![]() And Cowboy Bebop is an exceptionally tall order given the sophistication in Shinichiro Watanabe’s animation, bolstered by a tremendous jazz soundtrack from the composer Yoko Kanno and her band, the Seatbelts. Typically live-action anime adaptations struggle to reconcile the cartoonish elements-the character styles, the exaggerated movement, the stark colors-with the practical constraints on real actors and real sets, CGI notwithstanding. It was never going to be easy for live actors to reimagine Cowboy Bebop. The live-action Cowboy Bebop gets good-dare I say, great-once Spike, Jet, and Faye have warmed up, Vicious has toned down, the choreography has smoothed out, and the story has branched from the familiar setup into its own alternative direction. It takes the series a while to hit its marks on other counts, too. The penultimate episode culminates in a one-man army massacre, captured in a long tracking shot, at last making good on Spike’s badass reputation and Cho’s painful training for the role. The early fights are badly staged, but later fights with higher stakes are much better. Cho’s Spike is strong but not especially graceful or clever in combat. By contrast, the fights in the live-action adaptation, especially in the first couple of episodes, are rather slow and stilted. He’s hard to hit and quick to contort his lanky profile out of harm’s way. But then there’s his choreography: In the original series, Spike moves through the world with a certain invulnerability. Cho, as the lead, balances the humor and melancholy in Spike rather capably. ![]() Cho, Shakir, and Pineda each excel in their respective roles, and they’ve got great, contentious chemistry together. As for directors, the ten episodes were split between directors Alex Garcia Lopez ( Daredevil) and Michael Katleman ( Zoo).Sometimes the live-action scenes track the original series beat for beat sometimes, for the better, the adaptation takes great liberties with the chronology and characterizations. The writing team included Nemec, Yost, Vivian Lee ( Lost in Space), Liz Sagal ( Sons of Anarchy), Karl Taro Greenfeld ( Ray Donovan), Alexandra E Hartman, Sean Cummings ( Everything Sucks!), Javier Grillo-Marxuach ( Lost), and Jennifer Johnson ( Designated Survivor). In addition, Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg of Midnight Radio ( Limetown, High Fidelity, Knightfall) Adelstein and Becky Clements of Tomorrow Studios ( Snowpiercer, Hanna) Yasuo Miyakawa, Masayuki Ozaki, and Shin Sasaki of Sunrise Inc Tim Coddington, Tetsu Fujimura, Michael Katleman, and Matthew Weinberg also executive-produced. Christopher Yost ( Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok) wrote the first episode and executive produced. The series was a co-production between Netflix and Tomorrow Studios (a partnership between Marty Adelstein and ITV Studios), with André Nemec and Jeff Pinkner of Midnight Radio serving as showrunners and executive-producing. And from the sounds of it, he didn't need to actually watch it to know that it "would not be 'Cowboy Bebop.'" Cowboy Bebop (Image courtesy of Netflix) Now, anime co-creator Shinichiro Watanabe has weighed in on the matter during an interview with Forbes. But from the start of casting (for example, when Pineda was criticized for not meeting the unrealistic physical characteristics of her anime counterpart) forward, a large contingent of anime fans wasn't buying into anything that wasn't a direct adaptation (apparently, regardless of whether or not that would actually work on television). ![]() From a television perspective, the creative team produced an excellent series that was fun, sexy & dangerous in all the ways we wanted it to be. ![]() It was back in December 2021 when we learned that the adventures of John Cho's Spike Spiegel, Mustafa Shakir's Jet Black, and Daniella Pineda's Faye Valentine would be ending with only one season, with Netflix canceling its live-action adaptation of the popular anime Cowboy Bebop after only one season. ![]()
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