2071 AD. Mankind
has colonized the Solar System thanks to warp gates across the cosmos. With this expansion, crime runs rampant and
even the Police are stretched thin.
Spike Spiegel, Jet Black and Faye Valentine are Bounty Hunters. Their mission: track down the worst of the
worst and get them of the streets in exchange for a tiny profit. Each has their own baggage and hangups, some
worse than others. But with rival Bounty
Hunters, even more dangerous Bounty Heads and the ruthless steel of the
Syndicate all in their way, Spike, Jet and Faye will have to find a way to work
together as a team to get rich…or risk getting dead themselves.
Live Action Adaptations of any kind are tricky, no matter
the subject.
If you try to work too
little into your project, it’ll show a lack of trust in the material.
You work in too much, you might run the risk
of overcompensating for a lack of proper understanding of the material.
The latest Netflix attempt to bring Anime to
life, Cowboy Bebop, comes with a lot of heavy expectation.
Cowboy Bebop is one of the most universally
beloved titles in the genre, one that both casual and hardcore Anime fans alike
can enjoy.
And despite it being an
Anime, there are times where Cowboy Bebop transcended the genre and felt more
like watching an action packed scifi movie week after week, hence it’s
popularity beyond love of the medium.
The Netflix series has a wealth of material to work with but in the end
has no idea what it wants to do so it just throws in everything it can to
hopefully appease the fans.
Thus, it
falls into that latter category I mentioned: doing too much and in doing so
showing the people behind the scenes don’t know what makes Bebop, Bebop and
instead hope all the Easter Eggs, replica costumes and familiar music will do
the job for them.
Let’s get this out of the way first: of all the problems
I have with this show, NONE OF THEM are lobbed at our core trio of lead
actors.
In fact, it’s thanks to John
Cho, Mustafa Shakir and Daniella Pineda’s charisma, charm and chemistry that Cowboy
Bebop is watchable even when it stops being fun to sit through.
When the writing utterly fails them, these
three still manage to bring their own spin to these iconic characters, making
them their own and giving us plenty of reason to keep caring.
Cho does the impossible of channeling the
inner most zen like bad assness of Spike, always being cool under pressure with
dead pan deliveries that get a lot of laughs.
And he can kick a ton of ass too, so bonus point there.
Shakir is most certainly channeling the voice
of Beau Billingslea, the English voice of Jet, dude sounds just like him.
In this version though, Jet has a family he’s
estranged from with a daughter whose life he really wants to be a part of.
So it’s fun watching his balancing act of
wanting to be there while also bounty hunting and keeping his team in
line.
Pineda’s Faye is very different
from her Anime counterpart.
Unlike other
examples we’ll get too, she’s actually fun.
Faye curses like a sailor and is far more brawler than ever but she
brings an energy to the core trio that cant be ignored.
If it weren’t for these three, Cowboy Bebop
would be a complete failure instead of a mostly failure.
Special cudos go to Tamara Tunie and Mason
Alexander Park, who both get bigger roles for Ana and Gren in this version and
are always a blast to see on screen.
There are times when the goal of Cowboy Bebop is to
expand on the Anime mythology while giving its own unique spin on characters
and events.
Most of the time though, the
grab bag methodology doesn’t gel at all and the “unique spin” on certain
characters just fails altogether.
Nowhere is this more evident than with the weakest part of the whole
series: Vicious and Julia.
In the Anime,
there was an air of danger and mystery to both of these characters.
Vicious was a man of few words but capable of
the greatest of violence.
He only spoke
in a soft voice that screams foreboding and I only heard him shout once in all
of his five appearances.
Julia was the
greatest enigma and we barely saw her in the Anime but she left an impression:
this beautiful temptress who seemed so dangerous to be around.
In the TV Series though, that which made both
characters unique is tossed out the window.
Vicious is now a neglected man child with a lot of anger issues and
Julia is a terrified victim of fate.
Everytime both were on screen it was cringe worthy.
How can they get Spike, Jet and Faye right
but not show the same care for these other two important members of the
cast?
And that’s to say nothing about
what happens to the both of them in the Season Finale…which is by far the worst
part of the entire season and makes me unsure if I want any more of this
version of Bebop afterwards.
I even got
my wish to see a flashback episode to Spike’s time in the Syndicate and how he
met Vicious and fell in love with Julia…and yet it falls flat because of how
Vicious and Julia have been handled.
And
this came out in the same year when we got a flawless recreation of Kenshin
Himura’s backstory in Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning.
But whereas RuroKen: The Beginning had a perfect
understanding of Kenshin’s world, motivations and a great production around it,
Cowboy Bebop feels like it is constantly reaching for anything and everything
to make the show appeal to everyone, especially the fans, without any understanding
of what made Bebop great in the first place.
You can just put John Cho into Spike’s suit and say “hey this is Cowboy
Bebop”.
The random usage of all the
visuals and Easter Eggs from the Anime feels chaotic and nonsensical.
They don’t further the plot and only
occasionally got a chuckle or hint of amusement out of me. After the first two
or three episodes I had a feeling I was gonna be in trouble for the rest of
this 10 episode watch.
Having just
rewatched the Anime in the lead up to the Netflix launch, I can tell you that
show still grabs me, never feels boring and makes me feel all sort of feels but
most importantly, it’s still fun as hell.
The TV Show though, wants to grab me, feels boring, and seldom feels fun
when the attention isn’t on Spike, Jet and Faye without anyone else to bother
them.
By the time we got to the very
end, which set up Season 2, a surprise appearance and the promise of another
familiar villain to enter the fray didn’t do anything to excite me.
I think I had to watch the first ten minutes
of RuroKen: The Beginning to feel better after a ten hour viewing experience I
can only describe as disappointing.
Before I close this out, I should talk about the
music.
Yes, Yoko Kanno and the reunited
Seatbelts handle all of the music and a lot of it is from the Anime and The
Movie, Knockin on Heaven’s Door.
This
was a huge grab for the Live Action project and should’ve been the one thing it
got right…it didn’t.
Of course it’s
great to hear “Tank” as the opening theme and Kanno’s revealed she’s remastered
and updated several classic tracks for use.
The problem is the usage, or over usage I should say.
The beauty of the music in the Anime isn’t
just that it sounds unique and different, it’s how it’s all used throughout a
single episode: what scenes its used in, how long they last, how they fit the
mood and characters.
The TV show though,
will just play random Bebop tunes at any point in the episode without any rhyme
or reason other than they don’t want the dialogue to dominate a scene for more
than a minute.
It’s all…random.
I know most of the Cowboy Bebop OST by heart
and I was wondering why a certain song was being used for scenes where it
wasn’t needed.
There are some new songs
made just for the show but theyre largely forgettable.
I think the only new addition I really liked
was the track used in Spike’s flashback episode when he singlehandedly rips
apart an entire Cartel on Mars.
It makes
me think that Yoko Kanno and her famous score was the big fallback on this
project: if nothing else worked, the OST would save it…it didn’t.
Cowboy Bebop is trying to do so much with its wide array
of influences, references and iconic soundtrack but fails to deliver on almost
every front that counts.
Spike, Jet and
Faye are fine and the visual effects are OK (Swordfish, Red Tail and the Bebop
all look great, wont lie).
But the
world, the stories, the conflict with Vicious and Julia, even the soundtrack
itself all lack purpose, soul and enjoyment.
By the time I reached the end of the final episode of the season, I
didn’t feel as angry as I did walking out of Ghost in the Shell.
No, I felt more disappointment than anything
else.
This could have worked, should have
worked.
Instead, we have another
instance of an Anime in the hands of people who think if they show enough
visual representation from the source material that it’ll win the attention of
viewers and fans.
I should be more angry
about this misfire.
But again, Cho,
Shakir and Pineda made an unwatchable show watchable.
At least they seemed to care about the
characters they were bringing to life…cause the writers and directors sure as
hell didn’t have a clue why Bebop is what it is.
And until they figure that out, whatever
awaits in Season 2 will be no better than what we got here.
Go watch the Anime instead (and then The
Movie)…you’ll see what they missed.
4/10
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