Cowboy Bebop

There are expected controversies around how faithful it is (or should be) to the source material - some points are literal retelling of the story, some are drastically different. I think it's mostly good that they're changing the story at times, it's a new material and a new medium after all. And I think they actually are the story difference are actually fixing the issue of the source material where the story was not sufficiently told in the end.

What's really great about the live action series is a visual style - it's realistic (the CGIs are mostly about space and some background imagery) yet very bright and vivid and ever-so-slightly goofy. The pace and character development is also great, it's all coming together nicely.

But it's a real hit-and-miss in the actors department - some of them are really in the right place and the resulting characters are truly great (like Spike and Jet), some of them come unbalanced (like Faye), and some are a complete disaster (like Vicious and Julia), which is really irritating.

It's still very worth the time, for it's a quirky and goofy blend of visual greatness and great characters.

Cowboy Bebop is a live adaptation of a popular anime featuring a group of space bounty hunters nicknamed 'cowboys' who roam the now-populated solar system a few centuries in the future. The tone of the series is light-hearted, featuring typical down-on-their-luck yet likeable main characters who stumble their way into victories against equally incompetent bad guys. It's basically all in good fun.

It's universe is a combination of Americana influences from the '50's up to the '70's, Japanese mafia tropes and old-skool visceral science fiction, with a film noir-detective glue that holds it together. It consist of over-the-top but well designed set pieces with characters that find themselves in absurd situations, mostly created by their own antics. Fair warning, it can get pretty bloody at times between all the sarcasm, true to anime heritage.

The music is excellent, especially the jazz pieces from all the greats that seem hand-picked to fit the scenes. It's general feel is reminiscent of comic books, with lots of different color schemes, shots from strange angels and short, witty comebacks that could've just as easily been dropped in captions. Blood doesn't drip, it flashes over the screen, that sort of thing.

My main criticism are the predictable plot-lines, with one or two nice surprises. Also, not all the jokes land because the editing can be off beat, slowing down the comedic timing of the actors. On these review pages it has been compared to the original, well-loved anime, which I didn't do. Without the comparison, the end-result is a production that could have had a sharper finish, but that doesn't take away much from this futuristic noir-detective that got stuck in the seventies.

Don't expect the world and you'll root for these cowboys.

I won't make comparisons with the original animation.

I think this show in general is an excellent production. The actors are ok and have great chemistry together.

But this show takes a bold approach to the way it tells the story.

It tries, perhaps excessively, to be faithful to an Anime narrative structure.

It's a western. It's a space opera. It's a buddy cop comedy. It has a noir atmosphere mixed with ultra-over the top action scenes. All mixed in a crazy colored juice.

This cocktail isn't easy to make into a live series.

And the end result is a highly stylized TV show that is beautiful to watch, well interpreted, but not everything blends in very well.

This will certainly work for many people, but for many it won't.

So, in the end, what counts is a matter of taste.

Try it and you may like it or not.

I personally enjoyed some episodes more than others, but I wouldn't mind seeing more.

A solid 7 out of 10 for me.

I was skeptical about the cast at first, but John Cho was surprisingly pulling Spike off very well. Now, I can't seem to find any other actors to play Spike other then John Cho. Jet Black, on the other hand, the beard on him looks too artificial. It just doesn't sit well on the guy. They could have styled the beard as its own since they changed the character to a black guy, but then somehow they attached the original character's beard on him which seems to be the general issue in this show. They changed some elements in the animation and adopted new things to a live action show, but then they somehow applied original elements back to new things. They don't get along well together, and often produces some silly chuckles and eye sores just like Jet Black's beard. Overall, the show is interesting as its own. It could have been better if they have made it as a standalone show instead of making a carbon-copy version of the original animation.

Good acting, the actors have swag. It's a good serie it's anything you have seen before. Right amount of humor and action. You will like this series if you like anything surrounding sci fi space movies/series. Interesting story to follow too, this will not disappoint. Usually asian actors are the bad guys in action movies/series, but not in this one.