Netflix Cowboy Bebop - Live Action Netflix Series (1 Viewer)

[Francois Caron]

Session #3: Dog Star Swing.

This episode reveals just how corrupt the Bebop Universe really is. It's very much like real life. As for the performances, the chemistry has improved and the acting was less stiff. Story-wise, a traditional "can't have nice things" plot line was used which I now find to be very old, really tired and incredibly annoying. I would have preferred an alternative.

Viewer discretion: there's nudity in this episode. I know from the Star Trek: Lower Decks thread that some people here are a bit sensitive to that stuff even in cartoon form.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I tried watching episode 1 and found that I had stopped paying attention maybe 10 minutes into it. Not my cup of tea.

 

[dpippel]

Netflix Cowboy Bebop Casts Eden Perkins as Ed

In a cast interview, newcomer actor Eden Perkins discusses their experience on set as Ed in the Netflix version of Cowboy Bebop.

www.siliconera.com

 

[Francois Caron]

Session #4: Callisto Soul.

This is the Eco-Terrorists episode.

The show's definitely finding its groove. It was slow getting there, but having Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine and guest star Adrienne Barbeau as the leader of the terrorist group definitely kicked things up a notch.

The long story arc involving Vicious and Julia continues.

The broadcast TV segments in the show are still crap. Did they hire a 14 year old to write them?

 

[Francois Caron]

Session #5: Darkside Tango.

A bad luck story that could have been better written. Even the side story of Faye and Spike's bonding moment was a bit ridiculous. The best actor in this episode was probably the dog.

The broadcast TV segment in this episode shows improvement. It now looked like it was written by a 16 year old!

 

[Francois Caron]

Session #6: Binary Two-Step.

This is the cult episode. Better written than the last episode, but still with problems including a few contrived plot points that didn't make much sense.

Session #7: Galileo Hustle.

A rushed version of Faye's life. The anime did a much better job with this.

I'm beginning to understand what's wrong with this show. It's as if the producers tried to cater to both fanboys of the anime and to newcomers of the Bebop Universe at the same time. The problem is that such approaches rarely work. You can't just take an existing property and reimagine it by copying half of the original material at every episode. You need to break away from the original and make it your own show.

This is what made the reimagined version of Battlestar Galactica a huge success. Ron Moore kept the basic premise and the character names of the main cast, and threw almost everything else out the window. We ended up with an excellent apocalyptic space opera that's better appreciated than the original show.

I was thinking of the same approach when I started working out a reimagined version of an old Canadian made Sci-Fi disaster called The Starlost. It would have been much closer to the version conceived by Harlan Ellison instead of the crap we ended up with.

If the production team behind Netflix's Cowboy Bebop only kept basic elements of the original show instead of making it 50% rehashed Bebop, it might have resulted in a much better show. There's definitely no lack of creativity in the writing. But by forcing the writers to write within the strict context of the original show, they pretty much tied their own hands behind their backs.

I'll keep reporting on the remaining episodes simply because I do want to finish what I started. But if there's any hope of this show coming back for a second season, there needs to be dramatic changes applied in the writing and direction.

Also, some of the cast members will need to go, or at least be downgraded to guest appearances only.

 

[Francois Caron]

Session #8: Sad Clown A-Go-Go.

This is the Perrot Le Fou episode.

Story-wise, this version is very well done considering the budgetary and technological limitations involved in recreating a full size live-action abandoned amusement park. We're seeing the team bond a lot more in this episode, revealing decent character development for a change -- mostly.

The Vicious and Julia plotline continues to evolve. I do appreciate that the Julia in this live-action version of Bebop is an active main character and not mostly a piece of furniture as shown in the anime.

This is a brutally violent episode. It's almost as if it were directed by Sam Peckinpah.

Session #9: Blue Crow Waltz.

This is a flashback episode that presents the full history between Spike, Vicious and Julia a few years before Spike became a bounty hunter.

I wish the past episodes were this good. This episode barely uses any material from the anime, delivering an almost entirely original story that properly stands on its own two feet. It demonstrates that the writing team never should have recycled as many episodes from the anime as they did. They should have targeted writing original stories instead.

For once, Alex Hassell's performance as Vicious in this episode isn't as comical (mostly) as in past episodes. I think his lousy past performances were simply due to him receiving very poor direction on how the character should have been portrayed.

 

[Francois Caron]

Session #10: Supernova Symphony.

The season finale. Yes, it happens in a church.

While this episode does a great job of setting up plenty of cliffhangers for the next season, it does have a few rough spots. However, it's not as bad as the first seven episodes and still has plenty of original material with very little recycled content.

Have never seen the original Bebop anime. Have vacation coming up, which is a good time to binge something I might otherwise not get to, like Bebop. Is it worth trying out?

It might be worth it if you have the patience to reach the last three episodes where things start to get good. Otherwise, you might want to skip over this show and binge on something more worthy.

The same goes for anyone who has watched the original anime. There were complaints early on that the producers didn't fully understand the original material. After watching the entire first season of this live-action adaptation, I tend to agree.

There have been many missed opportunities to create a fantastic adaptation of the anime with new and original stories. Unfortunately, that originality was limited to the Vicious and Julia storylines which recycled very little from the original anime. Everything else about the show was rehash after rehash of the anime, some of it good, some of it bad, much of it very bland.

The second season's production will continue under the leadership of showrunner André Nemec. He needs to fix this partial mess if he ever hopes to see the show renewed for a third season or, more important, not see the second season's plug suddenly pulled.

The first big step would be to get rid of the anime's recycling bin and produce original stories. The second step would be to give the actors better direction. The first season's mostly original last two episodes set the tone as to how each main cast member should perform during the second season. It's all a matter of accepting one's mistakes and applying the necessary fixes.

First season verdict: marginal. Highly marginal.

 

[Chris Will]

Well, I'm going to start watching this tonight and, since I have not seen a single second of the anime, they will be original stories for me.

 

[kalm_traveler]

I grew up with the anime so this has been very iffy for me.

To be upfront, most of the casting choices didn't seem to fit the source material and despite news outlets claiming that disappointment with Daniella Pineda were over her not showing enough skin - that wasn't exactly the issue from my end (meaning for my own viewing enjoyment i couldn't care one way or another about seeing her specifically).

My take of Faye in the anime is that although she is a bounty hunter and thief, we see her repeatedly use her feminine allure to seduce/distract men quite often. Her attitude is also more sassy, less 'angry little person' than the vibe I got from the live action clips. So while yes, the outfit is an issue - the issue is that she's not going to seduce anyone while in full combat gear - which ultimately changes how the character operates in that world. I'm not sure if the actors were required to watch the anime but I'm sure if this is done that Danielle Pineda is perfectly capable of better mimicking the anime character's persona, it isn't Faye Valentine if it's just an angry combat girl.

Spike is a young man, not an older man. Have no issues with Jet - his skin color has nothing to do with his character. Not sure how to feel about Ed - actor doesn't matter as long as they can believably embody the character, but the anime character is in fact a little girl albeit not stereotypically dressed or named.

If someone who loves the anime watches this and can recommend that I give it a chance despite the casting 'liberties' taken I'll fire up a Netflix subscription but so far the outlook isn't favorable.

 

[Ted Todorov]

Have never seen the original Bebop anime. Have vacation coming up, which is a good time to binge something I might otherwise not get to, like Bebop. Is it worth trying out?

I’m loving it, but we all have our own tastes. I have watched the movie, not the series. Not at all an anime expert. But if your going try an anime (or it’s human actor version) than was not made by Miyazaki— Cowboy Bepop is the one

 

[Ted Todorov]

Also curious which version of the original anime people here prefer to watch -- subtitled or dubbed? I decide to see some of the original on Hulu this morning and it defaulted to dubbed, but quickly I restarted it as subtitled. That's one advantage of the new Netflix version -- the English language version is the right one...

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Not sure how to feel about Ed - actor doesn't matter as long as they can believably embody the character, but the anime character is in fact a little girl albeit not stereotypically dressed or named.

While Eden Perkins the the actor identifies as nonbinary, Ed the character is intended to be a girl on the show and indeed Perkins uses female pronouns when referring to the character.

 

[kalm_traveler]

While Eden Perkins the the actor identifies as nonbinary, Ed the character is intended to be a girl on the show and indeed Perkins uses female pronouns when referring to the character.

that's true - as is often the case many of the 'news' articles first announcing Eden's casting focused more on their desired pronoun use and a 'hope' that Ed would be changed to a gender-ambiguous character.

Not addressing any of the socio-political topics, but I do get annoyed when Hollywood takes liberties to alter established franchise canon out of what appears to be a desire to check a box on a list of items to gain current-day street cred - which was my only concern about the way Ed's casting was first announced.

Of course I'm still not convinced as a long-time fan of the anime that this is worth a Netflix sub so it's a moot point either way I suppose.

 

[Francois Caron]

My take on the performances of the main and supporting cast.

First of all, someone once described the Bebop in the original anime as a ship full of broken people. As the anime progressed, I quickly understood why that description was very true. This live-action adaptation had failed to project this early on mainly due to the very poor direction given to the main cast. It was only during the last episode of the first season that we finally started to see the real Bebop crew emerge into their natural state.

John Cho as Spike Spiegel. To be honest, I'm not sure how the producers could have done better with this part. Yes, the live-action Spike is much older than the anime version, but I see that as a correction instead of an alteration. Asian cultures have strict customs when it comes to age; elders are always perceived as superior to their juniors no matter the circumstances. Having a couple of 27 year olds challenge the leadership of a major crime syndicate as depicted in the anime would have seemed completely ludicrous in a live-action adaptation. But add two to three decades to the main characters, and now it appears much more realistic.

Cho’s performance for much of the first season was overly stiff. I’m not sure if it’s because he didn’t know how to perform his part or if he had trouble understanding the direction he was given. There was a glimmer of hope in the last episode when he started to deliver real emotions that seemed to match the original character.

Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black. Again, same problem as John Cho: received bad direction and only caught on during the last episode who his character really was. There were complaints about Jet Black’s race, but I’m not bothered by this especially considering Beau Billingslea, the English voice actor from the anime series, is African-American and you could feel it in the English dub. To me, this casting choice seemed like a perfect match.

My only complaint with Shakir‘s performance was that it was straight from an American television sitcom environment, a format that I now despise enormously. The addition of a family background in Jet’s past is what contributed to his misleading and often confusing performance. It’s only in the last episode that we started to see the real Jet Black rise to the surface. Here’s hoping it carries through into the second season.

Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine. Hoo boy were there ever massive complaints over her casting and her costume even before the show was released! What surfaced on social media was toxic beyond belief! And yet, Pineda was probably the only main cast member who understood perfectly who she was playing early on and made it her own.

I’m really hoping Pineda keeps owning her Valentine character in the second season like she’s done so well in the first, expanding on her character’s bounty hunting abilities along with discovering her long lost past. It might not be the exact same Faye Valentine we’ve known in the Anime, but it’s pretty darn close and even more exciting with the added unknown factors!

Of all the characters in this live-action version of Cowboy Bebop, the one I care the most about for the time being is Faye Valentine.

Alex Hassell as Vicious. Oh, Lord. Where to begin? I’m pretty sure the actor has done decent performances in the past, but this was downright ridiculous! The exaggerated facial expressions were cringe worthy throughout the season! It just bugs the Hell out of me that he was involved in the side story that turned out at times to be much more interesting than the main story!

Even worse, Hassell has natural black hair. Didn’t the producers realise that he would look somewhat ridiculous wearing a white wig while the rest of his face clearly revealed his natural hair colour? The production really should have aimed for a closer to natural blonde actor to make the hair blending more realistic.

Elena Satine as Julia. The best thing about this casting choice is that Julia is no longer a piece of furniture as she was depicted in the anime. She has an actual backstory along with ambitions of her own. In this version of Cowboy Bebop, Julia has a massively huge impact on how the side story unwinds, eventually becoming a major player in both storylines.

Satine’s performance however was a bit unconvincing for the most part except during the last episode just like most of the other cast members. I do hope she improves in the second season otherwise she could very well become the “Cousin Oliver” of the show if Edward’s introduction isn’t completely screwed up by the production staff.

Eden Perkins as Edward. I wasn’t sure if the production would stick with a very young actor due to child labour laws. For the short while Perkins was on the screen however, their performance was very much like the Edward that we know and love, only with shoes.

It’ll be interesting not only to see how this part turns out in the second season, but also how many rabid computer geeks will lose their fecal matter over every inaccurate depiction of computer hacking presented on the show!

Charlie and Harry as Ein. Woof.

As for the supporting cast, I have no complaints. They’re all technically new parts in this live-action series, and the actors are all portraying their respective parts very professionally. In some cases, the supporting cast’s performances were more convincing and more consistent than the performances coming from the main cast!

For the second season, the producers really need to develop new stories instead of recycling old ones. That also goes for the music which should have been much better than what we were offered. The music choices for some scenes were so mismatched that they became laughable. And it’s not as if the production team can’t deliver a decent looking production. The amount of detail in the show’s sets, both real and virtual, was simply outstanding! And yet, many episodes completely fell apart because the stories were really bad.

Here's hoping for a much improved second season. If not, we can always try to make another reboot in a few years.

 

[Francois Caron]

Also curious which version of the original anime people here prefer to watch -- subtitled or dubbed? I decide to see some of the original on Hulu this morning and it defaulted to dubbed, but quickly I restarted it as subtitled. That's one advantage of the new Netflix version -- the English language version is the right one...

Dubbed version from the original DVD release. The recent HD releases have been altered from the originals. It was probably the very first time I've ever heard a decent English dub of anime. The second time was FLCL.

 

[Lord Dalek]

BANG.

 

[Francois Caron]

BANG.

Not surprised. Too much to fix to get it right.

 

[Edwin-S]

That's what happens when you take out most of the Sci-fi elements and spend a fortune to make a show look like a retro 70s Mod Squad.


Edit: Well, at least they managed to complete the first story ARC and not leave it hanging and ARCANE appears to be getting another season so no loss to see this one go. The anime was superior anyway.

 

[Robert Crawford]

It’s been canceled!