A Painfully Honest Review of Netflix Cowboy Bebop 

This is the reason why “the manga, the anime, the Netflix adaption” is a meme that’s never played in flattering light for Netflix

Vicious' actor literally always looks like he thought of a really funny joke he's waiting for the right time to tell

My late 60s parents accidentally watched the first episode of this show and stopped watching it in anger because they felt they were tricked into thinking the show was about a Corgi.

Netflix Bebop is a great case study in why people need to take media literacy seriously. Because at the end of the day, most of the problems that plagued this show could have been solved if anyone involved loved the messaging of the show more than the aesthetics.

A quote from Roger Ebert's review of Battlefield Earth, "The director has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why," applies here perfectly.

"Guaranteed a second season" fortunately didn't age well.

Netflix: We have to tone down Faye’s sexuality so she can be taken more seriously. Also Netflix: Gives her a sex scene.............just because, I guess?

I just feel bad that John Cho moved his whole family to New Zealand because he planned on this being a multi-season Netflix show. He was pretty dedicated.

It's actually hysterical watching this and hearing "all but guarantees it a second season" after it being cancelled.

I believe giving Jet Black a family/daughter actually worsens his character a bit because in the original it feels like he is taking on a paternal role to the crew because he has no outlet for this elsewhere. Giving him a daughter to focus on actually takes away from that unique dynamic.

Vicious was the personification of Spikes past catching up with him. Julia was Spikes inability to move on and live his life. They were no more developed than that because they didn't need to be. This characterization is not difficult to understand. The writers actively chose to ignore it.

Jet is amazing in the show, he’s great. I hope he gets more work after this. Same with the guy who did L in Netflix’s Death Note. They both put their souls into characters that were in crappy adaptations and I respect them for that.

I feel so bad for the person who played Ed, none of this was their fault

Dude, I don't actively hate the live action adaptation like some fans do, but seeing clips from the anime after clips from flixbop is like filling your lungs with fresh air when you didn't even realize you were holding your breath. The original really is just as close to a perfect piece of visual media and storytelling as human hands can create.

Making Faye less overtly sexual 100% feels like another component of the toothless liberalism of this adaptation, and I say that as someone who cringes at most hypersexualized female characters. Faye is a rare example of a salacious female character who is not a sexy lamp with no depth nor a character with depth that is undermined by being dressed like a sexy lamp. She is a woman in a terrible financial position who intentionally uses her body and sexuality as some of the only assets available to her to try to survive. That is also important and biting social commentary that is cut by making her Woman Who Wears Pants and Swears.

How could you screw up Vicious? He’s a monster, intimidating, and pretty straightforward

This adaptation’s existence is what drove me, a part of the algorithm generation, to actually watch the original show and discover it’s jaw dropping beauty. If nothing else I am thankful for that.

There is only one point in this analysis that I would say you are completely wrong. 7:53 As someone who has owned a corgi for over a decade now, I can assure you that Ein does NOTHING in the anime that I have not seen my corg do in real life. Including the weird hopping thing. ESPECIALLY the weird hopping thing.

I think something a lot of “reboots” are running into is… people in the industry enjoy iconic media and want to create something because of it. But instead of making a separate IP inspired by it, they choose to build on top of the existing IP. But what happens is their personal style influences how they create the “expansion”, and essentially what happens is they add a Roman column to a Greek temple. Sure they share similar elements, but that does not make them the same.

My poor Gren. He was such an interesting, mysterious character in the anime. He just looks like a comedy sidekick in this one…

Abdul Hakim's death, one of the coolest designed side characters imo, hits poorly tragic in Netflix's Cowboy Begone. His last words are cries about how the rich have ruined his life only to be killed in cold blood by cops. Then, Jet and Spike shrug it off and believe another bounty is around the corner. This show had all the bell peppers and no beef.

I hated the Jet Black story change, where they didn't want to show all cops as being dirty... even though they're in a rotting, scummy world that uses bounty hunters.

Let's just call it quits and agree that Firefly is the closest thing to a live action adaptation of Cowboy Bepop there will ever be.

Original: let's rarely mention Vicious so whenever he shows up he'll actually have a menacing presence and we don't know what he'll do Netflix: sure but what if we had a full storyline with clips in each episode so you get to know the character

I'm just gonna say this about the show........Yōko Kanno music is still incredible.

I like Jet Black's actor and how he ATE the role. My problem is that the writers gave him a backstory that's basically Terry Jeffords from B99 in Scott Lang's storyline in Antman.

Finally someone else that understands bebop had a HUGE amount of political philosophy in it!! The show was so much more then it seemed on the surface and watanabe San is fucking based and a genius

Legit paused to go watch the video about the opening, and now I'm back. I'd heard of this show my whole life, and finally watched it all in one go, and after sobbing about it, I needed more. So here I am

Actually, in Bebop's case, Yoko Kanno created the music first before the animation, the story, and characters even existed. Watanabe was even inspired by her music to create new scenes. This makes Cowboy Bebop even more special because not only is it extremely rare to have the music as the focus, but to allow the composer to write what they want without the director misusing their music. That said, while I don't want to blindly hate Netflix's adaptation, the music from there is actually kind of okay, but there are some clips that just don't digest well with some of the scenes, in my opinion.

The most tragic aspect is Vicious being turned into a angsty teenager with daddy issues and Julia becoming selfish lol

The sad part about their usage of Vicious is that one of his key tones in the anime is a twisted sense of justice, and the driving point for Spikethat lies under the surface of his character. Vicious is a shark under the calm surface of Spikes exterior and when news of him surfaces like a fin rising above the water it cuts through the calm. The demeanor that Spike holds is broken because of this because he desires revenge.Vicious is meant to be an ever lurking force in Spike that is rarely spoken of or seen. The acting and also putting Vicious in brighter environments, this created a goofy character that, instead of lurking in the shadows came as subtly as a sharknado.

One thing Bebop, Avatar, and Samurai Jack have in common is that their animation style is a massive part of both their identity and their appeal. Making a live-action adaptation of any of them would just gut a large part of what makes them, and *made* them, have the appeal they do. I would bring up the thing that makes Samurai Jack different from the other two, but I'm worried even thinking it will jinx it and condemn us all to living in a world where such best-left-unnamed horrors exist.

The fact that he said “there is no movie in Ba Sing Se” makes me feel good

One of the things that really stood out to me on this was that Spike felt unnecessarily murderous in Netflix. Sure Anime Spike kills a lot of people, but he generally does so in situations where it feels like he couldn't really avoid it. Netflix Spike kills a lot of people who aren't really threats any more, for no real reason.

As someone who works as an artist I agree with the idea of burning the orginal Bebop OST into your mind while working on anything... Just trust me Kano makes being creative easier.

It's been difficult to find such balanced, fair, and thoughtful discussion on this, while you still stick to your own personal opinion and reasons. Great job, and a terrific video.

I can understand changing Faye's outfit, but for them to say that her character is outdated can only make me assume that they never really *watched* the show.

Jeff: listing in detail why you cannot translate Ed 1:1 from animation to live action Me, head in my hands knowing exactly what's coming: Jeff, please... I beg you

wouldn't a way better version of Spike's realization be that he goes to shoot the kid, realizes what he's about to do and what instincts the life of a hitman has instilled in him, and from there decides to become a good guy?

I think the thing that gets me the most about the Netflix version of Ed is how poorly they understood how the character was intended to be in the anime. Like, Ed (at least as far as I can tell) is more of a parody, behaviorally speaking, of that one hyper little kid that we all know. Like, obviously no human being would behave like Ed does in the anime. Some of that shit is very clearly meant to be an exaggeration, and it works well. It conveys how over-the-top and obscenely hyper Ed is. The Netflix Ed didn’t have to be this weird, creepy kid (albeit only for one scene). They could have found a more nuanced way to convey that sense of Ed being a crazy, hyper child. Shame we’ll never get the chance to see it though

I hate what they did with vicious. In the anime he seemed so scary and like he could kill anyone no problem. But the Netflix one seemed like he couldn't do anything on his own. I was shocked when he killed people because I didn't think he could

What amazes me is how deluded the people who worked on the reboot are. Multiple writers have attributed the show's lack of popularity to "a handful of very vocal trolls" and "coordinated attacks by haters." Yet there are multiple corroborating opinions from well known reviewers who all agree that it's a bad adaptation that focused more on superficial aspects of the show rather than what really made it shine. They've convinced themselves that they're geniuses who are being harassed by a small number of people who hated the show before it even debuted. Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes actually line up pretty closely between professional critics and general audiences for once, when there is usually a pretty big gap. Rather than take the criticism as something to learn from, they act like petulant children who want to blame everyone else for their problems. There are plenty of things Netboy Flixbop did right, but the most important things - writing, dialogue, pacing, characters - all have various issues that can't simply be ignored.

I think it’s a really good point how the anime was more political than the the live action, but more accepted. It makes me wonder if the real reason modern shows irritate so much with their political takes is really just due to poor execution, and due to the bar for what we find acceptable writing being so low. Kind of like how the scene in Endgame that shows off the female heroes makes you just groan due to being as subtle as a bag of bricks.

9:52 this kind of "casually being cool" kinda of action scenes are VERY difficult to do correctly, the line between unwatchable Looney Toones level absurdity and breath taking awesome action choreography is ridiculously thin. But yeah, what the hell were the writers thinking, it's like they hand these positions to people with a crazy superficial understatement of the original source, or just fell asleep after the first 5 minutes and got inspiration over a fever dream about what they thought they watched. Btw, I'm really grateful that you took your time to watch the series and give an insightful opinion about it that is not simply "it's not like the anime so it's garbage", or even worse, the "woke" take on it. And instead you give actually helpful criticism about it.

"People definitely died when they were killed." I see what you did there.

There's one big thing they dropped which I haven't seen anyone comment on in any reviews yet: Spike's missing sleight of hand. It's so important to the anime because once you see what he's capable of you realize that as a viewer you can't trust him. It makes you second guess everything he says and gives way to a notion of some hidden complexity. His pickpocketing (and place-pocketing) abilities change the course of so many episodes and really makes it believable that he could pull something like dropping a primed grenade onto the floor as he's being shoved out the window of a church four stories up off. It gives you this feeling that what he's thinking is really different from what he's saying. In the live action, you just see this guy with bad action hero lines who likes to murder people and longs for some woman that's not really worth his time.

There seems to be a whole lot of "they knew what, but not when or why." They knew that the ever present idea of sex surrounding Faye could be viewed negatively. And it could, but it fit her because she was not as much a sexualised character as she was a character who was sexual. It came off better in the anime that it was HER sexuality and not just her gimmick. It wasn't overly fetishized, it was utilized.

I think the difference between the complaint of "Woke" versus what Political Commentary, comparing Netflix to the Original, is because what I call "Woke Culture" is more akin to Tokenism than it is political commentary. For instance, without the context of "They'll be more important in Season 2," Putting Gren in there *feels* like they threw a Non-binary character in for the sake of a check mark for Representation's Sake only. Whereas in the original, Gren is Non-binary, and that doesn't really matter to their character. I can't quite recall if any attention is directly drawn to it besides one point when they refuses Faye's advances because 'Sex with a woman isn't his thing.' Now, the Netflix version doesn't seem to ride on high for their gender identity, but fans know and fans will question 'Why is Gren here?' when they serve no plot importance at all.

Honestly, if Netflix would've just released this as it's own thing and have it inspired by cowboy beebop instead of trying to recreate the legendary anime.... it would've been received way better

The thing that makes animation is good is the fact that it's animated.

After watching the show, I feel so sorry for the cast, visual designers, and Yoko Kanno and Seatbelts. They tried their best but the show failed due to needing better writers and direction.

The best way to write politics in a story is to make it genuine and not fake.

Vicious telling Julia never to say he "isn't manly enough" is the most embarrassing thing I've ever heard. I feel so sorry for the actor who plays him. God, that was so bad. It makes him seem like a whiny incel. Vicious wasn't vicious because he was trying to compensate for something. He was vicious because he _liked_ it.

19:14 omg I'm dieing, she actually delivered that awful line so well, with such conviction. I hope they paid her extra for that line she deserves it.

The Cowboy Bebop 2021 showrunner Andre Nemec was also responsible for the failed US remake of the hit UK TV show Life on Mars. It explains so much.

The whole we don't want males to sexualize Faye so we're going to make her a lesbian part was some bullshit if I ever seen it.

Geoff successfully putting into words what i couldn't in my head. The only two things I'd add is the casting of the bounties is totally on point. Some of those actors looked 100% like the anime characters, which was fantastic. And I wish they would have stuck the three old guys in the background more. I think i only saw them twice but i could be wrong. As a fan since the first showing on Toonami in my teens, I can appreciate what they were trying to do but I genuinely hope they take in Geoff's feedback and incorporate it into any future installments. But that's wishful thinking. And yes, no more Vicious/Julia, thats was just awful.

This is something that bugged me when I watched the new series. in the original, Spike’s entire character arc was about him running away from the past and actively trying to avoid his problems with vicious and the syndicate, anytime he gets involved with them in episodes like ballad of fallen angels or Jupiter jazz, he always involuntarily confronts them and never WANTS to deal with it, it isn’t until the ending after Julia’s death that spike WILLINGLY confronts the syndicate and vicious out of his own volition, completing his character arc. Buuuut in THIS show, Spike finds out that the syndicate knows he’s alive….aaaand imMEDIATELY goes and threatens Vicious. It’s just…..so bad

The trick to watching the adaptation is to take none of it seriously and pretend it is not connected to the original work.

This is a great analysis. You explain why the anime is so great and you're very fair to the Netflix version.

The scene with Asimov in the bar dealing Redeye to the bartender really said a lot about how the rest of the show was going to go, at least for me. The whole subversion of that serious moment where he takes the drug is completely undercut by the "And then we have cupcakes?" line. It's done throughout the entirety of the show up until the end, where a serious moment is completely ruined by unnecessary interjections of levity that were otherwise absent. You'd think the people writing it never saw the anime, or even referenced the source material. It's so off base, it's not even wrong.

On a sidenote, how is it possible that everyone looks like they're wearing wigs or fake facial hair? It looks so bad, even by TV standards the styling department is lacking.

"next season's premiere can...." LOL, nope.

I petition for the definition of woke as a pejorative to be changed from "has minorities in it" to "has tokenized minorities in a shitty attempt to capitalize on a marginalized market"

At this point I'm convinced that these live adaptations are being used as tax write offs like the vudeogame movie adaptations of the 90s

It boggles my mind how they managed to make the live action Cowboy Bebop even goofier than the anime version. How badly does one have to fuck up for that to happen?

The Vicious and Julia storyline also doesn't require as much production effort as most other storylines in the show. No space, no spaceship sets, less fight scenes, not a lot of tech that needs to be designed etc. So now we get the Vicious and Julia power hour because that's what's doable on a budget. Kinda makes you think they shouldn't really adapt stories they know they don't have the budget for, but what do I know.

Geoff, I'm watching this two years later upload and I just want to say I really appreciate the commentary you give specifically in Session 4 of this video. You really have your finger on the pulse of current discourse, and your words remind us of what we could really look for in art. Thank you!

I honestly think if this show never rehashed a storyline and instead had just done all new interstitial episodes it would have been really enjoyable. they would really be free to do what they want and play with the core characters. They def need to do something about the camerawork tho.

I was first introduced to Cowboy Bebop by one of my English teachers in high school, who was incredibly based and much beloved. We were talking anime one day and I was the only one who watched any. Told him I'd never seen it, just a couple snippets here and there. "You gotta watch it, man." Next day he lends me his fancy collector's edition set. Watched it all that night and returned it to him, eyes open. We pretty much shot the shit the whole next class about it. What they've done here has probably made him cry. It would've been tolerable, maybe even kinda good if it weren't attached to the name. Mr C, if you see this just know I haven't fallen for this infernal tasteless spell. Might've been the thing that pulled me a B in that class, I hardly did any of the assignments. Thanks man.

I think you hit the nail on the head and it is exactly what I was thinking- this show would've done better if it didn't have the name 'Cowboy Bebop' attached to it. While the Capitalist temptation is there to milk an IP for all its worth (since it's seen as "safer").... it more likely would have succeeded critically, and maybe financially, if it went by another name. You're gonna get a comparison to the original when you slap an IP on something and 99% of the time it won't live up to the original.

I like how for Ed, All they had to do was have a child like skinny actor and they did the opposite

The opening scene was a nice homage if I ignore all the extreme high probability that Spike would have died almost immediately. The people I watched it with were immediately so turned off by the opening casino scene that they refused to watch any more.

Vicious looks like a HBOs Game of Thrones Targaryen reject who just like gave up

Its kinda weird hearing ppl upset that jet wasnt casted as a white guy when the black community has always seen jet as a black guy.

i just don't know if they can do a good live action series because the big issue is that they always get crappy writers or people who don't understand the original in order to do it. i just don't know if it will ever be possible to do one because they knee cap it from the start

"Lets not pretend its your first time seeing that clip..." It was my first time seeing that clip I feel like I lost something, some sort of innocence

"We can't stop this show from existing now, or even getting a second season, most likely." We did stop it. The evil has been defeated.

the amount of effort you put in to actually giving this one hour long video captions is inspiring

Just watched Ganymede Elegy, and I love how Jet learns all the lessons Spike fails to.

I really feel bad for the actress playing Edward, they now have to live with that reality for the rest of their life that they were probably the worst scene in this show that got canceled. It's not the actress's fault, I mean anime movement just doesn't correlate to real life.

I don't think people understand Vicious at all. Most people take away that he is an cool, edgy sword guy. That's kind of the bare minimum surface understanding of the character. Vicious is a true nihilist. He does not believe in any human construct, be it tradition, bonds, honor. That is what makes him a terrifying foe. He's essentially soulless and empty, which would make him tragic if he weren't so deadly. The real key to the character is his obsession with Spike as a sort of brother. The only time we see Vicious lose his cold composure is in "Ballad of Fallen Angels" where he tells Spike that he can see the inner beast arising in him after their fight. The same beast that allows him to kill and dominate people who are weaker than him. Spike tells him that he's bled out all the blood of that beast. And Vicious yells, "THEN WHY ARE YOU STILL ALIVE!?" That moment tells you exactly why Vicious hunts Spike. It's not about revenge for stealing Julia or for the honor of the Syndicate. He doesn't believe in those things. It's because he is empty. The only thing that still animates him is the blood of the beast which drives him to dominate and kill. Without this blood, he'd be nothing. In Spike, however, there is someone underneath that beast. The person he saw as the one person in the world that could understand him is not broken like he is, and it drives him mad. In a flashback, we see Vicious grinning and looking back at Spike as they fight along side each other. For him, that was probably the only time in his life that he felt remotely like a human being.

I'm coming back to this video after your post on RU-vid recently, and I have to say that I've watched cowboy Bebop the first time I was a teenager. I was like I don't know 14 years old and I didn't get it the first time, but I watched it again and again and again and again and again and again over and over again. I'm 34 now and I've I've JUST BEGUN TO UNDERTAND and grasp all of the nuances. Such a rich story, and nuanced, and complex... That not for one second I thought the nextflix live action would do this MASTERPIECE justice. I still rewatch CB to this day and everytime I do it I lean and feel something different. I just can't even begin to discribe what this show made me feel.

I'm so glad he mentioned how Jet Black was pretty great as a cannon thing. He played the hell out that role and I liked it. I was pissed about the Daddy thing. Wracking my brain if Jet even mentioned having a daughter in the anime. Spike and Jet were really good actors for what bullshit scripts they were given.

I do honestly feel bad for a lot of the actors here. I bet they all had a good time during the production and cared a lot about the show. The writers definitely screwed up, not just on an objective level, but the fact that the anime community was going to be hard on it anyways. A lot of this stuff was just kinda doomed to fail. You can't go on to try and make a new version on something so beloved. They just couldn't ever win, no matter if the show was considered good

Honestly though, the characters not learning from their mistakes is the most humanly accurate thing ever.

If they wanted more Julia and Vicious, they should have added flashbacks with Spike before he faked his death, but Cho is already too old...

Martial Artists should always make sure they don't lose their Yuria to other martial artists.

They sanded all the edges off of all the characters except Jet, and they gave Jet all those extra edges. Spike has no real sad side at all and Faye is just a straight up good guy all the time. It is all really upbeat throughout. The end with Julia seems completely out of left field and counter to her entire character the whole show. Finally, you can definitely see why there is no Ed in the live action except at the end. Ed was pretty cringe inducing when they finally showed up. Some things in anime do not translate to live action as straight reproductions, and need to be adapted rather than just thrown on the screen. I thought it was good for a TV show, just not good for Cowboy Bebop.

As a non-binary person, Gren's change from anime to Netflix is the most egregious. I think you worded your take really well and I wholeheartedly agree. They took a character who had so many layers of personality and perspective and reduced them to what's ostensibly "The gay best friend."

This has to be the highest praise I've heard from mother's basement for a live action remake. And it's: decent

48:25 when I first saw this i had to rewind because I couldn't believe my eyes. absolutely incredible

Not surprising to me that they scrubbed the 'working class' vibe from Ana and Ana's place. The whole show starts with the bad guy being a manic, disgruntled worker carelessly shooting up civilians and employees and speaking against capitalism....not much further down the line, Jett lists 'anarchists' right alongside 'terrorists': effectively equating the two as being the same thing (when, and I will be clear: they are not). Compared to the anime, which typically shows all kinds of people trying to scrape just enough coins together in a mildly dystopic society in which capitalism still coldly rules; and in which Spike's usual reaction to a bounty's grievances are, 'Look, I get it, but I'm hungry so I'm just gonna ahead and do my job, ok?', this live action show aggressively bootlicks as if rich feet were made of candy.

My favorite episode of Bebop will always be Mushroom Samba, and just imagining half the shit in that episode in a live action setting makes me physically ill.

Hello, anyone knows the OST playing at the start of the vid? I’ve heard it so many times, while watching the show and just at random times, but I can’t quite place it…

EVIL JULIA ???? WHY???? THAT MISSES THE WHOLE THEMATIC POINT.

if we can pretend The Last Airbender movie doesn't exist, i can pretend Cownet Bopflix doesn't exist. Thank you for your in depth review.

The thing that really annoyed me was that in the time it took to watch the first episode of the live action bepop, you can watch 3 episodes of the original. The only thing I thought of the whole time was that I was wishing to watch the original and how bored I was.

I took it as a cheesy, bad, exploitation, grind house, Kung fu, comedy, spaghetti western. I didn't expect much and I was right not to. I still enjoyed it and when I met Steve Blum at ECCC in March and gave my explanation, he was on board with it and seemed to genuinely to like it. It's not great, it's bad, but I felt the cast really wanted to make it shine which is why I can't 100% hate it. But the vicious and Julia stuff was what REALLY killed it for me and I just kind of ended up more neutral toward it and can't really recommend it. The writing was just, oof, and honestly the music wasn't as memorable as the original. But my GF called me a nerd every time I called out music from the original and she listens to it regularly. Also to dominatrix scene was a great

If I’ll give the live action Cowboy bebop one thing, is that it got my mom to watch it. I watch stuff with her most nights she’s at home, stuff like snowpeircer, the series version of that golden compass film, the mandalorian, wandavision, stuff like that, with the only animated one being beastars, which I find hard to watch. But I saw that clip- the live action Ed scene at the end, and part of me wanted to check it out to see how bad it was, and with me not showing her the clip to preserve suspense, she gave it the ok, and I don’t think she would have if it’d been animated. Do note, **Neither of us had seen the original series**, all We knew was the Tvtropes page “Cowboy bebop at his computer” and she’d heard something about some part of it maybe being filmed in the area, so the lack of any knowledge of it was almost a recurring gag between us. We’ve now finished the live action version- didn’t realise Ed wouldn’t show up until the end of the last episode- and after that happened, she’s decided to watch the original version with me, accidentally spoiled gren for myself watching this vid but regardless.. here’s hoping watching the live action one doesn’t make the original look worse, in some weird inverse nostalgia.