Cowboy Bebop (2021) - Review and Eulogy
John Cho as Spike Spiegel. Screenshot: Netflix
Oh, Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop. We’ve only known you for a minute and now you are gone due to Netflix’s elusive success metrics. You had the potential to be great, but veered too often into embarrassingly bad terrority that resulted in an abysmal critical reception. A second season could have helped course correct, some of your building blocks were solid. But it is too late now.
Based on the eponymous, legendary and powerful 1998 series by Sunrise and director Shinichirō Watanabe, the Netflix adaptation wrestled the plot of the anime into something...new. Sort of.
If you compare it directly to its source material, the series fails to justify its existence. It looks worse, the plot is middling, and the added bits involving resident bad guy Vicious and his wife Julia involve some of the most amateurish execution of noir-tropes I have ever witnessed.
If you have never seen Cowboy Bebop, well, it might work for you? The cast is pretty good, with Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black a clear stand out. The action is pretty fun. Whenever the crew just jives, the show actually develops a good rhythm.
So, if you squint really hard, Netflix's Cowboy Bebop kinda worked. But only if you squint.
One issue might have been, how the series treats its source material. The Netflix adaptation clung too tightly to the anime, without really understanding what made the anime so special.
In both anime and Netflix adaptation, a ragtag team of intergalactic bounty hunters find each other, form a family and hunt criminals together on the Bepop spaceship. Spike Spiegel (played by John Cho in the series) is a melancholic scoundrel, now on the lookout for his next paycheck. Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), captain of the Bepop and a former detective, is the level-headed dad of the group, feeding everyone, making sure they go to their extracurriculars and, added in the adaptation, trying to be present for his daughter. Faye Valentine (as played by Daniella Pineda), is an amnesiac in search of belonging and a good time. They make up the core trio, which soon is expanded to include an adorable corgi named Ein.
Here is the team (+ Ein, who is the best). Screenshot: Netflix
Unbeknownst to his crewmates, Spike used to work as a hitman for the Red Dragon Crime Syndicate. His partner in crime: Vicious (played by Alex Hassel), who in the anime, behaves like the shark in Jaws, only popping up occasionally to be mysterious and mean, attempts to be a character in the adaptation.
Emphasis on attempts, I would not count being one of the most annoying parts of the show as good characterization. Same to his wife, Julia (Elena Santine) who is not actually his wife in the anime, and is the femme fatale Spike is in love with. Her rise from damsel in distress to woman in power is absurd and abrupt and her scenes with Spike lack the chemistry necessary to make their bond believable.
Some parts of the series work - Episode 7 "Galileo Hustle" - is a very solid effort, capitalising on the chemistry of the actors, with some decent gags and action. If they had played their cards looser, and let the adaptation’s characters spin their own tale, Cowboy Bebop might have become a fine update on the Firefly format. But by trying to squeeze the characters into the corset of the narrative laid out by the anime, the show loses rhythm, coherence and what could have made it special. The creators apparently did not trust their actors and their own narrative, but also failed to grasp why adaptation changes are needed in the first place and why transferring anything animated into life-action has hardly ever worked (see, the recent Disney live-action remakes).
So long Cowboy Bebop, it was not nice knowing you, but you had potential and at least I would have watched a second season.
