Cowboy Bebop

This show isn't the anime, but is definitely enjoyable all on its own. The casting is great. The sets and music really captures the spirit of the original.

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.

This is not Cowboy Bebop the masterpiece animation. If you came into this expecting it to be you did yourself a huge disservice. I'll admit I was having a bit of this with Faye, but the depiction is growing on me after I shook it off.

Almost every sub 7 rating directly compares this to the original. Every so often I get exposed to a 6.4 rated show(Rating at the time of this review) and this is not a 6.4.

Hopefully after the fanboys voting on day one are done with it it'll increase to something more reasonable.

My only casting dislike so far is Faye Valentine.

The writing for her is awful, and her delivery is even worse. She also doesn't look the part either. Faye was the stereotypical femme Fatale in appearance, but juxtaposed by her brash nature. This actress lacks the first part, which is important to her character. She's cringeworthy. Also not a fan of vicious, either. But I'm telling ya Faye is really bad.

Jet is great. Spike is pretty good.

They NAILED the environment and atmosphere. Production is amazing. That really helps the affair.

Music is the best of all. Amazing. They brought back the same guy from the anime. It's incredible stuff.

They did make some stupid changes to things that I found entirely unnecessary, though. Why? Beats me.

It's not the anime and it never could be. But it's a damn good show, especially when you compare it to every other animation adaptation to live action

Give it a shot and don't let others whining taint your experience.

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.