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Cowboy Bebop was an anime created by Hajime Yatate that first aired in 1998 and was dubbed into English for Cartoon Network’s late-night programming block, Adult Swim. It is regarded as one of the greatest anime ever made.
The series follows a group of space cowboys who chase bounties on a spaceship known as the Bebop while struggling with their pasts. The central character is Spike Spiegel, a former enforcer for the Red Dragon Syndicate, a criminal organization.
He is joined by Jet Black, a cyborg ex-cop; Faye Valentine, a woman who emerged from cryostasis with no memory of her past life; and Radical Edward, a teenage hacker. The Bebop crew is joined by a Welsh corgi named Ein.
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Cowboy Bebop stood out among other anime for its unique blend of cyberpunk, western, and noire themes in a space-age setting. It ran for 26 episodes and had one film, Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door.
Plans for a live action adaptation were announced in 2017 with Christopher Yost (best known for the Mandalorian and several Marvel projects) as executive producer and writer. The series was released on Netflix on November 19, 2021.
Season one consisted of ten episodes adapting plot elements from the first half of the anime. Some plot elements were revised, and new content was added to expand on the backgrounds of the main characters.
The criticism that the adaptation received
Critical reviews are mixed and often negative-leaning, which is common with American adaptations of Japanese work. The response from fans of the source material is generally poor. Minute details, casting, and performances are picked over, and sometimes even members of the cast are criticized online.
Though Netflix cancelled the live-action remake of Cowboy Bebop after only one season, the remake garnered enough fans to spark a petition to revive the series for season 2. Currently, the petition—Save the live action Cowboy Bebop—has reached 151,071 signatures. Fans of the original series started their own petition to keep the series from being revived, which reached 12,741 signatures.
If entertainment were a democracy, we would have 91.56% of the vote in favor of bringing the show back for another season.
Devil's Advocate? My review of Cowboy Bebop's American adaptation
Adaptations always fight an uphill battle for success. Whether it is Dragonball Evolution, The Last Airbender, Death Note, or Halo, devoted fans of the original work tend to behave as if they have been personally attacked, even when original authors and developers participate in production and approve of the work. They bear a sense of entitlement that their opinion is right and must be obeyed. Cowboy Bebop was no exception.
On the other hand, fans of a movie or show are not an authority. Adaptations bring new people into old fandoms and keep interest going. It is also common in western media to reboot and revive classics. DC and Marvel Comics virtually pioneered the modern day’s understanding of the multiverse to justify having various series and canonical events for their characters.
With that mindset, it is possible to enjoy a retelling without comparing it to the original and judge it by its own merits.
Following closely with the original series, Netflix's adaptation of Cowboy Bebop starts off with Spike Spiegel and Jet Black. Together, they hunt bounties on criminals in Jet's ship, the Bebop. Chasing their first bounty, the two meet Faye Valentine, a departure from the original plot. Originally, Faye wasn't introduced until the third episode, titled Honkey Tonk Woman. Another change is that Radical Edward is not introduced until much later.
In regards to the bounties, many of Asimov and Katerina's scenes were directly copied from the anime. Small changes are Faye being hired on a separate bounty to take Katerina back to her rich father, and bringing down Asimov led to Vicious (the main villain), learning that Fearless (Spike's name in the Red Dragon Syndicate) is alive.
Spike's connection to the criminal organization eventually came out in the anime, with many flashbacks showing his relationship with Vicious and Julia, his lover. In the Netflix adaptation, Vicious and Julia are present from the beginning and their story unfolds much faster than the original. Due to this plot change, Julia's character comes to the forefront.
Another change that builds on Jet's character is that his lost love, Alisa, is now his ex-wife and mother of his daughter. This completely departs from their original story, where Jet reconnects with her once while chasing a bounty for her new boyfriend. Alisa is now remarried to Jet's former partner, from his cop days before going to prison. I like that it gives Jett more backstory, but it feels too much like the dynamic in Ant-Man when ex-con Scott Lang had scenes with his daughter, ex-wife, and her new husband, who is a cop.
Faye's backstory remains very similar, but with light changes. However, I concede that the Netflix series' cancellation prevents this storyline from being completed and leaves it open. Radical Edward only has a single appearance at the end of the season finale.
The most noteworthy change is in the season finale, which draws from a fight between Spike and Vicious from the anime, but builds on the confrontation with the Red Dragons, drawing Spike in by kidnapping Jet's daughter. In the midst of their fight, Julia intervenes and betrays Vicious and Spike to assume control of the syndicate. She imprisons Vicious to occasionally torture him.
Originally, Vicious kills Julia and she dies in Spike's arms before their final battle. This could still have played out later, albeit in a different manner. But with the remake cancelled, we'll never know.
Cowboy Bebop’s Netflix adaptation proved that talent goes unrecognized when we focus on A-list actors. Much of the cast comes from humble origins and fits in amazingly well with their characters. John Cho as Spike was unrecognizable from his prior roles as Harold Lee and Hikaru Sulu. Mustafa Shakir and Daniella Pineda’s talents were wasted on their previous projects.
The blend of real life and CGI in the setting did well to capture the original’s aesthetic while also being reminiscent of science fiction video games such as Borderlands and The Outer Worlds.
The updates to Cowboy Bebop's story go both ways: some I liked, some I did not. The passive criticism of corporatism made me wonder if Yost was playing Outer Worlds while working on the script.
Overall, Cowboy Bebop brings action, campy humor, and complex personalities to bear, and it was good.
