuse to follow Vicious's advice. Vicious is also shown to be a huge hypocrite as he claims that his mentor, Mao Yenrai, and his superiors had lost their claws, yet he prefers to let his men do his own dirty job for him.
Despite his seemingly horrible personality, Vicious also shown himself to be a sophisticated and calculating man who uses his own brain and charisma when he tries to get what he wants. This is shown as he tries to form a plan of using his dead mentor's body to lure Spike out of hiding, and when that failed, he kidnaps Spike's own companion in order to lure him into a cathedral as a Plan B or where he attempts to perform a coup d'etat against The Van where he manages to sway the men in the syndicate to his own side.
In addition to all of this, Vicious shows the capacity of possessing humanizing traits in several episodes, such as feeding his pet bird and feeling the slightest bit of sorrow after seeing Julia choose Spike instead of him. However, every time the work attempted to humanize him, it was dissipated at the end of the day as Vicious let his seething rage and vengeance consume him. This was shown as he forces Julia to kill Spike and was hellbent to kill the two of them while also letting his pet bird die as a part of his plan to defeat The Van because of the spy transmitter he put on his pet bird. Overall, Vicious, at the end of the day, is a man with no glimmer of happiness inside of him who allowed his seething hatred and ambitions to consume him in the present day.
Powers and Abilities[]
- High Intellect: Vicious is a cunning strategist and manipulator. After the Titan War, he framed his former comrade Gren for spying. He had a bomb planted on the White Tiger ship and used the opportunity to kill his former mentor. He set a trap for Spike by using his mentor's body as a decoy, then capturing Faye Valentine to lure him into a trap. He was able to overthrow Van to seize leadership of the Syndicate using explosives hidden in his bird and convincing other syndicate members to join him.
- Peak Human Condition: As a former soldier, Vicious is in top shape. His strength, speed, and reflexes are at peak physical conditioning. He is strong enough to throw Spike through a church window with just one hand. In that same incident Vicious was shown to be fast enough to escape a hand grenade exploding. His reflexes are great enough that he can evade gunfire.
- Master Swordsman: Vicious is a highly skilled swordsman, particularly in Iaijutsu and Kenjutsu. He is able to take on multiple opponents in quick succession, even those wielding automatic firearms. He is even able to match and wound Spike in a fight twice, who is a master marksman and combatant in his own right.
- Expert Knife Wielder/Thrower: Vicious is skilled at knife throwing, demonstrated during his final fight with Spike. During the Titan War, Vicious showed his prowess with a knife when he quickly cut a scorpion in half with just one stab.
- Skilled Marksman: As a soldier, Vicious is skilled at using different firearms such as handguns and rifles. This is seen during flashbacks to the Titan war and working side by side with Spike.
- Indomitable Will/High Pain Tolerance: Vicious possesses an unshakable will to to do whatever it takes to achieve his goals, even if it means betraying his "allies" to gain success. This drive gives him a high tolerance for pain as he quickly recovered from a gunshot to the shoulder.
- Stealth: Vicious is skilled in stealth tactics. He was able to get the drop on Spike during their church confrontation.
- Intimidation: Vicious is an intimidating presence for anyone to be around, including his fellow syndicate members.
- Piloting Skills: Vicious was capable of piloting his own ship which he used to have a dogfight with Spike.
Equipment[]
- Katana: Vicious is usually seen carrying a blue handled katana sword with a golden pommel and tsuba hand guard around with him in its saya sheath as his main weapon of choice.
- Throwing Knife: Vicious used this throwing knife hidden up his right sleeve during his final fight with Spike, wounding him in the shoulder.
- Trench Knife: Vicious used this single edged trench knife during the Titan War which he used to kill a scorpion near Gren.
- Colt Cobra Commander: Vicious threatened Julia with this semi-auto handgun before giving it to her, forcing her to kill Spike.
- Heckler & Koch G36: Vicious used this rifle during his time in the Titan War.
Quotes[]
| “ | Honor, huh? Well then, it's up to me to sever them all. | „ |
| ~ Vicious foreshadowing his betrayal. |
| “ | Don't forget.. A Serpent's Venom poisons slowly after the bite. | „ |
| ~ Vicious to The Van before being taken away. |
| “ | And you will shed tears of scarlet. | „ |
| ~ Vicious shortly before killing the last of the Van and taking Power. |
| “ | Vicious: You should see yourself. Do you have any idea what you look like right at this moment, Spike? Spike: What? Vicious: A ravenous beast. The same blood runs through both of us. The blood of a beast that wanders, hunting for the blood of others. Spike: I've bled all that kind of blood away. Vicious: Then why are you STILL ALIVE?! |
„ |
| ~ Vicious and Spike's stand-off during 'Ballad of the Fallen Angels'. |
| “ | A beast that has lost it's place, He had nowhere to return to now, He will Come. | „ |
| ~ Vicious after Julia's death, knowing Spike will settle the score with him. |
| “ | Spike: Julia is dead... Let's finish it now! Vicious: As you wish. |
„ |
| ~ Vicious's Last confrontation with Spike before his death. |
Trivia[]
- The story that Spike tells to Jet after he saw Julia die in front of him is loosely based on Ernest Hemingway's short story on 1936, The Snows of Kilimanjaro. In this story, Spike based himself on a tiger-striped cat who died a million deaths and met a white female cat who became a fragment of its life before dying of old age as the cat died after he cried millions of times too.
- Despite the huge debate that sparked whether Spike died or not after the final fight with Vicious, the director, Shinichiro Watanabe, intentionally leaves the anime open-ended, and it is stated by him that Spike was just sleeping.
External Links[]
- Vicious on the Cowboy Bebop Wiki
- Vicious on the Pure Evil Wiki
- Vicious on the Magnificent Baddie Wiki
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 Villains
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Red Dragon Crime Syndicate Dragon Head Syndicate Others See also | ||