Cassie C

I'm not a reviewer in the slightest, but they took the soul of Cowboy Bebop and stomped on it. Cowboy Bebop, the anime, is supposed to be this lesson on how time waits for no one and that whatever happened in the past, you'll always carry with you. However, it's supposed to be about moving forward because if you don't move forward, life isn't going to just wait for you. The live action adaptation was like "frick that noise, space bounty hunters go brrr" and just completely forgot about that important lesson. The characters are former shells of themselves, for some reason they made Julia a more primary character instead of scarce like they should have done. The whole point of Julia's character is to further play up the "time waits for no one" lesson in the original series. By having Julia more prominent and having Spike get close again to her early on, it kind of ruins what makes Julia symbolic. Spike's character has also been watered down, also his actor is way too old to be Spike. Spike is 27-28 in the series. Not in his 40s. His personality is no longer charming and witty and in the live action he just seems bored like 90% of the time. Faye's character has also gotten watered down, she's no longer this quick-witted, selfish, femme fatale-esque woman. Instead they chose to make her more of a naive and "one of the boys" trope. Faye in the anime is way more complex than that, she's lonely and scared. She survives in the world the only way she knows how and that's by making money through any means necessary to pay off her wrongful debt and avoid being arrested. I don't even want to touch on the abomination that is Ed in the live action. Her character doesn't translate well into live action, but I think if they tweaked her to be a little more realistic but still eccentric it could have worked, but the one time they actually try to do a direct anime translation? Ed should not be that character. She needed the most modifying out of all of them to work without being cringey. Also for some reason they made her white. So that's a thing, Jet is probably the one I'm the least mad about. His actor is near perfect, he even sounds like the original english VA at times which I wasn't expecting at all but it was a delight. I don't like some of the changes to his backstory, but out of everyone he gets a pass. His actor is just 10/10 and this is how I would envision a live action Jet. Only other issue here is with Spike being older, it messes with the dynamic that Jet is like the "dad" of the group and makes it a bit harder to pull off. Then there's the pacing of the show and at times some storylines don't make much sense or the resolution of them is mediocre at best. I feel like these episodes could have been cut down a bit to fix some of these issues. Look, I'm not an expert reviewer and I tried really hard not to let my love of the original series skew my views of this show. However, even without my knowledge of the previous characters, everything just falls flat. I understand changes need to be made to make it fresh and new and also to bring in non-anime fans or just Western viewers in general, but by cutting out the most important theme of the original show, it just doesn't work. Do yourself a favor if you haven't already and watch the original. It isn't perfect and I will not claim that it doesn't have its own flaws, but it's considered a classic and a work of art for a reason. And if you HAVE already seen if and want to watch more from Watanabe: Samurai Champloo is another good one as well as Kids on the Slope, Carole & Tuesday and many other great works.