Warning - The following text contains spoilers for Jupiter Jazz Part 1 and Jupiter Jazz Part 2. In fact...if you read this, you will essentially spoil the entire plot of those two episodes.

Gren

Gren is a character from Cowboy Bebop. He was only in 2 episodes: Jupiter Jazz Part 1 and Jupiter Jazz Part 2. In the grand scheme of things, it was only a brief encounter, yet he is my favorite character from Bebop, henceforth this shrine.

Gren is immediately intriguing as the saxophone player at the Rester House at The Blue Crow on Callisto. No women live in this town, so when Gren notices Faye at the bar, he tries to caution her about all the men in the area. She tries to flirt with him a little, but he says he isn't interested. Bored, Faye leaves to find some trouble to get into. Sure enough, she finds trouble, but before she can really get into it, Gren "rescues" her and takes her back to his apartment.

While Gren is in the shower, Faye looks at the photos on the wall. Vicious calls and leaves a message on the machine and Faye recognizes his voice. Faye sneaks into the bathroom and discovers Gren's secret.

Gren was in the war on Titan with Vicious. Vicious had given him a music box that played a tune called "Julia." Gren was framed and sent to prison for spying. While in prison, Gren was taking drugs for insomnia that caused a hormone imbalance. He heard that Vicious was the one who testified against him and he wanted to know for sure. When Gren had met Julia at the bar awhile back, she showed him that the music box had a transmitter in it.

Gren set up a drug deal with Vicious to confont him in person. Gren gives a great heartfelt speech about comrades. Of course, Vicious and Gren end up shooting at each other. They both hop in their ships, but Gren's gets hit and goes down. Spike, who was on Callisto looking for Julia, goes and checks it out. Gren is badly injured, but he insists that he wants help getting to Titan one more time. Spike puts Gren in his ship and tows it out into space and lets him go.

I would argue that these are definitely the two saddest sessions of Cowboy Bebop. Gren was looking for answers and he never found the resolution he sought from Vicious...it's heartbreaking.

Stats

I took these from a screencap of the Big Shots show.

Grencia Mars Elijah Guo Eckener
ID: T78282LAK
DOMI: CALLIST.
HEIGHT: 6 FEET 2 INCHES
WEIGHT: 172 POUNDS
AGE: 29

Additional Information

Samurai442 from The Bebop Board shared this information from the Tokyopop Cowboy Bebop Anime Guide #3:

As a character with mysterious origins and a feminine body, Gren leaves a strong impression. This character has the same name as a character that appears in the Macross Plus novel series also written by Keiko Nobumoto. The director of Bebop, Watanabe, worked with Nobumoto on the Macross Plus animation, but "Gren" aprears only in the novel series.
That character was also a hermaphrodite. According to Nubomoto, she brought him back in Bebop because she really liked the character.

If anyone knows more about this, please email me!

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