‘Cowboy Bebop’ is a decent adaptation of a great anime

Posted on December 10, 2021

By MARK VIOLA

During the 10 to 15 years I was really into Japanese anime, I probably watched somewhere around 80 or so series. Of them all, one still stands atop the rest: 1998’s “Cowboy Bebop” from director Shinichirô Watanabe.

Reportedly, the only guidance Watanabe was given when developing the show was that it needed to have spaceships in it so partner company Bandai could sell model kits. The show does indeed have spaceships, but it has so much more, creating a jazzy sci-fi world where bounty hunters chase criminals through the colonized planets and moons of the solar system, trying to earn enough money to have the fuel to take the next job.

The crew we follow in “Cowboy Bebop” at first includes Spike Spiegel (voiced in the English dub by Steve Blum), a former member of a criminal syndicate who left his old life behind in a shower of blood, and Jet Black (Beau Billingslea), a former cop who lost his arm and now chases bounties on his ship, the Bebop. Along the way, the duo is joined by the Welsh corgi, Ein, an amnesiac hustler named Faye Valentine (Wendee Lee) and a 12-year-old spastic computer hacker who calls herself Ed (Melissa Fahn).

Not only was “Cowboy Bebop” my favorite anime of all time, it would rank right near the top of a list of my favorite televisions series — animated or live action. Fans of the short-lived “Firefly” series owe a hearty thanks to “Cowboy Bebop,” which clearly influenced the look and style of that show.

This past September marked my 15th anniversary writing movie — and occasionally television — reviews, and I’ve never found a good reason to give you my thoughts on this now 23-year-old anime. But, thanks to Netflix, which recently debuted a live-action adaptation of “Cowboy Bebop,” I finally do.

U.S. studios don’t really have a great track record adapting Japanese anime into live-action films, and while I enjoyed 2017’s “Ghost in the Shell” more than a lot of people did, the stench left behind by 2009’s “Dragonball Evolution” and Netflix’s 2017 adaptation of “Death Note” will take a long time to clear out.

Although a commendable marketing campaign for the new live-action “Cowboy Bebop” kept me intrigued, I also managed to keep my expectations quite low, because I frankly had no reason to be optimistic.

Fortunately, the new show is not the total abomination that I was fearing it would be and some early reviews were declaring it was. It definitely has its flaws, and I still prefer the original anime in almost every regard, but there’s actually quite a lot to enjoy in the live-action adaptation.

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