Incompetent image composition, choppy editing, and wholesale mimickry of the anime that doesn’t grasp onto whatever made Cowboy Bebop special in the first place results in not just a subpar adaptation, but also validation for the most insufferable Internet trolls who can now brag, “Told you so.” (A depressing end-result for all of us.) However colorful and textured its physical environments appear, the paradox of high-budget streaming means no amount of money visibly been thrown into the production can stave off the sense audiences are watching a cheap knock-off. The show is firstly turgid, told in bloated hour-long chapters that fail to pick up pace. This Cowboy Bebop, far from a triumph of translation, exists as a cautionary tale of artistry crushed beneath the Netflix house style. Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop, from showrunner André Nemec ( Life on Mars), is a dud, simply put, that falls on its face less because of the liberties it takes with the anime and more because of its inescapable sense of unoriginality. John Cho, Mustafa Shakir, and Danielle Pineda star in Cowboy Bebop, a Netflix adaptation of the Japanese anime. And unfortunately - to cut to the chase - the series does little to dispel that skepticism.ĭespite its labored efforts to resemble the anime - including a beat-for-beat recreation of its energetic opening (complete with animated cigarette smoke) and a diverse cast by John Cho, whose magnetism as a leading man has been long overlooked - one can’t shake the feeling Hollywood filmmakers have again misunderstood the nuances that exist within Japanese animation. Given this, many have been understandably suspicious of the new live-action remake of Cowboy Bebop, streaming Friday on Netflix. The anime lasted for all of 26 half-hour episodes and one feature film, never telling a complete story across its runtime. Cowboy Bebop, the Japanese anime that first premiered in 1998, lived up to the spirit of its namesake.Īnimator Shinichirō Watanabe’s artistry eschewed the sugary aesthetics of anime at large when it premiered, Cowboy Bebop felt fresh, even though it was unabashedly a pastiche of many atypical touchstones: pulp sci-fi, gunslinger westerns, detective noir, and, of course, jazz. While bebop often sounded strange, especially to those hearing it in its early years, the style’s stark departure from conventions was its entire appeal.

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