I haven’t finished the series yet but I’m a big fan of the original and I think they nailed it. So there! Take your negativity some other place.
Is it perfect? nope. But a great romp none the less.
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A cynic might say that, since people who “read the book” first always seem pissed at the movie, you should never read the book until you see the movie. That way you can go in order of (apparently) increasing pleasure.
For things like this, most complaints come down to “it’s not the same show, because it’s not the same format, and it couldn’t be even if it wanted to be.” Movies cannot do a novel justice: they can approach a short story at best, assuming the short story is one where the writer only cares to describe some set of actions happening. TV shows can either be cheap an long-lived (which mostly means that each episode is a collection of shots of talking heads), or pricey and dense. Chekhov can’t afford the luxury of a gun. It’s a pocket knife. And that knife needs to earn its keep by jimmying the lock to the secret layer, be the necessary tool to escape the death trap, be revealed as a sentimental keepsake from his estranged father, and be used to kill that father in the finale. This was dense, live-action TV Cowboy Bebop, and it was fine.
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I enjoyed the live action Cowboy Bebop quite a lot. There are some really fun performances by good actors who throw themselves into fantastical characters and situations. The overall design of the show was really sharp, and the music, MWAAAH! Disappointed no season two.
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Am I the only one that having read the book Howl’s Moving Castle when I was younger, and then later having seen the anime movie found the changes to some of the characters and plot points very jarring? Like mentioned in the YouTube video the move felt like a very well produced fan movie and not a direct adaptation of the book to animation.
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I loved both the anime and the live action. Different mediums mean different choices, get over it. We can’t have nice things because of people going out of their way to hate on something and then put effort into making sure that opinion is amplified. Didn’t like it? Watch something else and move on.
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I’m probably remembering a few points wrong, but from my recollection of the backstory for the original: While humans started colonizing and terraforming other planets in the solar system an accident with the hyperspace gate near the moon resulted in the moon fracturing and parts of it raining down on Earth. This resulted in mass evacuations, some to colonized planets, and many to refuge camps set up on moons and asteroids. Tijuana in space is essentially the refuge camp from the evacuation of the same city on Earth that has grown into a settlement. The presumption being that they would rebuild the city they knew.
The carbon copy of classic cars does not make a ton of sense, but the regression to lower tech level vehicles probably does make sense in the context of a 1989 series. Simpler electro-mechanical controls are easier to build an maintain than modern highly precise computer controlled engines. From a modern point of view I don’t think it makes more sense to assume that sourcing fossil (or bio) fuels for an internal combustion engine would be easier than sourcing the rare-earth elements needed for an efficient electric engine.
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Anime isn’t a “genre.”
Noir detective stories are a genre.
Period war dramas are a genre.
Sci Fi space operas are a genre.
Magical fantasy adventure epics are a genre.
Family musicals about anthropomorphic singing animals are a genre.
Anime is a broad term describing a style of animation that can be used to tell stories in any and all of those genres.
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You are absolutely entitled to your opinions because they are your own, fair, and shared in a reasonable manner. However, I have a nitpick about this:
Anime is a medium, not a genre. Within it you will find many genres. You’ll also find many tropes, especially within the most popular things that come out of Japan. If you’re not really into it, yes, the whole mass of it can look samey and things can be boring. I’d say there’s an anime for everyone if they’re willing to look, but I also don’t think it’s a big deal if you don’t want to look (so long as you’re not poop in the punch bowl for everyone else).
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I’m gen x. I got into anime. I love Akira and Howl’s moving castle. I tried watching Cowboy bebop at the time. I couldn’t get into it at all. Maybe I didn’t give it a chance but something just turned me off and I never finished a full episode.
I watched the live action. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I’m sad they didn’t pick it up for a second season. Conversely I read Locke and Key and while the live action series disappointed me I still enjoyed it. I was surprised it got a season 2 (and season 3?). I wouldn’t have been disappointed if it ended with season 1 though.
I guess if the opportunity arises to watch the original Cowboy Bebop, I’ll give it another attempt. Still for me the pinnacle of animation is Serial Experiments Lain (or Spirited Away but Ghibli is a category of its own).
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Wow, what a hot take. The reviewer unconsciously puts his extremely rigid biases on display with nearly every word. He could just cut almost an hour off the video by just saying, “I don’t like it. Nyeaah!” and not lose any valuable criticism.
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It’s a good thing that nobody has previously attempted that. No, that didn’t happen.
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O_O
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, period… even if those opinions have none of those aforementioned attributes.
Agreed, absolutely it isn’t; like you said, it’s a style of rendering animation, which is used in many different kinds of genres.
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An important point to stress, since you don’t want parents confusing Ghibli for Bible Black.
…Though also a trap I fall into when I say “I don’t like anime anymore” when what I really mean is “I don’t like the lazy adaptations and derivative plots of the evening and late-night anime of the sci-fi, fantasy, and high school drama genres I used to like.”
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There is no avatar movie in Ba Sing Se.
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episode 5(?) where it centers on him, and is spot on perfect detective noir: so good.
maybe they’re just canceling the show so he can have his own space noir series. 
honestly, while the cg itself was mostly pretty good - the compositing and lighting was terrible. it made it feel to me like an old dvd rom game.
i think the scope of the thing must have been just too much for their budget. probably also explains things like the cars @Otherbrother mentioned
the best looking parts imo are all where they were able to have real world practical sets.
maybe that’s easier to do with fantasy? because shows like the witcher and shadow and bone have looked great all throughout
( edit: to be clear. i really liked the show. my only real gripe was ed’s character at the end. and even with that, i was very much looking forward to more! )
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I loved the cars, especially that particular era Camaro because it nails a particular vibe. I felt it a surreal impressionistic thing rather than worrying about how did that get there.
I’m bummed about the cancellation. I enjoyed the animated as well as this one, and the live action got my wife to watch, she prefers not to watch “cartoons”, but now I can probably get her to watch the anime. (eta: this also worked with Ghost in the Shell, I really didn’t want to watch the live movie but as a plus it got her into the story so she wanted to watch the anime movie which she had always previously declined)
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I feel that they could have achieved the same vibe with just slightly altered, retro looking vehicles that were heavy inspired/based upon old cars, but that had a different drivetrain technology or something to at least give a nod to the idea that this is happening on a space colony in the future, even if it is a well lived-in and not particularly luxurious future. Star Wars usually handles that reasonably well. But I’m sure that would have made the production cost more.
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Absolutely all I need to know to just completely ignore the whole thing and never watch it is that (or so I deduce from screenshots) they changed the Betamax tape to a VHS.
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I’m mostly here to say that I find Mother’s Basement to be about the most basic of basic anime takes on the internet to an exceedingly boring degree despite being able to present it well. It’s basically never going to deviate from sorting by hot on an anime subreddit though.
I watched about half the Cowboy Bebop live action, and had I not watched the anime it would have been quite enjoyable as a science fiction show with fun characters and awkward action shots. The problem is that it’s a remake of a show with outstanding artwork, action, and direction that suffers from being indulgent in some of the lamest anime/hollywood tropes. The live action improved Faye a lot in the way she integrates into the show, and while the divorced dad thing didn’t work for me with Jet I didn’t hate it and Mustafa Shakir was amazing in the role. At this point we all know dangerous white haired sword boys are lame in real life compared to video games and anime so Viscous had no hope… but that whole expansion was still lame.
7/10, will finish eventually and there is much much worse out there especially as sci fi
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