In the bold LED text, the word “PORN” airs itself behind a rooftop fight scene from the beginning Netflix‘s new live-action Cowboy Bebop—Text a letter in a different color and shape, like a clip from a teen fashion magazine, or a hostage letter. The sign is slanted, glare and clear, against some architectural features, but Spike, Cowboy BebopThe protagonist is a sci-fi bounty hunter, never admitting it. In fact, it seemed there was no one to acknowledge — unrecognizable to visitors to the building below or to the spaceships flying above. “PORN” is there for the camera, and the camera haunts it.
It’s hard to say Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop Break the fourth wall. Certainly, as a live-action adaptation, it has to be — a certain amount of self-awareness is needed to move a hit anime classic into the third dimension. If it didn’t accept the frothy accumulation of 23 years of fandom, the show would look detached. So nod your head. It recreates the famous intro backed by jazz music. The actors do their best to voice over copied and pasted lines from the anime, but with extra verve. At one point, Faye Valentine specifically said the phrase “I won’t carry that weight,” a throwback to the original series’ melancholy ending scene: “You’ll carry that weight.”
However, as a translation project, Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop unsuccessful. In fact, it may fail to be so many of its easiest descriptors: an adaptation, a re-imagining, an expression. What Cowboy Bebop is, down to its cyberpunk hammy signage and the fingernails of its cheap-looking sets, it’s a show. To whom, it is not entirely clear. But at times in reputable media, when the audience is certain, the “PORN” sign will always remain in place.
Cowboy Bebop considered the northern star of the anime, an absolutely unquestionable “favorite” for dabblers and heads alike. It features the characters of a film noir, the action sequences of Jackie Chan, the music of a New York jazz club, and the superstructure of a space opera. And because it’s episodic and not plot-driven, Cowboy Bebop evade the classic anime’s pitfalls of influencing moments behind dozens of sub-episodes. Everyone loves it, because it’s good and because it’s for everyone.
Announced in 2017, Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop will always disappoint fans of the original anime. There is no way around it; This bar is the stratosphere, raised higher by the infinity of the animated environment. Generally speaking, live-action anime adaptations have long failed to build the heart of their original anime. (See: Fullmetal Alchemist, Ghost in the shell, Death Note). A large and convincing team of otaku would argue that it is simply impossible to adapt an art form, especially sci-fi anime, into live-action without a sense of interpretation.
The first trailer and trailer pointed out Cowboy Bebop would at least be an homage to its wide-brushed portraits of its finest scenes. And luckily, host André Nemec, known for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, choose the right people: John Cho as Spike Spiegel, Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine and Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black. (The show’s standout performances come from Elena Satine and Alex Hassell, playing Julia and Vicious, respectively — even the most ardent characters. Cowboy Bebop fans will admit it’s underutilized.) Describing the anime as a “road map” in an interview at last week’s RE:WIRED conference, Nemec further explained that Cowboy Bebop “Present an optimistic view of the future that must be cross-cultural and gender-flexible.”
