In the future, mankind has established colonies throughout the solar system and left Earth behind. In this future, bounty hunters known colloquially as "Cowboys" travel the galaxy looking to collect prices on the heads of any number of terrorists and criminals. The show follows the crew of the spaceship Bebop owned by a former cop, Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), whose past has left him a mixture of man and machine with cybernetic limbs and prosthetics, former syndicate enforcer, Spike Spiegel (John Cho), who is haunted by his past and the woman, Julia (Elena Satine), he left to it, opportunistic cowboy, and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda), a woman with no memories of her past life before being revived cryogenically and swindled by a con artist as the group work as "Cowboys" to try in vain to keep their heads and ship above water. Meanwhile, Vicious (Alex Hassell), Spike's former partner whose now married to Julia gets wind that Spike is still alive after having seemingly killed him years ago and sets out to kill him while also staging a coup within the Red Dragon Syndicate.
Airing in 1998 in Japan and making its debut in 2001 on Adult Swim in the United States, Cowboy Bebop is often regarded as one of the quintessential modern anime classics due to its richly nuanced characters, eclectic mix of styles and influences, and a soundtrack rich with personality. Since 2008, Studio Sunrise and Shinichiro Watanabe, the company and director behind the original have been closely involved with attempts to bring the property to feature film format with an incarnation at 20th Century Fox starring Keanu Reeves as Spike Spiegel beginning development only to languish in development hell much like other long gestating adaptations like the since released Ghost in the Shell movie or the ongoing cycle of green lighting and cancelation that is the Akira adaptation. Eventually the project landed at Tomorrow Studios, the producers of the successful TV adaptations of Hanna and Snowpiercer and secured distribution for Cowboy Bebop at Netflix alongside an in development adaptation of the One Piece manga. After a 14 year journey, the Cowboy Bebop adaptation is okay.
The show makes a good impression with its three leads played by Mustafa Shakir, John Cho, and Elena Satine as Jet Black, Spike Spiegel, and Faye Valentine respectively. The three have a natural chemistry that comes through in their performances and from the way they carry themselves to their various interactions over the course of the show, the three convey that "dysfunctional family" dynamic that was present in the original series while making it their own. The cast all hold their own in the action sequences and were reportedly trained by 87eleven Action Design who were also responsible for the stunt work in Atomic Blonde, Nobody, and the John Wick series and it shows with the choreography smooth and engaging with good sense of spatial geography and flow. The production design is also well done capturing most of the future present in the original series with a mixture of film-noir, western, and 70s iconography that made the style and environment such an engaging place.
The show this time around tries to have a "binge friendly" narrative as opposed to the episodic closed ended nature of the episodes of the original series where Watanabe treated each one like a stand alone movie. The original show despite being seemingly limited by a half-hour runtime managed to fit in a lot of plot and character through visual storytelling and atmospheric visuals where the music would play over moments of science and emptiness to convey a sense of mood and atmosphere. The show tries to build a season long arc out of Vicious' coup with the syndicate and on paper it's not a terrible idea for a overarching narrative as it was briefly glimpsed at in the show, but unfortunately the syndicate coup and its politics are probably the least interesting thing in the series and feel more like a weight the show is dragging around with it. While there are "villains of the day" most of them aren't all that engaging and pale in comparison to the menace, mystery, or humor of their counterparts to the original series. Some parts do still resonate such as episode 7 where Faye finds a VHS tape that's a clue to her past, and the acting by Elena Satine along with the direction and music manages to capture the same level of emotional resonance that was in the original. Unfortunately that's only one scene where I got that level of emotional resonance with most of the other scenes never really achieving that.
Cowboy Bebop doesn't escape the shadow cast by its anime counterpart, but it's also not a complete failure either as seen with instances such as Guyver, Fist of the North Star, or Dragonball: Evolution. In terms of anime adaptions by western studios Cowboy Bebop hovers somewhere between Christophe Gans' adaptation of Crying Freeman and Robert Rodriguez/James Cameron's adaptation of Battle Angel: Alita. The show is perfectly serviceable in its inaugural season even if I'm not sold on every aspect of it, and the ending to season one promises further divergence for season 2 should it be renewed. But considering that redux/remake versions of Evangelion, Berserk, and Sailor Moon exist, this should be taken for what it is: another approach to the material. It doesn't replace the original nor should it, and it's okay enough that it won't dissuade people from checking out the original. Who knows? Maybe this will nudge people towards checking out the original series.
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