Character · Cowboy Bebop
Vicious
He carries a katana in a science fiction show and a raven on his shoulder, and neither is played for laughs.
In Otakana the clue reads: Sword-carrying syndicate rival with a crow
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Cowboy Bebop
- Letters
- 7 · Normal
Vicious runs with the Red Dragon syndicate, kills with a sword in a setting full of guns, and keeps a raven that lands on him at convenient moments. He and Spike were partners once, close enough that betrayal was even possible. Everything he does afterwards runs on that. He speaks rarely and never raises his voice, which the series treats as the more frightening option.
The name is a plain English adjective, which fits a show that names things after music it likes. Session titles include Honky Tonk Women, Bohemian Rhapsody and Ballad of Fallen Angels, so a villain called Vicious sits comfortably inside the same habit. Norio Wakamoto voices him in Japanese, and the low register does much of the work the script leaves out.
Their fights are short and ugly rather than long and choreographed. He wants Spike dead partly over Julia and partly because he has decided that nothing from the past may be left open. He climbs the syndicate by removing whoever is above him. Cowboy Bebop gives him no redemption arc and no softening, and the story is better for the refusal.
Spelling VICIOUS
VICIOUS is seven letters, and the run of vowels near the end is where rows die: I, O and U in a line before the final S. Split it into VICI and OUS and the shape holds. There is one C rather than two, and the ending is the ordinary English CIOUS you already write in delicious and precious.