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.
Absolute perfect quote to sum up my sheer annoyance at the creative team overusing that frigging dutch shot angle and failing to understand how you're supposed to use them in the shot composition.
It's pretty much like if jojo did the "menacing" symbols literally every other scene haha. It's like wait why are you doing that? It's not the right moment for that yet..
to be fair, a cowboy bebop manga wouldn't hit quite as well unless there were little buttons on each page that played a yoko kanno track to correspond with a particular scene
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.
Yes. Cowboy Bebop is an amalgam of Westerns, film noir, science fiction, and Hong Kong cinema as interpreted by a Japanese production team who loved these genres. The American team, not so much... When watching the Cantonese space gangster scenes, it struck me that not a single person involved in writing, editing, or production had ever watched a John Woo movie... They had no sense of how things should look or what issues of duty, love, greed, and loyalty should be emphasized. They were just "This is Asian. We need it to be bright and flashy."
I very much doubt any of the writers for Netflix Bebop watched a single episode of the original anime in its entirety. Really feels like, at best, they watched several youtube clips of the most iconic moments and based their show around those without any additional context to them. It explains why the main tone for the new series is comical, bordering parody, rather than the tragic melodrama that permeates the original anime.
@@hypothalapotamus5293 the original bebop was also explicitly leftists as well. Not in the liberal way the live action showed but in an ACTUAL LEFTISTS SENSE. It had very harsh critiques for modern capitalistic society . It wasn’t woke it was a modern critique from an actual policy non aesthetic perspective.
It goes to show that people need to create new IP's and not remakes. If this were a scifi show heavily inspired by Cowboy Bebop would have been much more tolerable.
It was bad enough that watching the trailer was enough to put us off so it was dead on arrival. Unlike the opinion in the vid most people are saying the character don't get close to the originals other than Mustafa Shakir with Jet who by all accounts is good.
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.
The subtext of the anime is that all four characters have been set adrift from all the human relationships they used to know, and can now only find it in each other, dysfunctional and mildly toxic as that might be. Giving Jet a daughter not only ruins the powerful unspoken theme running through the team dynamic, it doesn't add anything to his character.
Imo she was just an addition, not a replacement. If there's any lack of the feeling you're talking about then I think that's more to do with the story being told than the daughter characters inclusion. Basically, if there's a problem then it's with THAT first and additional characters second.
Him having a kid really throws it off for me too, like if he has a kid that he cares that much for and just wants to use the money to buy presents and be there for her then why would he be a bounty hunter? Why wouldn't he just get an office job that has steady pay and lets him stay near his daughter so he can always be there for her.
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.
I see what you mean there. Defintely in more aspects than others. Being someone that is all for seeing different takes on things I fully enjoyed pretty much every aspect of the show. Save for Vicious... That was just... Overtly saddening. Lol But from Ana, Gren, Julia, and the main cast, I super enjoyed the new takes and future setups for the whole show.
It is my favorite anime of all time. I enjoy most aspects of the live action version. Except what they did to my baby Ed. Vicious and Julia were a little butchered too but I could handle that. But what they did to my baby Ed broke my heart. Otherwise I enjoyed the show!!
If people are holding their expectations of the live action up to the Anime then of course they will be disappointed… they're looking through the eyes of Nostalgia and they need to just enjoy it for what it is, and that's "Based on the anime" instead of comparing it to the anime as if its supposed to be a live action copy.
I thought it was okay or meh but man it could have work out of the writing was better and the character was better written spike and fade are a downgrade to their anime version the only character I thought was decently written was jet
It is not bad by Netflix standards, the main chars are well cast at least, despite made different. But relative to the original, quite bad and disrespectful. And 30% dedicated to Vicious is horrible. Or, say, Gren. He is totally okay as a goofy support character if you forget that he is replacing a serious character who had his own 2 episodes. Recycled and bastardized the original to please those who never watched it. And, the fans of the original, we are supposed to be happy that some of the good parts have survived the rape.
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.
they're pretty smart id put on the anime for them thats what i did for my mom she was confused about it until i put on the anime. luckily she understood what was better
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.
Same here. I never would've watched the show if it wasn't for seeing clips of it being compared to scenes from the Netflix adaptation, which showed me everything I was missing out on in the original.
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 was hoping someone would point that out, I truly believe that when they did that scene in "Mushroom Samba" that someone had a pet Corgi and saw it jumping around like that and they used it in the show because it is so true!! Corgis really do weird stuff like that ;)
@@debodatta7398 lol yeah he was wrong on a number of things in this review. Like it not being a show pandering to the woke crowd. The tokenism is pretty clear cut.
@@snug0191 political agenda? If you're talking about me, I have no political agenda. I hate politics and I'm an independent. You don't think that it's tokenism to cast a black actor (he was awesome by the way), to a role that wasn't black, and paint him as stereotypical as they could? I mean, leaving his family because he had to go to jail, and was falsely imprisoned by the police. Really? And this is just one character that they destroyed. Mustafa Shakir was amazing, considering that pile of garbage that he was dealt by the writers.
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.
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.
New Zealand is a beautiful place to live. I would look at the glass half full and say that it gave him an excuse to move there. He could've moved to somewhere like Ethiopia, for which pity would be well deserved.
I feel worse for the regular New Zealanders working on the show. Lighting and everything else, your regular crew who lost a years long gig because of the completely talentless hacks in charge of the show. Though also feel a bit bad for John Cho because he seemed to be the only one who genuinely cared about making something for the fans.
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'm sorry but Abdul Hakim is the wrong hill to die on here. He's a nobody in the show, just some generic cool-looking (?) greedy guy who stole a vague generic data dog (??). I respect the show for trying to flesh out this character and even the dog. The anime worked because it knew how to pull off the vagueness of the story by making it feel realistic and like "something they'd totally do", but I'd still insist that what they did with Abdul in the adaptation was interesting and worthwhile :/
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.
for real. I felt like Spike wasnt bad but just out of age really. the spike from the anime shows you he's young but chaotic in a naive way. meanwhile the portrayal of Vicious is like some crazy batman villain; when he's supposed to be just as sophisticated as spike.
Agreed, also the guy who played L in the Netflix Death Note is Lakeith Stanfield and he's been getting consistent work some of it absolutely incredible like the film "Sorry to Bother You' where he was the main character.
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.
Thats why ANime wasn't really WOKE as much as progressive. Netflix was WOKE becuase it wanted to fix things that didn't need fixing. Like changing Faye tragic past about her hetersoexual relationship into annoying quirky lesbian from Marvel movies. Since they already feel proud of giving Jet the Black skin and earn their progressive points on twatter they had to ass lines about being "Black Male" as well as single dad backstory becuase thats how leftists see Black community. Oh and obviously Gren and Ed had to be non binary for safe inclusion even though they were more complicated than that.
@@MrConredsX What lesbian do you see in Marvel movies? Progressive is woke dude, progressives are leftists. Single dad is NOT the stereotype attributed to black men lol, he's also not single, he has a wife. Black people deal with divorce like the rest of us. His portrayal is also the one positive I see everyone talk about, and isn't that what you weirdos keep screeching about? Casting for talent over "diversity"? If Bebop was written now Ed and Gren would be non-binary, it's called people's views change, they had no idea what enbies were back then. And do you sincerely think being enby is this simple, safe thing?
@@MrConredsX In case you didn't know, WOKE is just a buzz word for social progressivism. There's literally zero difference between them, other than some kids decided they needed a 4 letter word for it.
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.
Yeah, him and Jet laughing about blowing a dudes face off in the casino/bar made them both seem like unhinged sociopaths, and Spike is def unhinged in the anime, but not a sociopath, and Jet is ABSOLUTELY NEITHER, so it was definitely a very weird choice.
he’s way too trigger happy in my opinion. i never knew him as a guy who loved killing people. i know he’s pretty good at kicking ass but not to the point where he “accidentally” kills them
@@TheSonicShoe That part really bothered me, too. I know being a bounty hunter already implies a certain level of disregard for human life, but that exchange really soured me on the two early on.
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.
Yoko Kanno did the music for the live action too which I thought was really cool and made sense because I really enjoyed the music throughout the live action series, especially when they added songs from the anime.
@@SquaulDuNeant Thanks, but I'm just saying that I don't think it's fair of me to judge a series, saying that it's all bad, without fully watched it, hence blindly hating XD.
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?
There IS an argument to be made about “objectification vs sexuality” in the instance of whether a person is in control of their presence sexually or not.. but adding a sex scene to an adaptation without any need for it isn’t.. really doing that? I’m sure the creators had that in mind, but instead it gives off the impression that “Wearing sexual clothing makes you unable to be taken seriously(which obviously they didn’t mean, don’t think I actually accuse them of this) but being sexual for another person’s benefit is a-ok.(WHICH IT IS, DONT GET ME WRONG!!! but to say it’s the only scenario that is strikes me as a little cringe)” No hate at all to anyone involved though. Do not care enough about live action adaptations to shit on the creators.
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.
"Hey we want to pay homage to westerns....without the archetype of morally bereft sheriff departments; eg the pinkertons" Its like they dont actually understand what theyre approaching
@@TOAOM123 or perhaps they did, but their corporate masters didn't want to inspire any forbidden wrongthink against the thin blue line we're all taught to worship
@@HUGEPoWERFULMooN "Woke bad woke bad" What's bad about being aware of the world? You culture warriors literally just tie everything down inventing these fake issues. Like, oh no, potato head is woke by... *reads notes* Being a gender neutral toy that can be made to be whatever a kid wants it to be. The horror. Better sound the alarms. Woke bad woke bad woke bad *terminate thoughts* As proven here, the tendency of hiding forbidden thoughts continues with you, and people are caring less and less about the noise you make over nothing. If only they were leftists. At best they're progressive, which is good of course, but I have yet to see evidence that they want to transition to a society without a commodity form or the abolition of a privatized means of production.
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.
This is an underrated take. An important part of what make Spike so compelling was you would always be drawn into who he was projecting himself ot be, just to have it subverted because he was up to something.
UNDERRATED COMMENT!!! As a long time fan you pointed something out that I implicitly picked up but was never super clear until your comment. Wow, thank you for this comment--you've added a whole new layer of appreciation for the original that I wanna rewatch the whole thing again now. Thanks bruv!!
Spike in the anime is a trickster - he uses slight of hand, a very unusual mix of disparate martial arts techniques (aikido, krav maga, jeet kun do, and street brawling), and is usually at least a bit reserved when it comes to killing people. Plus, he's altruistic, buying candy from a kid just to be nice or showing off some magic tricks to a stranger to make them feel better. He's not above acting like a clown or offering a hand to the little guy. Meanwhile, Netflix Spike is a sociopath who will kill people (or at least talk about it seriously) just for upsetting him, only does things if he directly benefits from it, is overly confrontation with his teammates, and the only people he ever goes out of his way for are people he cares about. In the second episode, Jet says they've been working together for 3 years, but it feels like they've only known each other for a couple of months - they both barely know anything about each other and talk about things in a way that suggests they still don't fully trust one another. And despite being portrayed by an actor who has done a lot of action work, his fight scenes are often stilted and clunky, like he's improvising his fights without really knowing anything about martial arts.
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
The difference honestly is just how you could put them both side by side infront of a gun squad. One would cry and make a bunch of noise, while the other likely wouldn't say anything or even care much as he's basically dead inside already. "Do it" would likely be OG Vicious' only words.
@@joshwillingham4592 That horrible sniper rifle scene made me wonder just *how* they could possibly rehabilitate Vicious to preserve him as a credible threat to Spike. They really cut his nuts off and he never recovered.
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.
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
@@farhanasafran8124 like when you take the guy holding the gun to your head by the hand and force it up against your skull while screaming "COME ON PUSSY DO IT DO IT NOW!"
@@Arufonsa1 No....Vicious was a cold blooded, war hardened, soulless killer who wanted power over anything. The live action gave us a white haired Kylo Ren. Not the same
@@gokuwufei99 And he was also a try hard edgelord. Those things are not mutually exclusive. Sephiroth hair, uses a sword in a gun fight, trench coat, nihilist whose only friend is a crow, and speaks only in cryptic threats. Yea I was never taking that seriously lol. Was that supposed to be played strait because it came off like a bit. It played into Beebops aesthetics great but nah fam he was always a child in dress up.
@@Arufonsa1 wellllll....his only friend was....the guy who screwed his girlfriend lol but the less is more theory worked in the anime because he didn't have much screen time or dialog but still felt menacing. "Fearless" (lol) has nothing to "fear" from this watered down crybaby version of vicious
@@gokuwufei99 I was never afraid of Vicious. I mean I can’t believe I left this out but the man named himself Vicious lol. He was certainly skilled and that was it. But so was the literal child man. Hell he was arguably more of a threat. My point is that cry babies can still be threats. Their skill level is not based on whether or not they made it through therapy. And Vicious was always a try hard child in a man’s oversized coat. This is nothing new.
Easily. They tried to do too much with him instead of letting him be that brooding, mysterious evil that's nipping at Spike's heels and reminding him of what he once was.
Basically, instead of Darth Vader (Quiet, menacing, kills people with a melee weapon in a setting where everyone else has a gun) they made Kylo Ren (Loud, impotent, scary in less of a slasher monster way and more in a "your crazy boyfriend is about to drive the car off the road and kill you both" kinda way)
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
Couldn’t agree more. Spike was way too actively involved in all the problems and interactions in the show. In the anime, Spike couldn’t care less about pretty much everything going on around him besides chasing the next bounty and what he’s going to eat that day. He hardly ever gets involved with the random people he comes across unless he’s toying with them for his own entertainment. In the live action, it was annoying how Spike would immediately establish a rapport with all the strange randos he encountered because of Jet and Faye and act super interested in them. Anime Spike would just give an annoyed sigh and mind his own business.
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.
@@alexanderv.8961 Ah sorry! I am too old lmao. Prior to it's cancellation in 2008 (and revival in 2012) toonami and adult swim were seperate. I was thinking the person meant in the very early 2000s when cowboy bebop first aired on tv, not in recent years
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.
Thats every failed story in existence with superficial woke guidelines in the spotlight and bad writing that tanks the whole product. The pattern is there. " Its not our fault, but the fans'!" Cue Batwomen series, Ghostbusters 2016, Birds of Prey, the new Star Wars trilogy and many others from recent years. They never even think of the possibility, that what they did MAY be bad in some... or even ANY aspect at all. It must be the patriarchy, white men or [ insert your favourite strawman here ]! Thankfully, screaming bigots or toxic men/fans nullifies each and every valid point of criticism, like an uno reverse card, so it could never be your fault! And who wants to be at fault? God forbid, you may own up to your mistakes and actually make an effort to genuinely undertsand others AND better yourself!
Writing? Writing Vicious and Julia as active members who have nearly a dozen scenes in the first few episodes? Dialogue? "You are black and you are male", along with the rhyme gag scene. Characters? Faye spinning her fists and dancing? My gf and I just finished the original bebop and I have no idea wtf you are talking about. Your first paragraph was spot on though.
@@jroldo8353 A few examples against many more that missed the mark. But this is just my opinion, not objective fact. I am not happy with what they did to Julia or Vicious, and I thought the "black and male" joke was cringey, not funny. It is very much a matter of taste, and you aren't wrong to like them. In fact, I'm glad someone found something worth liking about it - I think most of the hate is predetermined and unfounded. But I also personally dislike it
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.
And that's something we can at least hope was the cause, and not the creators' innate inability to understand that Faye WAS more that just a lady who swears and wears a loose outfit. In which case they probably gave themselves a pat on the back and high-fives all around for keeping the "essence" of the character while also "saving" her appearance from those evil Japanese artists back in those, clearly uncivilised, days.
If you watch the anime with awareness of it Faye's revealing outfit is as much a tool for her as Spike's seemingly lackadaisical careless attitude to danger. Spike walks around with a hunch and his hands in his pockets to make himself seem smaller and less of a threat, a goofball that can be ignored, and that lets him get the drop on enemies. Faye's version of that is showing off her body. Several times in the anime potential foes are distracted looking at her nearly exposed curves and don't notice what her hands and eyes are doing. Yes, it is fan service for the viewers as well, but it's not brainless fan service. It's her character, she's using her physical looks to gain advantage over enemies, just like Spike does. Covering her up removes a fundamental aspect of what her character is and just shows that the Netflix writers don't understand the characters at all. They should have just made a spin off with their own new original creations since they clearly don't understand or like the anime versions.
I also think that her overemphasized feminine appearance is a representation of her lack of identity. She definitely uses her appearance as a tool, but I feel like she spends so much time throughout the show searching for her identity that being able to really lean into a socially assigned identity like gender could be a kind of emotional crutch as well as a tool for survival. The way that she is perceived by other people simply because of her gender is a given, society assumes and applies a certain identity to her with no context other than her gender. Considering she was a blank slate after she woke up, being able to rely on some form of identity was probably stabilizing for her to some degree. In her search for an identity and for some way to survive, she could have taken on a roll like VT and leaned into her skills without needing to dress in an objectifying manner. Instead, she chose to use her body as a tool and her gender as a crutch in order to survive while inhabiting an encouraged identity that is pushed upon her by society.
They seem like such a lovely person and extremely enthusiastic for the character. Honestly, given what they were asked to do, their performance was great! It's all on the director.
Played Ed? Do you mean said some words for 40 seconds as his/her first work as an actor and now is been use as tool for the hate of " fans" over a show?
@@mothersbasement Thank you. I’m so happy to see this. A lot of people are going to come after this young, new actor and that’s so sad. It’s their first role and they’re so happy to be a part of it and if they read a lot of vile toxicity towards them as a person - undeservedly so - it could be so damaging.
@@DuskWolf99 It's none of the actors faults for how this played out. It's the fault of the director and script writer. This young actor did nothing wrong and I may not have liked the direction of Ed, but I found the actor playing Ed to have a charm to them. For what they had to go with they acted the shit out of it and for that I appreciate them.
Hope she’s not discouraged by the reaction to 60 seconds of her inclusion and she’s able to understand that the bulk of the issues with that scene and the show in general stems from the showrunners and writers themselves. She may be the worst or best actress to ever live for all we know, but I’m not judging her entire skill set over 60 seconds. With that said, screw this adaptation in general.
It gives me onion flashbacks to when they would say things like "a gay man's life is worth how many American lives?" And the colonel would say "7" like it was the most natural thing of all
It's a line that was very much intentionally awful. From the moment that woman appeared she was very clearly this mildly senile cougar who still thinks she has all the charm in the world. Spike has a look of perpetual dumbfounded shock and awe with every word that comes out of her and can't help but jab Jet about how amazingly cringey that interaction was afterwards. I think people trying to frame it out of context like a line played 100% seriously are being pretty disingenuous.
The only thing I don't like about animation is that it's often clunky rather than fluid, it takes a lot of effort to pull off convincing choreography and enjoyable action scenes and many studios just don't have the time or money to do it justice. But this is where the new show Arcane really shines. It's one of the first full CGI animated shows where I can say they absolutely fucking nailed it.. The animation itself is the perfect balance of smooth and realistic with cartoony/cell shaded styling and exaggerated expressions that offset the uncanny valley, choreography and cinematography are on point and the sound track is fucking epic. Only thing that holds it back is the story itself but everything else combines together so well that it more than makes up for it. I sincerely hope more shows come out with this style of animation
Hard disagree. This discounts so much that goes into making a good animated show. Just because the animators take advantage of their medium does not mean that the only merit to these shows are that they are animated.
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
Here is someone else who had not seen that. I slept better at night knowing it existed without having any way to actually measure the level of cringe that would be in it.
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 think thats what some other youtuber said is that if the show decided to just, keep faithful to the characters, but put them in different scenarios that are all original, that would have been really interesting.
Yep that’s what I had hoped for when it was announced. Bebop is an episodic show so an original story could fit in there anywhere. Just throw in the cast in a big misadventure and delve into the theme of the past and more specifically running away from the past and you’ve got the set up for something decent. Tell a story that takes advantage of its medium and you have something to justify its existence. But no just rehash a story that was made to be told in animation and take the most anime-reliant episodes and make it this campy incompetent mess of a recreation/rewrite attempt. Knocking on Heaven’s Door is a perfect example for the type of story that could have been.
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.
he looks like the most....ehhh cant say that cuz youtube censore you. they took the 15sec of dialogue about him being neither a women nor a man and both at the same time that wont ever be relevent after this the whole character plus an extra extra far right exageration of what a drag queen looks like spice into the mix. its like making someones body deformity their whole chracter after a 10 second text over snapchat pass through like 300 language over google translate.
@@troudbalos333 also, the reveal of green being neither sex is a massive shock value in the original. And not at all his central character trait like you said. He used it once to his advantage, he covered his face so Vicious wouldn't know the "woman" before him is actually Gren himself.
@@iwannaseehowlongyoucanmakethis so I’m actually about halfway through my first run of this show, but I had read about the ‘Gren is non binary in the reboot’ before. And after just watching the episodes with Gren primarily… I have to wonder where it came from. Because it was very clear Gren was born male, and identified as male, and the drugs he took before had the effect HRT has on trans people, but that wasn’t the effect he wanted - it was secondary. So the people who wrote the new show seemed to think he took the drugs he became addicted to, specifically for the HRT effect? But that’s changing so much about the character’s motivations.. I really don’t think any non binary people who had watched the original, were cheering at Netflix’s poor attempt at enby representation, because stuff like this reflects badly on them. Because people then assume that non binary people see anyone who presents as androgynous is non binary when most don’t. Most of us would prefer fresh, original characters, and you can make them non binary and make them androgynous or masculine or feminine or whatever, it would be fine. But that’s just… kind of insulting for both sides oof
To me better real life analogue would be trans man prevented from transition than androgynous enby. Tragedy of him Is his body was changes against his will. They should eighter keep it as it was And made contrast with regular trans character in some way or change outcome of experiments he went throw.
@@goingunder2548 it hurts doesn't it? They didn't have to change much if anything at all with Gren just find an actor who understands what he went through and portray him. They put in so much work to butcher a character that didn't need altering in the first place.
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.
This was a hard series to get through, Me and my sister were trying to judge it on it's own merits but we love the anime. Two of my friends who never saw the anime had different opinions one turned it off first episode the other loved it and can't wait for more. Both refuse to watch the anime because cartoons are for children.
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.
they did they just hate it wahmon are all snarky tough action heros and nothing else to them despite fem fatales being impowering because the point is they ACT like just a pretty face only to get close to the target and get what they want then take them down with ease no diffrent then how james bond SHOULD be.
She went from being an attractive but competent (if unlucky) free spirit who knows when to use her charm and when to use threats to someone who swears a lot, isn't a very good bounty hunter, and doesn't really know how to fight despite getting into fights a little _too_ often. She's more of a sass dispenser than anything, even compared to how sarcastic she was in the original.
@@OtakuUnitedStudio In the original she was pretty subdued all things considered, she had her obnoxious moments but you could tell she was smart and could read the damn room.
Ironically their idea of modern gets outdated faster than classic, complex and unique characters like Faye. In just less than a decade you'll see a new generation of creatives counter this whole self-righteous generation of filmmakers who strip characters of all things "problematic" so much that they end up with lifeless, unengaging shells that neither offend nor delight anyone. What I'm trying to say is the woke generation still doesn't realize they'll get old too, and faster than they think. But it really bores me how obsessed those people are with female characters, everything women do on a screen is symbolic to them and needs to be of an impeccable standard and serve as a role model but most of the time they miss the point about them, women characters, and women as humans all in all, what I mean is they don't need to walk on eggshells when writing a woman for christs sake. So now They're starting to make every female character so similar that it's just counterintuitive, beats their whole point. Which is an actual potentially classic, outstanding female character these woke folk managed to create recently?
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
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
@@Jessidafennecfox Yeah, agreed. I get the idea of trying to change her, but they really didn't have to do that and she's just the worst character in the trio every single time. It's like they just had a huge void where her old personality used to be and instead of re-making her from the ground up they just filled that space with really forced quips that just paint her as a super unlikable dick that tries way too hard to earn people's praise and attention.
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.
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
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.
Also, I love how they just insert the "Tears of scarlet" line with the introduction of Vicious; totally unprompted Like, they had a puzzle of elements that made of the show and no way of understanding how it fit together or the context.
It's really depressing how much research they did (if you watch the interviews) yet they still chosen to go the dumbest route they could every time. I still want a Season 2 just to see if they would make up for all the flak they are taking, or whether they'd continue with their butchery crusade.
The scene where Jet was attending his daughters recital was where I was fully sold on Mustafa as Jet. I laughed my fucking ass off and was like this is 100% Jet as a father. Very well done segment in all honesty.
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?
It is crazy how evident it is in the very first scene. Just compare the opening scene of the Cowboy Bebop movie to the first episode of the TV. Imagine describing those scenes to someone who has never seen either and them guessing right that the antics space casino version wasn’t a cartoon
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.
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.
Loved that one as a kid, years later the first time I took shrooms I was going up a curved staircase and I was afraid I was going to get stuck going in circles like spike on the endless staircase so I sprinted as fast as I could and collapsed at the top bursting into laughter
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
It would have been far better to make an original movie of cowboy beebop. Or perhaps a mini series and a recreation of the original series. Make a spin off in the world of Cowboy Bebop? I mean it worked for Detective Pikachu,and Ailita Battle Angel
Yes, yes, blame the fans. Not the fact that it shit all over the original. Not the fact that 99% of live actions always do. There's a reason why these live actions keep happening despite no one liking them. Because shit writers, like these, know that they can't write, so they try to ride off of the clout of actual writers and their popular works. They don't even bother watching/reading the source material to even try to understand it before adding in their fanfiction. But, no, let's ignore all of that and just blame the "ignorant fans".
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.
Yeah. I don't get why they thought that more than doubling the episode length in an adaptation of an episodic show would be a good idea. That just means they need to expand each adapted plot to fit an episode or shoehorn in other plots and either way it's not going to be accurate.
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.
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.
That and amongst other things, they did my boy Vicious the worst out of all characters. He's no longer intimidating or mysterious, just a loud, deranged, insecure idiot.
Whiny incel is basically live action Vicious to a T. They want him to be really intimidating and skilled, but they also want him to be this super pathetic insecure schemer type that is just an absolute coward that gets by on his daddy's coat-tails, and those two ideas are just fundamentally incompatable.
@@dracocrusher Every show nowadays takes a one dimensional villain from whatever they're adapting and in order to give him depth adds daddy issues into it, same with making every villain redeemable by giving them a kid. Sometimes it works like with Homelander in the Boys, but most of the time it just feels cliche and doesn't fit, especially when the character was "one-dimensional" for a reason in the first place. We don't need to know a whole lot about Vicious asides the fact he likes killing and eschews personal relationships in the name of his own bloodthirst.
@@commandervile394 this is the thing, you can't feel a single ounce of respect for vicious in this show, he never feels intimidating or anything like a threat, he is just idiotic and insecure and every character he interacts with laughs on his face
idk, while I agree with most of this review, I think that the show, by itself, removed from the bebop name, was decent, and the actors did a good job. i think the show just failed in the writers adapting it to live action
@@jacobkeffer8437 it also failed as a SHOW. It was way too expensive and time consuming to produce for the results that it got in terms of views/ viewer retention. I think thats the main reason it got shut down rather than anime fan backlash
@@Demolitions75 ironically, I'm pretty sure it was because of it's rating. It was a little off from what Netflix usually uses to renew their shows. Which not gonna lie, wasn't too far off surprisingly. (70% for Netflix and I'm pretty sure Cowboy Bebop was at a 58%.)
@@Demolitions75 true. But maybe it wasn't the fan backlash as it actually was fans *lack* of interest. I'm a fan and didn't even watch it. And others will just tell you they watched 1 or 2 episodes
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.
Ed was the worst, most annoying character in the original… I would have been fine, no… ecstatic… if they had removed that character from the live action.
@@67tedward Well they did have ed show up after Spike is drunk and possibly has a concussion so either could be a hallucination or a if people don't like it this could be an excuse to tone her character down for season two.
It’s been a while since I watched the anime but I feel like Ed could’ve worked if they understood the ‘cloud cuckoo lander’ trope, instead of the ‘loud obnoxious younger sibling.’ Rather than ‘SPIIIIIIIKE :D SPIIIIIKE SPIIIIIIEGELLLLLL,’ if it was a calmer _’Spiiiiiiike~?’_ that _feels loud_ because of Spike’s disorientation, I think the whole situation would’ve been received better.
I haven't watched it through yet, but if it's true that Ed is the post-credit sting for season 2, that might be the best thing for her character. Without much screen time, they should be able to take the time between seasons to redo her. She was always my biggest concern, as Ed is the most animation-centric character and immediately struck me as one who wouldn't translate well to live action.
@@BengtBagels Watch it. I enjoyed it a lot. I’ve not watched the original though. I’ve stopped watching review videos before I see the show, no matter what it is. I’ve found I can just watch the show without any preconceived negative thoughts. Which lets me actually enjoy some that I might be looking forward too. Like this.
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.
Why is everyone so worried over this? 99% of the hate is directed at Netflix and the creators, not the actors. Besides, she was on screen for like 20 seconds, I doubt most people even know her name, or what she looks like without the Ed cosplay gear. She's probably going to feel bad for a couple weeks and then audition for the next thing. She's gonna be fine.
It's possible, but that's what makes the animation really great. That kind of movement looks really good animated, but is very difficult to do realistically and yet I'm sure we can think of some good examples of how it is done better in live action or at least similarly to animated counterparts.
@@esteemedyams Like no one even really thinks like that too XD. Granted, there are a few special snowflakes that take everything seriously, but I have no idea where people are coming up with the whole "Lets go after the person who played Ed and tell them how shitty they were!!!" Unless they're on 4chan or something....maybe reddit or an open world discord but....that's like bottom of the barrel responses then XD. Like someone got to have some serious mental imbalances going on to think the person playing a character is really them and acts like them irl lol. Even in that case you never take them seriously.
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.
Gren was one of my favorite characters from the original bebop and it saddens me to see how they decided to handle their character in this adaptation. The straw that broke the camels back for me on this one.
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.
This is insightful as hell, excellently done. On a more surface level, they don’t understand that he’s supposed to be an implied Red Eye addict, which is why he can get away with the ninja shit. They should’ve sourced emaciated meth addicts for his design, not Geralt of Rivia.
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.
Whenever these sorts of works get made, be they live action adaptations of something animated or full on reboots, the first question I feel they need to answer is "Why should I watch this and not just re-watch the original." So Netflix leaning so hard on "Look how much we recreated shots from the anime!" is already a turn off. If your main goal is just to remind me how good Cowboy Bebop is, I'll just watch Cowboy Bebop again. Heck its even on Netflix! So I guess if any good comes of this maybe a new crop of people will be introduced to the original show.
Yeah but thw pro lem is thats still a win for Netflix . they dont care if netflix bebop is good or even popular it just has to sucker enough people into paying there netflix subscription for one more month to offset the cost of production. If it ends up basically being a gloried commercial for OG Bebop then so be it they get subs from that too.
exactly there are good adaptation out there, Lord or the Rings is one of them. Cowboy bebop is not one of them and now this is the same company that will have the job of the One Piece adaptation and I do not know how to feel about this :(
The problem with adapting a masterpiece is that you can only ever be “as good” at best and, most likely, worse. If we were to see a remake of the Mario movie, we could see that it couldn’t be much worse. In Bebop, it was always going to be an imitation. It’s already a masterpiece, and in adapting it to live action and doing the “same” story, it just becomes a cheap wannabe.
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.
Yeah, I noticed that bit about Ana's place in the second trailer, and it felt like a red flag then. Still working up the nerve to give the show a shot, but it's disappointing, even if not surprising, to hear that was just as indicative as I feared it might be.
Modern media is very complacient with the status quo, especially American media. I guess it's a consequence of the writers strike in 2007 and Hollywood replacing writers with algorithms
@@gorimbaud Every time I'm like, 'Okay, today, I'll give the live-action another shot', it leaves me side-eyeing some little detail that was said or done that's just, _blatant_ classism, or unnuanced, unwoke pandering...or like MB said: Vicious. 😅😂 It sticks in the mind, and distracts from what happens next, and I wind up having to just turn it off. Good luck to us both in finishing this slop 💯😷 🤝
Something something capitalism bad despite one character being a career criminal, the other being a successful cop who bounced to being a bounty hunter out of being an ex cop and the other displaced out of time while wrapped up in debt after being thawed out from a storage facility of cryosleepers because she was pretty. ...there's a ton of characters with normal jobs and they constantly deal with actual criminals who make excuses for their actions while having terrible zero to any personal responsibility trying to get an easy way out. ...the reviewer says the show is too Liberal when progressivism (which is usually colloquially replaced with woke) is all about rounding edges.
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?
What killed me was how they put ‘you’re gonna carry that weight’ on the second to last title card of the season and then had Faye reference it in the last episode. Turned it from this impactful thing about how you the viewer have to carry on Spike’s story now that the show is done to just this ‘hey look we said the thing’
Yea i have that tattooed on my forearm along side Spike’s ship and I cringe at how they destroyed all the meaning and “weight” behind the timing and meaning of that line.
That sums up the entire show and Netflix's motivation in doing it to begin with....it was just "look we did the thing from the anime" as an entire show except for when they did the things that didn't make any sense at all. Shows like this arent even really worth reviewing, watching, or getting upset about....its nothing more than a shallow cash grab by Netflix to milk a developed IP because thats easier than making a new one that is actually good.
We are drowning in nostalgic references/Easter eggs nowadays. It was fun when Marvel first started doing it, but writers are treating them as a replacement for plots and character developments.
There is a point where a fanficton reaches so far out of the source material that it's better to rework it into its own beast. Sadly, when you toss money to aquire an intellectual property before you come to that realization you are so deep in sunken cost fallacy that the proper conclusion is hard to reach. I admire the bravery of tackling the greatest anime, but I can't say that I'm happy with the result. It's okay to be inspired and steal via homage sometimes, and then proceed to do your own thing. I'd be much happier if you could integrate a new story into a bebop-like universe.
They could have followed a different group of people in the same universe. It’s that these “remakes” waste so much time copying instead of expanding into these universes.
I disagree that it had anything to do with a too late realization. its not the first franchise this was an issue with, and it wont be the last. because the point of these remakes isnt to bravely tackle a beloved franchise out of artistic interest, but the money it never fails to extract from the cashcows.
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.
Had to pause at 29m to say Daniella's Faye is cringy at best. Faye's char is so dynamic so frequently. Just go look up the first rule of combat scene. In one minute Faye in the anime exhibits almost everything she is. Cool to the core, sexy, dangerous, a chameleon in every situation and somehow calm and witty at the same time. Daniella didn't fail Faye all by herself though. The writers and wardrobe gave her the coup de grace. Gren was butchered in every single sense and he can't be saved at all. Ed just needs to be recast if they have ANY intention of using her. Eden's interpretation of Ed's voice makes me physically ill. You were right about Jet though. Mustafa absolutely NAILED Jet in every single way he could have given what the writer's put in front of him. It's absolutely insane how perfect it was. John Cho isn't a bad Spike at all but I'm not impressed. There's something about Spike being constantly depressed or sleep deprived and perking up in a heartbeat that I don't think we'll see on the big screen. Same goes for his body language.
John Cho is almost TWICE THE AGE that Spike is supposed to be, and that actually comes across in his body language. I can tell you, being 43 yrs old, that I literally move different than I did in my 20's. I'm reasonably fit, but having made it to my 40's, you get unconsciously...hmm...cautious in your movements. Cho did a good job with the standing still slouch, but he walks & moves too stiffly. And someone who looks his age (ok he looks damn good but he sure as shit doesn't look 25), his moving so unrefined would look odd on someone with his maturity. Spike makes brash, impulsive mistakes that, being 26, is believable. Cho, looking like a Spike IN HIS MID FORTIES, looks dumb. Like, if you've lived this long, why haven't you learned anything yet? Anyway, that's just my 2 cents.
This remake yet again proves that instead of trying to remake a series, rebooting within the world will always work better. I would have much rather seen them make something completely new in the world of Bebop rather than try to recreate the original and messing it up. They clearly show they can make things work, at least decently, in the world and they fail the most when they're trying to follow the original work. Had they just made something new in the world they might have actually succeeded.
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."
I will never understand their compulsion to make Gren a yaaaaas queen. For one he didn't even have a choice in how his body ended up. And there's, uh, IMPLICATIONS there with Jet finding Faye handcuffed and out of it in Gren's bed. Yeaaah great source for representation, guys.
Gren was the most tragic characters in the show he was good even if he was treated like shit. Then they made him into a stereotype like that's FIXES anything. Gren was a nuance take on war, and shit that soldiers go through. He took meds to calm him down that they had the side effect of boosting his estrogen count. He isn't some flamboyant cariacture
@@SaiScribbles I think it's because in original, Gren shown to be not comfortable/ dislike the body change. They probably think it would insulting the diversity representation
I love in bebop when they just hang out on the ship, it feels like what would actually happen if people had their own spaceships, it'd be like a mobile home. Heck if I had a spaceship I'd probably stay up in space and just chill out. defiantly better than the generic clean white corridors of every live action sci-fi ever.
What always bothered me was how anime isn't drawn anymore in detail. This is 20+ years old and looks better than almost every other episodic anime. If your into that CRISP drawn style like Bebop go watch REDLINE, it took 7 years to draw it's a feast for the anime eyes!
I said this on twitter in Geoff's thread about this show in response to someone who said that you lose too much ed without the over-the-top kineticism and wildness, and I stand by it: You really don't need any of it. All that stuff in the show was just a stylized way to express general excitement and hyperactivity. Literally just have her MOVE AROUND any times she's not hyperfocused on something. If I were the director, I'd tell them "Any time you're not doing anything specific, act like you're grooving to music." Also, every second time a cut puts her in frame, she should be sitting in a different pose. That's it. That's Ed's physicality in live action. I've heard a LOT of people say over the years that a live action Cowboy Bebop is doomed to failure; that it's too anime and simply can't be translated to live action. I've always thought this was bullshit. As far as popular anime goes, Bebop is among the most grounded, both in terms of it's world and it's characters, and with minimal tweaks here and there it could make for a fantastic live action show. I still think that. Notice how the VAST most of the criticisms against this show are to do with script and directing; problems with the showrunners not "getting it" over any particular aspect being unworkable. The sets look fantastic, the world looks real, and the chemistry is good. After watching this video I think that with a bit of work, a push in the right direction, and giving the show room to breathe without being afraid of or a slave to the source material, this can still turn into something really special and authentic. Even Ed. Whether it will or not remains to be seen, but it CAN. And as Geoff said, "that aint nothin"
I think they should have aged Ed up on the show and just said that she matured a bit but still kept some of her quirks. Look up Emmymade thats how they should have made her look and just have it the orange. Have her have pants with the same material as the live action have the shirt have a happy face that way it won't look like complete cosplay.
I like your ideas on how to animate a live action ed. I was kind of wondering how you would tone her down from the anime while still keeping her, her, but I feel like what you described is a good way to go about it. Worth a shot at least since that clip of her just does not work.
I feel like the problem with Ed, just from that tiny snippet of her, is that they didn’t try to figure out how a real-world Ed would be. They kept all the cartoony bits, but what seems merely silly when animated is unnatural when acted. I hope I’m wrong.
@@Tb0n3 Technically Ed does fit on the autistic spectrum with how she acts in the anime. Showing elements of both Asperger's Syndrome (hyper-fixation, extremely poorly developed social skills, extreme lack of interest outside of what they hyper-fixate on) and ADHD (inability to slow down and stay still even when focused on a task, when not focused on a task is constantly bouncing from one thing to another). The Live Action version they simply translated the character to be extremely cringy (and that is coming from someone who has Asperger's Syndrome and once had a friend with ADHD) and ramped that up to 11, ultimately making a mockery of the character.
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
Also they put some boy that is transitioning into a girl to play Ed. Ed was a girl in the anime. It pissed me off because they wanted to push their lbgtq bs instead of giving the role to a talented girl actor. Completely agree with you that the goofy exaggeration only works in the anime. How hard was it to just make a normal girl that is a genius with a sense of humor. The writers sucked.
I love the evolution of Geoff's critique. He's come a long way since making content that was essentially distilled SAO-bashing, to recognising Reki Kawahara is a person who deserves recognition for their attempts to do better (no matter how terrible a writer), to this: asking the fandom to be like water. Provide constructive criticism. Even when you hate something, there are good things there. Instead of pretending the good things don't exist, insist on expanding on them, let them take over the bad things until what you hate is gone, and what you love has grown through. Thanks, Geoff. This is a great one. EDIT: realised I wrote SAP and not SAO, lol
I'm sure I'm just beating a dead horse but this whole show just feels like another example in a pile of examples of how you can't, perhaps ever, capture the same atmosphere and tone that anime provides with live-action content. There's nothing inferior or superior about either but I'm just so tired of western cinema and entertainment refusing to understand animation does things that you *cannot recreate faithfully.*
I think what Disney has been doing - "Live Action" of their early animation masterpieces, which has only diminished what once were amazing fantasies, but are now garbage ready to be shredded - is proof positive to leave the original animes alone. Just don't touch them. Come up with something new, for CS.
Maybe the consumers of the end product need to stop expecting them to capture the essence of anime in live action, only to be disappointed every time. I'm not a big anime fan, so I watched this show with no expectations beyond some light entertainment. In that regard, it was fine-not great, not horrible, just fine. It seems the people who hate it do so because they were hoping for a what you rightly point out is impossible.
Is so sad that people still look down on animation, the fact that any anime is being adapted into live action is sad, cause they're already loosing an integral part of what may made them special. And I'm not against adaptations, but they have been aproched in the worst possible way. I still haven't watched the Rurouni Kenshin movies, and I understand why people liked Alita battle angel and I would like adaptations going that rout, is mostly animated after all (for me is a 5 or 6 out of 10). But I still haven't watched and anime adaptation where I feel I can say they finally nailed it, and why they should have to, when in animation is already nailed. I don't see a reason for an live action adaptation if they're not doing anything worth watching that the original already did or didn't did.
I say we do the opposite. Adapt live actions INTO animation more. Look, Star Wars: Visions was the best star wars content ive seen in a long while, and i think we should do more of that stuff. Mediums are very different in themselves, but animation can do alot more with less budget to create visions much less possible in a live shows.
You should check out the beginning and the final. As a fan of samurai X and someone who grew up with Ruroni Kenshin as a child i can say that the beggining and the final are not 10/10 movies but if you like the original show they are at least worth watching, the combat is decent and the story is passable.
i get your point and i do agre, i just want to add my pov regarding animation when it comes to anime shows that are adaptations of manga themselves. as an avid manga reader (and frankly someone who prefers reading it over watching anime) there have been several times when i was really disappointed in an anime adaptation due to the quality of animation and poor creative decisions made to cram story material into 12 - 25 episodes. anime adaptations themselves can sometimes butcher their own original manga material. so i do find myself sometimes fantasizing about what if someone who genuinely gets the og manga adapts it into live action instead of the messy anime that we got.
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!
they could have saved money and credibility making a tv series set in the world of cowboy bebop with random appereances of spike or othere known characters of the anime here and there. That would have been cooler, easier, more fan friendly and interesting.
I think it was confirmed that the anime Carol & Tuesday actually took place in the same universe as Cowboy Bebop. > feel like it kinda sorta counts as a spinoff without cameos
a post-spike death group of bounty hunters trained by jet and faye would work, they would live in the same universe of lore and writers would have more freedom to create.
@@pedrohenrique-et3fs hell it would even give them an excuse to have an older Ed appear, who would presumably be a little more mature and not do the weird movements and mannerisms that REALLY don't work in live action.
My biggest gripe with the live action is the cinematography and directing. How does the anime feel and look more like a movie than the actual live action ? The lighting was piss poor. Shooting this particular live action on digital cameras was a huge huge mistake. They should've shoot this entire thing on film. There's a reason why lots of big time directors still shoot things on film. It would've given the long time fans that feel and classic 90's look on screen. The low contrast completely killed the feel of cowboy bebop
i agree and disagree. any competent director/cinematographer can make digital look good. You just have to actually be good at your job and have love for the art. The people making this show were just looking for an easy cash grab and its very apparent.
I don't think analog would've saved it. If the thing you're shooting is crap, using different tools won't save you. I think some shots of this show look ok but really it looks fake and watered down compared to the anime somehow. The anime had this density and detail to each shot that is missing from Netflix Bebop
@@frankie3351 it was good lighting it was just bad for bebop. I thought we was going to get a blade runner type of vibe or even better. Shit looked like a tv show which pissed me off.
How to improve to next season of Bobflix: 1. Improve the script. Reduce the corny Joss Whedon style of dialogue. 2. No need to tell us every damn thing. Assume that most of your audience can put 2 and 2 together and no need to explain everything in excruciating detail. 3. Significantly reduce screen time of Julia and Vicious.
I don't know about that. I feel like if you don't put two and two together for the audience, a bunch of half-wits are going to come out screaming about "Plot holes"
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.
It’s because the people making modern shit with political tales don’t feel like their actual perspectives. Their idea of politics is completely based off aesthetics and leads to hollow pandering. Watanabe has REAL deeply held political ideas that he infuses into his work in such a seamless way that it honestly goes over most peoples heads. That’s what makes it so fun to figure out as you watch over the years.
Arcane is a lefty leaning show but not necessarily woke. Political commentary and left leaning ideas LGBT isn't auto woke. Mainly because these two shows tell you a story with the message embedded inside. All these streaming show adoptions that are poorly received the message is front and center with story setting and character in the back seat. It's no different to me than those wholesome poorly done christian movies. Where the message and morals is the focus rather than a good story. All these woke shows are the same as the christian movies. Making a statement is cool but no one wants to be preached at in your face
I definitely think a lot of it is about subtlety. I'm completely okay with representation and with talking about these ideas and people but for the love of all that is good, make it make sense and fit into the story. So many times you can tell it's there just to be a maul to bash you over the head and say 'see how progressive we are??' when the characters are so one-dimensional that 'being gay' or 'being a leftist' is their only defining character trait.
@Pengalor I rarely see that now. And when you got right-wing fans of Warhammer or Star Wars I think you need to be more overt with leftist messaging. Andor is beloved and it's not exactly subtle
I think one of the best things about the original anime is that it doesn’t actually give you all the answers to the questions you have. You only get most of the pieces to the puzzle, and it’s up to you to put it together and fill in the rest with you own imagination. It engages with you in a deeper way by not bogging you down with BS, just like Eva it focuses on the emotion of the scene over the lore details. Think about it, was there a single scene with Julia and Vicious in the same room in the original? You just have to imagine what went down between them and Spike. That’s just an example but i hope you get what i mean
@@oliverebbing6637 Because, as someone (I forgot who) said, modern shows/movies are "written by children for children", with which they meant plot points must be obvious, action scenes must be frequent, and characters must be (overly) emotional. You can't have quiet introspection or ambiguous messages*, otherwise the audience "won't connect with it" and will get bored because they don't get it, and nothing flashy has happened in the last five minutes to keep them at the screen despite that. And movies like that are expensive, so unless you go for the biggest market (i.e. the young adult demographic, or "the crowd that are still young enough to, as a majority, enjoy simple, flashy, things, but old enough to start having disposable income"), it's not worth making them. So big investments for big returns, because big numbers look good for the people doing the investment, and writers who understand/share the mindset of the target audience have been put in charge of the movies to make those kinds of movies more effectively. *On the topic of being ambiguous, to throw a small correction at the video: The big fight against a hallway full of rival syndicate members didn't kill Spike in the anime. Maybe. We don't actually know. Spike's ultimate fate was never confirmed, and even when directly asked about it Shinichiro Watanabe has always been intentionally vague, saying things like "even I don't know" or "he sure looked tired, though".
Wrong - Japanese animators weren't given huge budget's (besides DBZ) to make their visions so they made them more concise and to the point back then. Wantanabe was given direction to make this to sell toys, just as long as it had a spaceship in it he was good lol. He was also going to make it more adult also but was told that they were aiming at a younger audience so he toned it down. Eva's original ending was cut due to budget reasons, which is why the ending is butchered down to make us think what could've happened they legit had no money for it. This caused them to make End of Evangelion after it's popularity exploded End of Evangelion is a middle finger to the fans that gave Hideaki Anno death threats and the reason why we got the rebuilds, crazy. Vicious held a gun up to Julia's head stating that she needs to kill Spike - I don't know why you received those likes, nothing you said was right. Anime's humble beginnings are full of artistic and meaningful endeavors because they can't do live action big budgets like America which forces them to be more creative.
@@PerkulatorBenny yeah and its sad. When the only thing a show\movie does is look good for a moment and make a lot of money, that doesn't make it worth being remembered.. Creating a movie that has an impact on people and invokes thoughts or even changes their view on things is the effect we should go for. Even entertaining people is maybe even more worth it that just big numbers. Like idk the impact "Fight Club" has in invoking thoughts. Movies like that can create so interesting conversations :)
@@robthegreatt1 If you're talking to me, then you're misunderstanding something. I was replying to Oliver's comment about modern movies (which I took to mean something like the Marvel movies) and how their writers don't have any subtlety anymore, which is also showing in how the Netflix show is beating people over the head with certain plot points. We weren't, or at least I wasn't, actually talking about the anime (or even anime in general) at all. As for Spike, in the anime he is never shown to be confirmed dead on screen and you can look up interviews with Shinichiro Watanabe about it if you want.
I will say that the biggest crime the show commits is to the characters themselves. In many cases, it isn’t even what they do to the protagonists, but what they do to the antagonists and many side characters. Gren was meant to be a tragic figure, yet another victim in the long line of victims of Vicious. His inability to escape his past and let go foretells of Spike’s own final showdown. They even make a reference to a star representing a person’s life that would later be used for Spike in the finale. I can sympathize with anime Gren. I actually felt bad for him and was saddened by his tragic end. I feel nothing for the live action Gren. It seems like they reduced him to an LGBT stereotype that has no important role in the story, whereas he had an entire two part arc in the anime. If they are going to do something with him, it better be pretty damn good to make up for what they’ve done so far. By far, I’d say the biggest crime is what they did to Vicious and Julia. The anime did an amazing job of telling us what we needed to know about the two without flat out explaining their past. The brief, silent flashback clips we get, combined with their interactions in the present, tell us all we need to know. The anime staff knew what to tell us and what to leave out. Vicious himself was a great villain that was built up nicely not by dialogue, but by the silent air of menace that surrounded him. He didn’t need to say anything. You could tell just by looking at him that this was a dangerous man that was not to be messed with. This Vicious is just a cartoon villain, more so than the actual animated villain. They somehow made him more cartoony and less realistic. I actually laughed when I saw his intro scene. Plus, he is so damn annoying. Not menacing. Annoying. Where anime Vicious was cunning, ruthless, and power hungry, Netflix Vicious is a stupid, temperamental moron with daddy issues. As for Julia….I don’t even know where to begin. Everything about her is wrong. It’s outrageous how much they screwed up the character. I will never understand why anyone would defend these changes.
I tried to watch it, but after 2 episodes and ESPECIALLY the scenes with Vicious, I had to tap out. Couldn't even drunk watch it, it was *that* bad. You nailed it, describing what they did to Julia & Vicious.
Vicious is a dark mirror of Spike and isn't ever present because he doesn't need to be. The story isn't about him. Same with Julia. She shows up when it's time for him to die because it's his past finally catching up with him that he could never let go of. Also, the Netflix show revels too much in adding in a ton of violence against women where that didn't exist before.
Not only that, but spending a lot of time focusing on Vicious and Julia just destroys their mystique. It makes Vicious less threatening (even without the bad acting and change to his personality), and it bogs down the mystery of Spike's past, and his connections to these two people.
It is weird. I never imagined even the far scarier Vicious of the anime as a wife beater. Obviously he was vindictive enough to order her to kill Spike when he found out about their relationship. But that is space gangster sh!t not I’m a cry baby with impotent rage sh!t
I thought the fact that Julia MARRIED Vicious destroyed her character. In the anime she fled for her life, going into hiding and leaving everything behind. She would rather die than marry him. She was enigmatic but there was the impression that she was strong and resourceful.
@@existentialgamer9206 You barely see Julia in the anime. But when you do, she's doing the same space noir action alongside everyone else. In the Netflix show, she's just a damsel until her inevitable heel villain heel turn. At least before I could care about Julia as a mystery or simply because Spike did. But just watching this man baby version of Vicious abuse her, followed by a weak flashback love story, followed by a villain twist ... there was just never any reason to care about this version of the character
@@TheJadedJames That is definitely something else that bugs me: Julia is not someone who can't take care of herself. She has all of her strengths taken away to be a victim to a sub-par Vicious' tantrums. But the Julia in the anime is every bit the lethal assassin and soldier that Spike and Vicious were. Which: a show that revels in taking power away from women, praising cops, and ignoring all the social commentary about the problems of capitalism....I mean I guess it all goes hand-in-hand, really.
I stand by the idea that Pacific Rim (the first one) is hands down Hollywood's best adaptation of anime, despite not being explicitly based on any one anime property.
I feel like this is random, but if you want a show that gives off a similar vibe but with cooler word building I would recommend altered carbon. It deals with similar themes but with a very different story. I’m a massive Bepop fan and altered carbon is more like bepop than this live action lol
altered carbon is really good, but if you read the books theyre even darker. both the show and the books are amazing in my opinion, and the show delves away from the book but pulls different parts into it.
Having had a few weeks to digest it, I have realized why the remake of Bebop is so awful - People wanted *more* Bebop, not to revisit what we already had. THe original is still so good, that revisiting it is at beast, unnecessary, and at worst (what we actually got) disrespectful and disingenuous. People really were excited for what this show could be, including the fans, so to write it off as if there's no way fans of the anime could like it was kind of a short term play that was always going to backfire... And we can look to Final Fantasy 7 Remake for proof. With FF7, the fans were pointing out almost immediately that it could stand for a remake. It came form the era where each release had a few bugs or issues - a stat doesn't work right or an item has a function that gets ignored, or something to that effect. ANd then you had FF8 and FF9 come out to show what the PS1 was really capable of and all the sudden, tiny chibi blobcloud and the rest of the play-doh brigade just look silly. Looking back, FF7 lived as much in your imagination as it did on screen. Oh sure, the low poly models were still leaps and bounds more capable of 3-D action than older models and sprites (especially in the FF franchise...) but when the PS2 rolled around it was time for a serious talk about how the game could use a new coat of paint like how the original FF got spiffed and shined for the PS1. In the meantime, the FF7 fandom got a movie, an OVA series, some mobile games, and two spinoff games to expand the lore and show that there was life in the franchise. And now? EVen though they are changing the plotline a bit and adding more bosses and content.....There isn't nearly as much backlash compared to the embrace of the changes by the fandom. They got the movie, some spinoff games, and more.....And so when they remade the story proper, it was obvious that changes need to be made - support the side stories, fix the broken items and stats and cut out things that didn't work. Actually have facial animations! No more lego heads in cutscenes! But Bebop never needed to be remade....it was pretty damn good as it was, and it wrote the book for many shows in the future to follow. What people wanted, was MORE. Don't reheat the leftovers, make new content - new bounties, new stories, new places. You can use the existing story as a springboard and build something new, rather than falling over yourself making changes to support other changes because you changed something that never needed to be remade. Fuck, imagine other franchises modified by this group. "We loved the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, but Gollum doesn't work for modern audiences! So we made it so he gets the ring at the end of the first film, kicks Frodo off a fucking cliff and wishes that sauron would explode so we have him just vaporize POOF! Right in front of the fellowship of the ring! NOw we've got a REAL villain for the next film! Who's ready for the two towers? Spoiler alert - we condensed them down into one tower! We don't want fans thinking they know what's going to happen!"
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.
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.
Absolute perfect quote to sum up my sheer annoyance at the creative team overusing that frigging dutch shot angle and failing to understand how you're supposed to use them in the shot composition.
Beautiful comment and yes, it got extremely annoying after the first 20min
Like how the first Thor movie was done. It hurts to see once you notice a lot of the shots compose of dutch angles.
This was perfect quote. I think this describes the show on the whole
It's pretty much like if jojo did the "menacing" symbols literally every other scene haha. It's like wait why are you doing that? It's not the right moment for that yet..
This is the reason why “the manga, the anime, the Netflix adaption” is a meme that’s never played in flattering light for Netflix
More like the novel, the manga, the anime then the Netflix adaptation
@@javianbrown8627 *Light Novel. Lets not pretend weabs actually read
What do you think a light novel is?
@@anguishedcarpet that proves I'm not a weeb. I read them
to be fair, a cowboy bebop manga wouldn't hit quite as well unless there were little buttons on each page that played a yoko kanno track to correspond with a particular scene
Vicious' actor literally always looks like he thought of a really funny joke he's waiting for the right time to tell
And nobody is following his imaginary script
Honestly, he feels like an unbridled horse... In dire need of a dentist
Vicious was a cool mysterious character they made him a joke lmao
While also trying REEEALLY hard to hold in a massive fart
@@Illvana oh god now I will not be able to unsee it.
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.
Yes. Cowboy Bebop is an amalgam of Westerns, film noir, science fiction, and Hong Kong cinema as interpreted by a Japanese production team who loved these genres. The American team, not so much...
When watching the Cantonese space gangster scenes, it struck me that not a single person involved in writing, editing, or production had ever watched a John Woo movie... They had no sense of how things should look or what issues of duty, love, greed, and loyalty should be emphasized. They were just "This is Asian. We need it to be bright and flashy."
I very much doubt any of the writers for Netflix Bebop watched a single episode of the original anime in its entirety. Really feels like, at best, they watched several youtube clips of the most iconic moments and based their show around those without any additional context to them. It explains why the main tone for the new series is comical, bordering parody, rather than the tragic melodrama that permeates the original anime.
@@hypothalapotamus5293 the original bebop was also explicitly leftists as well. Not in the liberal way the live action showed but in an ACTUAL LEFTISTS SENSE. It had very harsh critiques for modern capitalistic society . It wasn’t woke it was a modern critique from an actual policy non aesthetic perspective.
Ty
It goes to show that people need to create new IP's and not remakes. If this were a scifi show heavily inspired by Cowboy Bebop would have been much more tolerable.
It's actually hysterical watching this and hearing "all but guarantees it a second season" after it being cancelled.
Feels good. Hope we can all forget about it soon.
I know right?! I had to fight the urge to cackle out loud when I heard that bit
'few reasons' heh.
Thank satan
It was bad enough that watching the trailer was enough to put us off so it was dead on arrival. Unlike the opinion in the vid most people are saying the character don't get close to the originals other than Mustafa Shakir with Jet who by all accounts is good.
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.
His actor was also too young while spikes was too old, so they ended up being around same age.
It’s also pointless and only drags out the already long 40 minute time count
The subtext of the anime is that all four characters have been set adrift from all the human relationships they used to know, and can now only find it in each other, dysfunctional and mildly toxic as that might be.
Giving Jet a daughter not only ruins the powerful unspoken theme running through the team dynamic, it doesn't add anything to his character.
Imo she was just an addition, not a replacement. If there's any lack of the feeling you're talking about then I think that's more to do with the story being told than the daughter characters inclusion.
Basically, if there's a problem then it's with THAT first and additional characters second.
Him having a kid really throws it off for me too, like if he has a kid that he cares that much for and just wants to use the money to buy presents and be there for her then why would he be a bounty hunter? Why wouldn't he just get an office job that has steady pay and lets him stay near his daughter so he can always be there for her.
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.
I see what you mean there. Defintely in more aspects than others. Being someone that is all for seeing different takes on things I fully enjoyed pretty much every aspect of the show. Save for Vicious... That was just... Overtly saddening. Lol But from Ana, Gren, Julia, and the main cast, I super enjoyed the new takes and future setups for the whole show.
It is my favorite anime of all time. I enjoy most aspects of the live action version. Except what they did to my baby Ed. Vicious and Julia were a little butchered too but I could handle that. But what they did to my baby Ed broke my heart.
Otherwise I enjoyed the show!!
If people are holding their expectations of the live action up to the Anime then of course they will be disappointed… they're looking through the eyes of Nostalgia and they need to just enjoy it for what it is, and that's "Based on the anime" instead of comparing it to the anime as if its supposed to be a live action copy.
I thought it was okay or meh but man it could have work out of the writing was better and the character was better written spike and fade are a downgrade to their anime version the only character I thought was decently written was jet
It is not bad by Netflix standards, the main chars are well cast at least, despite made different. But relative to the original, quite bad and disrespectful. And 30% dedicated to Vicious is horrible.
Or, say, Gren. He is totally okay as a goofy support character if you forget that he is replacing a serious character who had his own 2 episodes.
Recycled and bastardized the original to please those who never watched it. And, the fans of the original, we are supposed to be happy that some of the good parts have survived the rape.
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.
Not enough corgi is perhaps my favorite complaint about any show to ever happen.
that has to be one of the most genuinely adorable things that I have ever heard
The most wholesome negative review
Well that's valid. Give them Chi's Sweet Home.
they're pretty smart id put on the anime for them thats what i did for my mom she was confused about it until i put on the anime. luckily she understood what was better
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.
At least this adaptation meant Netflix also got to stream the original anime so silver linings and all that
Same here. I never would've watched the show if it wasn't for seeing clips of it being compared to scenes from the Netflix adaptation, which showed me everything I was missing out on in the original.
Blessings upon this journey.
Same here and I can’t wait to review it on my Instagram account too
then again which brought more fans to berserk? the 97 anime or the one that shall not be named?
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.
Clearly I need a more comprehensive corgi education
@@mothersbasement Dog
I was hoping someone would point that out, I truly believe that when they did that scene in "Mushroom Samba" that someone had a pet Corgi and saw it jumping around like that and they used it in the show because it is so true!! Corgis really do weird stuff like that ;)
Damn gotta go look up corgi hopping videos now
@@mothersbasement They really are little weirdos. Mine does this stuff all the time too, hahah
"Guaranteed a second season" fortunately didn't age well.
mothers basement is often wrong when it comes to his predictions lol
@@debodatta7398 lol yeah he was wrong on a number of things in this review. Like it not being a show pandering to the woke crowd. The tokenism is pretty clear cut.
@@jesusisc0mings00n3 That's not what he said? He said that it was less woke than the original, not that it wasn't woke or pandering to the woke crowd.
@@jesusisc0mings00n3 I have never seen someone trying so hard to misinterpret a messege to support their political agenda.
@@snug0191 political agenda? If you're talking about me, I have no political agenda. I hate politics and I'm an independent. You don't think that it's tokenism to cast a black actor (he was awesome by the way), to a role that wasn't black, and paint him as stereotypical as they could? I mean, leaving his family because he had to go to jail, and was falsely imprisoned by the police. Really? And this is just one character that they destroyed. Mustafa Shakir was amazing, considering that pile of garbage that he was dealt by the writers.
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.
Or they just completely failed to grasp that...
So then what was Jet or the dog?
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.
Oof lmao
Damn.
New Zealand is a beautiful place to live. I would look at the glass half full and say that it gave him an excuse to move there. He could've moved to somewhere like Ethiopia, for which pity would be well deserved.
@@nannerrammeri work with a guy who is from Ethiopia. It has a beautiful country side and is not portrayed as american media chaulks it up to be
I feel worse for the regular New Zealanders working on the show. Lighting and everything else, your regular crew who lost a years long gig because of the completely talentless hacks in charge of the show. Though also feel a bit bad for John Cho because he seemed to be the only one who genuinely cared about making something for the fans.
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.
They also had the bell peppers and no beef scene but without the monologue.
Spike is a sociopath and Jet is an enabler for him.
What does that final phrase mean?
I'm sorry but Abdul Hakim is the wrong hill to die on here.
He's a nobody in the show, just some generic cool-looking (?) greedy guy who stole a vague generic data dog (??).
I respect the show for trying to flesh out this character and even the dog.
The anime worked because it knew how to pull off the vagueness of the story by making it feel realistic and like "something they'd totally do", but I'd still insist that what they did with Abdul in the adaptation was interesting and worthwhile :/
I had high, however misplaced hopes for this. But I knew that it wasn’t long for this world
Well said.
I'm just gonna say this about the show........Yōko Kanno music is still incredible.
Yeah, her presence and the fact that she made new music for the soundtrack are the main redeeming factors about this whole thing.
Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop are my jam.
I don’t think her music was as well utilized as it was in the original, but the OST still bops
She shouldn't have lent her music to this trash fire.
Ein also a cute pupper? But that is real hard to mess up
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.
Jet was the best parrt of the show. He got the character down perfect
for real. I felt like Spike wasnt bad but just out of age really. the spike from the anime shows you he's young but chaotic in a naive way. meanwhile the portrayal of Vicious is like some crazy batman villain; when he's supposed to be just as sophisticated as spike.
Agreed, also the guy who played L in the Netflix Death Note is Lakeith Stanfield and he's been getting consistent work some of it absolutely incredible like the film "Sorry to Bother You' where he was the main character.
@@kaygeo Oh awesome, I love that movie! I had no idea it was Mr. Stanfield playing L. Good for him.
@@halfpintrr yeah he really vanishes into roles. He's an incredibly talented dude
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.
Thats why ANime wasn't really WOKE as much as progressive. Netflix was WOKE becuase it wanted to fix things that didn't need fixing. Like changing Faye tragic past about her hetersoexual relationship into annoying quirky lesbian from Marvel movies. Since they already feel proud of giving Jet the Black skin and earn their progressive points on twatter they had to ass lines about being "Black Male" as well as single dad backstory becuase thats how leftists see Black community. Oh and obviously Gren and Ed had to be non binary for safe inclusion even though they were more complicated than that.
@@MrConredsX What lesbian do you see in Marvel movies? Progressive is woke dude, progressives are leftists.
Single dad is NOT the stereotype attributed to black men lol, he's also not single, he has a wife. Black people deal with divorce like the rest of us. His portrayal is also the one positive I see everyone talk about, and isn't that what you weirdos keep screeching about? Casting for talent over "diversity"?
If Bebop was written now Ed and Gren would be non-binary, it's called people's views change, they had no idea what enbies were back then. And do you sincerely think being enby is this simple, safe thing?
@@MrConredsX There's like barely any non-binary characters or actors in media. It's the least safe form of inclusion.
@@ChangedMyNameFinally69 Then create non binary character instead forcing them in into characters that aren't
@@MrConredsX In case you didn't know, WOKE is just a buzz word for social progressivism. There's literally zero difference between them, other than some kids decided they needed a 4 letter word for it.
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.
I literally noticed it even from the trailer! In my words, he's too killy
Yeah, him and Jet laughing about blowing a dudes face off in the casino/bar made them both seem like unhinged sociopaths, and Spike is def unhinged in the anime, but not a sociopath, and Jet is ABSOLUTELY NEITHER, so it was definitely a very weird choice.
@@jesuspaganrosario4698 Is he looking for the net terminal gene
he’s way too trigger happy in my opinion. i never knew him as a guy who loved killing people. i know he’s pretty good at kicking ass but not to the point where he “accidentally” kills them
@@TheSonicShoe That part really bothered me, too. I know being a bounty hunter already implies a certain level of disregard for human life, but that exchange really soured me on the two early on.
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.
Yoko Kanno did the music for the live action too which I thought was really cool and made sense because I really enjoyed the music throughout the live action series, especially when they added songs from the anime.
Saying the truth or wanting quality isn't hating tho ... stop being afraid mate.
1 2 3 let's jam
@@alexl9334 isn't it 3 2 1?
but whatever, I'm not complaining
@@SquaulDuNeant
Thanks, but I'm just saying that I don't think it's fair of me to judge a series, saying that it's all bad, without fully watched it, hence blindly hating XD.
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?
lol right
Well, you see, Game of Thrones has set this precedent that "serious television" must have sex scenes to be Really Serious.
There IS an argument to be made about “objectification vs sexuality” in the instance of whether a person is in control of their presence sexually or not.. but adding a sex scene to an adaptation without any need for it isn’t.. really doing that? I’m sure the creators had that in mind, but instead it gives off the impression that “Wearing sexual clothing makes you unable to be taken seriously(which obviously they didn’t mean, don’t think I actually accuse them of this) but being sexual for another person’s benefit is a-ok.(WHICH IT IS, DONT GET ME WRONG!!! but to say it’s the only scenario that is strikes me as a little cringe)”
No hate at all to anyone involved though. Do not care enough about live action adaptations to shit on the creators.
Like Jasmine from Aladdin reboot
It's so stupid rip. They want her to be "empowering" when having sexuality can be empowering when you're in control of it. Netflix is stupid.
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.
"Hey we want to pay homage to westerns....without the archetype of morally bereft sheriff departments; eg the pinkertons"
Its like they dont actually understand what theyre approaching
@@TOAOM123 or perhaps they did, but their corporate masters didn't want to inspire any forbidden wrongthink against the thin blue line we're all taught to worship
@@herec0mestheCh33f What? If anything Netflix would want it considering they are full of woke leftists.
@@HUGEPoWERFULMooN
"Woke bad woke bad"
What's bad about being aware of the world? You culture warriors literally just tie everything down inventing these fake issues. Like, oh no, potato head is woke by... *reads notes*
Being a gender neutral toy that can be made to be whatever a kid wants it to be. The horror. Better sound the alarms. Woke bad woke bad woke bad *terminate thoughts*
As proven here, the tendency of hiding forbidden thoughts continues with you, and people are caring less and less about the noise you make over nothing.
If only they were leftists. At best they're progressive, which is good of course, but I have yet to see evidence that they want to transition to a society without a commodity form or the abolition of a privatized means of production.
@@herec0mestheCh33f woke people have no problem rewriting lore and blackfacing white characters all the time to fit their gender politics.
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.
This is an underrated take. An important part of what make Spike so compelling was you would always be drawn into who he was projecting himself ot be, just to have it subverted because he was up to something.
UNDERRATED COMMENT!!!
As a long time fan you pointed something out that I implicitly picked up but was never super clear until your comment. Wow, thank you for this comment--you've added a whole new layer of appreciation for the original that I wanna rewatch the whole thing again now. Thanks bruv!!
Very well said. I was longing to see that sleight of hand in any episode really. Don’t get me started on Vicious.
Great comment. Netflix desperately needed people capable of your insight and understanding of the characters in the writer's room.
Spike in the anime is a trickster - he uses slight of hand, a very unusual mix of disparate martial arts techniques (aikido, krav maga, jeet kun do, and street brawling), and is usually at least a bit reserved when it comes to killing people. Plus, he's altruistic, buying candy from a kid just to be nice or showing off some magic tricks to a stranger to make them feel better. He's not above acting like a clown or offering a hand to the little guy.
Meanwhile, Netflix Spike is a sociopath who will kill people (or at least talk about it seriously) just for upsetting him, only does things if he directly benefits from it, is overly confrontation with his teammates, and the only people he ever goes out of his way for are people he cares about. In the second episode, Jet says they've been working together for 3 years, but it feels like they've only known each other for a couple of months - they both barely know anything about each other and talk about things in a way that suggests they still don't fully trust one another. And despite being portrayed by an actor who has done a lot of action work, his fight scenes are often stilted and clunky, like he's improvising his fights without really knowing anything about martial arts.
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
OG Vicious was cool without trying. Netflix Vicious is bootleg Kylo Ren
The difference honestly is just how you could put them both side by side infront of a gun squad. One would cry and make a bunch of noise, while the other likely wouldn't say anything or even care much as he's basically dead inside already. "Do it" would likely be OG Vicious' only words.
In the first episode I thought, "wow they made him really cartoony." In the second episode I thought, "wow, they made him a bitch."
@@joshwillingham4592 That horrible sniper rifle scene made me wonder just *how* they could possibly rehabilitate Vicious to preserve him as a credible threat to Spike. They really cut his nuts off and he never recovered.
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.
The fact that he said “there is no movie in Ba Sing Se” makes me feel good
There is no beef in Netflix Bebop's beef and bell peppers.
That was actually genius. I am surprised that this was the first time I heard somebody make that joke.
@@TheDiabeticGameMaster can you explain it to me? I’ve seen Avatar but I’m rarded I need help :(
There *is* no movie in Ba Sing Se!
As you know, when I raided the Great Library of Ba Sing Se...
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
my mind the entire time: Geoff hit me with it, come on now, don't prolong the torture, DO IT
@@farhanasafran8124 like when you take the guy holding the gun to your head by the hand and force it up against your skull while screaming "COME ON PUSSY DO IT DO IT NOW!"
I just laugh cried from your comment, which is more than I can say the live action in question elicited.
What do you mean, I didn't get it
The most tragic aspect is Vicious being turned into a angsty teenager with daddy issues and Julia becoming selfish lol
Really? That felt accurate to me. Vicious is absolutely the try hard edgelord of his day.
@@Arufonsa1 No....Vicious was a cold blooded, war hardened, soulless killer who wanted power over anything. The live action gave us a white haired Kylo Ren. Not the same
@@gokuwufei99 And he was also a try hard edgelord. Those things are not mutually exclusive. Sephiroth hair, uses a sword in a gun fight, trench coat, nihilist whose only friend is a crow, and speaks only in cryptic threats. Yea I was never taking that seriously lol. Was that supposed to be played strait because it came off like a bit. It played into Beebops aesthetics great but nah fam he was always a child in dress up.
@@Arufonsa1 wellllll....his only friend was....the guy who screwed his girlfriend lol but the less is more theory worked in the anime because he didn't have much screen time or dialog but still felt menacing. "Fearless" (lol) has nothing to "fear" from this watered down crybaby version of vicious
@@gokuwufei99 I was never afraid of Vicious. I mean I can’t believe I left this out but the man named himself Vicious lol. He was certainly skilled and that was it. But so was the literal child man. Hell he was arguably more of a threat. My point is that cry babies can still be threats. Their skill level is not based on whether or not they made it through therapy. And Vicious was always a try hard child in a man’s oversized coat. This is nothing new.
How could you screw up Vicious? He’s a monster, intimidating, and pretty straightforward
Easily. They tried to do too much with him instead of letting him be that brooding, mysterious evil that's nipping at Spike's heels and reminding him of what he once was.
Make him whiny man baby… Easy!
😂😢😢😢
@@Pengalor Vicious should represent the past and that's all we know about him. Don't get into anything else with him, just that.
Haven't gone too far into it but I didn't find Vicious bad so far.
Basically, instead of Darth Vader (Quiet, menacing, kills people with a melee weapon in a setting where everyone else has a gun) they made Kylo Ren (Loud, impotent, scary in less of a slasher monster way and more in a "your crazy boyfriend is about to drive the car off the road and kill you both" kinda way)
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
Couldn’t agree more. Spike was way too actively involved in all the problems and interactions in the show. In the anime, Spike couldn’t care less about pretty much everything going on around him besides chasing the next bounty and what he’s going to eat that day. He hardly ever gets involved with the random people he comes across unless he’s toying with them for his own entertainment. In the live action, it was annoying how Spike would immediately establish a rapport with all the strange randos he encountered because of Jet and Faye and act super interested in them. Anime Spike would just give an annoyed sigh and mind his own business.
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.
Toonami? You mean adult swim?
Give me an episode with THEIR backstory. Watch me be glued to that shit.
@@MrInuhanyou123 Toonami was a programming block of Adult Swim
@@alexanderv.8961 Ah sorry! I am too old lmao. Prior to it's cancellation in 2008 (and revival in 2012) toonami and adult swim were seperate. I was thinking the person meant in the very early 2000s when cowboy bebop first aired on tv, not in recent years
@@MrInuhanyou123 Nah, I still think you were right. I am pretty confident that Cowboy Bebop only was on TV back when they were separate.
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.
Thats every failed story in existence with superficial woke guidelines in the spotlight and bad writing that tanks the whole product. The pattern is there. " Its not our fault, but the fans'!" Cue Batwomen series, Ghostbusters 2016, Birds of Prey, the new Star Wars trilogy and many others from recent years.
They never even think of the possibility, that what they did MAY be bad in some... or even ANY aspect at all. It must be the patriarchy, white men or [ insert your favourite strawman here ]!
Thankfully, screaming bigots or toxic men/fans nullifies each and every valid point of criticism, like an uno reverse card, so it could never be your fault! And who wants to be at fault? God forbid, you may own up to your mistakes and actually make an effort to genuinely undertsand others AND better yourself!
At this point I think they're just trying to cover for their future jobs.
Welcome to 2020s. Anything and anyone that is not PC are just Russian hackers and basement dwelling incels.
Writing? Writing Vicious and Julia as active members who have nearly a dozen scenes in the first few episodes?
Dialogue? "You are black and you are male", along with the rhyme gag scene.
Characters? Faye spinning her fists and dancing?
My gf and I just finished the original bebop and I have no idea wtf you are talking about.
Your first paragraph was spot on though.
@@jroldo8353 A few examples against many more that missed the mark. But this is just my opinion, not objective fact.
I am not happy with what they did to Julia or Vicious, and I thought the "black and male" joke was cringey, not funny. It is very much a matter of taste, and you aren't wrong to like them. In fact, I'm glad someone found something worth liking about it - I think most of the hate is predetermined and unfounded. But I also personally dislike it
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.
And that's something we can at least hope was the cause, and not the creators' innate inability to understand that Faye WAS more that just a lady who swears and wears a loose outfit. In which case they probably gave themselves a pat on the back and high-fives all around for keeping the "essence" of the character while also "saving" her appearance from those evil Japanese artists back in those, clearly uncivilised, days.
If you watch the anime with awareness of it Faye's revealing outfit is as much a tool for her as Spike's seemingly lackadaisical careless attitude to danger. Spike walks around with a hunch and his hands in his pockets to make himself seem smaller and less of a threat, a goofball that can be ignored, and that lets him get the drop on enemies.
Faye's version of that is showing off her body. Several times in the anime potential foes are distracted looking at her nearly exposed curves and don't notice what her hands and eyes are doing. Yes, it is fan service for the viewers as well, but it's not brainless fan service. It's her character, she's using her physical looks to gain advantage over enemies, just like Spike does. Covering her up removes a fundamental aspect of what her character is and just shows that the Netflix writers don't understand the characters at all. They should have just made a spin off with their own new original creations since they clearly don't understand or like the anime versions.
I also think that her overemphasized feminine appearance is a representation of her lack of identity. She definitely uses her appearance as a tool, but I feel like she spends so much time throughout the show searching for her identity that being able to really lean into a socially assigned identity like gender could be a kind of emotional crutch as well as a tool for survival. The way that she is perceived by other people simply because of her gender is a given, society assumes and applies a certain identity to her with no context other than her gender. Considering she was a blank slate after she woke up, being able to rely on some form of identity was probably stabilizing for her to some degree. In her search for an identity and for some way to survive, she could have taken on a roll like VT and leaned into her skills without needing to dress in an objectifying manner. Instead, she chose to use her body as a tool and her gender as a crutch in order to survive while inhabiting an encouraged identity that is pushed upon her by society.
@@smittywerbenjagermanjensen9281 That's a really good point!
I feel so bad for the person who played Ed, none of this was their fault
They seem like such a lovely person and extremely enthusiastic for the character. Honestly, given what they were asked to do, their performance was great! It's all on the director.
Played Ed? Do you mean said some words for 40 seconds as his/her first work as an actor and now is been use as tool for the hate of " fans" over a show?
@@mothersbasement Thank you. I’m so happy to see this. A lot of people are going to come after this young, new actor and that’s so sad. It’s their first role and they’re so happy to be a part of it and if they read a lot of vile toxicity towards them as a person - undeservedly so - it could be so damaging.
@@DuskWolf99 It's none of the actors faults for how this played out. It's the fault of the director and script writer. This young actor did nothing wrong and I may not have liked the direction of Ed, but I found the actor playing Ed to have a charm to them.
For what they had to go with they acted the shit out of it and for that I appreciate them.
Hope she’s not discouraged by the reaction to 60 seconds of her inclusion and she’s able to understand that the bulk of the issues with that scene and the show in general stems from the showrunners and writers themselves. She may be the worst or best actress to ever live for all we know, but I’m not judging her entire skill set over 60 seconds.
With that said, screw this adaptation in general.
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.
Honestly I dearly, dearly love that line
It gives me onion flashbacks to when they would say things like "a gay man's life is worth how many American lives?" And the colonel would say "7" like it was the most natural thing of all
Her performance turns it from terrible to amazing. Made me wanna play some overly-horny cougar rattling off absurd lines, it looks like so much fun.
It's a line that was very much intentionally awful. From the moment that woman appeared she was very clearly this mildly senile cougar who still thinks she has all the charm in the world. Spike has a look of perpetual dumbfounded shock and awe with every word that comes out of her and can't help but jab Jet about how amazingly cringey that interaction was afterwards.
I think people trying to frame it out of context like a line played 100% seriously are being pretty disingenuous.
@@tituslafrombois1164 I totally agree. I really liked her and thought the writing was clever.
The thing that makes animation is good is the fact that it's animated.
Underrated comment. This is such a rarely acknowledged fact.
The only thing I don't like about animation is that it's often clunky rather than fluid, it takes a lot of effort to pull off convincing choreography and enjoyable action scenes and many studios just don't have the time or money to do it justice.
But this is where the new show Arcane really shines. It's one of the first full CGI animated shows where I can say they absolutely fucking nailed it.. The animation itself is the perfect balance of smooth and realistic with cartoony/cell shaded styling and exaggerated expressions that offset the uncanny valley, choreography and cinematography are on point and the sound track is fucking epic. Only thing that holds it back is the story itself but everything else combines together so well that it more than makes up for it.
I sincerely hope more shows come out with this style of animation
This. Comment. Deserves. More. Attention.
Hard disagree. This discounts so much that goes into making a good animated show. Just because the animators take advantage of their medium does not mean that the only merit to these shows are that they are animated.
You want to see Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry live action? No, not the live action + cg cartoon mix. They just don't mix
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
It might have worked. . . if he hadn't been characterized so pathetically.
Like monsters in horro films, less is more. Can go the other way too - like Julia
And lots of shots of tuna
"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
I want that sweet naievite back.
Would you believe me if I tell you the same happened to me?😥
Here is someone else who had not seen that. I slept better at night knowing it existed without having any way to actually measure the level of cringe that would be in it.
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 think thats what some other youtuber said is that if the show decided to just, keep faithful to the characters, but put them in different scenarios that are all original, that would have been really interesting.
@@runningwild09 but then again, it wouldn’t satisfy the core audience, and people would just hate it more.
Yep that’s what I had hoped for when it was announced. Bebop is an episodic show so an original story could fit in there anywhere. Just throw in the cast in a big misadventure and delve into the theme of the past and more specifically running away from the past and you’ve got the set up for something decent. Tell a story that takes advantage of its medium and you have something to justify its existence.
But no just rehash a story that was made to be told in animation and take the most anime-reliant episodes and make it this campy incompetent mess of a recreation/rewrite attempt.
Knocking on Heaven’s Door is a perfect example for the type of story that could have been.
The camerawork was obnoxious. They did the same thing with the Death Note remake. When will Netflix learn?
@@Torannn As a Bebop fan I'd rather have something that at least tried to be its own self contained story than a bad rehash of stuff from the anime.
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.
My poor Gren. He was such an interesting, mysterious character in the anime. He just looks like a comedy sidekick in this one…
he looks like the most....ehhh cant say that cuz youtube censore you. they took the 15sec of dialogue about him being neither a women nor a man and both at the same time that wont ever be relevent after this the whole character plus an extra extra far right exageration of what a drag queen looks like spice into the mix. its like making someones body deformity their whole chracter after a 10 second text over snapchat pass through like 300 language over google translate.
@@troudbalos333 also, the reveal of green being neither sex is a massive shock value in the original. And not at all his central character trait like you said. He used it once to his advantage, he covered his face so Vicious wouldn't know the "woman" before him is actually Gren himself.
@@iwannaseehowlongyoucanmakethis so I’m actually about halfway through my first run of this show, but I had read about the ‘Gren is non binary in the reboot’ before. And after just watching the episodes with Gren primarily… I have to wonder where it came from. Because it was very clear Gren was born male, and identified as male, and the drugs he took before had the effect HRT has on trans people, but that wasn’t the effect he wanted - it was secondary. So the people who wrote the new show seemed to think he took the drugs he became addicted to, specifically for the HRT effect? But that’s changing so much about the character’s motivations..
I really don’t think any non binary people who had watched the original, were cheering at Netflix’s poor attempt at enby representation, because stuff like this reflects badly on them. Because people then assume that non binary people see anyone who presents as androgynous is non binary when most don’t. Most of us would prefer fresh, original characters, and you can make them non binary and make them androgynous or masculine or feminine or whatever, it would be fine. But that’s just… kind of insulting for both sides oof
To me better real life analogue would be trans man prevented from transition than androgynous enby.
Tragedy of him Is his body was changes against his will. They should eighter keep it as it was And made contrast with regular trans character in some way or change outcome of experiments he went throw.
@@goingunder2548 it hurts doesn't it? They didn't have to change much if anything at all with Gren just find an actor who understands what he went through and portray him. They put in so much work to butcher a character that didn't need altering in the first place.
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.
I understand, I don't agree but I understand
I was incredibly turned of but gritted my teeth and gave the rest of the episode a chance.
Only episode I watched.
I think it set the tone perfectly, it was a fun time and continues to be
This was a hard series to get through, Me and my sister were trying to judge it on it's own merits but we love the anime. Two of my friends who never saw the anime had different opinions one turned it off first episode the other loved it and can't wait for more. Both refuse to watch the anime because cartoons are for children.
I don’t understand or agree
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.
*Sarah Bellum rebooted flashbacks* ... yeah
they did they just hate it wahmon are all snarky tough action heros and nothing else to them despite fem fatales being impowering because the point is they ACT like just a pretty face only to get close to the target and get what they want then take them down with ease no diffrent then how james bond SHOULD be.
She went from being an attractive but competent (if unlucky) free spirit who knows when to use her charm and when to use threats to someone who swears a lot, isn't a very good bounty hunter, and doesn't really know how to fight despite getting into fights a little _too_ often. She's more of a sass dispenser than anything, even compared to how sarcastic she was in the original.
@@OtakuUnitedStudio In the original she was pretty subdued all things considered, she had her obnoxious moments but you could tell she was smart and could read the damn room.
Ironically their idea of modern gets outdated faster than classic, complex and unique characters like Faye. In just less than a decade you'll see a new generation of creatives counter this whole self-righteous generation of filmmakers who strip characters of all things "problematic" so much that they end up with lifeless, unengaging shells that neither offend nor delight anyone. What I'm trying to say is the woke generation still doesn't realize they'll get old too, and faster than they think.
But it really bores me how obsessed those people are with female characters, everything women do on a screen is symbolic to them and needs to be of an impeccable standard and serve as a role model but most of the time they miss the point about them, women characters, and women as humans all in all, what I mean is they don't need to walk on eggshells when writing a woman for christs sake. So now They're starting to make every female character so similar that it's just counterintuitive, beats their whole point. Which is an actual potentially classic, outstanding female character these woke folk managed to create recently?
"People definitely died when they were killed."
I see what you did there.
🤣
Shiro Emiya: *Breaths out in relief*
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
The anime is life changing , once you’ve watched it there’s no going back. Watanabe truly is a genius
Hope you watched the movie as well it’s amazing
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
It feels like it's a mash up of Firefly/Serenity and the actual Cowboy Bebop . I seen cosplayers pull off Faye better than the actress.
@@Jessidafennecfox cause they dont need to do action scenes lmao
the only issues i had with faye were script related
@@someonexd1961 the actress playing Faye wasn't my cup of tea
@@Jessidafennecfox Yeah, agreed. I get the idea of trying to change her, but they really didn't have to do that and she's just the worst character in the trio every single time. It's like they just had a huge void where her old personality used to be and instead of re-making her from the ground up they just filled that space with really forced quips that just paint her as a super unlikable dick that tries way too hard to earn people's praise and attention.
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
At least that would be an excuse, but our tax laws are tighter than Germany's.
They weren't tax write offs, they were actually laundering drug money.
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.
cowboy bepop looks like my old warehouse co worker , the fighting is garbage too which is 80 percent of bepoo
Gren doesn't look like he's wearing a wig though
yeah, especially with faye. i couldn’t stop staring at her hair because it looked so unnatural on her
vicious' wig 😭
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
Also mothers basement a hasanabi head confirmed??!! Extra based
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.
whedonisms infecting everything man lmao
That was such a weird line. I 100% thought “cupcakes” was a euphemism for something until enough time went by and it hit me that it… wasn’t
Faye says in ep 1 (the only episode I watched) "You guys are dicks", and I was like wow yeah they are for no reason Im not watching this garbage
Also, I love how they just insert the "Tears of scarlet" line with the introduction of Vicious; totally unprompted Like, they had a puzzle of elements that made of the show and no way of understanding how it fit together or the context.
It's really depressing how much research they did (if you watch the interviews) yet they still chosen to go the dumbest route they could every time.
I still want a Season 2 just to see if they would make up for all the flak they are taking, or whether they'd continue with their butchery crusade.
The scene where Jet was attending his daughters recital was where I was fully sold on Mustafa as Jet. I laughed my fucking ass off and was like this is 100% Jet as a father. Very well done segment in all honesty.
He absolutely killed it as jet and once again became my favorite character from the main crew
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?
Yeah considering the anime crew fought sentient lunch meat that's a real accomplishment
@@mothersbasement don't forget the reanimated rock lobster!
It is crazy how evident it is in the very first scene. Just compare the opening scene of the Cowboy Bebop movie to the first episode of the TV. Imagine describing those scenes to someone who has never seen either and them guessing right that the antics space casino version wasn’t a cartoon
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.
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.
Honestly it's probaably a good thing they turned mushroom samba into a cameo order at a restaurant menu.
Loved that one as a kid, years later the first time I took shrooms I was going up a curved staircase and I was afraid I was going to get stuck going in circles like spike on the endless staircase so I sprinted as fast as I could and collapsed at the top bursting into laughter
Mine too!!!!!!
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
That's a copout. I'm sorry. Fans hated this show because it butchered the source material, not because it was live action.
It would have been far better to make an original movie of cowboy beebop. Or perhaps a mini series and a recreation of the original series. Make a spin off in the world of Cowboy Bebop? I mean it worked for Detective Pikachu,and Ailita Battle Angel
@@kay-jay1581 Oh yeah that sounds like a much better idea. That feels like ot has a lot more possibilities for it
No. If the show was good, it wouldn't have been canceled.
Yes, yes, blame the fans. Not the fact that it shit all over the original. Not the fact that 99% of live actions always do. There's a reason why these live actions keep happening despite no one liking them. Because shit writers, like these, know that they can't write, so they try to ride off of the clout of actual writers and their popular works. They don't even bother watching/reading the source material to even try to understand it before adding in their fanfiction. But, no, let's ignore all of that and just blame the "ignorant fans".
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.
Yeah. I don't get why they thought that more than doubling the episode length in an adaptation of an episodic show would be a good idea. That just means they need to expand each adapted plot to fit an episode or shoehorn in other plots and either way it's not going to be accurate.
That's a big problem in a lot of live action - the pacing sucks
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.
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.
That and amongst other things, they did my boy Vicious the worst out of all characters. He's no longer intimidating or mysterious, just a loud, deranged, insecure idiot.
Whiny incel is basically live action Vicious to a T. They want him to be really intimidating and skilled, but they also want him to be this super pathetic insecure schemer type that is just an absolute coward that gets by on his daddy's coat-tails, and those two ideas are just fundamentally incompatable.
@@dracocrusher Every show nowadays takes a one dimensional villain from whatever they're adapting and in order to give him depth adds daddy issues into it, same with making every villain redeemable by giving them a kid.
Sometimes it works like with Homelander in the Boys, but most of the time it just feels cliche and doesn't fit, especially when the character was "one-dimensional" for a reason in the first place.
We don't need to know a whole lot about Vicious asides the fact he likes killing and eschews personal relationships in the name of his own bloodthirst.
@@commandervile394 this is the thing, you can't feel a single ounce of respect for vicious in this show, he never feels intimidating or anything like a threat, he is just idiotic and insecure and every character he interacts with laughs on his face
I can't decide whether that line was more or less embarrassing than Vicious answering his phone with "Moshi moshi" ...
"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.
idk, while I agree with most of this review, I think that the show, by itself, removed from the bebop name, was decent, and the actors did a good job. i think the show just failed in the writers adapting it to live action
@@jacobkeffer8437 it also failed as a SHOW. It was way too expensive and time consuming to produce for the results that it got in terms of views/ viewer retention. I think thats the main reason it got shut down rather than anime fan backlash
@@Demolitions75 ironically, I'm pretty sure it was because of it's rating. It was a little off from what Netflix usually uses to renew their shows. Which not gonna lie, wasn't too far off surprisingly. (70% for Netflix and I'm pretty sure Cowboy Bebop was at a 58%.)
@@Demolitions75 it was definitely from ratings AND views, not one or the other
@@Demolitions75 true. But maybe it wasn't the fan backlash as it actually was fans *lack* of interest. I'm a fan and didn't even watch it. And others will just tell you they watched 1 or 2 episodes
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.
Ed was the worst, most annoying character in the original… I would have been fine, no… ecstatic… if they had removed that character from the live action.
They really should've toned down Ed. While her eccentricness can work in an animated format it just looks so out of place in live action.
@@67tedward Well they did have ed show up after Spike is drunk and possibly has a concussion so either could be a hallucination or a if people don't like it this could be an excuse to tone her character down for season two.
It’s been a while since I watched the anime but I feel like Ed could’ve worked if they understood the ‘cloud cuckoo lander’ trope, instead of the ‘loud obnoxious younger sibling.’ Rather than ‘SPIIIIIIIKE :D SPIIIIIKE SPIIIIIIEGELLLLLL,’ if it was a calmer _’Spiiiiiiike~?’_ that _feels loud_ because of Spike’s disorientation, I think the whole situation would’ve been received better.
It sucks that Jet and Faye were race changed. Netflix should leave the originals alone
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.
You and I both know that Firefly was already a live action adaptation of Outlaw Star.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick I mean, I adore all three, but you're not wrong!
@@stellardendrite Joss Whedon’s a hack.
Nah I thought battle Alita was pretty sweet.
And serenity
I haven't watched it through yet, but if it's true that Ed is the post-credit sting for season 2, that might be the best thing for her character. Without much screen time, they should be able to take the time between seasons to redo her. She was always my biggest concern, as Ed is the most animation-centric character and immediately struck me as one who wouldn't translate well to live action.
I think Ed could be embodied well by a trained modern dancer tho. Sad I will prob never get to see that
Ed could be done, but you need to seriousl tone ed down with keeping the zany humor. Not the optics, .
They should have change ed design like they did with fade it wasn't going to work in live action
@@BengtBagels If getting the answer you don't want could ruin your love for CB I'd stay away just in case.
@@BengtBagels Watch it. I enjoyed it a lot. I’ve not watched the original though.
I’ve stopped watching review videos before I see the show, no matter what it is.
I’ve found I can just watch the show without any preconceived negative thoughts.
Which lets me actually enjoy some that I might be looking forward too. Like this.
Honestly though, the characters not learning from their mistakes is the most humanly accurate thing ever.
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 never thought of that.... damn
Why is everyone so worried over this? 99% of the hate is directed at Netflix and the creators, not the actors. Besides, she was on screen for like 20 seconds, I doubt most people even know her name, or what she looks like without the Ed cosplay gear. She's probably going to feel bad for a couple weeks and then audition for the next thing. She's gonna be fine.
It's possible, but that's what makes the animation really great. That kind of movement looks really good animated, but is very difficult to do realistically and yet I'm sure we can think of some good examples of how it is done better in live action or at least similarly to animated counterparts.
@@esteemedyams Like no one even really thinks like that too XD. Granted, there are a few special snowflakes that take everything seriously, but I have no idea where people are coming up with the whole "Lets go after the person who played Ed and tell them how shitty they were!!!" Unless they're on 4chan or something....maybe reddit or an open world discord but....that's like bottom of the barrel responses then XD. Like someone got to have some serious mental imbalances going on to think the person playing a character is really them and acts like them irl lol. Even in that case you never take them seriously.
Nah fam, actress should never have applied for the role with that Non-binary bullshit on an established female character. Her career can rot in hell
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.
Vicious looks like a HBOs Game of Thrones Targaryen reject who just like gave up
I always called him budget Geralt who fell on hard times and started dealing and shit because no one would toss a coin to that Witcher anymore.
Gren was one of my favorite characters from the original bebop and it saddens me to see how they decided to handle their character in this adaptation. The straw that broke the camels back for me on this one.
Especially since it ISN’T their character.
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.
Wow. I think I understand Spike's whole back plot now. Thank you stranger
I never thought him as cool just some guy who have issues but not daddy issues like in the Netflix
Underrated comment
Netflix doesn’t understand Vicious at all smh
This is insightful as hell, excellently done.
On a more surface level, they don’t understand that he’s supposed to be an implied Red Eye addict, which is why he can get away with the ninja shit. They should’ve sourced emaciated meth addicts for his design, not Geralt of Rivia.
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.
Whenever these sorts of works get made, be they live action adaptations of something animated or full on reboots, the first question I feel they need to answer is "Why should I watch this and not just re-watch the original." So Netflix leaning so hard on "Look how much we recreated shots from the anime!" is already a turn off. If your main goal is just to remind me how good Cowboy Bebop is, I'll just watch Cowboy Bebop again. Heck its even on Netflix! So I guess if any good comes of this maybe a new crop of people will be introduced to the original show.
Yeah but thw pro lem is thats still a win for Netflix . they dont care if netflix bebop is good or even popular it just has to sucker enough people into paying there netflix subscription for one more month to offset the cost of production. If it ends up basically being a gloried commercial for OG Bebop then so be it they get subs from that too.
exactly there are good adaptation out there, Lord or the Rings is one of them. Cowboy bebop is not one of them and now this is the same company that will have the job of the One Piece adaptation and I do not know how to feel about this :(
The problem with adapting a masterpiece is that you can only ever be “as good” at best and, most likely, worse.
If we were to see a remake of the Mario movie, we could see that it couldn’t be much worse.
In Bebop, it was always going to be an imitation. It’s already a masterpiece, and in adapting it to live action and doing the “same” story, it just becomes a cheap wannabe.
I think the term you're looking for is "cheap watanabe"
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.
Yeah, I noticed that bit about Ana's place in the second trailer, and it felt like a red flag then. Still working up the nerve to give the show a shot, but it's disappointing, even if not surprising, to hear that was just as indicative as I feared it might be.
Modern media is very complacient with the status quo, especially American media. I guess it's a consequence of the writers strike in 2007 and Hollywood replacing writers with algorithms
@@gorimbaud Every time I'm like, 'Okay, today, I'll give the live-action another shot', it leaves me side-eyeing some little detail that was said or done that's just, _blatant_ classism, or unnuanced, unwoke pandering...or like MB said: Vicious. 😅😂 It sticks in the mind, and distracts from what happens next, and I wind up having to just turn it off.
Good luck to us both in finishing this slop 💯😷 🤝
@@Koroschiya Agreed.
Something something capitalism bad despite one character being a career criminal, the other being a successful cop who bounced to being a bounty hunter out of being an ex cop and the other displaced out of time while wrapped up in debt after being thawed out from a storage facility of cryosleepers because she was pretty.
...there's a ton of characters with normal jobs and they constantly deal with actual criminals who make excuses for their actions while having terrible zero to any personal responsibility trying to get an easy way out.
...the reviewer says the show is too Liberal when progressivism (which is usually colloquially replaced with woke) is all about rounding edges.
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?
What killed me was how they put ‘you’re gonna carry that weight’ on the second to last title card of the season and then had Faye reference it in the last episode. Turned it from this impactful thing about how you the viewer have to carry on Spike’s story now that the show is done to just this ‘hey look we said the thing’
Yea i have that tattooed on my forearm along side Spike’s ship and I cringe at how they destroyed all the meaning and “weight” behind the timing and meaning of that line.
Or Vicious saying "you will shed tears of scarlet" at the very beginning for no real reason, sigh.
That sums up the entire show and Netflix's motivation in doing it to begin with....it was just "look we did the thing from the anime" as an entire show except for when they did the things that didn't make any sense at all. Shows like this arent even really worth reviewing, watching, or getting upset about....its nothing more than a shallow cash grab by Netflix to milk a developed IP because thats easier than making a new one that is actually good.
We are drowning in nostalgic references/Easter eggs nowadays. It was fun when Marvel first started doing it, but writers are treating them as a replacement for plots and character developments.
They cheapened it
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.
There is no live action Cowboy Bebop in Ba Sing Se.
They made a Last Airbender movie? No idea what you are talking about.
Boondocks season 4 and Berserk 2016 too…
bowcoy pebob?
Also the Percy Jackson films don't exist
There is a point where a fanficton reaches so far out of the source material that it's better to rework it into its own beast. Sadly, when you toss money to aquire an intellectual property before you come to that realization you are so deep in sunken cost fallacy that the proper conclusion is hard to reach. I admire the bravery of tackling the greatest anime, but I can't say that I'm happy with the result. It's okay to be inspired and steal via homage sometimes, and then proceed to do your own thing. I'd be much happier if you could integrate a new story into a bebop-like universe.
They could have followed a different group of people in the same universe. It’s that these “remakes” waste so much time copying instead of expanding into these universes.
I disagree that it had anything to do with a too late realization. its not the first franchise this was an issue with, and it wont be the last. because the point of these remakes isnt to bravely tackle a beloved franchise out of artistic interest, but the money it never fails to extract from the cashcows.
As long as this new history has no vicious, I'm ok
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.
Had to pause at 29m to say Daniella's Faye is cringy at best. Faye's char is so dynamic so frequently. Just go look up the first rule of combat scene. In one minute Faye in the anime exhibits almost everything she is. Cool to the core, sexy, dangerous, a chameleon in every situation and somehow calm and witty at the same time. Daniella didn't fail Faye all by herself though. The writers and wardrobe gave her the coup de grace. Gren was butchered in every single sense and he can't be saved at all. Ed just needs to be recast if they have ANY intention of using her. Eden's interpretation of Ed's voice makes me physically ill. You were right about Jet though. Mustafa absolutely NAILED Jet in every single way he could have given what the writer's put in front of him. It's absolutely insane how perfect it was. John Cho isn't a bad Spike at all but I'm not impressed. There's something about Spike being constantly depressed or sleep deprived and perking up in a heartbeat that I don't think we'll see on the big screen. Same goes for his body language.
John Cho is almost TWICE THE AGE that Spike is supposed to be, and that actually comes across in his body language.
I can tell you, being 43 yrs old, that I literally move different than I did in my 20's. I'm reasonably fit, but having made it to my 40's, you get unconsciously...hmm...cautious in your movements.
Cho did a good job with the standing still slouch, but he walks & moves too stiffly. And someone who looks his age (ok he looks damn good but he sure as shit doesn't look 25), his moving so unrefined would look odd on someone with his maturity.
Spike makes brash, impulsive mistakes that, being 26, is believable. Cho, looking like a Spike IN HIS MID FORTIES, looks dumb. Like, if you've lived this long, why haven't you learned anything yet?
Anyway, that's just my 2 cents.
Mustafa's Jet will be the only non-anime Jet I see from now on
They fucked up when they started appealing to the woke crowds. Works for me, they keep doing it like its eventually gonna pay off, but it won't.
This remake yet again proves that instead of trying to remake a series, rebooting within the world will always work better. I would have much rather seen them make something completely new in the world of Bebop rather than try to recreate the original and messing it up. They clearly show they can make things work, at least decently, in the world and they fail the most when they're trying to follow the original work. Had they just made something new in the world they might have actually succeeded.
Like how Carole & Tuesday is a new story set in the same universe as Cowboy Bebop?
It should follow the Manga instead
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."
Glass Reflection said it best, they turned Gren into the “yaaasss girl” gay stereotype.
I will never understand their compulsion to make Gren a yaaaaas queen. For one he didn't even have a choice in how his body ended up. And there's, uh, IMPLICATIONS there with Jet finding Faye handcuffed and out of it in Gren's bed. Yeaaah great source for representation, guys.
Original Gren is defined by HIS past with Vicious. His treatment in this is appaling
Gren was the most tragic characters in the show he was good even if he was treated like shit. Then they made him into a stereotype like that's FIXES anything. Gren was a nuance take on war, and shit that soldiers go through. He took meds to calm him down that they had the side effect of boosting his estrogen count. He isn't some flamboyant cariacture
@@SaiScribbles I think it's because in original, Gren shown to be not comfortable/ dislike the body change.
They probably think it would insulting the diversity representation
This is a great analysis. You explain why the anime is so great and you're very fair to the Netflix version.
I love in bebop when they just hang out on the ship, it feels like what would actually happen if people had their own spaceships, it'd be like a mobile home. Heck if I had a spaceship I'd probably stay up in space and just chill out.
defiantly better than the generic clean white corridors of every live action sci-fi ever.
What always bothered me was how anime isn't drawn anymore in detail. This is 20+ years old and looks better than almost every other episodic anime. If your into that CRISP drawn style like Bebop go watch REDLINE, it took 7 years to draw it's a feast for the anime eyes!
Facts
I said this on twitter in Geoff's thread about this show in response to someone who said that you lose too much ed without the over-the-top kineticism and wildness, and I stand by it:
You really don't need any of it. All that stuff in the show was just a stylized way to express general excitement and hyperactivity. Literally just have her MOVE AROUND any times she's not hyperfocused on something. If I were the director, I'd tell them "Any time you're not doing anything specific, act like you're grooving to music." Also, every second time a cut puts her in frame, she should be sitting in a different pose. That's it. That's Ed's physicality in live action.
I've heard a LOT of people say over the years that a live action Cowboy Bebop is doomed to failure; that it's too anime and simply can't be translated to live action. I've always thought this was bullshit. As far as popular anime goes, Bebop is among the most grounded, both in terms of it's world and it's characters, and with minimal tweaks here and there it could make for a fantastic live action show. I still think that. Notice how the VAST most of the criticisms against this show are to do with script and directing; problems with the showrunners not "getting it" over any particular aspect being unworkable. The sets look fantastic, the world looks real, and the chemistry is good. After watching this video I think that with a bit of work, a push in the right direction, and giving the show room to breathe without being afraid of or a slave to the source material, this can still turn into something really special and authentic. Even Ed.
Whether it will or not remains to be seen, but it CAN. And as Geoff said, "that aint nothin"
As it is they seem to have given Ed some kind of mental disorder. Just hits wrong.
I think they should have aged Ed up on the show and just said that she matured a bit but still kept some of her quirks. Look up Emmymade thats how they should have made her look and just have it the orange. Have her have pants with the same material as the live action have the shirt have a happy face that way it won't look like complete cosplay.
I like your ideas on how to animate a live action ed. I was kind of wondering how you would tone her down from the anime while still keeping her, her, but I feel like what you described is a good way to go about it. Worth a shot at least since that clip of her just does not work.
I feel like the problem with Ed, just from that tiny snippet of her, is that they didn’t try to figure out how a real-world Ed would be. They kept all the cartoony bits, but what seems merely silly when animated is unnatural when acted. I hope I’m wrong.
@@Tb0n3 Technically Ed does fit on the autistic spectrum with how she acts in the anime. Showing elements of both Asperger's Syndrome (hyper-fixation, extremely poorly developed social skills, extreme lack of interest outside of what they hyper-fixate on) and ADHD (inability to slow down and stay still even when focused on a task, when not focused on a task is constantly bouncing from one thing to another).
The Live Action version they simply translated the character to be extremely cringy (and that is coming from someone who has Asperger's Syndrome and once had a friend with ADHD) and ramped that up to 11, ultimately making a mockery of the character.
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
Also they put some boy that is transitioning into a girl to play Ed. Ed was a girl in the anime. It pissed me off because they wanted to push their lbgtq bs instead of giving the role to a talented girl actor.
Completely agree with you that the goofy exaggeration only works in the anime. How hard was it to just make a normal girl that is a genius with a sense of humor. The writers sucked.
@@mili-oh4481bro the actor is gender queer and wasn’t a boy transitioning to a girl 💀
@@helenainamerica I read an article on him now, guess he's just a homosexual boy.
@@mili-oh4481 i know him irl dude
@@mili-oh4481weird of you to take this opportunity to be transphobic, but ok
I love the evolution of Geoff's critique. He's come a long way since making content that was essentially distilled SAO-bashing, to recognising Reki Kawahara is a person who deserves recognition for their attempts to do better (no matter how terrible a writer), to this: asking the fandom to be like water. Provide constructive criticism. Even when you hate something, there are good things there. Instead of pretending the good things don't exist, insist on expanding on them, let them take over the bad things until what you hate is gone, and what you love has grown through.
Thanks, Geoff. This is a great one.
EDIT: realised I wrote SAP and not SAO, lol
he really has become one of the best critics on the platform over time. it's genuinely amazing.
I'm sure I'm just beating a dead horse but this whole show just feels like another example in a pile of examples of how you can't, perhaps ever, capture the same atmosphere and tone that anime provides with live-action content. There's nothing inferior or superior about either but I'm just so tired of western cinema and entertainment refusing to understand animation does things that you *cannot recreate faithfully.*
I'm not sure recreating is their goal. It might be them trying to replace the original, for whatever reason.
I think what Disney has been doing - "Live Action" of their early animation masterpieces, which has only diminished what once were amazing fantasies, but are now garbage ready to be shredded - is proof positive to leave the original animes alone. Just don't touch them. Come up with something new, for CS.
Maybe the consumers of the end product need to stop expecting them to capture the essence of anime in live action, only to be disappointed every time.
I'm not a big anime fan, so I watched this show with no expectations beyond some light entertainment. In that regard, it was fine-not great, not horrible, just fine. It seems the people who hate it do so because they were hoping for a what you rightly point out is impossible.
I agree with you, but they are not all that bad. As an example, I really enjoyed the adaptation of Alice in Borderland.
This needed to be said
Is so sad that people still look down on animation, the fact that any anime is being adapted into live action is sad, cause they're already loosing an integral part of what may made them special.
And I'm not against adaptations, but they have been aproched in the worst possible way. I still haven't watched the Rurouni Kenshin movies, and I understand why people liked Alita battle angel and I would like adaptations going that rout, is mostly animated after all (for me is a 5 or 6 out of 10). But I still haven't watched and anime adaptation where I feel I can say they finally nailed it, and why they should have to, when in animation is already nailed. I don't see a reason for an live action adaptation if they're not doing anything worth watching that the original already did or didn't did.
I say we do the opposite. Adapt live actions INTO animation more. Look, Star Wars: Visions was the best star wars content ive seen in a long while, and i think we should do more of that stuff. Mediums are very different in themselves, but animation can do alot more with less budget to create visions much less possible in a live shows.
You should check out the beginning and the final. As a fan of samurai X and someone who grew up with Ruroni Kenshin as a child i can say that the beggining and the final are not 10/10 movies but if you like the original show they are at least worth watching, the combat is decent and the story is passable.
i get your point and i do agre, i just want to add my pov regarding animation when it comes to anime shows that are adaptations of manga themselves. as an avid manga reader (and frankly someone who prefers reading it over watching anime) there have been several times when i was really disappointed in an anime adaptation due to the quality of animation and poor creative decisions made to cram story material into 12 - 25 episodes. anime adaptations themselves can sometimes butcher their own original manga material. so i do find myself sometimes fantasizing about what if someone who genuinely gets the og manga adapts it into live action instead of the messy anime that we got.
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!
they could have saved money and credibility making a tv series set in the world of cowboy bebop with random appereances of spike or othere known characters of the anime here and there. That would have been cooler, easier, more fan friendly and interesting.
I think it was confirmed that the anime Carol & Tuesday actually took place in the same universe as Cowboy Bebop. > feel like it kinda sorta counts as a spinoff without cameos
They could have just re-released the original in HD quality with 60 fps animation. That would have been sweet.
a post-spike death group of bounty hunters trained by jet and faye would work, they would live in the same universe of lore and writers would have more freedom to create.
@@pedrohenrique-et3fs hell it would even give them an excuse to have an older Ed appear, who would presumably be a little more mature and not do the weird movements and mannerisms that REALLY don't work in live action.
My biggest gripe with the live action is the cinematography and directing. How does the anime feel and look more like a movie than the actual live action ? The lighting was piss poor. Shooting this particular live action on digital cameras was a huge huge mistake. They should've shoot this entire thing on film. There's a reason why lots of big time directors still shoot things on film. It would've given the long time fans that feel and classic 90's look on screen. The low contrast completely killed the feel of cowboy bebop
i agree and disagree. any competent director/cinematographer can make digital look good. You just have to actually be good at your job and have love for the art. The people making this show were just looking for an easy cash grab and its very apparent.
yeah bruh you're strait trippin. "lighting was piss poor" lmaoooooooooooo
I don't think analog would've saved it. If the thing you're shooting is crap, using different tools won't save you. I think some shots of this show look ok but really it looks fake and watered down compared to the anime somehow. The anime had this density and detail to each shot that is missing from Netflix Bebop
@@frankie3351 it was good lighting it was just bad for bebop. I thought we was going to get a blade runner type of vibe or even better. Shit looked like a tv show which pissed me off.
@@Laughterheals71 Bingo
How to improve to next season of Bobflix:
1. Improve the script. Reduce the corny Joss Whedon style of dialogue.
2. No need to tell us every damn thing. Assume that most of your audience can put 2 and 2 together and no need to explain everything in excruciating detail.
3. Significantly reduce screen time of Julia and Vicious.
@@youtubestayatyourrootsforfsake Honestly, your idea is also pretty good.
I would completely replace Julia and Vicious, explaining that they were busted up AI clones or something that got loose.
@@MrModel--CAPTURED-ON-FILM prototypes made by ai that was trained with damaged vhs copies of the cowboy bebop anime
I don't know about that. I feel like if you don't put two and two together for the audience, a bunch of half-wits are going to come out screaming about "Plot holes"
Hahaha “next season”
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.
It’s because the people making modern shit with political tales don’t feel like their actual perspectives. Their idea of politics is completely based off aesthetics and leads to hollow pandering. Watanabe has REAL deeply held political ideas that he infuses into his work in such a seamless way that it honestly goes over most peoples heads. That’s what makes it so fun to figure out as you watch over the years.
Arcane is a lefty leaning show but not necessarily woke. Political commentary and left leaning ideas LGBT isn't auto woke. Mainly because these two shows tell you a story with the message embedded inside.
All these streaming show adoptions that are poorly received the message is front and center with story setting and character in the back seat. It's no different to me than those wholesome poorly done christian movies. Where the message and morals is the focus rather than a good story. All these woke shows are the same as the christian movies.
Making a statement is cool but no one wants to be preached at in your face
I definitely think a lot of it is about subtlety. I'm completely okay with representation and with talking about these ideas and people but for the love of all that is good, make it make sense and fit into the story. So many times you can tell it's there just to be a maul to bash you over the head and say 'see how progressive we are??' when the characters are so one-dimensional that 'being gay' or 'being a leftist' is their only defining character trait.
@@danf7411 We've gotten great media that also does that though. It's just that the writing sucks, that's all there is to it
@Pengalor I rarely see that now. And when you got right-wing fans of Warhammer or Star Wars I think you need to be more overt with leftist messaging. Andor is beloved and it's not exactly subtle
I think one of the best things about the original anime is that it doesn’t actually give you all the answers to the questions you have. You only get most of the pieces to the puzzle, and it’s up to you to put it together and fill in the rest with you own imagination. It engages with you in a deeper way by not bogging you down with BS, just like Eva it focuses on the emotion of the scene over the lore details. Think about it, was there a single scene with Julia and Vicious in the same room in the original? You just have to imagine what went down between them and Spike. That’s just an example but i hope you get what i mean
Today most movies/series don't get that. They want to show you everything they have because... Idk I really don't know why..
@@oliverebbing6637 Because, as someone (I forgot who) said, modern shows/movies are "written by children for children", with which they meant plot points must be obvious, action scenes must be frequent, and characters must be (overly) emotional. You can't have quiet introspection or ambiguous messages*, otherwise the audience "won't connect with it" and will get bored because they don't get it, and nothing flashy has happened in the last five minutes to keep them at the screen despite that. And movies like that are expensive, so unless you go for the biggest market (i.e. the young adult demographic, or "the crowd that are still young enough to, as a majority, enjoy simple, flashy, things, but old enough to start having disposable income"), it's not worth making them.
So big investments for big returns, because big numbers look good for the people doing the investment, and writers who understand/share the mindset of the target audience have been put in charge of the movies to make those kinds of movies more effectively.
*On the topic of being ambiguous, to throw a small correction at the video: The big fight against a hallway full of rival syndicate members didn't kill Spike in the anime.
Maybe. We don't actually know.
Spike's ultimate fate was never confirmed, and even when directly asked about it Shinichiro Watanabe has always been intentionally vague, saying things like "even I don't know" or "he sure looked tired, though".
Wrong -
Japanese animators weren't given huge budget's (besides DBZ) to make their visions so they made them more concise and to the point back then.
Wantanabe was given direction to make this to sell toys, just as long as it had a spaceship in it he was good lol.
He was also going to make it more adult also but was told that they were aiming at a younger audience so he toned it down.
Eva's original ending was cut due to budget reasons, which is why the ending is butchered down to make us think what could've happened they legit had no money for it.
This caused them to make End of Evangelion after it's popularity exploded
End of Evangelion is a middle finger to the fans that gave Hideaki Anno death threats and the reason why we got the rebuilds, crazy.
Vicious held a gun up to Julia's head stating that she needs to kill Spike - I don't know why you received those likes, nothing you said was right.
Anime's humble beginnings are full of artistic and meaningful endeavors because they can't do live action big budgets like America which forces them to be more creative.
@@PerkulatorBenny yeah and its sad. When the only thing a show\movie does is look good for a moment and make a lot of money, that doesn't make it worth being remembered.. Creating a movie that has an impact on people and invokes thoughts or even changes their view on things is the effect we should go for. Even entertaining people is maybe even more worth it that just big numbers.
Like idk the impact "Fight Club" has in invoking thoughts. Movies like that can create so interesting conversations :)
@@robthegreatt1 If you're talking to me, then you're misunderstanding something.
I was replying to Oliver's comment about modern movies (which I took to mean something like the Marvel movies) and how their writers don't have any subtlety anymore, which is also showing in how the Netflix show is beating people over the head with certain plot points.
We weren't, or at least I wasn't, actually talking about the anime (or even anime in general) at all.
As for Spike, in the anime he is never shown to be confirmed dead on screen and you can look up interviews with Shinichiro Watanabe about it if you want.
I will say that the biggest crime the show commits is to the characters themselves. In many cases, it isn’t even what they do to the protagonists, but what they do to the antagonists and many side characters. Gren was meant to be a tragic figure, yet another victim in the long line of victims of Vicious. His inability to escape his past and let go foretells of Spike’s own final showdown. They even make a reference to a star representing a person’s life that would later be used for Spike in the finale. I can sympathize with anime Gren. I actually felt bad for him and was saddened by his tragic end. I feel nothing for the live action Gren. It seems like they reduced him to an LGBT stereotype that has no important role in the story, whereas he had an entire two part arc in the anime. If they are going to do something with him, it better be pretty damn good to make up for what they’ve done so far. By far, I’d say the biggest crime is what they did to Vicious and Julia. The anime did an amazing job of telling us what we needed to know about the two without flat out explaining their past. The brief, silent flashback clips we get, combined with their interactions in the present, tell us all we need to know. The anime staff knew what to tell us and what to leave out. Vicious himself was a great villain that was built up nicely not by dialogue, but by the silent air of menace that surrounded him. He didn’t need to say anything. You could tell just by looking at him that this was a dangerous man that was not to be messed with. This Vicious is just a cartoon villain, more so than the actual animated villain. They somehow made him more cartoony and less realistic. I actually laughed when I saw his intro scene. Plus, he is so damn annoying. Not menacing. Annoying. Where anime Vicious was cunning, ruthless, and power hungry, Netflix Vicious is a stupid, temperamental moron with daddy issues. As for Julia….I don’t even know where to begin. Everything about her is wrong. It’s outrageous how much they screwed up the character. I will never understand why anyone would defend these changes.
Don't worry about it , the show is canceled , thank God.
Could not agree more with everything you wrote.
I tried to watch it, but after 2 episodes and ESPECIALLY the scenes with Vicious, I had to tap out.
Couldn't even drunk watch it, it was *that* bad.
You nailed it, describing what they did to Julia & Vicious.
Vicious is a dark mirror of Spike and isn't ever present because he doesn't need to be. The story isn't about him. Same with Julia. She shows up when it's time for him to die because it's his past finally catching up with him that he could never let go of. Also, the Netflix show revels too much in adding in a ton of violence against women where that didn't exist before.
Not only that, but spending a lot of time focusing on Vicious and Julia just destroys their mystique.
It makes Vicious less threatening (even without the bad acting and change to his personality), and it bogs down the mystery of Spike's past, and his connections to these two people.
It is weird. I never imagined even the far scarier Vicious of the anime as a wife beater. Obviously he was vindictive enough to order her to kill Spike when he found out about their relationship. But that is space gangster sh!t not I’m a cry baby with impotent rage sh!t
I thought the fact that Julia MARRIED Vicious destroyed her character. In the anime she fled for her life, going into hiding and leaving everything behind. She would rather die than marry him. She was enigmatic but there was the impression that she was strong and resourceful.
@@existentialgamer9206 You barely see Julia in the anime. But when you do, she's doing the same space noir action alongside everyone else. In the Netflix show, she's just a damsel until her inevitable heel villain heel turn. At least before I could care about Julia as a mystery or simply because Spike did. But just watching this man baby version of Vicious abuse her, followed by a weak flashback love story, followed by a villain twist ... there was just never any reason to care about this version of the character
@@TheJadedJames That is definitely something else that bugs me: Julia is not someone who can't take care of herself. She has all of her strengths taken away to be a victim to a sub-par Vicious' tantrums. But the Julia in the anime is every bit the lethal assassin and soldier that Spike and Vicious were. Which: a show that revels in taking power away from women, praising cops, and ignoring all the social commentary about the problems of capitalism....I mean I guess it all goes hand-in-hand, really.
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.
I stand by the idea that Pacific Rim (the first one) is hands down Hollywood's best adaptation of anime, despite not being explicitly based on any one anime property.
I feel like this is random, but if you want a show that gives off a similar vibe but with cooler word building I would recommend altered carbon. It deals with similar themes but with a very different story. I’m a massive Bepop fan and altered carbon is more like bepop than this live action lol
altered carbon is really good, but if you read the books theyre even darker. both the show and the books are amazing in my opinion, and the show delves away from the book but pulls different parts into it.
The Expanse is also very Cowboy Bebop-like. Solar system and found family and all.
Holy shit I didn’t see how many likes this has❤️❤️❤️
Altered Carbon is amazing! The show with whom I left my heart too! It's sad it won't get a season 3.
Having had a few weeks to digest it, I have realized why the remake of Bebop is so awful - People wanted *more* Bebop, not to revisit what we already had. THe original is still so good, that revisiting it is at beast, unnecessary, and at worst (what we actually got) disrespectful and disingenuous. People really were excited for what this show could be, including the fans, so to write it off as if there's no way fans of the anime could like it was kind of a short term play that was always going to backfire... And we can look to Final Fantasy 7 Remake for proof.
With FF7, the fans were pointing out almost immediately that it could stand for a remake. It came form the era where each release had a few bugs or issues - a stat doesn't work right or an item has a function that gets ignored, or something to that effect. ANd then you had FF8 and FF9 come out to show what the PS1 was really capable of and all the sudden, tiny chibi blobcloud and the rest of the play-doh brigade just look silly. Looking back, FF7 lived as much in your imagination as it did on screen. Oh sure, the low poly models were still leaps and bounds more capable of 3-D action than older models and sprites (especially in the FF franchise...) but when the PS2 rolled around it was time for a serious talk about how the game could use a new coat of paint like how the original FF got spiffed and shined for the PS1. In the meantime, the FF7 fandom got a movie, an OVA series, some mobile games, and two spinoff games to expand the lore and show that there was life in the franchise.
And now? EVen though they are changing the plotline a bit and adding more bosses and content.....There isn't nearly as much backlash compared to the embrace of the changes by the fandom. They got the movie, some spinoff games, and more.....And so when they remade the story proper, it was obvious that changes need to be made - support the side stories, fix the broken items and stats and cut out things that didn't work. Actually have facial animations! No more lego heads in cutscenes!
But Bebop never needed to be remade....it was pretty damn good as it was, and it wrote the book for many shows in the future to follow. What people wanted, was MORE. Don't reheat the leftovers, make new content - new bounties, new stories, new places. You can use the existing story as a springboard and build something new, rather than falling over yourself making changes to support other changes because you changed something that never needed to be remade.
Fuck, imagine other franchises modified by this group. "We loved the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, but Gollum doesn't work for modern audiences! So we made it so he gets the ring at the end of the first film, kicks Frodo off a fucking cliff and wishes that sauron would explode so we have him just vaporize POOF! Right in front of the fellowship of the ring! NOw we've got a REAL villain for the next film! Who's ready for the two towers? Spoiler alert - we condensed them down into one tower! We don't want fans thinking they know what's going to happen!"
yeah
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.