25 Years Ago, the Best Space Western Series Ever Released a Shockingly Scary Episode

Mad Pierrot would be scary even if he weren't the most overpowered character in the series

Cowboy Bebop's most terrifying villain is still pure nightmare fuel

Most Cowboy Bebop episodes give Spike Spiegel a bounty, a complication, and enough time to crack a couple of jokes while puffing on a bent cigarette. He’s always getting himself into trouble, fighting for his life in shootouts where he’s vastly outnumbered, dodging explosions left and right. Even when he does take a beating, Spike effortlessly remains the coolest guy in the room. He’s an uncanny marksman and master martial artist with no actual superpowers, but you never really worry that he’s in any real danger, primarily because he’s one of the luckiest anime characters to ever exist.

That’s what makes “Pierrot le Fou” so frightening. The episode takes the familiar thrill of watching Spike get into trouble and turns it into something closer to a horror movie: for once, he’s completely outclassed in every possible way by a grotesque, portly bulletproof madman with a clenched grin. Mad Pierrot, whose real name is Tongpu, is the result of dangerous experimentation aimed at manufacturing a supersoldier. Those experiments gave him superhuman strength and speed, the ability to fly, and an innate psychic barrier that stops most projectiles. Nobody who’s ever seen his face has lived to tell the tale — until Spike.

The scariest thing isn’t the way Mad Pierrot grits his teeth so hard that he drools out of the corner of his mouth. The scariest thing is that Spike might actually lose to this freak.

Cowboy Bebop is jazz, but “Pierrot le Fou” scratches the record

“Pierrot le Fou” first aired in the U.S. on Adult Swim in the early hours of Nov. 5, 2001, and I was too young to be watching this kind of thing late at night. After-school airings of Gundam and Dragon Ball Z on Toonami had made me hungry for more anime. Cowboy Bebop was fun and cool and often rather sexy. What more could I want? I didn’t really understand at the time that the series relies on a kind of rhythm that makes it feel safe to watch Spike take risks. And I sure as hell was not ready for this episode to scare the living daylights out of me.

Cowboy Bebop itself is a lot like jazz. Every episode remixes familiar story beats: a bounty, a lead, a chase, a fight that goes wrong somehow. Those elements get rearranged into something fresh that suits the story. “Pierrot le Fou,” which is episode 20 of 26, still uses many of those pieces, but the distorted narrative it constructs makes it seem like Spike has somehow wandered into a full-on nightmare. Part of that has to do with the randomness of it all.

There’s no bounty to pursue or other job to worry about. Spike simply winds up in the wrong place at the wrong time after leaving a bar on Mars. He stumbles upon Mad Pierrot murdering a high-ranking official of the Inter-Solar System Police (ISSP) and his bodyguards. A shootout and fistfight ensue in which Mad Pierrot soundly defeats Spike — even juggling him in the air with flying kicks like a clip out of Super Smash Bros. — and nearly kills him. If not for a cat meowing, which sends Pierrot into a panicked frenzy, he’d have been successful. Spike’s first encounter with Mad Pierrot is a chaotic, one-sided beating that leaves him so bandaged that Faye calls him a mummy.

The Batman connection

A popular fan interpretation claims that “Pierrot le Fou” is heavily influenced by Batman: The Animated Series. The production studio Sunrise, which animated all of Bebop, also worked on several episodes in Batman’s first season. It’s true that this vision of Mars late at night feels a lot like Gotham, cloaked in shadows as a clownish supervillain murders what looks like a group of gangsters. That comparison paints Spike as a Batman with no money, no gadgets, and no cowl. And Mad Pierrot already looks like a cartoonishly exaggerated Batman villain spliced together from the Penguin’s rotund silhouette and the Joker’s grin.

Perhaps the scariest thing of all has to do with Pierrot’s origin story, which plays out over the course of a brisk three minutes or so in the back half of the episode. The black-and-white sequence, set to an unhinged synth track, shows dangerous experimentation that evokes MKUltra. The experiments themselves were successful in granting Pierrot superhuman powers, but they also severely damaged his psyche, causing him to regress to an almost childlike state.

There was also a cat with heterochromia in the lab, which explains why Pierrot’s only real weakness is his fear of felines that remind him of the torture. The only splash of color we get from this sequence occurs after the experiment is deemed a failure, and Pierrot murders dozens of people escaping. His killing spree continues as he pursues vengeance against those who tortured him, but it’s unclear if his bloodlust will ever end.

While Spike is still recovering from his injuries, he receives an invitation to the Space World theme park to face Pierrot once again. Their extended fight through the park is an off-kilter brawl where animatronic animals and cheerful attractions make the violence feel even more surreal. Spike’s guns can’t get through Pierrot’s shield as they battle on and across rollercoasters as they pepper stuffed animals with bullets. Just when it looks like Pierrot will shoot Spike dead, a glint in Spike's mismatched eyes — just like the cat from the lab — gives the bounty hunter an opening to land a knife in Pierrot’s leg.

The memory of the cat sends Pierrot spiraling into panic as he wails for his mother. He’s left lying on the ground as a parade of animatronics slowly marches forward to crush him. Spike survives, but he’s bruised, battered, and shot through the shoulder. As the dust settles, Jet calls Spike to explain Pierrot’s whole backstory. “Forget it,” Spike replies. “I don’t need the info anymore.” With a sigh, Spike just says his typical tired quip to end the episode: “Man, I hate theme parks.”

Thanks to Mad Pierrot, I do too.