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Cowboy Bebop | Official Teaser “Lost Session” | Netflix

Kev Kev

Member
In the original, when Julia and Spike see each other again for the first time in years (Episode 25) she points a gun at him, as if she’s going to really shoot him, but then she embraces him instead and seems like she wants to leave with him, and perhaps she always did.

But her pointing the gun at him was always strange to me. What backstory did they have that she points a gun at him the first time she sees him again? And why does Spike seem unfazed, as if he expected it? We may never know, because Bebop was so mysterious, and that was part of its appeal.

I believe they are trying to set up that moment with what they are doing in the live action. I can tell the writers/director have done their homework with the plot and are trying their best to fill in some of them those mysterious, unexplained plot points.

Eitger way it’ll be interesting to see play out if they approved for more seasons. As bad as the show can be, it has some pretty great moments, and I have to admit I really like seeing a take on trying to provide some sort of back story to explain those mysteries I’ve been thinking about for the last 20+ years.


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MastaKiiLA

Member
Honestly? The actor sounds like 95% spot on the English voice actor and plays him in every other way just about spot on. Best part of the show IMO. He's a tier above the Spike/Faye portrayals, and Vicious is just atrocious.
This. Jett was as close to nailed as you get in these sort of things. Voice, general appearance, and behavior were aced. Faye wasn't bad, honestly. I actually like live-action Faye more than anime Faye. Live-action Faye feels more authentic. Spike isn't bad, but is lacking some of the charisma/swagger of the anime character. The take doesn't throw me off though. He still works well with the other 2. I think they did great casting the crew.

Vicious, OTOH, is a dumpster-fire. Not menacing at all. I don't remember getting all this character development in the anime, but I don't think this has helped him at all.I remember Vicious being menacing and sinister, without a whole lot of talking. I don't remember him having this many scenes. I guess it's good to build the end boss out properly, but I don't like that he comes off this cowardly. Maybe I'm just forgetting the anime, because it's been so damn long, but I remember the character very differently today.
 

Kev Kev

Member
Anyway show sucks and Ed is already shockingly bad.
Great review 🤣 really top notch input lol

This. Jett was as close to nailed as you get in these sort of things. Voice, general appearance, and behavior were aced.
agreed. im convinced he watched at least enough of the show to get a good idea of how jett is supposed to act and talk (either that or he was coached very well by someone else who has seen the show). his body language, the cadence and rhythm of his speech and the inflection of his voice were all spot on.

and i was expecting to absolutely hate faye but she was hilarious (even if she got annoying at times). she was great, i loved her. although i dont think she was accurate compared to the show, but thats okay because i really enjoyed what she did, and she did capture the fiery/spicy side of faye.
 

Thaedolus

Member
This. Jett was as close to nailed as you get in these sort of things. Voice, general appearance, and behavior were aced. Faye wasn't bad, honestly. I actually like live-action Faye more than anime Faye. Live-action Faye feels more authentic. Spike isn't bad, but is lacking some of the charisma/swagger of the anime character. The take doesn't throw me off though. He still works well with the other 2. I think they did great casting the crew.

Vicious, OTOH, is a dumpster-fire. Not menacing at all. I don't remember getting all this character development in the anime, but I don't think this has helped him at all.I remember Vicious being menacing and sinister, without a whole lot of talking. I don't remember him having this many scenes. I guess it's good to build the end boss out properly, but I don't like that he comes off this cowardly. Maybe I'm just forgetting the anime, because it's been so damn long, but I remember the character very differently today.

You're not forgetting the anime, Vicious was totally different. Cold, dead eyes. Zero emotion and ruthless. The live action version is an insecure drama queen who nobody seems to respect. It's jarring how opposite he seems from the anime character. I don't blame the actor, he went all in on whatever the director wanted. But it's not a good change from the anime at all. Vicious in the anime seemed like someone to be feared, while the live action version deserves mockery.
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
Okay, I just finished the finale. Something...something didn't feel right. However, it's been over 20 years since I watched this. Maybe I can't remember right. So, I went back and skimmed a few anime episodes.

- Pierrot is just as awesome as I remembered it. Nothing like the live-action fight, which was terrible. Spike was so overmatched against Pierrot, it's not even funny. There was real fear the entire time. They whiffed horribly on that.

- Ed joins the crew way early in the anime. Not long after they find Ein, IIRC. I have no idea why they changed the order around here.

- Why oh why did they change Ballad of Fallen Angels? IMO, it was so much better with it just being Vicous and Spike, and Spike giving what he thought was the final fuck you to Vicious, as he falls from the window, with the amazing song going, and the flashbacks. That is easily Top 5 best scenes in anime history for me. Memorable to this day. It's iconic. If you're going to retell the anime story, and do lots of shot-for-shot stuff, including this scene, then you can't fuck with the structure of the scene. This was 1on1 between rivals. Julia had nothing to do with it at this point. Vicious was going to be fake going out on a pretty badass note. Now, we know for sure that he's alive, and he basically got punked by Julia, not Spike. When I think of CB, I think of that scene of Spike watching the window explode as he falls from it. This was the wrong scene to change in order to insert Julia more prominently. This is IMO, the best scene in the anime, so nerfing it the way they did means they better come hard with something much better next season, or this will end up being a massively wasted opportunity.

- Asimov's fight was also ruined. I remember watching the first fight and thinking, "wait...didn't he stare down a bullet?" That wild-eyed shot of him staring down from the window, as the last thing the assassin sees before dying, was fucking epic. I used to have the gif of that sequence as an avatar for years. I can't believe they didn't throw some CG at that job, because it was the first moment in the anime where I realized this shit was going to be good.

Otherwise, I'm fine with the series. I find it enjoyable, despite them butchering what were some epic fight scenes, and the aforementioned change to BoFA. Not sure how to feel about Ed's portrayal in the live action version, because I also found Ed to be annoying in the anime. Come at me Ed stans.
 

Shouta

Member
This. Jett was as close to nailed as you get in these sort of things. Voice, general appearance, and behavior were aced. Faye wasn't bad, honestly. I actually like live-action Faye more than anime Faye. Live-action Faye feels more authentic. Spike isn't bad, but is lacking some of the charisma/swagger of the anime character. The take doesn't throw me off though. He still works well with the other 2. I think they did great casting the crew.

Vicious, OTOH, is a dumpster-fire. Not menacing at all. I don't remember getting all this character development in the anime, but I don't think this has helped him at all.I remember Vicious being menacing and sinister, without a whole lot of talking. I don't remember him having this many scenes. I guess it's good to build the end boss out properly, but I don't like that he comes off this cowardly. Maybe I'm just forgetting the anime, because it's been so damn long, but I remember the character very differently today.

Damn, are you me? That's how I feel about the actors 4 eps in. I haven't gotten to the rest just yet but this is my assessment so far. Vicious is a dumpster fire both in casting and in portrayal in this. I don't necessarily dislike the concept of this Vicious but he comes off wholly as a whining wanker.
 


Fuck this quippy bullshit dialogue that is plaguing so many shows and movies nowadays.

This. I couldn't get past the first episode of this questionable show, that's how atrocious the dialogues are. Maybe I could get over the cringe costumes, cheap set designs, lame fights and wooden actors, but I just can't with the frikkin' dialogues man!
Is this supposed to sound badass nowadays or why do we have to suffer through this obnoxious 'yas queen slay' type of talk?

It ruins the mood, completely destroys any sense of seriousness and only results in more insufferable and unlikeable characters.
Who writes this crap? You can basically taste the spoiled bay area organic latte macchiato hipster between every line of dialogue.
 
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CGiRanger

Banned
This. I couldn't get past the first episode of this questionable show, that's how atrocious the dialogues are. Maybe I could get over the cringe costumes, cheap set designs, lame fights and wooden actors, but I just can't with the frikkin' dialogues man!
Is this supposed to sound badass nowadays or why do we have to suffer through this obnoxious 'yas queen slay' type of talk?

It ruins the mood, completely destroys any sense of seriousness and only results in more insufferable and unlikeable characters.
Who writes this crap? You can basically taste the spoiled bay area organic latte macchiato hipster between every line of dialogue.
I wholly contend again that Joss Whedon is hugely responsible for dumbing down scriptwriting and dialogue in film/media. Those influenced by the godawful "Buffy" dialogue are now the ones trying to write it themselves.
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
Just as I feared, it has made some people I know swear to never watch the original.

Good going, Netflix.
Those people are idiots, though. You don't get anime to live action adaptations if the source material is bad. AoT has had multiple awful live action films, but the anime is great.
 

.hacked

Member
I liked it, started out too similar to the anime. By the end it has diverted enough for me to really start to enjoy it as it’s own thing.

Jet Black was awesome, by far my fav part of show. Hope we get season 2 that gives us some new takes on other classic episodes.
 

Sgt.Asher

Member
Just got to the mad pierrot episode, all i could think of was the jump boots from the '93 mario bros movie. My god that shitty shadow fight.
If they were going to change so much for this adaptation, might as well remove the best episodes from the anime. That way when this falls flat on its face, people don't compare it to the best of bebop.
 

Atrus

Gold Member
Finally managed to finish the series. First off, I should point out that I didn’t find the anime Cowboy Bebop to be that great in the day, maybe in the 6-7 range but it was decent at the time.

This show on the other hand is unfortunately a pale imitation of that.

The folks who worked on the cg, costumes, sets, and even the actors did what they could with the terrible writing and direction (especially with how the fight scenes were shot).

I understand adapting the material for tv and budget, moving from a space prison to a earthbound shipyard and so on, but there were clear choices made to add depth to characters that just doesn’t work. Basically, they just regurgitated stories we’ve seen before and tried to pass that off as character development.

The divorced rogue cop who wants to connect with his family/daughter, the nightclub singer to kill and die for, or the gangster son with daddy issues and delusions of grandeur. You’ve seen it all before and it shoved its way into Cowboy Bebop so as to lower the quality of the story rather than raise it.

Spike and Jet were probably closest to their anime counterparts (with Jet being even more endearing than the anime one at times) but there are some real head scratchers.

Ed is written out. Ein is pretty much abandoned and… a cyborg? Faye is a Bi or Lesbian, foul-mouthed mercenary rather than a sly thief. Julia, Vicious, and Gren are nothing like their anime selves outside of superficial visual cues like the katana and hair colour.

You can see that people tried to make this show work but it just can’t overcome the poor writing and direction.
 
watched the first 3 episodes of this. it went from "well, I guess it's not... totally terrible?" to " WTF? did the writers even watched the original anime at all!?" Faye is wrong, Vicious is wrong, Spike is also kinda wrong. only half decent character is Jet. and this is not the problem of the actor as far as I can tell. it feels more like an issue of the writer's inability to write a proper story and dialog. there's no subtlety at all from what I can see, and throwing in the cursing feels really like them trying to make this "adult". however, that'll only work if they had used them accordingly instead of having them at all the time. and after looking up a few reviews, it seems like there's some ham fisted changes of stuff from the original in order to put some LGBT representation in there. I don't mind that if it's done right, but why are you changing some of the original characters to do that? just create a new character for that. and the sets are also all over the place in terms of quality. some look really good while other look barely better than some CW stuff. in any case, I think I'll just skip this and save my sanity.
 

CGiRanger

Banned
It's truly clockwork these days.

Announce Remake/Adaptation no one asked for -> Profusely claim that it will be "for the fans" -> Talk about "updating to a modern audience" -> Turns out fans hate the show -> Blame the fans/"You just don't get it" -> Claim it wasn't mean to be good to begin with (lol)
FE_c97JXIAcS8MQ
 
It's truly clockwork these days.

Announce Remake/Adaptation no one asked for -> Profusely claim that it will be "for the fans" -> Talk about "updating to a modern audience" -> Turns out fans hate the show -> Blame the fans/"You just don't get it" -> Claim it wasn't mean to be good to begin with (lol)
FE_c97JXIAcS8MQ
9d7m5uW.gif
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Just got to episode 5, maybe 6, the one with the mechanic. I tell yah, they missed a YUGE opportunity to bump the audience approval rating up about 30% :p
 
Finish.
Was not bad. Actually mostly of the reviews are good at start and bad later but for me was opposite.

awful start and then it gets good. Jet is spot on.

just the last 3 minutes of the last episode was pure crap. Everything else enjoyable
 
I feel like this will be another Star Wars situation. Disney planned on doing a bunch of movies after the sequel trilogy, but canceled them after the reception of The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker.

Netflix is planning a bunch of live-action adaptations of other cartoons, like Avatar, One Piece, and Yu Yu Hakusho, that will probably never see the light of day because of the criticism Cowboy Bebop is receiving. Even the creators of Avatar left the production of the live-action adaptation after seeing what Netflix was trying to do with their property, which doesn't bode well for the quality of that show either.
 
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