Everyone hated it, so Netflix canceled Cowboy Bebop
Netflix couldn’t even wait a month to cancel their much-hyped Cowboy Bebop adaptation
Aux News Cowboy Bebop
Netflix has, once again, burned through another beloved anime in search of the perfect live-action adaptation. Cowboy Bebop, the streamer’s latest stab at making anime without animation, is no more. It has ceased to be. “See you, space cowboy.” Except you won’t.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, the news comes less than one month after season one’s 10 episodes premiered to mostly negative reviews. Here at The A.V. Club, our own Sam Barsanti reviewed the series and said, “The show not a complete and irredeemable disaster, but it’s definitely not going to challenge anyone’s assumptions about live-action anime.”
Cowboy Bebop stars John Cho, and it’s a shame to watch things fall apart for him in particular. Many fans, both of anime and beyond, were thrilled that Netflix had cast an Asian actor for Spike Spiegel. In the past, particularly with 2017’s Death Note, the streamer opted for a color-blind casting approach. Not that that was the only problem with Adam Wingard’s film.
Live-action anime frequently runs into problems with whitewashing (see: 2009’s Dragon Ball: Evolution and 2017’s Ghost In The Shell). But with Cho’s casting and a stylish preview, fans of the original series were hopeful that, maybe, Netflix would finally get it right.
Alas, it appears Netflix couldn’t wait to cancel Bebop, which has been either derided or ignored since its release. Netflix’s Top 10 site says the show earned 74 million viewing hours in the three weeks since its debut, which undoubtedly makes one wonder how many hours are necessary for another season. 74 million feels like a lot of hours.
Still, the show was likely much, much more expensive than Tiger King 2, so with no one clamoring for another season, it makes sense that the show would get the ax.
Netflix will take another stab at live-action anime adaptations with One Piece, an even more expansive story than Bebop. For context, the One Piece manga has more than 1,000 chapters, while the anime has more than 900 episodes. Compared to the 26 original Cowboy Bebops, getting One Piece right should be a piece of cake.
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Apparently the drop off in viewing hours was quite steep not long after launch which precipitated this outcome.Oh well, I’m sure Spike will be able to find other gainful employment elsewhere, he always seems to land on his feet.
The movie is my favourite element of that great series. The movie is just perfection.
I think I might have already had in my possession the DVD set of the show but I hadn’t seen it when I went to see the movie which was showing at one of the Sydney cinemas.I remember some brief murmurs of surprise from the audience when it was found to be in Japanese with subtitles but luckily we’ve had a lot of exposure to subtitles thanks to one of our government run stations (SBS aka the Special Broadcasting Service) which shows a lot of foreign movies and TV shows. Thanks to their in-house subtitling department, they’re very good and they thankfully also use yellow subtitles which are easier to read as well.Anyway, everyone was really quiet very quickly and enjoyed a great film. It also didn’t spoil the TV show for me in any meaningful fashion, I found it was easy enough to follow it even having not seen the show beforehand, I figure they designed the movie that way.
As a fellow Australian, I think I found this show through the wonderful SBS as well.
Plus it provided even more awesome music to Cowboy Bebop’s collection. I hear “Pushing The Sky” and I get the urge to start swinging a broom around. I did appreciate the Netflix series featuring “What Planet Is This”, and now I’ll have that song in my head all day! (Better that than “Last Christmas”!).
Oh shit how did I not know this existed? Gonna have to see if it’s online anywhere.
I believe the plural should be “Cowboys Bebop”.
Hey, I liked it a whole lot! 🙁 (except for Vicious)
Vicious and his manscaping habits were a problem, but I’d say one of the biggest issues was that the writers thought that we needed an extensive backstory for Spike, Vicious and Julia in the first season.
How old is Spike supposed to be anyways. In the original he looks no older then his 30s. The actor in this remakes looks to be much older.
Doesn’t look that old to me. I couldn’t tell at all that he was 49 by looking at him. Then again, animated characters tend to look younger than real life humans regardless of their age.
27. John Cho is indeed old enough to be Spike’s father.
He was 27 in the anime, and the actor is 50, so…yeah, there’s been plenty of comments about him being too old, and they’re not wrong. The Kotaku post about Japanese response pointed out a major flaw as well, which is that the fights lacked the speed and energy of the anime. Maybe a younger actor could have pulled it off.
It was just baffling that they thought they needed to explain Vicious. The anime did well because they never fully explained it. Not only that but the actor, I dont know why, but I always laughed when he was on the screen.
The thing that bothered me more than anything else about the Netflix show was how it felt the need to explain EVERYTHING. Might just be a western storytelling thing. Anime in general tends to just drop you into its world and expecting you to catch up on your own, and Bebop in particular does this masterfully.That, and framing the Bebop crew as a typical MCU-style team that cares about each other and talks about their feelings and the power of friendship – not that the anime Bebop crew *didn’t* care about each other per se, but they were more like people thrown together by circumstance than teaming up out of a deep friendship.
That is a western storytelling thing. And it was a western production. Which was being marketed to a western audience.I understand why that might have rubbed you wrong, but that’s like walking into a Taco Bell and bitching that they don’t cook proper carnitas. You’re not *wrong*, but you went into that situation with the wrong *perspective*.Anime fans should not have held the western live action version to the anime standards.
Well keep in mind that the Cowboy Bebop anime also appealed to western audiences. That’s the whole reason Netflix made the show in the first place – to capitalize off its popularity in the U.S. So I think it’s legit to point to decisions they made to ‘westernize’ the property, if those decisions didn’t pay off. The Netflix show got some things right! Not enough for the whole thing to really come together, but enough that there was something to build on in a second season. I’m bummed they didn’t get one – I did, in fact, enjoy watching the Netflix series. There are just a few things that it failed to capture about what made the anime special – and at the same time, never quite found its own voice in a way that would make the series compelling to someone who wasn’t familiar with the anime.
I don’t think the long backstory was wanted, I think that was a budget decision. They cut so much expensive action in space time out of the show, they had to fill it with something.
It was a truly terrible performance.
He’s the worst part of the anime too, for what it’s worth.
yeah but hes not in it a whole bunch. im pretty sure Vicious has more screen time in the third episode than he did in the entire anime.
“Y’know how Cowboy Bebop is episodic and people love it? And y’know how Mandalorian is a modern version of a space western featuring a bounty hunter and it’s also episodic and people love it? Anyway, let’s lean into serializing the hell out of this adaptation and see how that goes!”-Phil Netflix, I guess
Fucking AGREE. Vicious is a dumb stupid villain in the og, too! This take of how the original is so “threatening and amazing” is wild. And I saw that shit when it was brand new. I’m not saying anime version is totally awful but he’s a one-note big dick adversary. Imo vicious and Julia were the parts of the og that I found least interesting.
Nah. The majority of Vicious’s character is implied, not stated. It’s something you have to put together. But it is there.Vicious not only sold red eye, but was addicted to the drug. One clue is the used vial of red eye that was repeatedly shown in Julia’s apartment. Another clue is the change in Vicious’s eyes. His pupils and irises are significantly smaller in 2071 than how he appeared in Spike’s flashbacks. The same thing happened to Asimov. The more he used the more his pupils and irises shrunk. And Vicious was able to dodge bullets, just as Asimov was.Asimov and Katerina mirror elements of both Spike and Julia’s relationship, as well as Vicious and Julia’s relationship. For the former they represent two lovers running away together to escape their life of crime, but never making it out alive. For the latter, they show a relationship damaged by one partner’s drug use.Something else that is important to grasp about Vicious is that he is a nihilist. He believes in nothing. He is also someone filled with bitterness and resentment. Resentment towards the Van for refusing to select him as the next leader of the Red Dragon. Resentment towards Mao for getting soft and for favoring Spike. Resentment towards Spike for leaving and for stealing the woman he loved. Resentment towards Julia for leaving him and for loving another man instead of him.He takes over the Red Dragon Syndicate to enact his revenge. He also needlessly hurts and later kills someone who cared for him very deeply and who had never wronged him in Gren.During his final fight with Spike, there comes a moment where the two disarm each other and inadvertently swap weapons. Vicious has Spike’s gun. Spike has Vicious’s katana. It is at this moment that Spike makes a statement of great significance to both men.Spike: Julia passed away. Let’s end it all.Vicious: If that’s your wish.The two return their weapons. Spike is sliced across the abdomen but shoots Vicious directly in the heart. Vicious dies almost immediately.When Vicious had Spike’s gun, he had the upper hand. He had much more experience with a gun than Spike had with a katana. He could have gone for the kill shot, and more likely than not he would have come out on top. Instead, Vicious agreed to even the playing field.He showed no reaction to Julia’s death. Yet his actions revealed that he was as ready to meet death as Spike was. The two enter into a gentlemen’s agreement to end each other. At no point before the mention of Julia did Vicious indicate that he had any intention of returning Spike’s gun.By the end of the series, Vicious has killed the only two people he ever loved. Killing Julia was the same as killing Spike. So he has nothing to live for.Spike does not mourn him either. He hardly gives Vicious a second thought. Once Vicious’s body has hit the floor, Spike is already with his visions of Julia. Vicious dies unloved and disregarded. He disappears completely. Not even his body is shown again. A cold end for a cold man.
Even with Vicious, the show earned a second season.
Vicious sucked, but not as much as the toxic fans who got the show undeservedly cancelled.
I don’t think that’s how Netflix works.
And you are correct, but it feels like there was enough negativity among nerds and critics alike to bury the show weeks before it even aired.
This is like Ghostbusters 2016, an incredibly shitty movie that somehow had a place in the cultural war so people think watching it, or Netflix bebop, means they are good person who did their cultural homework
Every one wants to make excuses. Cowboy bebop Netflix is one of the worst things I have ever seen and I’m fine with the casting. It was ugly, cheap, poorly acted and poorly made
Is that the guy who hit people with flowers?
Someone should throw a guitar pick at him.
Vicious kind of grew on me because there’s almost something comedic about his awfulness in the live-action show. I wanted to watch him get owned constantly and make his “angry” face.
This. He chewed scenery in the best way. Julia on the other hand was awful throughout and even more insufferable by the end of the thing.
I liked it too. (also apart from Vicious)Personally I think the anime was good, but it doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be more stuff.Also I kinda hope Netflix gets into Scifi bandwagon with book-to-series adaptations. There’s so much great scifi books that it’s a shame that we mostly get shitty remakes or some teenage dramas instead of more hard boiled stuff. I mean altered carbon was quite success even though the book is not that great.
It really did get better as it went on and Jet was outstanding.Faye was cringey at times, but her characterization in the anime was pretty lacking so foul-mouthed Faye was ultimately fine to me.Everything with Vicious was indeed pretty terrible. Looked like a preview of that Targaryen show.
I could only get through the show by skipping forward through all the scenes with Vicious/Julia (unless Spike was also in the scene). I do not feel I missed anything important.
This☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼
Same here, I thought it was good. Vicious seemed like he belonged to a completely different series though
Also quite liked it, and certainly would have watched a 2nd season.
Bang!
I ended up liking this okay. It felt like a remix of a great album. I thought maybe they would have new spaces to explore going into a second season, so disappointed not to get to see that. It felt very much like the Witcher in its serviceable but not quite GoT level production quality.
Time to blow this scene.
It was actually pretty good. On par with the original anime.
Screw everyone, I loved the show. It’s especially telling that there were an equal number of people accusing it of both being too much like the original show, or not enough. And I absolutely loved what they did with Julia and just laughed at all the people saying it wasn’t true to the character. Because oh yeah, there was SO MUCH the anime gave them to work with.
Sorry you have such shit taste 🙁
Fuck off.
Sorry you’re an asshole. 🙁
Oh fuck yourself. I’m so tired of you fucking elitist children.Transitioning anime to live action is a challenge and I truly enjoyed Netflix’s efforts.
Fuck off and die.
Cosign lol
sorry to tell you, you suck
Fucking cosign. The elitism and shitty “reasons why it sucks” were absurd. Fee reviewers took the show at face value, and like you said, it was apparently both “too much like the anime” and made “too many changes.” It was different. It was well performed, outstanding costumes and set design. Some pacing issues. I think vicious did come off way too goofy in the front half but the story and actor seemed to totally come together for Vicious by the last few episodes. It’s not without criticism, but so much of the criticism came off like anime dorks who never bothered trying to take the show for what it was and yelled at it for not being something else. Julia was literally a dead dream cipher girl in the og. I loved what they did. Nf cowboy Bebop was a different version of bebop. It felt more Tarantino/Jackie Chan than the og anime; which itself was a pastiche of genre homages. I had a giant goofy grin on my face for most of it. It was awesome. Also ffs Ed at the end literally is wearing a 1:1 anime costume and acting/sounding exactly like Ed in the anime, and somehow that was unforgivable cringe. Wtf? Ed in the anime is also cringe! I’m mad. Just toxic fandom ruining a good show.
100% agree. Apparently we can’t be allowed to just like a show and enjoy being entertained by it. See also: Star Wars sequels, Anything Zac Snyder Directed, and (I’m sure) the upcoming Firefly reboot.
Firefly reboot!? What?Ah Fuck! It’s being done by Disney… Don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
Wait, WHHHHAAAAAATTTTTT?!?!?!?!?!Firefly reboot??? How is this the first I am hearing about this? Is Nathan Fillion reprising his role? Probably not, so I guess I shouldn’t get too excited just yet. But thanks all the same for this bit of news.
You are absolutely allowed to like a show. You’ll just have to like one lonely season of it because many more people DIDN’T like the show and those are who Netflix listened to.
You can enjoy whatever you want. People who have seen the original are equally allowed to recognize an inferior version of an existing show. Particularly when the adaption erased all the political , and cultural subtext from the original.
If you love a narrative work for its subtext, what you *actually* love is polemic horseshit. Go thump your pulpit elsewhere.
Ah, I see you love using words that sound cool even if you use them incorrectly. How fun.
What, I didn’t use the adjective form so you’re gonna fucking cry about it?How fun.
Projection.How fun.
“Thumping the pulpit” is the best euphemism I’ve ever heard for fucking a priest, but I’m not sure what it has to do with Cowboy Bebop.
wel most reboots, except galactica
Cosign your cosign.
This seems to have gone off on a tangent.
edit: Wtf, I’m grey here?
The anime has some of the best dubbing. I usually go with subtitles but I’m glad I switched after reading that the dub is good.
I’m not sure you’re allowed to say that
It helps that Ed has alot of scenes with Ein.
Yeah, there was no way Ed was going to be good in live action. I’m disappointed that they left Ein on that dock too. The hell?
Also ffs Ed at the end literally is wearing a 1:1 anime costume and
acting/sounding exactly like Ed in the anime, and somehow that was
unforgivable cringe. Wtf? Ed in the anime is also cringe!
Things that work in animation don’t always translate well to live action, and it already felt like a bit of a miracle that Ed worked in animation.
The other thing to bear in mind is that a massively expensive Netflix project can’t be satisfied just pleasing hardcore anime fans: that market is too tiny. So even if the live action could perfectly capture what anime fans liked in the animated version, that’s not necessarily going to be enough: if everyone who doesn’t already love the conventions of anime decides they hate it, it’s a failure, whether or not it pleases the anime fans.That’s the problem with big-budget adaptations of cult material of any kind: pleasing the base does help a lot with whipping up word of mouth, but ultimately to justify the budget the product needs to break out of its existing fanbase somehow, and that often means accepting that things that work for that fanbase may not work for the audience in general…
The big thing that worked best in live action that didn’t work for me at ALL in the anime was the chemistry between the characters. That’s a big part of why shows work for me or don’t, and why I enjoyed the live-action Bebop a lot more.
You’re truly toxic and delusional yourself if you think the existing fans of Cowboy Bebop were the problem. There aren’t even that many of them for starters. The show failed because it was a bad idea badly executed. Even if anime fans had loved it we’d be seeing this cancellation.
“Also ffs Ed at the end literally is wearing a 1:1 anime costume and
acting/sounding exactly like Ed in the anime, and somehow that was
unforgivable cringe. Wtf? Ed in the anime is also cringe!”+10 to this! Ed was perfect and I have no clue why people were complaining about a whole 20 seconds of screentime anyhow!
Apparently it’s toxic for people to not like a tv show.
Ooh ooh, I can answer this! It was too much like the anime because they lifted individual sequences wholesale without changing anything (something they clearly took pride in because that was how they marketed the show on Twitter). This is a tremendous mistake because A. it shows a lack of imagination, and B. is only going to make the live action show look worse by comparisonBut they changed too much because the actual tone and vibes were WAAAAAAY off. The showrunners have said outright they didn’t think Cowboy Bebop should/does take place in a dystopia, which is a catastrophic misreading of the source material. Making Spike into this MCU-esque wisecracking funny guy is basically a 180 from the character he is in the anime
Exactly this. It’s a shallow adaptation. It’s goes for getting the looks right even though the looks don’t work when translated exactly into live action but they changed the story and the world which are actually the things that would translate almost exactly. Bafflingly wrongheaded.
I mean, you’re perfectly entitled to enjoy it, but I don’t think everyone who disliked it did so for “shitty elitist reasons” or whatever. The first episode was a huge turnoff for me for a variety of reasons.
It seems like this is par for the course for fandoms now. Just bitter, poisonous attitudes that hold commercial properties up like the sacred cows of yesterday. I can’t imagine an identity so hollow and sad.
Outside of you, you should see some of my greys. I feel like the past few years have just broken me. There are the larger, awful issues in society. But this isn’t just “pop culture” given how awful, how prevalent fandom backlash has become. Too many folks just unable to say “it’s not for me,” so much bad faith, on top of the now common harassment and worse of creatives who do something some fans don’t like.
Just because a minority of angry internet idiots are vocal doesn’t mean there aren’t valid reasons to hate this dumb fucking show.
I’m with you. I never thought I’d come to a time in my life when I would be embarrassed to be associated with certain things but I’m finally getting there. It’s the bad faith shit that really gets me, though. It points to a core narcissism that no one can overcome.
Everyone thinks if someone doesn’t like their weirdo bad art that thr person who doesn’t like the art is toxic now. This show was one of the worst things I have ever seen, and I’m allowed to feel that way.
Counterpoint:
People have many valid reasons for hating the show. The show, objectively is not good. Your complete angry overreaction at perfectly acceptable criticisms show what a douchebag you are. You fuck off
I’m not a Cowboy Bebop fan (have never watched it) but it wasn’t the toxic fandom that ruined it. What cancelled it was… that mainstream audiences (who don’t give a fuck about fandom) didn’t like it.
Yeah, I really liked it for what it was and would have really liked a season 2. Was the original anime better? Sure. This was good to, in a different way. Lots of fun, nice set pieces, great casting. Toxic fandom sucks.
Agreed. The dialogue reminded me of Tarantino but was less annoying than Tarantino. It was just fun.
I think that’s a great call. The LA leaned more into a 70s exploitation flick, tarantino/jackie chan/etc than the anime did. The anime, which I love, is itself a pastiche/homage to spaghetti westerns and other genres.
“Also ffs Ed at the end literally is wearing a 1:1 anime costume and acting/sounding exactly like Ed in the anime, and somehow that was unforgivable cringe. Wtf? Ed in the anime is also cringe!”Ed in the anime was a poorly adapted but actual child. They casted a full-blown adult that for some baffling reason still acted like the disturbed version of a poorly adapted but actual child. That scene was utterly, utterly baffling and completely horrifying in its awfulness.
14 year olds are adults now?
14? I looked it up and yup apparently 14. Coulda fooled me, judged Ed’s actor to be quite a bit older than that. I figured like 20 or something. I guess she’s just a victim of the adaptation proces then. Ed already walked the line between working and not working as a character in the anime.
Here’s an extremely good and thoughtful thread about it:
Hm. This is thoughtful! I appreciate you sharing it, and it makes some very good points that —- like the first tweet says —- have nothing to do with the surface details of Vicious or Ed or whatever. And I would love if the discourse surrounding it was far more like this. It just… isn’t.I certainly think the OG is a superior product. I also think the LA is excellent. And it is very possible that for those coming in as a “new viewer,” the lesser “inner life” of the characters did not grab.I’m chewing on it, for sure.
So far the only discourse I’ve seen has either been people not being unhappy about the show getting cancelled (of which I am one), or people saying “damn anime fans . . . they ruined anime adaptations!” Idk maybe your tl is different, but I haven’t seen anyone gloating about the end of the show beyond pointing out that it looked like crap and betrayed the source material in some pretty fundamental ways. I like all the actors involved and hope they get work. The showrunners, not so much
I wish people could do what I started doing a few years ago–try to engage primarily in things you like and don’t waste headspace on things you don’t. I have a friend who posts either directly about or references to how much he hated TLJ. Like, dude, get over it. Meanwhile I haaaated TROS but I mostly put it out of my head and I’m much happier for it.
Agreed. I don’t know what else to say. It’s an unhealthy way to live.
but by saying “I wish people could” you’re engaging in the argument that you dislike those people and are immediately contradicating the thing you’re casually trying to brag about here (and possible imply that you are superior to these less smart people). Get over yourself.
“Wtf? Ed in the anime is also cringe!”1000% COSIGN on this! I love the anime, but Ed grates on me every. single. time. Burning hot take: I can’t watch most anime because I don’t get why so many of them insist on having a squeaky, grating, immature child running around, even if it’s an adult-oriented show.I’m only episode 7 but I like a lot of the live-action version so far, except Vicious who seems totally ridiculous. Most of the actors are killing it, even if the writing is questionable at times. Would have been interested to see where season 2 would have gone.
it had a bit of a sin city vibe, now i wont say its epic, but it was good, to be honest never saw anything bebop before, previouse versions might be a reason (see dune, i robot, foundation, dresden ghost in the shell to name a few) but liked it, the julia twist was clever, did not see that coming, would have loved to see the 3 mains gel
Why did Julia need to be in the live action so much? Or at all? You also can never say Netflix didn’t try here. They clearly spent a lot of money on it, endured years of shooting after Cho’s injury and covid, promoted the hell out of it, acquired the anime for streaming and even signed deals to publish comics. If it didn’t find a mainstream audience, it didn’t find a mainstream audience. The show also shot in new Zealand, which plays a massive role in how expensive a second season probably would be.
Pretty sure they shoot in New Zealand because it’s cheaper. Lot’s of tax breaks and no unions
Why?
Let me quote Kelly Sue DeConnick:
If you can take out a female character and replace her with a sexy lamp, YOU’RE A FUCKING HACKJulia was always THE major part of Spike’s backstory. So if the entire show exists because Julia left Vicious for Spike, you’d better fucking show why in the first place.
Keiko Nobumoto makes the weakness of DeConnick’s critical beliefs even starker. What an astonishingly ill fitting quote for Cowboy Bebop.
Do you need to show that in the first season? Seems like you’re better off showcasing why we should care about the present day characters and see them bond and go on adventures rather than using Julia immediately. For all their fame, the anime wisely avoided using Vicious and Julia for the majority of the series, because as characters they were never that vital compared to the core crew.
It was fun as hell and grew on me quickly. Good cast chemistry, and while it was a bit weird how quickly they got into the Julia and Vicious stuff it all paid off with that twist at the end.
i just read a comment that said “everybody was wildly miscast” and i’m like… if there is only thing the show did well, it KILLED it in the casting. But… i dunno anymore
The casting was the best part of it. The main three were really strong, a lot of the side characters were fine, etc. The casting for Vicious seemed a bit off at first but then grew on me, and even Julia’s casting was okay (although the actress seemed a bit flat at first in her performance).
Yea, even in a vacuum this shit was just fucking cringy.
“…equal number of people accusing it of both being too much like the original show, or not enough.” But…both statements CAN BE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME. Something half following the original source and half doing its own thing is both too original and too copy/paste. If should either take a hint from the original, or follow it as closely as possible. Anything in the middle is too close to the original AND too far from it.
I was fully prepared to treat it as its own thing, I just didn’t like it that much.I thought the Vicious/Julia stuff was unwatchable. Not because it was different from the anime, just because I thought it was so bad on its own merits. My favorite stuff was pretty much all Faye stuff. That was pretty fun, and I will miss not seeing more of her story unfold.But to me, all the Spike/Jet stuff was just flat and draggy. Not really cool, not really funny, not really anything compelling. And with them in particular, I think my preparation to treat the show as its own thing went unrewarded.
The styling reminded me of the SpeedRacer movie. I love that movie for taking a bold direction, even though most people bashed on it. I’m just pissed that I only got 10 seconds of Ed. They didn’t even give it a chance to get to the best part of the storyline.People forget that the story and the telling will change with each form it is done in. Douglas Adams understood that, as he made specific changes to each irritation of H2G2 so that fans would get something new with every form the story took (audio drama/book/mini series/movie).
The inability of people to accept that adaptation means you must *adapt* a story to the different medium is really challenging, these days. A movie and a book are different things, but so many movie adaptations of books are not judged on whether or not they made a good movie, but how much fidelity to the source they do.
Yeah, I’m bummed too. Never watched the anime, not really an anime guy, but the show was entertaining and I would have liked to see a second season.
Nice bait
This feels like another example of fandom ruining something potentially good for everyone else.
The majority of people hated it. The falloff from the first week to the second proved how little staying power the show had.
I’ll still give it a fair shake. I have to imagine people were being influenced by all of the negative feedback. Seems like the problem of people wanting to hate on something just because other people are hating is getting worse.
I mean, of course judge for yourself and no ill will against anyone who did like it, except RNS for being an overwhelming asshat about it.My personal opinion was that the promotional material before release looked like amateur cosplay and therefore I had no real desire to even attempt a viewing. The over-the-top cartoony vibe is almost impossible to pull off with live action. I honestly think the closest anyone has come was with Speed Racer and perhaps Alita. What works in animation often comes across as cringe in live action (Ed…)
This is it, really. That’s the toxic part; and the negative feedback was overwhelming before the show even aired. The anime community is, while not wholly, quite stuck with an unfortunate number of people who have some awful takes on these things. It wasn’t about whether or not Bebop was good/bad/ok; it was about that they resented “their” thing being made for “normies” (their words not mine). They resent live-action adaptations of anime in general. They… and I can’t believe I’m writing this… believe that it is “disrespectful” to “Japan.” At the outset, that audience wasn’t just against the project for spurious reasons; they were also out to poison it. I’m not this mad because a show I like got cancelled. I’m *exhausted* by fandoms of all kind and how miserable they have become. What you say —- people seeming to want to hate on something just because other people are. People can like or dislike the show. On one discord, many of us have had respectful conversations about this and many other shows *without needing to shit on each other*. The dislike about Bebop before it even had a trailer, the over-criticism, contained so many voices that weren’t able to just “not like” a thing, but try to destroy it for anybody else who may have.That’s not what happened in the larger discourse. And even people like the AV Club’s reviewer seemed to come into this determined to hate it.
A person I like and respect went on a week-long Facebook tear about how terrible the Sandman TV show was obviously going to be because they had “normwashed” the character of Death. Because her hair wasn’t spiky enough.
Jesus. Case in point. The idea that “audiences just weren’t interested” dismissing the premeptive tear down and destruction…obv it has an effect.
I get what you’re saying about fandoms being insufferable – anime, Star Wars, video games, Radiohead (all things I enjoy, btw) – but I still find it far-fetched to claim that a relatively small group of people destroyed this show. If it was actually good and/or appealed to a large audience, I strongly doubt Netflix would’ve canceled it just because of anime-fan outrage.
Lack of interest isn’t the same as hate.I didn’t hate it. But I did only watch one or two a week.
How?
Well, it wasn’t “everyone” who didn’t like it, that’s some clickbait ass tag line. I loved it, and when I saw it on Netflix, it was the first thing trending so yes people were watching. Wasn’t a fan of Julia, though Viscous was kind of comical, but thought the Bebop crew was fantastic, Jet almost perfect in his role. Just the voice of the haters being hyped up and spoiling the fun. I honestly don’t know what people were expecting from this show (it was never going to match the greatness of the anime), but I had a blast.
Everyone I know who saw it – which is admittedly just my nephews, my orchestra conductor and me – thought it was just plain fun. Okay, so it wasn’t some philosophical masterwork like the anime apparently was (haven’t seen it), but it was stylin’ as hell. But I guess most people who would have liked it but weren’t automatically going to watch it- i.e., people who didn’t watch the anime but enjoy a good sci-fi action romp with a fun soundtrack – didn’t even think to give it a try, because 99% of the reviews were ‘it’s soooo dissapointing, don’t watch it.’
Also cosigned. I loved this show, and I was a huge fan of the original anime.At this point I’m not going to bother with season 1 of anything on Netflix, unless it’s a known-limited series or a BBC partnership. They’re too eager to pull the rug out.
I kind of felt like the issue was simply that it was an inferior remake of a show whose original still slaps. If the original of something does not feel dated, there’s no reason to remake it, whatsoever. It’s the same reason why, no matter how good a job one does, every remake of a John Carpenter movie is garbage.
Does this mean you’re not lining up for Big Trouble in Little China starring Dwayne Johnson?
Christ, no.
Agreed. It was a fun show with a great cast, plenty of action, decent writing, and cool FX eye candy. Everyone shitting on it because of how they thought it related to a 30 year old cartoon was a real shame. It was a great thing on its own. I loved the original, but I never fetishized it the way so many people seemed to.
Thank you. I was starting to think I was loosing my mind for enjoying it.
Were there cheesy or cringe-worthy moments? Sure. But the anime has that as well.
Were there plot holes? Absolutely. But the anime has that as well.
Was everything handled my favorite way? No. But I think it captured the spirit of the anime while being it’s own thing, and that’s really all I was looking for.
I was a diehard fan of the original show, as well as the movie. It was not perfect, but IMO the pros outweighed the cons, and I think a lot more could have been redeemed or flushed out with a second season.
My guess is that it was too cost prohibitive for the level of viewership, or, key players dropped out when the negative reviews rolled in. I would love to see a live action retelling of the movie, maybe there’s some hope for that, but I won’t hold my breath.
I understand the criticisms, but I liked it, and I’m not afraid to admit that. To me, this is a bummer.
“Were there cheesy or cringe-worthy moments? Sure. But the anime has that as well.Were there plot holes? Absolutely. But the anime has that as well.”yup“Was everything handled my favorite way? No. But I think it captured the spirit of the anime while being it’s own thing, and that’s really all I was looking for.”yup
Agreed. It got off to a rocky start (for me) but around the halfway mark the cast started to gel and the world began to make sense on its own terms. If nothing else, I’ll watch anything with Daniela Pineda from now on.
It’s especially telling that there were an equal number of people accusing it of both being too much like the original show, or not enough.The complaints were that it copied the original show in shallow ways while missing it’s substance.I think this thread explains it best.
In the anime, Julia was a complete woman that we were intentionally given the briefest of glimpses into. Despite her limited appearances, a lot of interesting things are shown about Julia in the original. She was an intelligent, badass ex-syndicate member. Shin called her Julia-sama. She had rank. She was a boss. Not Spike or Vicious’s arm candy, but their peer. She was arguably smarter than Spike, Vicious, Faye and Gren.She realized the threat Vicious posed to Spike’s plan while Spike was too lovestruck. When she was given the ultimatum of either killing Spike or them both dying, she manipulated Vicious into believing she would comply with his order then escaped him, thus protecting Spike.She’s the one that realized that Vicious was spying on Gren and she’s the one that quickly deduced where the spyware had been planted. She had Shin feeding her information from inside the syndicate and she had info about Spike and the Bebop. When she ran into Faye, she extracted information from Faye without Faye realizing it. She then positioned Faye to carry out a task for her.I love Julia in the anime because from what we saw of her, it was clear that she was a realistic and pragmatic woman who was deeply devoted to the man she loved. She was poised, had a quiet confidence and was cool under pressure, yet also had a very nurturing side. We see that in how she nursed Spike back to health.Not to mention that Julia was an experienced fighter. When attacked by the syndicate, she and Spike moved together as if they had fought back-to-back countless times. She drove like a professional racer and did not flinch when shot at. She managed to outrun the syndicate for three years on her own.Julia was always an interesting character that simply needed more screen time. What Netflix manages to do to her and Spike’s entire story is a travesty. The hyper-fixation on her abuse followed by turning her into a mustache-twirling villain was massively toxic and insulting. A complete betrayal to the character, who was ride or die. Remember that she could have killed Spike to save herself at any moment, she refused. This was a woman with agency, loyalty and character. She made her own choice. She had honor. She loved and fought just as deeply as Spike did. This is the woman Spike Spiegel fell madly in love with. His other half as he put it. It was HE who wasn’t complete without HER.
I was fine with the show too….UNTIL the Julia “twist.” It was at that point I knew this show should be taken out back and shot. Any adaptation has to take risks if it wants to succeed but what separates a successful true and faithful adaptation from a cheap imitation is this: the changes MUST stay true to themes and characters of the original and THAT is where the Julia “twist” failed miserably. I feel bad for the actors because they done an excellent job. It’s the writers that are to blame. But the very thing you’re laughing at about people being upset over the Julia thing? It was one of the things that pushed this series to an early grave. Remember that.
I was probably never going to watch it.Now I’m definitely never going to watch it.
I made it about 30 minutes through. It was very unpleasant to realize that a faithful adaption of a 25 year old show… feels about every bit of 25 years old. I will never finish it.
It was really fucking good!
I doubt it.
Yah, sorry, I guess my enjoyment was wrong. Sorry. I’ll go fix myself.
Step 1: Stop trying to pick a fight with everyone here, no one here cancelled it. Send Netflix an angry letter or something.
kiss my ass.
dude… I can SMELL your computer room from here. Go get a life.
you are an asshole
Something doesn’t have to be really fucking good for you to enjoy it.
True. I love the movie Hudson Hawk but it is not a good movie. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying something that isn’t great and especially nothing wrong with liking something other people hate. People’s opinions doesn’t take anything away from your enjoyment of it.
Exactly. A lot of the online anger I’ve seen are from people who liked the show getting upset that their tastes are not being echoed by everyone. Just because you like something doesn’t make it an objective masterpiece.
you are an asshole.
welcome to the ouch, motherfucker
Cancellation is a business decision, and not all that affected by quality. That said, the disregard you have for people who didn’t like it? Apply it to your opinion and check it out. Liking something doesn’t mean it’s good. And vice versa. And someone watching or not watching something you like is not a referendum on your enjoyment or taste–it’s not really about you at all.
it was not good
I find “really fucking good” to be about as far away from that show as you can possibly get.
Live-action anime frequently runs into problems with whitewashing (see: 2009’s Dragon Ball: Evolution and 2017’s Ghost In The Shell). But with Cho’s casting and a stylish preview, fans of the original series were hopeful that, maybe, Netflix would finally get it right.
Did they though? Spiegel isn’t really a Japanese surname and the anime hints pretty heavily at him being Jewish. I guess you could argue he’s meant to be from a mixed-race but the guy who designed the character was asked what his ethnic background is and who they should cast and said, “He’s German, so I would expect someone with German ancestry.”
Fun fact: Spike Jonze’s real name is Adam Spiegel, so odds are our space cowboy knows his way around directing a music video.
Speaking as a Jewish person myself, I like John Cho in the role, and I’m not sad about a non-Jewish actor getting the part.That being said, I AM annoyed about how Spike Spiegel is now a pseudonym and not just his real name. It probably wasn’t intentional, but it does feel like they’re cutting out all the Jewish stuff in his character. Which sucks.
Especially because there are Asian Jews and it would have been extremely cool to see a Jew of Color depicted on screen.
There ARE Asian Jews! I learned that by watching Very Bad Things!
There are but in this case Spike is either mixed or full Ashkenazi with some kind of connection to Israel.
I now have the image in my head of Sammy Davis Jr. practicing Jeet Kune Do.
Oh my god, the one thing I COULD NOT HANDLE in the Netflix show was that Spike’s syndicate name was ‘Fearless’. I know it was meant as a play off ‘Vicious’, but good gad – naming your hero ‘Fearless’ is the absolute most cringe thing imaginable.
People keep using “cringe” as a criticism and I’d like you all to kindly fuck off and learn some fucking vocabulary.“cringe”. Stop trying to make fetch happen, you assholes.
Okay… The decision to make Spike’s syndicate name ‘Fearless’ made me cringe at how, um, not good it was.
Spike was based on a Japanese actor but the anime’s creator didn’t narrow down his race. When asked if Spike was Israeli, his response was basically “If you think he’s Israeli, he’s Israeli”.
Not to mention they took characters that were Asian like Faye, Mao and arguably Vicious, and made them Latina, a Maori woman, and whatever the fuck they were thinking with Vicious.This after one of the writers threw shade at Ghost in the Shell for casting Scarlett as Major, saying Spike had to be Asian. The whole production team was a shit show, it seems.
I thought “Spike Spiegel” was an alias.
I agree and think that our very early 21st century concerns about identity in media actual run counter to one of the major themes of the original series; that old, terrestrial categories of nationality and ethnicity were in a process of redefinition. Off-world colonies, in part, represented opportunity to adopt new identities not bound to Earth. All the characters have fairly ambiguous ethnic characteristics, and the youngest main character, representing the newest generation actually born into this changing social landscape is Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV, so basically defies categorization.All that being said, “Spike” is not an uncommon given name or nickname among a certain generation of Jews, “Spiegel” is a very common Ashkenazim surname, and he is frequently described as having “fuzzy” hair in the anime. A Jewish are mixed-Jewish actor would have been totally appropriate.
Spike’s look was based on a Japanese actor and him having a Jewish name doesn’t mean he isn’t Asian.
There is absolutely no way to adapt One Piece to live action without either abandoning the show’s weirdness or enduring bad special effects and costumes.
I dunno. I feel like early OP was relatively normal (the weirdest part is Chopper, and he wouldn’t be TOO difficult). But as we go on and the strangeness ratchets up… Yeah, I don’t think Netflix is going to allow their big-budget high-stakes adaptation to have an episode about a former antagonist flying to the moon and meeting aliens, which won’t get referenced again until… Well, it still hasn’t been referenced again, several years after that happened.
If there aren’t at least four straight flashback episodes about the backstory of a bell, we riot.
The show is only 10 episodes. No way they are getting anywhere near Chopper. Most likely, it will end with a heavily condensed Arlong arc.
Bang.
This is historic – Netflix cancelled a show nobody likes for a change.
Tank!(ed) it.
One Piece is gonna be so trash I’m almost excited for it to see how bad it can get.And I don’t even like One Piece that much so it’s not a sacred cow for me, it’s just something that if you’ve read and/or watched it even a little, you realize it just cannot translate to live-action. It’s just too cartoony.
Thats why the key is to INTERPRET a live action adaptation, not TRANSLATE an anime to live action. How can they possibly translate Chopper to live action? They can’t, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a character based on chopper.
It wasn’t perfect, but still a lot of fun, and very deserving of a second season.Fucking entitled toxic nerds ruin absolutely everything.
So anyone who thought it was shit is an “entitled toxi nerd”?!
By…not watching it?
74 million view hours. That’s if you believe Netflix.
Hey, I hate entitled toxic nerds as much as anyone, but do you really think they’re the reason Netflix cancelled this? Honestly, aren’t they just a vocal minority? I’d think it was just a simple supply-and-demand reason for cancelling. Not enough demand and too high a cost to supply.
Probably didn’t help that Netflix also had the original anime on their platform.
Well, they certainly didn’t help. Same with many critics, who buried the show waaay before it even aired. This site was quick to jump on the hate bandwagon pretty quickly as well.
They just HAD to get you know who to review it.
IF ONLY SEAN O’NEAL COULD HAVE REVIEWED IT INSTEAD MY OWN PERSONAL A.V. CLUB SATAN THEN IT WOULD HAVE BEEN RENEWED FOR FIVE MORE SEASONS
They “buried” the show because it wasn’t very good, critically speaking.Not everything you (or anyone else) likes is good. You’re not “owed” good reviews just for wanting them. You’re the toxic nerd now.
Do all reviewers have to like art you like?
oh yeah, they didn’t help. what people who didn’t like the show should have done was help the show get renewed for a second season, and since they didn’t do that, they’re toxic
Because it was bad.
Yes. Because entitled toxic nerds being vocal probably did a lot to convince newcomers to not watch it.
Just look at how entitled toxic nerds being vocal online set the tone for how Mass Effect: Andromeda was received upon release
I can’t really relate as I don’t let the behavior of others dictate
what I’m going to watch or play.
“Advertising doesn’t work on me. That’s why it’s a billion dollar industry.”
Nice try, but advertising isn’t the same as a mob behaving poorly to get what they want. I mean, I can see some similarity, but in this case, no. 🙂
But I also don’t listen to advertising. If I need to buy something significant then I research it to death before deciding. The internet makes that easy.
And as we all know, the internet is free of advertising.
Oh wow, you got me. If reading product reviews from multiple unrelated websites, and gathering consensus from various forums, while also asking questions to product manufacturers and engaging in conversations with people who have bought and use said product on a daily basis means I’m succumbing to advertising, then you’re right. Well done you. You score an internet point, which is lucky for you since you seem to have missed the actual one. ;P
Product reviews from websites that don’t have sponsors. Forums that work without ad sales. Honest manufacturers. Yes, you marvelous iconoclast, I believe you are the hero foretold in the pages of AdBusters!Get over yourself. WINKYFACE
We’re not talking about advertising here. The point was about not basing decisions on what a vocal minority tell you. You missed that.
But if you want to make your point the focus over the actual one from the OP, I’ll bite. Yeah, there are ads all over the internet, but the examples I gave make the best of a bad situation. If you’ve got a better idea I’d love to hear it. No need to get over yourself, as you’ve already shown that’s unlikely.
Playing a videogame is very different from watching a TV show. The platform for the latter isn’t a specialist device.
People watch Netflix on their consoles.
Nope, it was the vocal minority ruining things as always
The people who Netflix needed to watch it, but didn’t watch it (typical viewers) have mostly not encountered these ‘toxic nerds’ and definitely don’t care about their opinions. They don’t live in that particular internet bubble.What they did encounter was cringeworthy dialogue, endless kitsch, set & prop design on par with random Youtubers, and a complete lack of charm.
We can disagree about the quality of the show but the set and prop design was objectively OUTSTANDING wtf
If all that was objectively outstanding, then why did it feel so subjectively fake to me? Like I was always seeing them as costumes and sets and props, and not just getting lost in show. I don’t know if I can put my finger on exactly why, but a show like, say, The Mandalorian did a much better job for me of mostly feeling pretty actual. Cowboy Bebop felt more to me like the 1990 Dick Tracy movie.Of course if that is what they were going for, OK. But I personally found it distracting.
Seriously! I was amazed at how much detail they put into the grunginess of the world.
Somebody doesn’t understand the meaning of the word objectively.
….and likely expensive too.
a complete lack of charm. It’s rare to see a statement containing so much wrong.
Bad word of mouth from people freaking over slight changes did hurt it pretty badly. Although it didn’t help itself with a weak first couple episodes.
Now now, you know how it works: Toxic Nerds are like a gas: they expand to fit the available argument.If you want a show to continue, any criticism is just an insignificant, tiny, irrelevant amount of toxic nerds. If that show is then cancelled, then there were actually a massive, overwhelming amount of toxic nerds.
You’re absolutely right. The people here who like it will just watch anything it seems. It’s a badly produced and written show, regardless of whether it’s based on an anime or not.
Its not a bubble, you couldnt interact with the show online at all and not see the hate. The internet is not some obscure thing for nerds anymore, everyone is on it all the time.
Entitled toxic nerds didn’t kill this. It got made and it got released. What killed the second season was nobody watching the first season because it was something that (statistically) nobody wanted or asked for.I kinda liked the first ep, John Cho was awesome. But then I asked myself if I really needed to watch another 10 eps of this if I’ve already watched the anime, and the answer was no. The anime was better, and this is something to watch only if I’ve got nothing better to do. Instead I’m going to go watch the rest of the content I can’t even keep up with like new season of The Expanse.
74 million watched hours feels like a statistically significant number.
but how many of those got past the first few episodes? I have a feeling not many.
That’s only 7.4 million viewers, assuming they watched the entire season. Or 15 million viewers who quit halfway through. Even 74 million viewers who watched one episode and immediately quit is within the realm of possibility, considering that it was advertised on Netflix’s front page.Of course, it will be a mix, but whichever way you slice it, it doesn’t look great for a presumably expensive show. On top of that, viewership typically declines in subsequent seasons, unless the show has a ton of hype. Im sure Netflix also factored in completion rate, thumbs up/down rating, how many subs it drove, and probably more that I don’t know.
Perhaps, but the fact that it the viewership fell off a cliff after the first week proves that most who started it didn’t like it enough to finish.
Hey, I watched an hour. There were a lot of people who were interested enough to watch the first episode even though we never asked for this and didn’t think it was needed – which is good, people actually took the time to watch it and give it a fair shake. But then for the rest of the episodes, the numbers fell off a cliff. Because we were right, and it was not something that needed to be made when you could be spending that money for new anime instead.
I’ve gotten a few responses to this post referencing interpretations of the data that aren’t actually present in this article, but I’ll reiterate my point here: 74 million hours is a statistically significant number. You might find it pedantic to pick up on you using a word with a specific definition to poorly make your argument, but you’re not Netflix, so I’m not arguing with you about whether or not it should have been canceled. I’m just telling you that you were wrong about that specific point.
74 million views is ‘nobody’? That’s about 8 times the population of my country. Apparently there was a huge dropoff last week (logical with all the new material Netflix keeps putting out). I do think the chorus of hate gave the show an undeserved (IMNAAHO) bad rap, so if they went for season 2 all the hate critics would be ‘why on earth are they making a second season of this complete, total, unmitigated, greatest in the history of television disaster of biblical proportions (aka it’s not exactly like the anime so it must be a bucketload of steamin shit)?’
The entitlement is found in those fans who complain that reviewers openly said they didn’t like it, and that casual viewers didn’t take the effort to watch it, and as a result they (the fans) won’t get a second season. Look (not you, sarusa, but hypothetical fans), if you wanted a second season, I’m sorry you’re not getting it. I wanted a second season of Teenage Bounty Hunters, and another season of Dark Matter, and the real fourth season of Halt and Catch Fire (instead of the version that was squeezed into the first episode of what was originally going to be the fifth season), and… and……but YOUR show doesn’t have a right to exist, fans. Every dollar being spent on your show is a dollar that’s not being spent on my show: if Netflix didn’t cancel Cowboy Bebop, they probably wouldn’t be greenlighting whichever otherwise on-the-tipping-point project they’re about to greelight, and THAT show may well be FANTASTIC. If reviewers didn’t like your show, they’re absolutely right to say so, and hope that the next one is better.
As it is, this show didn’t click with reviewers, it didn’t seem to click with a big cult fanbase of its own, it didn’t seem to click with audiences as a whole, and it apparently didn’t really click with Netflix executives either, because nobody stepped up to say “look guys, I know it’s not hit the ground running, but I have confidence that once word of mouth gets out the show is going to build and build, we just need to give it one more season to prove itself”. At that point, why wouldn’t it be cancelled? And unlike some other Netflix shows, this one can’t blame a lack of budget or a lack of advertising: they made sure people knew about it, and they convinced a lot of reviewers to talk about it, which is usually half the battle.
Yeah, this exactly. I thought the show looked good, Cho was fun, but there’s just too much to watch. The show didn’t offer anything new, and I’d rather spend the time watching something new or rewatching the anime.
I get the ‘it was fine, I just didn’t like it enough to get around to it when it came out’ outlook, but I can’t help but think – if that’s how most people felt, then they cancelled it too soon. I’m not saying it absolutely deserved a second season (though I would have loved one), but the whole point of Netflix is that people can catch up on shows. Maybe it gets a second life at some point, at least enough for a ‘you guys can have a second season if we find a way to reduce production costs’ discussion.
It does seem like it was an overly hasty decision. Seems like they should have at least given in the 10 weeks it would have had if the eps had been released weekly.
The nerds watched it and from what I’ve seen on twitter and kotaku seemed to have liked it, or at least saw it as acceptable. To a ‘normie’ like me, I hated it. I loved the handful of anime episodes I watched, but wow, is this show is surprisingly subpar. Spike is totally miscast, Cho is great, but he’s not the mercurial manboy Spike is supposed to be, Cho’s Spike is too sarcastic, mean, and gritty. They gave him the Nolan Batman treatment, which just doesn’t work with this source material. Faye is charismatic but meh ( sexualized fan service tropes galore and she seems even more dumbed down than in the series which doesn’t bode well for 20 years of feminist progress). Jet is far too good for this series, like a Shakespearean actor somehow ending up in red county America dinner theater. The rest is low-production looking which didn’t help its case (another hand-outs to the nerds who claim CGI is always bad and real sets and practical effects are always good, nope). Ya’ll need to accept CGI as your one lord and savior already! Rubbery props and cardboard-looking background pieces just don’t work anymore.The nerds also got the anti-woke culture they wanted so badly. Faye is badly diminished and Pineda plays her half the time like a doped up, glassy-eyed Barbie for fan service. Her toughness from the series was diluted by making her more of a sexy wisecracker out of the MCU than from the original show. So if anything, the production played up to nerd culture too much.On the plus side, its so embarrassingly bad its almost good in that regard. I see it up there with the Aeon Flux movie or the recent Ghost in the Machine movie to enjoy its badness ironically. There’s a lot of unintentionally funny things going on there. The show goes from bizarre to appreciated quickly if you see it as some rich kid’s fan film that is accidentally absurdist because everyone involved was high.The sad part about all this is that they could have done a shot for shot, word for word, live-action re-do of the original series with the needed CGI to make it all work and probably come out with a final product that would have been critically acclaimed. Fans don’t want more fleshed out back stories, they want what worked and just re-hashing the series in live-action would have been so much better than what we got.Also, was anyone seriously expecting a 2nd season? This seemed like an odd-ball experimental gamble and I imagine everyone involved in it has already lined up jobs with the expectation season two would never happen. This was a one-time paycheck, space cowboy. We won’t be seeing you outside of anime reruns and ironic viewings.
weirdly entitled comment
Truly delusional. The only toxic nerds here are the ones complaining people didn’t watch this show.
Indeed they do. They wrote the live action adaptation and it was ruined.
If it was JUST toxic fandom then why did the vast majority of professional critics hate it?
I gave it waaaay more of a chance than said toxic nerds and was simply underwhelmed. I did not binge watch it. That’s as much or more on Netflix having an incredibly stupid, shitty metric for “success” as toxic nerds having critiques.
“Fucking entitled toxic nerds ruin absolutely everything.”
I will assume by this you mean any person, originally a fan of the anime, who for whatever reason did not like/want/need a live action Bebop and, by exercising free will, declined to watch this trash.
Those motherfuckers! They should be FORCED to watch and LIKE this so ArgleBargle can get Season 2!
What? I’m calling complete BS until there’s an official Netflix release, screw this “Hollywood Reporter has learned” vagueness.They can’t drop it at season 1, with only a hint of Ed, of Faye’s background search. I want to see their spin on the Mushroom Samba episode, dammit. And the Heavy Metal Queen.
It was far from perfect, but the parts of it that were good (like the main cast) were really, really good. If they hadn’t tried to shoehorn in the whole Vicious side story I think they would have been better off. But I’m still sad to see this go. Ed would have been a huge challenge to translate to live action without being cringey, but now we’ll never really get to see how that would have gone.
As a huge fan of the original, I really wanted to like it, but nah. John Cho and Bushmaster’s chemistry was easily my favourite part of the show.
Oh damn, that was Bushmaster?!Tbh, I kinda checked out of Season 2 of Luke Cage, the villains kinda bored me (like Shades), but I remember Bushmaster.
Well, I like anime a bit (in case my avatar didn’t give that away) and I still haven’t watched live-action Cowboy Bebop and now have one less reason to do so. It’s probably safe to assume there are other people in a similar situation as me.
But I guess Netflix knows what they’re doing. They, along with Disney, have all our entertainment moneys.
Their renew/cancel algorithm is weird. I haven’t watched Bebop yet, but they’ve renewed shows with absolutely dog shit first seasons (looking at you, Another Life).
If the show has low initial ratings, but x viewers keep coming back to watch it on a regular basis, and thus can be assumed to help retain y subscribers, and costs z dollars to make a season; then z only needs to be less than y * $14/month * months/year to be worth renewing it.
If Another Life has 10,000 people who keep coming back to watch it (very tiny when some shows have tens of millions of watchers), that gives them $1,680,000 a year in revenue. Season 2 of Another life came out more than two years after season 1 debuted. That’s $3,360,000 for Season 1, or $336,000 per episode.Given that the show looks like it costs less than $330 an episode to make, that’s a huge boon for Netflix. lol
I don’t know how much Another Life cost to make, but the budget plays a big role too.
It does. Bebop had a huge budget, especially with the carious delays, involved. They needed it to be a huge hit and it wasn’t big enough to justify another budget on that level, so they cancelled it. This also happened with The Get Down
Yeah, but the overlap between the people who care about quality scifi, and the people who want to watch Katee Sackhoff emoting and agonizing and occasionally kicking ass in sleeveless shirts, is basically null. And Netflix has at least 10x as many subscribers in the latter category as in the former.
I definitely think there’s some metric based off of viewers, new subs, and show budgets. Sense8 was a good show that was very well loved by a vocal minority, but also insanely expensive. They killed it off with a movie.
God, Another Life was complete shite, wasn’t it? I don’t understand these decisions at all.
The show was still trending on the top ten watch on my netflix but It’s netflix france. However I thought they would get a second one. Disappointed
I mean, it wasn’t canceled because people didn’t like it. It was canceled because people didn’t watch it.
Yeah, but as you can see from this very thread, when people see articles exclaiming something is garbage they decide, “Well, better not waste my time on that!” Anyone that first sees any of these articles that rant and rave over how horrible the show is will most likely decide it isn’t worth wasting their time on…. especially in a genre like live action where any release is dubious at best from the start. I really think all the bs surrounding the show— people crying about minor costume changes, that they decided to give a little more depth to characters, that they tried to copy the show too perfectly or not nearly perfectly enough….all of that is naturally going to warn off anyone that isn’t already fully determined to watch the show. It’s a real pity…. But obviously the pros know what’s best— heck, I’m sure a One Piece live action is gonna be a great idea! …..pfft ridiculous.
I think it’s less about people watching it, and seeing if it drives subscriptions. As the article said, 74 million views in a month. But if only a FEW people said “I’m going to get Netflix AND keep going after my free month”, then maybe it just gets canceled.
That, and it looked expensive as fuck.
I’ve wondered for years now how Netflix has been able to afford making all of their shows and movies. I mean I have been a loyal customer for a decade, but that’s like a grand or two. How many people signed up and continued their subscriptions to watch yet another fine (i guess) Anthony Mackie movie?
Their primary metric, according to what I’ve heard, is not whether people watch the first episode, or even that it drives subscriptions (which is hard to gauge), but how many people continue to watch past the first episode. I quit and moved on to other things. I’m sure many did the same.
74 millions views includes people who watch, I believe, something like 2 minutes of a show or movie.
74 million views sounds like a lot until you realize Neflix has over 200 million current subscribers and that “views” can also count for number of episodes viewed on a single account. That means we’re talking about anywhere between 35% and 3.5% of subscribers actually watching the show. Considering how many people here and in other places online indicate they gave up after the first couple of episodes, that number is probably closer to 7-10% of subscribers, which is pretty small potatoes considering how much money they spent on production and publicity. I honestly can’t recall the last Netflix show that had this much publicity; even Squid Game seemed more like buzz from reviews and audiences than any intentional effort from Netflix initially.
also maybe 74 million views in a month isn’t that much. we get these random numbers from them, but we have no idea how to contextualize them.
It also says viewing hours, so that isn’t 74m individual viewers
They barely gave it any time to attract viewers. They allowed an entire three weeks for people to watch it. One of those weeks was the Thanksgiving holiday where people are typically busy with other things. I haven’t even finished watching the series yet and I’m someone who was actually enjoying it. What I’m saying is, this feels like they’re killing it on purpose.
Maybe they’ll get it right with a Prison School adaptation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Insider info from a friend that works at Netflix: they actually had renewed it for a second season, then had a change of heart and had to have what must’ve been an awkward conversation. I don’t watch anime (something about the aesthetic), but I thought this was fun, sorry to see it go.
I think the cast did well for as much as I watched it, but this was a prime example of how much the animation is a big part of the success of anime properties. When you start copying actual episodes, you’re going to show your audience how much of the cool stuff they like that you can’t do for budgetary reasons. The pilot episode lacks the aerial dogfight of the original. You need to either do something new that honors the spirit of the original, or just try to ape the original. You can’t do both.
The whole show was way too planet-bound. I gave it much more of a chance than the purists but it *did* bug me that they tried so hard to avoid space.
Bummer. The first season was fine, but the way they set up for the second season had a lot more promise I thought. I was looking forward to it.
Damn! I just started watching last night at the recommendation of a friend and am really liking it. John Cho is mmmhmm in it!
I don’t know what it was about the cinematography, but the whole thing felt like a fan-film. Something just seemed off with most shots, and they often used low shot, tilted angles.And Vicious was terrible.
It lacked authenticity.
I was noticing the camera framing as well. They leaned a little too heavily on dutch angles which work fine in animation but I think inadvertently ended up making the show look a little cheap.FWIW, I didn’t watch the whole season series, but I enjoyed what I saw.
The show looked like cosplay in the marketing materials. It did not make me want to watch the whole thing. The Cowboy Bebop/Seinfeld mashup was the nail in the coffin.
Yea, this show had a $60+ million budget, and it ended up looking like bad cosplay in a fan film.
Probably cause all the dialogue felt like it was written by an undergrad.
The outdoor sets looked crap.
I watched the first ep, and the tone was just . . . completely off. WAY too wry and self-satisfied
Same. And I heard it split from the anime in later episodes, but the whole time I just kept asking myself “why am I not just watching the anime?”
The show got Americanized (and poorly – just look at that script), but that would explain why some people really liked it and others really disliked it, as the characters and tone are geared more towards Western audiences.
Agreed. The dialogue in particular, very… “Whedon-esque,” like the default Marvel style of dialogue. Don’t want to hear Spike or Faye, the anime embodiment of cool, utter lines with the same tone as “Uh, so I guess THAT happened.”
It’s funny, when people complain that much of the critique of the show was invalid because it was contadictory (“at the same time too little like the anime and not enough like it”). To me, having the wrong tone can cause both critiques to feel true. And tone (emerging in this case more from writing and directing than acting) was unsettlingly off.
100%, it managed to feel big budget / low budget at the same time. I got to episode 3 and quit.
Live-action Vicious was miles better than anime Vicious.
At least live-action Vicious had reasons for doing everything he did. Anime Vicious was evil for literally no fuckin’ reason. The best example, of course, is framing Gren for being a traitor. There was literally no point in doing it, it might as well have been for shits and giggles.
he was evil because he hated spike. he had the same deal as spike and julia, where he was so wrapped up in the past that everything in the present felt like a dream, and only by dealing with spike and making his life miserable did he feel alive again. it wasn’t exactly subtle, but given that you preferred a guy in a bad wig just frowning all the time and getting owned repeatedly, maybe you’re just kinda stupid?
I mean, sociopaths exist.
Yes, it looked like a very good fan film. A great sizzle reel. A series shot by someone who has seen all the Tarantino and Rodriguez movies but none of the movies that they’ve seen. Style over substance with very little style.
the intro made me think “archer” but nope
You know why? It was out of respect.
F
minus
Ain’t Spike Jewish?
Live action, American remakes of anime does not work. Nor will they ever work.Just stop trying to do this.In general this show was just a poor, fan-film vibe instead of a project that Netflix apparently put MILLIONS into the project.
I thought the live-action Bleach was okay.
Yeah I liked the Bleach one too.
Fuck off gatekeeper
Misusing the word gatekeeper to try and bully people into silence is the exact sort of toxic behaviour you were complaining about.
classic reply to someone who’s being accurate
No u betch
You need a bottle over there baby? Maybe a nap? You seem awfully cranky.
I think Netflix is the gatekeeper in this scenario.
lol add ‘gatekeeper’ to the list of words that have lost all meaning.it isn’t gatekeeping to point out that western studios are like 0-30 on making live-action anime adaptations, nor is it gatekeeping to suggest that the next one will probably continue the trend
I agree for the most part. The funny thing about this was the show being too much of a remake. I’d say there’s nothing inherently wrong with taking an Anime and going live action. The real problem is being too faithful to the source material. Things that work in animation may not work in live action and vice versa. For instance I think Faye’s costume worked the best out of the main cast since it was designed to homage the original outfit but not ape that design. Spike and Jet’s outfits tried to hard to be the anime’s outfits and didn’t work as well. The other real problem is the story being too close to the original. It’s not a like a book where the adaptation is a massive change in media. Your really just going from one visual media to another. So why would I watch a remake (which is usually not going to be as good) when the highly regarded original is both available and only a like a hour longer. Instead what they should be doing is taking the basics of the show and making their own thing. You keep the main characters, their backstory and the setting but tell your own stories. The closest example I can think of is the MCU. The MCU took the characters and some of the basic stories and just did their own thing. The costumes were something designed to work in live action but still homage the comic book designs. Oceans 11 is another good example. They took the basic idea and just did their own thing with it. No one was trying to mimic Sinatra, Dean Martin or Sammy Davis Jr or follow the plot more or less the same. On the other side are the Disney live action remakes which have the same issues as Bebop and are also heavily critically panned. The issue with hewing too close to the anime is that the live action will never be the anime. Any changes made get magnified significantly since you can so readily compare to the original. It creates such a high bar for the new version. You really have to be amazing because anything less and all you bothered making was an inferior version (even if it is better in some parts). But if you instead go with some original plots then there’s less room to complain. Plus, new stories give people a reason to watch the adaptation even when the original is available. I’m concerned with the My Hero Academia movie. The setting of My Hero is great and there’s so much you can do with it. I’d much rather see the movie follow some other class in their world (see the YouTube video of UA Los Angeles for instance) than do some sort of remake of Deku’s story.
Instead what they should be doing is taking the basics of the show and making their own thing.Honestly I think this is one of the reasons they’ve had success with they’re adaptations of She-Ra and Voltron. Like them or hate them they were still really popular shows and they did a decent job at taking a nonsense plot and turning it into something original. The part of the formula I think they’re really missing is that they need to stop adapting popular show and instead go after something that no one really cared about. There are no shortage of shows with good plots but bad executions.
The original had a ton of class consciousness that the remake lacked. You’re talking about aesthetic faithfulness more so than tonal, I assume.
Disagree. Live action Speed Racer and Alita worked. Sure, the rest is bad, but that’s the entertainment landscape for you. The majority of what is made is “fine” or worse with a very narrow minority of things being universally considered worth saying was “good” or better. Despite being adaptations of things that already work (which much of the film landscape is as well), the majority of live action adaptations of anime are almost destined to disappoint.
Live action, American remakes of anime does not work. Nor will they ever work.*Ahem*Also, while not American, I thought the City Hunter adaption was good:
The idea of those movies appeal to me but the experience of actually watching them doesn’t. I wish I could agree with the folks saying Speed Racer was a masterpiece!
Just because there have been awful attempts at live action anime doesn’t mean it can’t work, it just hasn’t worked the way it’s been done. I knew death note would be trash because the director made some interview where he said he “wouldn’t be afraid of embracing anime tropes” like violence and blood. So this guy clearly didn’t get death note. And Netflix clearly didn’t get cowboy bebop. That doesn’t mean that the right project can’t coalesce into something great.
Alita worked. Speed Racer worked.
Article titles like “Everyone hated it” and whatever elitism gatekeeping nonsense Barsanti wanted to throw in his review is the reason it got canceled. That show was fantastic and the cast was great. Sorry I didn’t grow up watching anime and like to enjoy things as they exist.It must make you guys furious that Mary Jane is a person of color and not white like in the comics right? Might as well cancel the MCU.
I watched the first ep and enjoyed it for what it was – John Cho was f@#%ing fantastic. If the anime didn’t exist I’d love it.
But like every anime to live action adaptation, I didn’t see any reason to watch the rest of it when you could just watch the better anime instead. There’s already way more media than I can even start to consume, so if the live action doesn’t bring anything super special to the table (and it never does, except Ruroni Kenshin) then I’ll go watch the new season of The Expanse instead.This wasn’t just entitled nerds raging against it, it’s that nobody else cared to watch it and those that did stopped after the first episode (if you didn’t, you are a statistical outlier). That’s all Netflix cares about. It’s just something nobody wanted or asked for.
If a production doesn’t do it differently well, why bother?
Netflix kind of shot themselves in the foot by adding the original Bebop just before the remake. Given how quickly viewership numbers dropped off, tons of people apparently watched the first episode, thought to themselves “what if someone made this same show, but it was actually good? Oh wait, that already happened like 20 years ago.” And then they just watched the original show instead.
Cowboy Bebop is an amazing anime. How the hell could Netflix screw up the live version so badly? None of the characters acts or looks even remotely like the original characters. Whoever cast this version needs to be run out of town and told to go f*#$ themselves. What the hell were they thinking? This should’ve been an all new-blood production. We don’t need a former slapstick comedian turned melodramatic hack playing the lead role of a character half his age! Seriously!? Ageism is a two-way street. Anime fans don’t deserve this, and now a generation of the uninitiated have been turned off to this amazing genre of jazz noir. Plus, the entire violent yet non-aggressive motif was completely ignored. The complete opposite of cool. Good job Netflix 🙄😒 Please make heads role for this bull and for the love of God don’t let it happen again. It’ll be another thirty years now before anyone tries to revamp this classic. Boo! 👎
“Everyone hated it,” yeah except me and everyone I know. I loved every bit of it and would resubscribe to Netflix to see more.Maybe Netflix should ask how many viewers would still be around to watch it if they didn’t keep paying Dave Chapelle $24 million to complain about being criticized and go after trans people.
Ah yes, the “I have no idea how McGovern lost; everyone I knew voted for him” excuse.
“Maybe Netflix should ask how many viewers would still be around to watch it if they didn’t keep paying Dave Chapelle $24 million to complain about being criticized and go after trans people.”lol, yeah, they should stop associating with Chappelle, whose specials do massive numbers, because you and your friends who loved this shitshow are mad at him.
The important things are that Yoko Kanno got another paycheck and now the anime is on Netflix worldwide (though that will probably be gone before long).
*sigh* Goddammit. It wasn’t a perfect adaptation, but it had some really fun moments. I really liked the main cast, particularly John Cho as Spike. Now I guess it’s the so far disappointing 15th season of IASIP (though hopefully it’ll get better) or trying to stay awake through Wheel Of Time (my husband loves the books and the show. It’s not bad, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of high fantasy outside of LOTR and playing D&D). Oh well. Come on winter, end already, I need a new season of MST3K to cheer me up!
As a fantasy fan, I’ve felt some trepidation about WOT’s reception (I’m not watching it myself). On the one hand, it feels inevitable and deserved – after LOTR, it’s pretty much THE epic fantasy series. After GOT, of course they were going to try to do WOT. But on the other hand: back when people argued for GOT by saying in effect “oh, it’s not like what you imagine high fantasy to be like, it avoids all the clichés you’re expecting”… well, WOT just IS what you imagine high fantasy be like, and it does not avoid any of the clichés everyone is expecting. GOT was a way to take what worked in WOT and make it popular for a wider audience, so WOT is just GOT with all that cross-audience appeal taken out again… but with a colossal budget. A budget big enough that if it sinks, it’ll be see as a warning sign to the rest of the industry never to try a big-budget fantasy adaptation again because GOT was a one-off…
But it didn’t sink, and is Amazon’s biggest hit of the year.
But do they really have any hits. People don’t have Prime just for the videos they mainly have it for the free two day shipping.
So since the LOTR movies were a huge hit, I don’t really see there being a good case that only anti-fantasy like GOT can work with wider audiences. I think LOTR and GOT could both be hits despite GOT essentially being a critique of LOTR because both were actually good. The Harry Potter movies also made a ton of money, and while not flawless, on the whole they were mostly pretty good too.So I think WOT has to be good to be a hit, but I don’t think that is impossible just because it is more on the earnest side and less on the cynical side. Whether it IS good remains to be seen, but I think the start has been OK . . . it just needs to really nail that sense of an ever-expanding world that made the book series (particularly the first part of the series) so popular.
But LOTR was twenty years ago, and on the big screen, and not really replicated; and of course the LOTR books were likewise massive breakouts that no other high fantasy has ever replicated since. [and I think HP is easily excused as not really the same genre]. And it’s not like any of the other high fantasy live-action series have been a great success so far…Personally, I think WOT would do best emphasising the mystery element of the novels. I don’t just mean the occasional murder mystery, but I mean the way that there are SO many different threads left open for so long – there’s a constant feeling of ‘who did that? why did they do that? are they Forsaken in disguise!? who’s plan is this!?’ and so on. I remember that being the big thing that helped maintain such strong fan engagement in the two years between novels – the fact that there were twenty different mysteries to debate over. The characterisation and large-scale plot of the series, unfortunately, is not that good, and the worldbuilding is one-dimensional, so I think viewers will get bored if they don’t play up that paranoia angle.[fwiw, I don’t think GOT was really a critique of LOTR; I think it was a critique of the Shannara>WOT side of the genre (Brooks, Eddings, Jordan, Goodkind, etc).]
I was encouraged by the last episode of WOT. I found it very enjoyable, and I think it established a template for a successful version of the series.Anyway, what fantasy TV shows, since LOTR, besides GOT, have actually been good?I think you could name some successful animated series, like Adventure Time, Samurai Jack, or the Avatar/Korra series.Other than that, though, I can’t really think of live action TV series that DESERVED to be popular on the merits. As a fan of the genre I certainly watched a lot of them—the MTV Shannara show or Legend of the Seeker really did not put to the test the idea that a fantasy series can’t just be good in order to be popular, because they were not good.So I think the only real evidence we have is either the animated shows or movies. And although this might not be a complete slam dunk, I still think the success of Harry Potter or Avatar: The Last Airbender is at least some evidence you don’t need fantasy to be grim in order for it to have wide appeal.
Oh, I agree! Well, I half-agree. I don’t think it needs to be as grim as GOT, but I do think it probabyl needs a degree of grimness to have crossover appeal. But I certainly agree on the bigger point that fantasy has historically mostly failed, on both big and small screen, because it hasn’t been good, and when it has been good it’s done well. If there were more good fantasy, there would be more successful fantasy – much as SF has been rehabilitated from the B-movie depths into a major part of the market. And, of course, even more so, superhero fantasy! People used to just assume that there was no market for superheroes (other than the broad camp of Batman ‘66); and then they thought there was no market for superheroes outside of the camp of Batman ‘66 or the Gothic zaniness of Batman ‘89; and then they thought…The problem is, I think executives are a terrible judge of why something hasn’t worked, or has. They tend to see one thing do well and say “wow, X films are really popular, we should make more of them!”, or see one thing do badly and say “wow, X films are unpopular, we shouldn’t make any more of them!”. When it’s a genre with so few (relatively) major attempts, and a lot of prejudice against it, it doesn’t take many failures to derail the whole genre, particularly if they’re expensive failures.[why has most fantasy on screen been bad? Partly because the genre tends to be inherently expensive and can lot awful if you don’t have a big enough budget. Partly because it often has the wrong creatives – either they’re massive fans who fail to understand which part will work with the wider audience and which won’t, or they’re not fans at all and fail to understand which parts will actually give audiences something new and different. But also unfortunately because a lot of the source material just isn’t very good, and even when it is good it’s not designed for adaptation*.]*my personal pick for what would be great on screen: Robin Hobb. Not just great books, but also often very cinematic – lots of great visual scenes, and plot arcs that could easily yield both well-formed episodes and satisfying seasons. Assuming you can persuade someone to finance fifteen seasons or so of it… (not that it matters, since Hobb is resolutely anti-adaptation, but we can dream!)
There are things that I liked about GOT, though certainly not the show’s (and let’s face it, that whole storyline’s because it’s clear that Martin either wrote himself into too tight a corner or just doesn’t want to focus on the series anymore ) ending. As for the subverting tropes, a lot of the trope subversion of GOT is mostly down to sex and violence. Otherwise it has the same “chosen ones” and “prophesies” that almost every fantasy series has, and there’s a cynicism to that approach that I’m not sure I want too many shows emulating. Maybe something with a little more “middle ground”, so to speak.
I think it’s much deeper than that; ASOIAF subverts the heroic expectations created by the previously-dominant branch of the genre. It’s not much about sex – lots of fantasy novels had sex in them before that – and it’s certainly not about violence (a lot of fantasy was far more gruesome before that). It’s about things like the assumption that Our Guys will always be the heroes and their enemies must be the villains, and that Our Guys have unbreakable plot armour. That everyone will rally around to defeat evil, putting petty squabbles aside; that heroic conquerors can easily solve the problems of impoverished or evil nations just by bossing them around a bit. Basically it moves the genre away from the heroic-romantic model it had fallen into in that Brooks-Jordan period, and in the direction of a more ‘realistic’, character-driven sort of storytelling. It also, as part of that, moved away from the focus on individual Heroes on a Quest, broadening it out into a multi-generational dynastic conflict. I suppose in a way you could say it tried to marry the more low-fantasy impulses of S&S-derived pulp fantasy (eg various off-the-main-track TSR novels) with the epic scale of mainstream bestseller fantasy. [and following on its heels I’d also point to Robin Hobb, and to Mary Gentle’s amazing “Ash”, both of which actually do it better than GRRM]And while it does have prophecies and chosen ones, the whole point of them is that many of the prophecies have been proven wrong and others have had to be repeatedly re-interpreted, while the identity of the chosen ones, if they exist at all, is unclear… so again, taking a 1980s trope (not one from Tolkien, notably! is it from Star Wars? Wait, no, it’s in Earthsea, isn’t it?) and looking at what it might look like in ‘real life’…
My vehement hope is that the new MST episodes learn their lesson and have the cast record *together*. I went to two of the live shows and much preferred them. And part of that was because you can’t replicate the vibe of riffing together. (I also don’t care overly much for Jonah as host. Nor Felicia and Patton as the Mads. I like all three as performers, especially Felicia and Patton, but their MST stuff doesn’t click for me. And I like that Emily is not a known L.A. standup comedian or actress. It’s a dumb complaint but I always loved that the OG crew, both Comedy Central and SciFi era, were Midwest unknowns.)
I went to the first live show and had such a blast. I think I startled the person in front of me with a loud “whoooo!” when Joel walked on stage. I wish I could have made the others, but, ya know, obligations and stuff. I’m hoping this new season is good, the previous seasons did have their issues even though there were episodes I liked. Speaking of Jonah Ray, who I do like as a comedian, these videos have been cracking me up.
It was great on its own merits. A live scifi comedy series telling the story and characters from Cowboy Bebop. It wasn’t a “live anime” because that would be pointless. As pointless as the complaints that it didn’t simply use its actors as meat puppets to recreate the anime. The original Cowboy Bebop was stellar but let’s not pretend it wasn’t also full of tight camera angles between Faye’s colossal boobs.Honestly to me it played more like a prequel to The Fifth Element being in a messy, scrappy yet artful spacefaring future where humans clearly haven’t changed. I loved the sparse cramped style and steady balance of humor with brutality.Maybe Amazon will pick it up. They’ve rescued cancelled live scifi before.
I love Bebop and was excited about this. But I really didn’t plan on jumping right into it, especially when I heard it was more of a continuation than a live-action reboot/re-do/whatever. I have been re-watching the anime for the 1st time in quite a while, and it is still great. Planned to get it all fresh in my mind, as I was hoping this show would be something along the lines of Watchmen on HBO. I guess that is not the case…
Watchmen was great and now I’m wishing the live-action Cowboy Bebop had the same kind of relationship to the anime as the HBO Watchmen had to the graphic novel.
Watchmen very wisely built itself as a miniseries, so even if it failed, it was a complete story. Then of course watchmen was freaking incredible, which still made the miniseries approach wise. Doing something inspired but unique from the source material would have been maybe better for cowboy bebop.
Yeah, I can sometimes understand the idea of a faithful live action remake of a 90-min to 2-hour animation movie. For a 7+ hour season of television, it strikes me as kind of crazy and pointless. Watchmen (HBO) was amazing. When the Wachowskis adapted V for Vendetta, and tried (as people used to try) for Moore’s approval, Moore response was, essentially, “If you want to criticize your government, grow a backbone and write something original, like I did. Don’t hide behind the political context of my story.” I love that Watchmen actually took that criticism to heart, bringing a new story, changing the political context, and in the process substantially improving on Moore’s limited understanding of America.
Good or bad, it was absolutely unnecessary. They should have made something set in the Cowboy Bebop universe rather than a direct 1:1 adaptation. Arcane is a great example of taking an existing property and doing your own thing with it. That was the problem, they didn’t even try to do their own thing. They just did the anime but worse.
Just finished watching this on Tuesday. It was hard to get through. It wasn’t *bad*, but it wasn’t fun at a lot of parts. The set design was awesome, though. And the main trio of actors were perfect. But Vicious was just tedious and annoying. And stripping the tragic senselessness from Pierre’s episode kind of lost something for me. So I just literally don’t care about the next season. A bummer because you could tell the people making it clearly cared a lot about it.
I wonder how much of the dislike is for similar reasons that you posted. Not saying its wrong, but how many viewers didn’t care for the depictions because they remember the anime as it was and found the changes off putting or lackluster? Pierre is a good point, I haven’t watched that episode yet but if you as a fan knew his backstory ahead of time and this version is just a random villain with no tragedy I can understand the feeling. It’s maybe not entirely fair, though its also not fair to expect fans of the original something to not find differences off-putting especially if those scenes resonated.
I’m kinda disappointed though. Hey Netflix, have you seen some of your other shows? And this is the one you cancel? Ok, but whatever.
Bummer. It was pretty good. A solid B type of show. Nothing mind blowing, but certainly entertaining. I thought they did well enough translating anime to live action, which is a damn near impossible task. It was well acted for the most part, Vicious was a little over the top (but he is in the anime as well) and Jet Black was a little wooden at times, but other than that, that acting was good for what the show is suppose to be. The set pieces were great. The story, even with the changes, was compelling and engaging. It deserved better and I wish more people would have gave it a real shot with an open mind. But I know this type of show is a tough sell to casuals anyway and there’s a large chunk of anime fandom that is just toxic and chooses to be pissed off about everything that doesn’t match canon, or more specifically, their head canon, to give the show a chance.
Christ now people are calling TV viewers “casuals”.
So apparently it started reasonably strong and then had a large drop off in viewership.Assuming that is true—maybe a lot of people did in fact “give it a real shot with an open mind,” and then they simply did not agree it was “compelling and engaging.”That doesn’t mean your subjective experience was wrong. But if it wasn’t widely shared, that means the economics doesn’t support continued production. And shows don’t “deserve” to be funded when there is not enough of an audience that likes them to justify their cost.
Wait what ??
The show was extremely bingeable and a fun watch. The anime community is extremely male dominant and toxic that it won’t give anything that slightly deviate from their fantasy a chance. Feeling sad for the creators and especially John and Daniella, who were excellent.
I’m rather sad to see it get cancelled; They could’ve reworked the show if they took the criticisms to heart and dumped the stuff that didn’t work (the bad Whedon-esque dialogue, all of Vicious/Julia).
I’ve seen the first three episodes and I mostly just found the show OK, with the second episode the strongest and the third episode the weakest.
I really liked it, and thought it was a fun show with good characters. I think they rushed into the Vicious and Julia stuff a bit fast, but it did have a good pay-off at the end. It got off on a bit of the wrong note. It was a big mistake for Netflix to make our first look at the show a near shot-for-shot remake of the “Tank!” opening rather than a cool scene from one of the episodes. The budget might have also been a big problem, too. It was an expensive show to make, got more expensive with delays when Cho got injured, and then more expensive still when they had to shut down filming for Covid and re-open with a ton of precautions.
I wonder, what is the best well-received US live action adaptation of an anime or manga? My brain instantly goes to Edge of Tomorrow, but I’m probably forgetting another film.
I’m deliberately ignoring The Lion King because that’s a whole new can o’worms.
Alita: Battle Angel wound up doing quite well commercially, and its reputation seems to have increased quite a bit since it first came out.
completely inexplicably too, given that it was extremely bad
I don’t know why. It is dogshit.
The Wachowski brothers’ adaption of Speed Racer faceplanted hard at release, but people seem to have come around since then on it as being pretty good.
Wachowski *sisters*, but yeah Speed Racer turned out to be a lot more fun than it had any right to be.
I sat through a two-hour YouTube video about how the Lion King anime ripoff hooplah was manufactured. For the good of all mankind I’m not linking it, I watched it so you don’t have to. Not an adaptation. If anything, Lion King itself was ripped off.We could do Hunger Games/Battle Royale though
I see a lot of comments blaming toxic nerds / gatekeepers and deservedly so. But they aren’t the ones that got the show axed after the season. It was the people who aren’t inclined to watch an anime, let alone follow discussions surrounding it, who inadvertently killed it. A show like this desperately needed mass viewership, which it didn’t get.
Seems like canceling the show this early is spiteful. Its like the streaming equivalent of rage quitting.
The show was woke as hell. All the fans of the anime are adults now. The only fans of the Netflix abomination were the minority indoctrinated kids lolThank God it got cancelled lol
I feel a weird schadenfreude from this happening. Pretty much every creative decision done on this was misguided. Heck those comparison shots between it and the original that they did for marketing on twitter really did not do it any favors either.
It wasn’t quite Spiderman Turn off The Night levels of schadenfreude, but it was getting kind of close.
Love John Cho when he is at easting at White Castle but his ability to play Spike was out of his range. His action and fight scenes looked as if they were choreographed by my high school drama teacher and about as natural as a fish out of water. The design, set, and wardrobe were fantastic. But John Cho just was not the right casting choice as Spike, he just didn’t have the chops to make the character feel authentic, and the series went downhill from there. Too bad. I would’ve given season two a chance.
Once more Matts headline gaslighting people. Everyone didnt hate it, stop calling the loudest voice everyone. You people do this all the time, its like saying every American vote supports trump because they were the loudest and most vocal. Headline could of easily been Netflix canceled another show weeks after its realise. Know the difference between people who bomb reviews because of diversity and purest from fan bases and general fans who really enjoy it. Headlines matter as alot of people dont see past them. The amount of people i hear saying a movie flopped so they’re not seeing it. Because they didnt understand what it ment. Flopped meaning not alot of tickets sold because of low interest how ever they has nothing to do with the quality of a movie or show. Firefly is a prime example of that. Click bate headlines is ruining movies, TV shows games and comics with there gaslighting to get clicks.
This is one of those things where I liked it fine, and I don’t see how it’s existence ruins the experience of people who only liked the anime.
I guess I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t just watch the anime. And if you don’t like animation, well frankly, maybe just get over yourself or miss out on some stuff?Admittedly, I haven’t watched the series yet because I haven’t had any interest in it and the previews didn’t look that great.
I guess I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t just watch the anime. And if you don’t like animation, well frankly, maybe just get over yourself or miss out on some stuff?I like animation, but I’m not a fan of some of the conventions of anime, and both subtitles and dubbing are flawed. But, I heard the story was good, so was interested in an English-language version.
Because you can fucking like two or more things.
Well that’s dumb as hell. I was skeptical about the live action when it was announced but hot damn was it a good show! Friends who watched it that had never seen the original loved it! Julia had goddamn agency and rightly shot Spike! Ed was Ed and I have no clue what people were complaining about there.
Fucking Netflix the only decent show they didn’t cancel before it ended was Dark.
RIP The OA 🙁
I really enjoyed it. It’s a shame that it’s not coming back, because I thought it only got better as it went on. Oh well.
Good job, Netflix. Now you have more money to blow on another Tiger King season or crappy foreign films.
I seriously hope another service picks this up and gives another writer a chance at it. It absolutely deserved another season.
Genuinely great news. A hard rethink of how anime is adapted to live action English speaking media is needed.
After seeing the opening credits (that apparently everyone liked), I knew this was going to… tank.It tried to be both real and far-out. It kinda reminds me of that other cancelled Netflix show “The Get-Down” – which also suffered from the same problem.Let weird be as weird as it wants to be!!!
I probably won’t watch the remake, but I’m glad that its development led to Netflix having the original. I’d never watched it before now.
Why is a white person writing this?
I havent watched it yet. This is disapointing all the same. Quick question. Is there an ending or is it left as a cliffhanger forever?
It ..just wasn’t good. None of the characters were likeable or compelling. The action was cheap and lazy. As a fan of the original there was definitely a world where I could have powered through just out of nostalgia, but spike is a turd and unfunny. Jets casting was great, but he only seems to exist to whine about spike being a turd. Vicious and Julia are just insufferable.This adaptation is an instance where the audience is forced by episode 2 to ask themselves “Why am I watching this?” and remember they needed to go study or clean which would somehow be more exciting.
They should have done Ranma 1/2. A genderfluid hero with a complicated love life, and martial arts mayhem? What is more 2020s than that?
I think this is going to go down like the Speed Racer movie. It was doomed by preconceived notions from people who were already CB fans. It didn’t have a chance. The SR movie was hated upon release (mostly by people who were fans of the original), but it has aged well and with a little distance, you can see how true it was to the original storyline and absurdity. It was never going to be a duplicate of the original, and besides, what would the point be of making a live action duplicate?
I’m super sad that it’s been cancelled. My dad asked me if I had seen it, because he had already watched the whole series, and liked it!I enjoyed it for what it was. The casting was pretty decent (Except for Vicious). Instead of complaining about not getting the exact same thing as you remember, be grateful that an old series was given life again.
Just continues to prove that ravenous anime/video game/star wars fans are the worst fans in the world.
74 million hours seems like a whole lot until you consider how they count that time. From just watching a trailer, to counting 3 minutes of a movie being viewed as the whole movie being viewed, etc. Netflix metrics are smoke and mirrors.
Unless Reddit was taking the piss in their thread they posted snippets of some of the character’s dialogue that I hadn’t seen in the brief clips I watched, and MAN that writing is fucking terrible. Apparently Faye especially was just horrendously written.
I might still watch this as an oddity – and honestly I think that’s why most people watched it, as an oddity. And your oddity has to be fucking AMAZING to get traction and be worth spending another infinite million bucks on another season.
Not everyone hated it, i loved it, even with some criticismIt was just differentCriticism even loud criticism doesn’t mean it isn’t good or successfulIt’s an adaptation, period
I’ve seen the first two or three episodes and I enjoyed what I saw. It’s not the anime and that’s fine, but honeslty the thing that annoys me the most is just how fast it happened. Like, three weeks after its release and it’s dead. They expected it to be HUGE and when it was only DECENT they abandoned it entirely. I get that this is all business for Netflix, but it just sucks that the people who binged it the day it came out seemed to be the only voice out there.Like, most of the people who saw it as soon as possible were probably either purists for the anime who weren’t going to like it to matter what because it wasn’t the anime and/or people who just wanted to have the hottest takes, so of course their opinions were largely negative. If it had been released weekly then maybe it would have had a chance to find its audience better and there would be a more balanced set of opinions out there.Like, this io9 article that came out the same day as the series, spoiling the last scene of the last episode, (what would have been) a stinger for season 2 and revealing Ed (Netflix themselves revealed a gif of the character but the top comment is the full scene on Youtube). A lot of people saw the (admittedly not great) scene before having a chance to start the series and decided to not even bother starting it. But if it had been two and a half months later when that scene was released, a lot of people would have already given the show a chance and may have been more forgiving.
Oh Jesus, now we’re gonna get the counter-narratives about how this was canned by culturally ignorant executives pandering to racist nerds, and it’s going to come from all the same folks who complained that adapting an anime was itself a stupid appropriative act. I hate the internet so much.Look. Cowboy Bebop was a just okay show that probably cost a lot to make, had its production badly stretched by Covid, and didn’t resonate with casual viewers or anime fans, that’s why it’s getting cancelled. The principles were all great, the supporting characters were all trash, and it slavishly imitated the anime while ruining all its most iconic scenes (I could tell the wouldn’t do the bullet dodge in episode one way before they didn’t do it). Would it have gotten better? Objectively yes, Stargate SG1’s first 2 seasons are horrible but the overall show is an all-time great; same for Star Trek: TNG. Unfortunately, someone at Netflix decided now was the time to start being smart with money so it’s over. And at the risk of sounding smug, this is what happens when the industry is so risk-averse that they will try to turn ANY existing property into a new one, instead of just writing their own story. If the same leads had been put in an original space opera, people would have loved it.One Piece is going to be legit awful, though. I cannot be persuaded otherwise.
The action scenes were -so slow- and badly edited. It’s the only time I’ve ever gotten uncanny valley from a live-action show.
I liked it. I thought the casting was great. It was fun and did a good job capturing the the feel of the anime. I am disappointed by the cancellation. The Vicious/Julia-centric stuff was by far the worst part. I know some of it was necessary to move the story forward, but I though it was too much.
All I know is people were very mad about how Ed was portrayed.
So I watched the clip of the scene with live action Ed, then a compilation of all Ed’s scene in the animated show.And it was exactly the same. So I just assumed wacky anime characters don’t translate to real life in any way shape or form.
But they SERIOUSLY nailed Ed, from what I saw.
Ed was nailed 100%. So much so that it stuck out in a bad way imo.I was like “they should have dialed this back a bit”. So if anime fans are mad at the way Ed was portrayed, it can’t be because “they didn’t follow the anime”.
I hated Ed in the anime, but haven’t gotten to that episode of the live action series yet. I’m just glad Ed is just around less.
I’m really glad it’s not just me, I absolutely couldn’t stand Ed but I’ve been taken to task for that more than once!Her (basically) not being in the Netflix version didn’t make it any good but it did make it less insufferable.
I’m late to the party but its shit headlines like this that painted an artificial picture about the show. I enjoyed it. Was it as good as the anime? No, but what could be? Did I enjoy it? Yeah I did and I think that with the Vicious stuff resolved it would have hit its stride in S2, especially if they began departing from the anime a bit more.Frankly, I think its wrong that this show didn’t get a second series when garbage like Another Life did (surely that show cost a bundle as well). The cast was by and large charismatic and other than some perverts bitching that Faye didn’t have a skimpy costume or massive nummy-nums (thank you Dick Clark for that) really fit the bill.oh well- just another show on the ashheap of history that deserved better.
They made a second series of Another Life? Oh good god.
If you can believe it. It arguably makes less sense than S1
They’re not lying though. All the hardcore nerds were up in a huff about it.
“Cowboy Bebop stars John Cho, and it’s a shame to watch things fall apart for him in particular.” He was a big part of the problem. in particular. Just too uptight. And not at all funny (which I get can be blamed on the script…but that delivery was not doing any favors).
I was very skeptical going in, but ended up enjoying it. It wasn’t great, but it was fun enough. My girlfriend, who has zero interest in anime, quite enjoyed it. I was really hoping for one more season, with Edward joining the crew. (and maybe doing a ‘Mushroom Samba’ episode).That said, I can’t get *too* bummed out about this, and kind of expected it.
I think it was wonky tone-wise but I liked where it wound up. Given how much hype they put into this, I’m genuinely surprised they didn’t give it a second season to hit their stride. Hell, Iron Fist got a second season that was a huge improvement over the first.
https://www.change.org/SaveCowboyBebopS2#SaveCowboyBebop #SeeYouSpaceCowboy
Bring on Lupin the 3rd.
I had my issues with it but I really dug what they were doing. I understand it was on the expensive side, though.
I feel particularly bad for Eden Perkins, the kid who played Radical Ed. I watched an interview with them and they were thrilled beyond belief that they’d landed the role. On the other hand, at least they’re spared the wave of internet hatred they would have received if the show had continued.
I don’t hate it. But I didn’t watch it either.
I’d seen some of the Anime and really had no problems with it being different. Much like how MCU never stuck directly to the text, but got the spirit of the comics right, and that never got my goat even as a lifelong Marvel Comics fan. And John Cho injured his nearly 50 year old self to try and make this a good show but…well ok, that’s not an argument for it’s quality, but it still sucks to commit that hard.
I agree with the pacing issues…but hey man, if we’re gonna compare it to the Anime, *phew*…so much space between things on those early outings as well as Anime in general. Maybe doesn’t work translated to film?
I think maybe the episodic-meets-epic of it doesn’t work for people. Villain of the week with slight overarching mythological implications when they’ve been told this will be the greatest things since sliced bread *shrug*.
In any case, sad to see it go. I just hope the talents involved in this will get to focus them elsewhere (*Cough*Mustafa Shakir*cough*)
Its biggest problem is that there are a lot of things that work in the context of anime, that just don’t translate well into live-action. In particular, the sort of lingering close-up shots you get in anime, either of someone’s reaction, or their emotions as they follow someone with their eyes. In anime it helps build tension or convey that emotion, but in live-action it seems to mostly come off as poor pacing. Every other shot being a Dutch angle didn’t help either. I respect the effort, and I’d happily come back to watch more of the animated version with this cast doing the voices.
get woke go broke
This fucking sucks. The show was excellent. I despise anime purists. They’re as bad as the folks that want their books translated word for word and won’t take anything less. And on top of that fuck you AVClub. You didn’t give it a goddamn chance, nor did any bit of media. You all decided we hated it before we got any clue as to what it was because LiVe AcTiOn AnImE and now you’re lamenting like you gave a fuck?
Maybe if Spike had declared himself a TERF Netflix would’ve paid for another season?
I have watched the first five episodes, and I really don’t understand why people who adore the original hate this version. Honestly, this seems just as good as the anime to me (which I quite liked), so what am I missing? What am I not appreciating about the original that makes the new version so lacking?
One important factor that doesn’t get brought up much is that the Netflix show wasn’t just translating anime to live action – it was also translating a half-hour format into an hourlong format. Part of what makes the original Bebop so special is how streamlined the storytelling is – with just 22 minutes to work with, important character moments get boiled down to just a few seconds – a glance here, a pause there – all moving the story forward. There’s not a wasted second.With an hourlong format, those moments become entire scenes – usually a conversation in which all motives are plainly stated. Again, this doesn’t have to be a bad thing – most great TV shows have an hourlong format! – but it changes the feel of the show in an irrevocable way. Netflix Bebop tried to adapt to that but hadn’t quite nailed it yet.
The discourse around this show has been uncomfortable. Disliking something is not toxic. It’s not only for gatekeeping haters. And no one owes any piece of entertainment a chance if they feel it’s not for them. At the same time, clearly the show was not hated by “everyone.” Many people seemed to enjoy it, which is also their right. I don’t know why Netflix canceled it but treating a TV show like it’s Tinkerbell and it will die if enough people don’t clap and believe is fucking creepy and weird.
Yeah there’s almost this ‘reverse toxicity’ thing going on where people who liked the show feel attacked that their taste is being called out, and then get toxic because of it. It was an objectively mediocre show (look at the rare sync between critic and user ratings on Rotten Tomatoes) that people lost interest in and that’s why it wasn’t renewed: the cost to produce it isn’t justified by the viewership numbers.
I didn’t hate it as much as others. Thought it could be better and was hoping a 2nd season would do that. But its there’s money not mine so whatever.
Really sad about this. It was good enough it deserved to figure things out in a season 2. Who cares that it wasn’t a 1-1 of the anime.
I finally finished watching the show last night, and I liked it for what it was…until we got to the Church sequence. After watching the final episode, I had to queue up “Ballad of Fallen Angels” to get the bad taste out of my mouth.Worst of both worlds: they copy-pasted all of the dialogue between Spike and Vicious, after giving us 9 episodes of a Vicious that was nowhere near that eloquent. To say nothing about the 3rd party pushing Spike out the window.
To everyone who liked the show complaining that the ‘weebs killed it’, that’s not the reason. It’s because there aren’t enough of people like you out there.
Netflix doesn’t care if a show is massively hated as long as people watch (or hate watch) the shit out of it. They only care about the numbers, and the numbers in this case didn’t pan out for it. This show objectively isn’t that great (bad writing, plotting and dutch angles for the sake of it) despite you guys liking it. In fact most of the comments I’ve seen from the people who do like it amount to “Eh it wasn’t that bad.” Liking something mediocre is fine, but in this case it’s not enough to save it.
I hope the AV Club does a proper tribute to the original ‘Cowboy Bebop’ writer Keiko Nobumoto who died from cancer recently. She left behind a great body of work, not only the original ‘Cowboy Bebop’.
There is only one live action worth watching: Rurouni Kenshin.