Character · Cowboy Bebop
Julia
Two men left the same crime syndicate over her, and the series shows her almost entirely in memory.
In Otakana the clue reads: Woman both the bounty hunter and his rival loved
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Cowboy Bebop
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Julia is the reason Spike Spiegel describes himself as a man who already died once. She was involved with him while he worked for the Red Dragon syndicate, and she was involved with Vicious, his partner. Choosing was not permitted. The syndicate does not let people leave and it does not let people share, and both rules were going to be broken.
Most of what the audience gets is fragments: a rooftop, rain, a church, a plan to run that did not happen on schedule. Cowboy Bebop withholds her for most of its run, which turns a simple love triangle into the weight the whole show leans on. Gara Takashima voices her in Japanese, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn in the English dub.
The withholding is deliberate. Spike says his past feels like a dream he has not woken from, and Julia is the part of it he refuses to test against anything real. The series lets him keep that for as long as it can. What she wants, once she finally speaks for herself, is not quite what he remembers wanting.
Spelling JULIA
JULIA is five letters, and the Japanese ジュリア romanises as Juria: the R and L swap that catches so many katakana names. Spelled from sound alone you might reach for JURIA and lose the row. The tiles want the ordinary given name, J-U-L-I-A, three vowels out of five letters with an A closing it.