I didn't watch Cowflix Netbop, but I did watch Netflix's The Witcher and a lot of the same complaints apply. Overdone effects, cheesy lines, and seeming disdain for the source material. There's gotta be some executive at Netflix who buys these properties and is like "alright, let's make this for adults"
I’ve always had the thought tha Vicious and Julia were flat and forgettable in the original, and i thought that was a mistake by the team, but you changed my mind with the “they’re ghosts, haunting Spike” because they really are, they don’t need the most intricate backstory or personality because they’re not the focus, how they affect Spike is, and they show how much they affect him, and it really adds a lot to his arc of unwillingness to let go of the past, and makes the ending a lot more bittersweet
It's kind of like someone watched the original and was like "These characters are so mysterious and I want to know more!" without thinking about *why* the characters are mysterious.
So I'm running a D&D game in the Spelljammer setting inspired by Cowboy Bebop, and "A bunch of cool idiots who are so obsessed with their past that they're constantly fuckin' up their futures" is absolutely the vibe I'm going for. With space wizards.
I remember Vicious being absolutely terrifying in the anime, and only as an adult and seeing so much of him in the live action do I realize that he's frightening because of how little you see him. He's the boogieman in living flesh in the anime and no one wants to know the boogieman's motivations and goofy backstory. Also, the new Julia plot sucked . . . like a lot.
"we can't do the boot shot a *ninth* time..." maybe the most frustrating thing was that nobody in the room thought to be like "oh but eight times was fine?"
I don't feel a thing And I've stopped remembering Days are just like moments Turned to hours Mother used to say "If you want, you'll find a way" But mother never danced through fire showers Walk In the rain
I'm glad there's people in the world that are able to take my thoughts on media from my brain and turn it into words. I couldn't articulate exactly my issue with Cowboy Bebop Netflix but this is it.
The decision to drop the debt from Faye's backstory really surprises me. It's such a guaranteed slam dunk of a plot point -- why exclude it? Seems like either 1) they were so afraid to be accused of preaching that they cut sermons present in the source material just to be safe^ or 2) they just wouldn't allow anything of substance to jam up their Blue-Suit-Guy-Who-Kicks Style Hour. ^ #1 is especially ridiculous because it assumes most of their viewers wouldn't have already watched the anime. Everyone who was going to stream CB on Netflix has already watched the anime, because everyone on earth has already watched the anime. And rightly so! It's good.
the debt is dropped because netflix is an enormous Capitalist entity. ANY discussion about the crushing nature of debt contributes to Class Consciousness and Must be eliminated from the common discourse.
Everyone who was going to stream CB on Netflix has already watched the anime, because everyone on earth has already watched the anime. And rightly so! It's good. Not entirely true at least. I couldn't ever get into the anime because of not really enjoying the pacing, and when CB was being discussed heavily at the time, I had a fair few friends who said the same, but still gave Netflix CB a shot (as I did). Not sure how many of them enjoyed it (like I did), but given how much CB is evangelized by the anime community, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a sizable portion of anime-adjacent viewers that haven't seen it or couldn't get into it that nonetheless tried the Netflix CB because of how good its source material is always said to be.
i have noticed they shows they fund tend to make capitalism get redeemed or lessened in some way. in BNA, when the "one evil capitalist" guy is taken down, all is well apparently. in Great Pretender the millionaires they scammed throughout the show come back and help them. in Squid Game that last little bit with the old guy undercuts the whole message of the show. it's a pattern.
The main cast are absolutely phenomenal and I really hope they have oppertunities to reprise their roles as the Bebop crew in the future, just under different writers, showrunners, cinematographers... yeah just change the entire production team cos NONE of it worked for me. Really love the actors they chose, feel they really work well together and when the material isn't getting in the way of their performances they really live and breath the original characters but my god that material sure is getting in the way all the time.
Action in general being stripped down to bad quick cuts in modern cinema is brutal. If you want to make an action shot, take the time to do it correctly. Hire the choreographer, have your actors go through tens of hours of training... and make a good shot that is worth watching in a few takes. If your actors can't do an action scene... give them a helmet and use a double, or DONT HIRE THAT ACTOR FOR THAT ROLE. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Good points Jenna.
They did ALL the characters so dirty. They didn't let Spike, Faye, or Jett have much of their flaws still, which is what made the original characters so compelling. They also fully removed what made Vicious and Gren who they were. Gren I like some of the changes, but they changed so much that they felt more like a new character with the same name? I would have liked to see some of their interactions witg Faye or their music or more!!
The year before Cowboy Bebop started playing on Adult Swim, I was introduced to it by a dvd from a friend in college. I had barely any prior anime experience and to this day, it remains my favorite. You put the caption of "You know what music is playing here". I can do that for the majority of the video. It sticks with you and it hit me at a time where things sink that much deeper. I, too, love the hunting for old technology sequences and started singing/beatboxing "Egg and I". Probably lucky for me, I had jumped off the Netflix train prior to Bebop coming out. Maybe because it wove itself into my dna or maybe because I spend too much time pondering critique and such, but I assumed the show would attempt to be "as cool" without fully grasping everything that made it so cool. Plus, attempting to flesh out the spike trio backstory, yikes. The three/five anime episodes around them are so tonally perfect. No full explanation of everything that occurred with them will EVER live up to the whispers of emotional clues from every corner. Wanders off to listen to Space Lion instead of rambling forever.
I'm the only other person who finished watching this on pre gatecrash earth and cared about the weird changes to the ending and Julia as a whole too BUT I was also on psychedelic mushrooms at the time so I felt like no one else would hear my confusion in the void
Your encouragement to reflect down here about how we knew which song was playing in the church made me chuckle bc I began to actively hum it as soon as the visuals came on screen
It's accurate though. Vicious and Julia in the original anime didn't have any sort of character depth to them. They were a perfect example of "less is more" which is normally the characterization of killers in slasher movies.
The actress playing Faye was actually a huge reason other than writing that the show failed so miserably, she was basically insufferable to watch or hear at all.
Yes exactly! They were trying too hard to be glitzy and punchy but they missed out on the essential cowboy bebopness. True disappointment. I did *not* finish the show (only made it through essentially the good episodes before giving up), and yet I *still* hated everything they were doing with Julia's character. For once, it was a terrible choice to take a character who wasn't actually physically in a piece of media that much and beef up her role in the adaptation. xD And Vicious just lost so much viciousness. Absolutely tragic. Time to just rewatch the original on loop haha.
I don’t know, the first time I watched Jupiter Jazz Part 2, which would have been its original airing on Adult Swim in late 2001, all I could think was, “what about Vicious’ relationship with his *father*!? Forget Gren, forget Spike and his relationship with Julia, does Vicious get along with his father!?” That’s what the story’s always been missing. SSSSAAAARRRRCCCAAASSSMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I found your channel because of the FFXVI bit you just did on Insert Credit which made me chuckle (your pronunciation of FFXVI was spot on) and this was a great first video for me! I really wanted to like this adaptation, and I stuck through to the end mostly based on some of those smaller interpersonal moments between the main trio that felt, if not like the original, like there was a core in there somewhere that could have smoothed out in a second season - away from a weird focus on Julia and Vicious, to being more of a weird/interesting/thoughtful series of adventures in space. I really did like the main cast a lot, even if most of the other characters felt varying levels of "off." I definitely felt pretty much everything you laid out in this video, so the warning signs were all there pretty much from the jump. The end made me so sad, lol. It was like gut punch after gut punch as it just became clear that the showrunners just didn't get the source material, that they were going to do this bewildering heel turn, and... Ed... woof. This was like Last Jedi levels of "why" for me. So yeah - long story short, this really resonated with me! Thanks for making it, and looking forward to checking out more of your stuff in the future :)
I’ve always been meaning to check out the original anime, and i think this is just more incentive to do so. Nice to know a little more about the themes before i dive in (Also little note, the subtitles don’t match up with what’s being said a lot of the time? Might want to patch that up a little)
When I heard it was getting adapted I thought there was no way Spike's actor would be able to properly recapture the character's vibe from the show. Then I watched the trailer and was like "oh shit, this actor has properly recaptured Spike's vibe from the show." Great work on the body language from him. Shame about the shows... everything else.
the dutch angles really reminded of that one roger ebert quote that im almost certain everyone knows that goes "the director learned that good movies include angled shots, but did not bother learning why"
I actually just recently checked out the first ep of it today and why does no one ever talk about the insane amount of cuts for the fight scenes, I literally ended up counting how many were in the scene of Asimov attacking Spike to Katerina escaping with him and got 112 cuts for just that. Hell, it might have been more as I had to scramble to count them at times.
Honestly the worst part of this series was just how sex-obsessed and nudity-obsessed it is. I don't mind these things, but it was just gratuitous for *no reason*.
I knew to avoid the Netflix Bebop when Ed wasn't in the main cast. Downgrading Ed displays the tone-deafness to theme you mention. Even tho Ed is in fewer anime eps than the other 3, she's thematically crucial as the 'baby' of the fam who realizes she has to leave the Bebop to grow up. As the youngest, she represents the future of the Bebop 'family,' so when she leaves them, it really emphasizes how they're losing the future by clinging to the past. There's also the extra symbolism of Spike and Jet gorging on eggs when they realize Ed's gone-- eating the symbol of future potential to fill their short-term emotional wounds. Add the brief, devastating interlude of Faye drawing the outline of her bed to lie down in the ruin of her old house, and I really can't think of a more potent few minutes of heartbreak in any other show, anime or live. Decades later I still can't hear "Call Me Call Me" without tearing up. What made the anime so haunting was that it /could/ have been a lovely found family story, all the elements are there... but although the characters align for a while, they never really find each other. The others are stuck; Ed is young enough to make a different choice and she makes it.
Personally I really disliked the portrayal of Spike. I was having a hard time placing it, but I think you nailed it. In padding it out they added so much mediocre dialogue especially the quips that just went against his vibe. He is a mysterious character and "fleshing out the third dimension" really only took away from that and gave them more opportunity for weak dialogue. The other big failing was in the fluidity of the action. I think they really should have picked someone with a martial arts background to play spike. It goes beyond the fight scenes to how the characters hold themselves, how they move, and how they are at rest. That is something that can't be taught in a couple months of boot camp. Additionally as you pointed out, the framing and editing of the action scenes was rough, though some of that was likely to hide the use of stunt performers. Great video.
"Why would you want your sci fi to shine on such relevant topics" This is something i noticed in Artemis Fowl, and the recurrence of such convenient alterations really makes them feel intentional. When your source is critical of systems created intentionally to benefit the rich and the rich alone, its not really in the interest of the majority shareholder to be criticized, especially when that money is being used to adapt the source material in the first place. Its why i feel like when there is an issue in the source that's brought up in a movie, there's an attempt to pass it off as already solved or unimportant through weird writing choices that could have been played straight and the entire work would have been better off for it. That or the writers that producers choose REALLY like writing on opposite day, turning fun romps into grimdark and well written stories into their most comedically stylish bathos interpretation. The Discworld Guardsmen stories? Lets make them grimy and filled with edge, ignore the fact that a major character is named carrot, think hes a dwarf, and doesn't care hes the next true king. Mort? We dont want the grim reaper in a story about death, his presence will make everything a downer even when that would fundamentally change the entire plot of the story without him.
Thanks for a really interesting video! I binged the Netflix Bebop when it came out and didn't particularly like it, but I'm always fascinated by the choices made by people creating new versions of classics. I think I'll go back and rewatch the two episodes you talked about here. "Not an improvement on nothing" is a great description btw.
I saw Daniella Pineda in a random indie film and she was so charismatic and then I found out she was in Bebop and it made me think about how bad the direction and production environment must have been to make three good core castings so unwatchable.
This was a great video! I've never seen either the original Cowboy Bebop, or the Netflix adaptation, though the original has long been on my watch list, it's getting put to No. 1 after watching this video. Just a quick bit of feedback, and this is probably caused by my not having watched the source material and my having ADHD, but I found it hard to follow along for much of the video (though, it came together to a nice conclusion that I *do* remember), and I felt like I have a hard time remembering much of the topics you covered in this video leading into the conclusion. If it's not too much extra work, in future videos, would you mind creating like subsections broad strokes of bullet points that you intend to convey? That would make it easier for me to follow along, and make it more memorable. Great video! Liking this new channel and I'm gonna go sub to your patreon right now lmao =D
I haven't watched the show and have no deep attachment to the anime, but goddamn, just looking at the clips in this video make the whole production seem incredibly amateurish. You're right about the framing and color grading. It can be easy to forget just how crucial those elements are to a stylized TV production, until a big budget show comes along where they SO clearly miss the mark.
I remember watching the first few episodes and being surprised the reviews were so brutal but by the end I don’t think they were harsh enough. Especially like your conclusion here - if this is what they came up with, what were they *trying* to do?
This is such an amazing video essay. Everything you had to say about the style undermining the series was so incisive. I was a little surprised in general by the overt colour grading and (intentionally?) artificial costuming. It seemed like they decided, oh, this is based on a cartoon, so our aesthetic needs to look as plastic as possible. I always expected a live-action Cowboy Bebop would go for like, John Woo in space, rather than like... Roger Rabbit
I don't care if I'm gonna watch cowboy bebop, I got the full anime in several different sets, so no need for me to ever damage my eyes by watching the Netflix dumpster fire.
I binged through all of the live action cowboy bepop at I remember liking it at the time, but I had never seen the original! I guess this just means I need to go back and watch it
There's a reason it was one of the fastest canceled shows ever. The original is one of the GOATs, the gold standard, a masterpiece that had layer and layers and layers that has made people watch it over and over across decades. Both myself and the creator turned off the live action with the opening scene. They completely missed the point. There's nothing wrong with liking it, but basicly the few who did were ones like yourself who don't know the original.
Yep yep! Exactly what the reply above me said, if you've watched the original even the opening scene makes you shut off Netflixes adaptation. I will say that I get why you'd like it without the originals context, and in general Netflix seems to have this problem where they will make a watchable series, but based on a media whose fans have severely different expectations. I wish they would start makingindependent series simply "inspired" by a story. Especially since when people aren't previously attached to characters they're much less critical.
I haven't watched the Cowboy Bebop anime (I know, I know, it's been on my "to watch later" list for like a decade). I'm taking this video as a cautionary tale of why I shouldn't immediately fall for Netflix's sparkly new series, and go watch the original first, then see if I still want to dive into the Netflix adaptation 😅
Surprised you didn’t see people complaining about Julia’s plot as v&j were easily the worst part of the show. I had mixed feelings about where they ended up and how they set up the prospective season 2 but the decision to make Julia into (spoilers?) the big bad is… interesting. My theory is that while og bebop is about letting go of the past, Netflix bebop is about family, lost and found. That’s why jet has kids, Faye has a mom, vicious has a dad, and the crew has kind of a found family feeling by the end of the season.
I fell in love with the anime earlier the year the Netflix Bebop came out and I was so excited to see it in live action. And honestly? I liked the first two episodes. And then the third episode happened. Wish I knew how to put into words why the characters reactions to all the BDSM stuff annoyed me so much without sounding like a puritanical asshole, but it really, really got on my nerves. Everything after that in the show just annoyed the hell out of me. You're a real trooper for having watched the whole thing twice, Jenna. Really great analysis.
I love fascinating messes, usually. When you call your shot and miss, there's still, at the very least, some guts that went into that. It tends to make for something interesting to experience. I love the Star Wars prequels for this same reason. I can't really put my finger on what it was, exactly, but something about Netflix Bebop didn't work for me, even in that kind of way. Maybe I'll find something about it to enjoy in time. It really is a shame, though. I agree on all points about the main cast being great actors saddled with a bad script. There are moments of a much better show that shine through here and there, but it's, sadly, not enough.
If you want some more thought processes behind the mind of the creators of the Netflix show, there's a podcast called "The Bebop Beat" that somehow managed to get interviews with the writers and showrunner. It's...illuminating. Like Javier Grillo-Marxauch says he specifically chose to adapt Pierrot Le Fou, because the original episode was perfect and nothing could improve upon it or match it. No really, he said that, I can't for the life of me figure that thought process out. Also, I heavily disagree about Gallileo Hustle being good. My main complaint is that Faye in the original anime is Singaporean (and possibly Romani, if you believe some of Faye's backstory). Now Daniella Pineda is Latina, but is coded as white in the Netflix show (and for some reason her younger self is a Japanese actress, but I digress. Now I myself am a White American Asexual Man, but aside from Spike, pretty much every Asian and Latin American coded character from the anime was changed, usually to white. Vicious and The Van were coded East Asian, for instance. (And the live action version puts The Van in literal Yellow Face) As for Latin American, there were The Three Old Men, Asimov, and Katerina, four of whom were changed to white with the other being Black. But to the point, I've seen several posts from Singaporean people who resonated with Faye in the anime, because according to them, Singapore is an Eastern country impacted by Western culture, and the youthful conflicted as to remain in their cultural past or to forge a different future. And I dislike Whitney being a mother figure, as well as Faye. sleeping with Mel. Not because of the LGBT themes, but because it makes Faye really have no goal, other than finding her past. What I mean is that in the anime she wanted money, but had a fear of getting close to others (and also she had a gambling addiction, which imo would resonate to modern viewers) Faye being betrayed by anime Whitney hit way harder, as she was essentially used in every sense of the word, and she kind of thinks she has to use others to survive in the future. So I'm find with her being into women, but it would be closer in line for anime Faye to hit on a woman and get rejected (Also I think Mel was supposed to be a stand in for Miles, who was Black in the anime, but Mel is white) As for Netflix Faye's current goals, she wants to...find out about her past? Even the script supervisor and showrunner said season 2 would have Faye discover her true parentage....which was completely opposite of the point of the anime. It didn't matter who her parents were, they'd be long dead anyway.
Javier Grillo-Marxauch is such a confusing guy to me. 'The Middleman' is a great, super nerdy show. But just about everything else he touches is some form of shit.
@Fafhrd42 It's kind of a similar case with Neill Blomkamp. Neill Blomkamp made District 9, which is great, then he made Elysium, which wasn't as good but was still enjoyable, then Chappie which I'd easily classify as a "so bad it's good" kind of film, and then he made Demonic, which was just bad. I will give Blomkamp some slack though, he spent a lot of time working on an Alien project and a Robocop project that ended up not getting made due to corporate shenanigans, which I'm sure was very disheartening.
Didn't see the Netflix show because of all the reviews saying it didn't respect the source materials, and this definitely supports that choice! Good to know. It also makes me want to rewatch the anime, because damn, that is some good shit.
funny because i had otherwise feeling:) it was carried with nice respect for the elements from original making them more realistic and expanding them. i loved the original show and i love the first 7 episodes from live action, but the last 3 episodes turns into messy sci fi drama/action tv show and i didn't like it. i don't understand the hate for the first episodes of netflix version, cause it's really nice twist and i don't have any issues with dutch angles, color grading and color grading lol. i loved how they used some of the coolest motives from the original series and i would love if they could keep the whole new series in this style, just exploring and reimagining the original sidecharacters. it would be really great series kept this way.
Not that anyone asked but I personally hate the way that Gren was portrayed in the Netflix show. Having Gren be a burlesque dancer feels like a trope where gender nonconforming people need to be a spectacle for others amusement. Not to mention, I wouldn't call Anime Gren nonbinary. With the way they talk about their experience, they seem more like a man whose masculinity is being challenged by their changed body. I am someone who often struggles to reconcile their own gender identity with their body, so to me Anime Gren is an interesting inversion on the typical dysphoria struggle. I was excited to learn that Gren would play a bigger role in Netflix Bebop but was ultimately disappointed in their presentation.
I don't think sticking closer to the source material would've helped end up with a show that's good in its own right. Just like every adaptation, Netflix Bebop was kind of ok when it was doing its own thing, and sucked when it was attempting to carbon copy the original. The Julia/Vicious stuff *was* great compared to the first 3 or 4 episodes, and that's why: the early episodes were cool but had no "soul" and felt like they were trying way too hard. They just should've found a happy medium like the middle episodes you mentioned!
Why are all of these remakes being done by people who didn't like, or even experience, the source material!‽!? Wouldn't an ardent fan of the original be a much better choice¿ Make it make sense!
I cannot begin to imagine looking at the original cowboy bebop and thinking it lacked complexity? Yes, I do think the episode run times lessened the option of quieter character interactions between the main characters (which would have been a nice thing that they could have aded) but the complexity was clearly still there. At least they didn’t make everyone white (looking at you death note)
An aspect I didn't appreciate on first viewing but did on my second is that the Netflix series was a "remix" of the original. Music in the original series was interwoven with the show in complex ways. Not just by setting the atmosphere (and episode titles), the nature of each musical sub-genre they explored was reflected in the storytelling. The pacing and narrative arc of each episode matching the tropes of the style of music. The Netflix show gave a head-nod to how important music was in the original. They didn't have as many episodes and were forced to pare down - there's many ways to do this, but the method they went with is very reminiscent of musical mashups and DJ remixes. Mixing and matching elements of familiar songs together so you are hearing them in new ways.
I watched the anime for the first time shortly after the live action show came out, and then the live action show right after. I honestly felt like the live action was not that bad at all. But it also didn’t really compare in quality to the anime either. I think people were a bit unfair for sure.
I liked it. Sure the Original is genius but basically every episode boils down to - 'there is a dilemma to be solved - but the team are all selfish so do things 3 individualistic ways which messes things up - but somehow they coolly or luckily resolve things'.
I didn't watch Cowflix Netbop, but I did watch Netflix's The Witcher and a lot of the same complaints apply. Overdone effects, cheesy lines, and seeming disdain for the source material. There's gotta be some executive at Netflix who buys these properties and is like "alright, let's make this for adults"
I’ve always had the thought tha Vicious and Julia were flat and forgettable in the original, and i thought that was a mistake by the team, but you changed my mind with the “they’re ghosts, haunting Spike” because they really are, they don’t need the most intricate backstory or personality because they’re not the focus, how they affect Spike is, and they show how much they affect him, and it really adds a lot to his arc of unwillingness to let go of the past, and makes the ending a lot more bittersweet
It's kind of like someone watched the original and was like "These characters are so mysterious and I want to know more!" without thinking about *why* the characters are mysterious.
So I'm running a D&D game in the Spelljammer setting inspired by Cowboy Bebop, and "A bunch of cool idiots who are so obsessed with their past that they're constantly fuckin' up their futures" is absolutely the vibe I'm going for. With space wizards.
You should check out Cyberpunk RED system. its totally built for a cowbooy bebop game :)
I remember Vicious being absolutely terrifying in the anime, and only as an adult and seeing so much of him in the live action do I realize that he's frightening because of how little you see him. He's the boogieman in living flesh in the anime and no one wants to know the boogieman's motivations and goofy backstory. Also, the new Julia plot sucked . . . like a lot.
"we can't do the boot shot a *ninth* time..." maybe the most frustrating thing was that nobody in the room thought to be like "oh but eight times was fine?"
6:53 Her ID is literally 12345 but also her serial number is NCC1701, the registry number of the USS Enterprise, for some reason
I don't feel a thing
And I've stopped remembering
Days are just like moments
Turned to hours
Mother used to say
"If you want, you'll find a way"
But mother never danced through fire showers
Walk
In the rain
I'm glad there's people in the world that are able to take my thoughts on media from my brain and turn it into words.
I couldn't articulate exactly my issue with Cowboy Bebop Netflix but this is it.
The decision to drop the debt from Faye's backstory really surprises me. It's such a guaranteed slam dunk of a plot point -- why exclude it? Seems like either 1) they were so afraid to be accused of preaching that they cut sermons present in the source material just to be safe^ or 2) they just wouldn't allow anything of substance to jam up their Blue-Suit-Guy-Who-Kicks Style Hour.
^ #1 is especially ridiculous because it assumes most of their viewers wouldn't have already watched the anime. Everyone who was going to stream CB on Netflix has already watched the anime, because everyone on earth has already watched the anime. And rightly so! It's good.
the debt is dropped because netflix is an enormous Capitalist entity. ANY discussion about the crushing nature of debt contributes to Class Consciousness and Must be eliminated from the common discourse.
Everyone who was going to stream CB on Netflix has already watched the anime, because everyone on earth has already watched the anime. And rightly so! It's good.
Not entirely true at least. I couldn't ever get into the anime because of not really enjoying the pacing, and when CB was being discussed heavily at the time, I had a fair few friends who said the same, but still gave Netflix CB a shot (as I did). Not sure how many of them enjoyed it (like I did), but given how much CB is evangelized by the anime community, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a sizable portion of anime-adjacent viewers that haven't seen it or couldn't get into it that nonetheless tried the Netflix CB because of how good its source material is always said to be.
i have noticed they shows they fund tend to make capitalism get redeemed or lessened in some way. in BNA, when the "one evil capitalist" guy is taken down, all is well apparently. in Great Pretender the millionaires they scammed throughout the show come back and help them. in Squid Game that last little bit with the old guy undercuts the whole message of the show. it's a pattern.
"Not an improvement on nothing" is my new favorite burn for bad subplots.
The main cast are absolutely phenomenal and I really hope they have oppertunities to reprise their roles as the Bebop crew in the future, just under different writers, showrunners, cinematographers... yeah just change the entire production team cos NONE of it worked for me.
Really love the actors they chose, feel they really work well together and when the material isn't getting in the way of their performances they really live and breath the original characters but my god that material sure is getting in the way all the time.
Keep the costuming and set design people, too.
Action in general being stripped down to bad quick cuts in modern cinema is brutal. If you want to make an action shot, take the time to do it correctly. Hire the choreographer, have your actors go through tens of hours of training... and make a good shot that is worth watching in a few takes. If your actors can't do an action scene... give them a helmet and use a double, or DONT HIRE THAT ACTOR FOR THAT ROLE.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Good points Jenna.
I'm gonna go watch that Every Frame a Painting video again
"Cool idiots so obsessed with thier past fuckin up thier futures" thats such a good way of describing cowboy bebop.
also nice pointing out that any scifi timeliness is kicked out
They did ALL the characters so dirty. They didn't let Spike, Faye, or Jett have much of their flaws still, which is what made the original characters so compelling. They also fully removed what made Vicious and Gren who they were.
Gren I like some of the changes, but they changed so much that they felt more like a new character with the same name? I would have liked to see some of their interactions witg Faye or their music or more!!
Don't you fucking dare reach out from the screen to grab me with that Adult Swim "partially-renovated basement" call out.
A new Jenna video!!
The year before Cowboy Bebop started playing on Adult Swim, I was introduced to it by a dvd from a friend in college. I had barely any prior anime experience and to this day, it remains my favorite. You put the caption of "You know what music is playing here". I can do that for the majority of the video. It sticks with you and it hit me at a time where things sink that much deeper.
I, too, love the hunting for old technology sequences and started singing/beatboxing "Egg and I".
Probably lucky for me, I had jumped off the Netflix train prior to Bebop coming out. Maybe because it wove itself into my dna or maybe because I spend too much time pondering critique and such, but I assumed the show would attempt to be "as cool" without fully grasping everything that made it so cool. Plus, attempting to flesh out the spike trio backstory, yikes. The three/five anime episodes around them are so tonally perfect. No full explanation of everything that occurred with them will EVER live up to the whispers of emotional clues from every corner.
Wanders off to listen to Space Lion instead of rambling forever.
I'm the only other person who finished watching this on pre gatecrash earth and cared about the weird changes to the ending and Julia as a whole too BUT I was also on psychedelic mushrooms at the time so I felt like no one else would hear my confusion in the void
I got myself drunk to finish it so I can relate to this.
Your encouragement to reflect down here about how we knew which song was playing in the church made me chuckle bc I began to actively hum it as soon as the visuals came on screen
The actual creators of the Live action calling Vicous and Julia flat characters is deeply upsetting
It's accurate though. Vicious and Julia in the original anime didn't have any sort of character depth to them. They were a perfect example of "less is more" which is normally the characterization of killers in slasher movies.
The actress playing Faye was actually a huge reason other than writing that the show failed so miserably, she was basically insufferable to watch or hear at all.
Yes exactly! They were trying too hard to be glitzy and punchy but they missed out on the essential cowboy bebopness. True disappointment. I did *not* finish the show (only made it through essentially the good episodes before giving up), and yet I *still* hated everything they were doing with Julia's character. For once, it was a terrible choice to take a character who wasn't actually physically in a piece of media that much and beef up her role in the adaptation. xD And Vicious just lost so much viciousness. Absolutely tragic. Time to just rewatch the original on loop haha.
I don’t know, the first time I watched Jupiter Jazz Part 2, which would have been its original airing on Adult Swim in late 2001, all I could think was, “what about Vicious’ relationship with his *father*!? Forget Gren, forget Spike and his relationship with Julia, does Vicious get along with his father!?” That’s what the story’s always been missing.
SSSSAAAARRRRCCCAAASSSMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I found your channel because of the FFXVI bit you just did on Insert Credit which made me chuckle (your pronunciation of FFXVI was spot on) and this was a great first video for me!
I really wanted to like this adaptation, and I stuck through to the end mostly based on some of those smaller interpersonal moments between the main trio that felt, if not like the original, like there was a core in there somewhere that could have smoothed out in a second season - away from a weird focus on Julia and Vicious, to being more of a weird/interesting/thoughtful series of adventures in space. I really did like the main cast a lot, even if most of the other characters felt varying levels of "off." I definitely felt pretty much everything you laid out in this video, so the warning signs were all there pretty much from the jump.
The end made me so sad, lol. It was like gut punch after gut punch as it just became clear that the showrunners just didn't get the source material, that they were going to do this bewildering heel turn, and... Ed... woof. This was like Last Jedi levels of "why" for me.
So yeah - long story short, this really resonated with me! Thanks for making it, and looking forward to checking out more of your stuff in the future :)
This is so awesome! It's always great to get nostalgic about the anime, and thanks for making sense of what went wrong with the live-action show.
I’ve always been meaning to check out the original anime, and i think this is just more incentive to do so. Nice to know a little more about the themes before i dive in
(Also little note, the subtitles don’t match up with what’s being said a lot of the time? Might want to patch that up a little)
When I heard it was getting adapted I thought there was no way Spike's actor would be able to properly recapture the character's vibe from the show. Then I watched the trailer and was like "oh shit, this actor has properly recaptured Spike's vibe from the show." Great work on the body language from him. Shame about the shows... everything else.
the dutch angles really reminded of that one roger ebert quote that im almost certain everyone knows that goes "the director learned that good movies include angled shots, but did not bother learning why"
I actually just recently checked out the first ep of it today and why does no one ever talk about the insane amount of cuts for the fight scenes, I literally ended up counting how many were in the scene of Asimov attacking Spike to Katerina escaping with him and got 112 cuts for just that. Hell, it might have been more as I had to scramble to count them at times.
The most unnecessary adaptation there ever was. It's basically impossible to improve upon a masterpiece.
"I was just taught not to lie" 🤣🤣
Expounding on julia's story was what made me think the writers hadn't understood the original
Honestly the worst part of this series was just how sex-obsessed and nudity-obsessed it is. I don't mind these things, but it was just gratuitous for *no reason*.
initial thought: why the hell is everything so dark and weird colors
jenna: so the color grading is weird and everything is dark
me: YEAH
I knew to avoid the Netflix Bebop when Ed wasn't in the main cast. Downgrading Ed displays the tone-deafness to theme you mention. Even tho Ed is in fewer anime eps than the other 3, she's thematically crucial as the 'baby' of the fam who realizes she has to leave the Bebop to grow up. As the youngest, she represents the future of the Bebop 'family,' so when she leaves them, it really emphasizes how they're losing the future by clinging to the past.
There's also the extra symbolism of Spike and Jet gorging on eggs when they realize Ed's gone-- eating the symbol of future potential to fill their short-term emotional wounds. Add the brief, devastating interlude of Faye drawing the outline of her bed to lie down in the ruin of her old house, and I really can't think of a more potent few minutes of heartbreak in any other show, anime or live. Decades later I still can't hear "Call Me Call Me" without tearing up.
What made the anime so haunting was that it /could/ have been a lovely found family story, all the elements are there... but although the characters align for a while, they never really find each other. The others are stuck; Ed is young enough to make a different choice and she makes it.
Personally I really disliked the portrayal of Spike. I was having a hard time placing it, but I think you nailed it. In padding it out they added so much mediocre dialogue especially the quips that just went against his vibe. He is a mysterious character and "fleshing out the third dimension" really only took away from that and gave them more opportunity for weak dialogue.
The other big failing was in the fluidity of the action. I think they really should have picked someone with a martial arts background to play spike. It goes beyond the fight scenes to how the characters hold themselves, how they move, and how they are at rest. That is something that can't be taught in a couple months of boot camp. Additionally as you pointed out, the framing and editing of the action scenes was rough, though some of that was likely to hide the use of stunt performers.
Great video.
"Why would you want your sci fi to shine on such relevant topics"
This is something i noticed in Artemis Fowl, and the recurrence of such convenient alterations really makes them feel intentional. When your source is critical of systems created intentionally to benefit the rich and the rich alone, its not really in the interest of the majority shareholder to be criticized, especially when that money is being used to adapt the source material in the first place. Its why i feel like when there is an issue in the source that's brought up in a movie, there's an attempt to pass it off as already solved or unimportant through weird writing choices that could have been played straight and the entire work would have been better off for it.
That or the writers that producers choose REALLY like writing on opposite day, turning fun romps into grimdark and well written stories into their most comedically stylish bathos interpretation. The Discworld Guardsmen stories? Lets make them grimy and filled with edge, ignore the fact that a major character is named carrot, think hes a dwarf, and doesn't care hes the next true king. Mort? We dont want the grim reaper in a story about death, his presence will make everything a downer even when that would fundamentally change the entire plot of the story without him.
Thanks for a really interesting video! I binged the Netflix Bebop when it came out and didn't particularly like it, but I'm always fascinated by the choices made by people creating new versions of classics. I think I'll go back and rewatch the two episodes you talked about here. "Not an improvement on nothing" is a great description btw.
I gave up on the show one and a half episodes in, but this video was a lot better, thanks jenna!
Commenting for algorithm. Thank you for the compelling video!
Ugh Jenna your videos are so good
delighted to see you Jenna, this was wonderful and I have missed your videos very much!
I knew that the adaptation would be bad ever since I saw Fayes hair was colored purple and Spikes shirt was yellow.
I saw Daniella Pineda in a random indie film and she was so charismatic and then I found out she was in Bebop and it made me think about how bad the direction and production environment must have been to make three good core castings so unwatchable.
This was a great video! I've never seen either the original Cowboy Bebop, or the Netflix adaptation, though the original has long been on my watch list, it's getting put to No. 1 after watching this video.
Just a quick bit of feedback, and this is probably caused by my not having watched the source material and my having ADHD, but I found it hard to follow along for much of the video (though, it came together to a nice conclusion that I *do* remember), and I felt like I have a hard time remembering much of the topics you covered in this video leading into the conclusion.
If it's not too much extra work, in future videos, would you mind creating like subsections broad strokes of bullet points that you intend to convey? That would make it easier for me to follow along, and make it more memorable.
Great video! Liking this new channel and I'm gonna go sub to your patreon right now lmao =D
I haven't watched the show and have no deep attachment to the anime, but goddamn, just looking at the clips in this video make the whole production seem incredibly amateurish. You're right about the framing and color grading. It can be easy to forget just how crucial those elements are to a stylized TV production, until a big budget show comes along where they SO clearly miss the mark.
3:45 is that Earl Hickey lol
I remember watching the first few episodes and being surprised the reviews were so brutal but by the end I don’t think they were harsh enough. Especially like your conclusion here - if this is what they came up with, what were they *trying* to do?
"It is not an improvement on Nothing." lol. That's good.
Damn... your biggest achievement was making the show tempting to watch (for two episodes)
Thank you for this! But I don't think I'll be watching the episodes for myself 😅
i know exactly what song is playing in this scene, oh god i need to touch grass
I know what music was playing in that scene in the anime. I DID MY PART JENNA NOW KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK GREAT VIDEO
Let's jam
You watched it twice?! You're stronger than I.
This is such an amazing video essay. Everything you had to say about the style undermining the series was so incisive.
I was a little surprised in general by the overt colour grading and (intentionally?) artificial costuming. It seemed like they decided, oh, this is based on a cartoon, so our aesthetic needs to look as plastic as possible. I always expected a live-action Cowboy Bebop would go for like, John Woo in space, rather than like... Roger Rabbit
I don't care if I'm gonna watch cowboy bebop, I got the full anime in several different sets, so no need for me to ever damage my eyes by watching the Netflix dumpster fire.
this didnt convince me to watch netflix bebop but it did convince me to start the original!
Was that the "Walk in the Rain" scene?
I binged through all of the live action cowboy bepop at I remember liking it at the time, but I had never seen the original! I guess this just means I need to go back and watch it
There's a reason it was one of the fastest canceled shows ever. The original is one of the GOATs, the gold standard, a masterpiece that had layer and layers and layers that has made people watch it over and over across decades. Both myself and the creator turned off the live action with the opening scene. They completely missed the point. There's nothing wrong with liking it, but basicly the few who did were ones like yourself who don't know the original.
Yep yep! Exactly what the reply above me said, if you've watched the original even the opening scene makes you shut off Netflixes adaptation. I will say that I get why you'd like it without the originals context, and in general Netflix seems to have this problem where they will make a watchable series, but based on a media whose fans have severely different expectations. I wish they would start makingindependent series simply "inspired" by a story. Especially since when people aren't previously attached to characters they're much less critical.
4:46 I like it
Great video! Awesome to see your patreon is growing nicely!
The enviorment artists & SEATBELTS nailed it.
The Writers made you anti-hollywood writers union & beyond
Walk, in the rain...
I haven't watched the Cowboy Bebop anime (I know, I know, it's been on my "to watch later" list for like a decade). I'm taking this video as a cautionary tale of why I shouldn't immediately fall for Netflix's sparkly new series, and go watch the original first, then see if I still want to dive into the Netflix adaptation 😅
Great thumbnail 👏
Surprised you didn’t see people complaining about Julia’s plot as v&j were easily the worst part of the show. I had mixed feelings about where they ended up and how they set up the prospective season 2 but the decision to make Julia into (spoilers?) the big bad is… interesting.
My theory is that while og bebop is about letting go of the past, Netflix bebop is about family, lost and found. That’s why jet has kids, Faye has a mom, vicious has a dad, and the crew has kind of a found family feeling by the end of the season.
commenting for engagement- awesome video jenna!!!! :D
Could you imagine a live action eva 💀
I fell in love with the anime earlier the year the Netflix Bebop came out and I was so excited to see it in live action. And honestly? I liked the first two episodes. And then the third episode happened. Wish I knew how to put into words why the characters reactions to all the BDSM stuff annoyed me so much without sounding like a puritanical asshole, but it really, really got on my nerves. Everything after that in the show just annoyed the hell out of me. You're a real trooper for having watched the whole thing twice, Jenna. Really great analysis.
This is the real folk blues.
algorithmic punch!
I love fascinating messes, usually. When you call your shot and miss, there's still, at the very least, some guts that went into that. It tends to make for something interesting to experience. I love the Star Wars prequels for this same reason. I can't really put my finger on what it was, exactly, but something about Netflix Bebop didn't work for me, even in that kind of way. Maybe I'll find something about it to enjoy in time.
It really is a shame, though. I agree on all points about the main cast being great actors saddled with a bad script. There are moments of a much better show that shine through here and there, but it's, sadly, not enough.
Voidbugger?
If you want some more thought processes behind the mind of the creators of the Netflix show, there's a podcast called "The Bebop Beat" that somehow managed to get interviews with the writers and showrunner. It's...illuminating. Like Javier Grillo-Marxauch says he specifically chose to adapt Pierrot Le Fou, because the original episode was perfect and nothing could improve upon it or match it. No really, he said that, I can't for the life of me figure that thought process out.
Also, I heavily disagree about Gallileo Hustle being good. My main complaint is that Faye in the original anime is Singaporean (and possibly Romani, if you believe some of Faye's backstory). Now Daniella Pineda is Latina, but is coded as white in the Netflix show (and for some reason her younger self is a Japanese actress, but I digress. Now I myself am a White American Asexual Man, but aside from Spike, pretty much every Asian and Latin American coded character from the anime was changed, usually to white. Vicious and The Van were coded East Asian, for instance. (And the live action version puts The Van in literal Yellow Face)
As for Latin American, there were The Three Old Men, Asimov, and Katerina, four of whom were changed to white with the other being Black.
But to the point, I've seen several posts from Singaporean people who resonated with Faye in the anime, because according to them, Singapore is an Eastern country impacted by Western culture, and the youthful conflicted as to remain in their cultural past or to forge a different future. And I dislike Whitney being a mother figure, as well as Faye. sleeping with Mel. Not because of the LGBT themes, but because it makes Faye really have no goal, other than finding her past. What I mean is that in the anime she wanted money, but had a fear of getting close to others (and also she had a gambling addiction, which imo would resonate to modern viewers)
Faye being betrayed by anime Whitney hit way harder, as she was essentially used in every sense of the word, and she kind of thinks she has to use others to survive in the future. So I'm find with her being into women, but it would be closer in line for anime Faye to hit on a woman and get rejected (Also I think Mel was supposed to be a stand in for Miles, who was Black in the anime, but Mel is white)
As for Netflix Faye's current goals, she wants to...find out about her past? Even the script supervisor and showrunner said season 2 would have Faye discover her true parentage....which was completely opposite of the point of the anime. It didn't matter who her parents were, they'd be long dead anyway.
Javier Grillo-Marxauch is such a confusing guy to me. 'The Middleman' is a great, super nerdy show. But just about everything else he touches is some form of shit.
@Fafhrd42 It's kind of a similar case with Neill Blomkamp. Neill Blomkamp made District 9, which is great, then he made Elysium, which wasn't as good but was still enjoyable, then Chappie which I'd easily classify as a "so bad it's good" kind of film, and then he made Demonic, which was just bad. I will give Blomkamp some slack though, he spent a lot of time working on an Alien project and a Robocop project that ended up not getting made due to corporate shenanigans, which I'm sure was very disheartening.
Thanks
Didn't see the Netflix show because of all the reviews saying it didn't respect the source materials, and this definitely supports that choice! Good to know. It also makes me want to rewatch the anime, because damn, that is some good shit.
funny because i had otherwise feeling:) it was carried with nice respect for the elements from original making them more realistic and expanding them. i loved the original show and i love the first 7 episodes from live action, but the last 3 episodes turns into messy sci fi drama/action tv show and i didn't like it.
i don't understand the hate for the first episodes of netflix version, cause it's really nice twist and i don't have any issues with dutch angles, color grading and color grading lol. i loved how they used some of the coolest motives from the original series and i would love if they could keep the whole new series in this style, just exploring and reimagining the original sidecharacters. it would be really great series kept this way.
Yoko is about 50% of the cool.
Bebop is so good the adaptation did it dirty.
What they did to viscous made me hate the show
Not that anyone asked but I personally hate the way that Gren was portrayed in the Netflix show. Having Gren be a burlesque dancer feels like a trope where gender nonconforming people need to be a spectacle for others amusement. Not to mention, I wouldn't call Anime Gren nonbinary. With the way they talk about their experience, they seem more like a man whose masculinity is being challenged by their changed body. I am someone who often struggles to reconcile their own gender identity with their body, so to me Anime Gren is an interesting inversion on the typical dysphoria struggle. I was excited to learn that Gren would play a bigger role in Netflix Bebop but was ultimately disappointed in their presentation.
Nice vid.
I don't think sticking closer to the source material would've helped end up with a show that's good in its own right. Just like every adaptation, Netflix Bebop was kind of ok when it was doing its own thing, and sucked when it was attempting to carbon copy the original. The Julia/Vicious stuff *was* great compared to the first 3 or 4 episodes, and that's why: the early episodes were cool but had no "soul" and felt like they were trying way too hard.
They just should've found a happy medium like the middle episodes you mentioned!
Why are all of these remakes being done by people who didn't like, or even experience, the source material!‽!? Wouldn't an ardent fan of the original be a much better choice¿ Make it make sense!
AS A LONG TIME FAN, THIS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS F OFF
Wow, you kinda convinced me to watch Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop. Impressive.
How???
I cannot begin to imagine looking at the original cowboy bebop and thinking it lacked complexity? Yes, I do think the episode run times lessened the option of quieter character interactions between the main characters (which would have been a nice thing that they could have aded) but the complexity was clearly still there. At least they didn’t make everyone white (looking at you death note)
another slay
live action gren is crap tho they missed the point
An aspect I didn't appreciate on first viewing but did on my second is that the Netflix series was a "remix" of the original. Music in the original series was interwoven with the show in complex ways. Not just by setting the atmosphere (and episode titles), the nature of each musical sub-genre they explored was reflected in the storytelling. The pacing and narrative arc of each episode matching the tropes of the style of music. The Netflix show gave a head-nod to how important music was in the original. They didn't have as many episodes and were forced to pare down - there's many ways to do this, but the method they went with is very reminiscent of musical mashups and DJ remixes. Mixing and matching elements of familiar songs together so you are hearing them in new ways.
agagaga
Ugh, making me suddenly have to stare at tiny subtitles on my phone. Why didn't you just use the excellent dub for your anime clip??
I loved the Netflix Cowboy Bebop
I watched the anime for the first time shortly after the live action show came out, and then the live action show right after. I honestly felt like the live action was not that bad at all. But it also didn’t really compare in quality to the anime either. I think people were a bit unfair for sure.
ayy
Ed was cute
I personally loved Netflix bebop. Yeah it’s not as good as the anime. But I still loved it. Felt like a kid again staying up late watching the anime.
You should of used the dub
I tried watching the original anime when the netflix show came out, and got about four or five episodes in. I found it so incredibly boring
Didn't care for the anime. I remember liking the last 2 episodes and the movie.
The live action was fine.
I liked it.
Sure the Original is genius but basically every episode boils down to - 'there is a dilemma to be solved - but the team are all selfish so do things 3 individualistic ways which messes things up - but somehow they coolly or luckily resolve things'.