Despite the initial hype, many viewers feel that Netflix's live-action version of not as good as the original Cowboy Bebop anime, making many of the same mistakes which have repeatedly plagued modern adaptations. The show's creators focus heavily on reproducing the aesthetics of the original, but is considered by many to have failed to capture the feel of the original anime.
The original Cowboy Bebop was always going to be a difficult act to follow. Widely considered to be one of the best anime series ever made, its huge cultural impact and devoted fanbase persist despite the original being released over 23 years ago. Much like the musical genre it's named after, the anime has a chaotic and discordant feel, with an eclectic mixture of genre styles and pastiches that clash almost as sharply as the characters' personalities — but also like actual bebop, these clashes are what makes the story work.
Unfortunately, The Last Airbender, given how the show pays such careful attention to aesthetics while suffering from characterization problems and cumbersome exposition.
The Cowboy Bebop Remake Says Less With More
One thing which makes the anime series so compelling is how much is always left unsaid, or up to the viewer to interpret. The characters are deeply uncomfortable talking about their pasts, and become evasive or confrontational if pushed for details. This makes Inception.
Netflix's Cowboy Bebop fails at building this kind of mystery into the story by giving away too much too soon, with each character revealing their backstory as soon as possible through dialogue. The character introductions lead with exposition, using dialogue to tell viewers that Jet used to be a cop, Spike used to be a gangster and, most egregiously, Faye quite literally slaps her entire backstory down onto a table in front of the camera. This removes any mystery and weakens the emotional impact of any reveals in later episodes.
This leaves the episodes feeling somehow rushed and more spacious at the same time. Where the anime had 25-minute episodes, each live-action episode is 40 minutes long. This gives writers the opportunity to develop things that the original series simply doesn't have time for. With such a short runtime, each anime episode feels very streamlined, but there are also moments where they feel slightly rushed. Some characters' mysteries are left unresolved. Some confrontations feel like they finish too soon. Some mysteries are solved a little too quickly. With nearly double the runtime, writers could have built on the nuance and subtlety which keeps an audience invested. Disappointingly though, the writers of the Netflix series fail to do so. The show ends up explaining too much too soon, and feels like it doesn't have enough to say later on.
Netflix's Cowboy Bebop Adds Details in the Wrong Places
The other big problem which modern adaptations make frequently is heavy-handedly adding story elements that didn't exist in the source material. Done carefully, this can enrich the entire viewing experience, adding depth and nuance to both the characters and the world they inhabit. However, the sad truth is that adaptations seldom do this well. Disney's live-action remakes are frequently guilty of this. The writers of Disney's Mulan remake attempted to enrich the worldbuilding and add extra characters, but this resulted in a story that completely robbed Mulan of her most compelling traits. Similarly, the Hobbit trilogy attempted to explore several of its characters in greater depth, adding backstory and lore, but failed to properly integrate those elements into the story being told. The result is that these movies end up feeling dilute, drawing the audience's attention away from the emotional core of the story.
This same problem is a major stumbling block for Netflix's Cowboy Bebop. Adding in a whole storyline for Vicious allows the writers to explore his character but it also removes all of his menace. Vicious was a more threatening character when he was a mystery with unclear motives. Explaining Faye's backstory too early gives writers a chance to give her a deeper character study, as a woman with no past. But the side effect is that the live-action version of Faye is an entirely different character with a different dynamic within the group.
Making changes during adaptations is, of course, unavoidable. Particularly when translating a work from one medium to another, creators will always need to make alterations, and those alterations should not be criticisms in and of themselves. Animation and live-action have different strengths, and older stories will always need some amount of adjustment, removing outdated or problematic elements. Taking the time to elaborate on things that were underdeveloped in the source material can also dramatically improve the story. more depth to Boromir's character and making him one of the most memorable parts of the entire movie trilogy. But this kind of thing requires care, attention, and, above all else, a good understanding of the story being adapted.
This is not to say that the live-action adaptation is all bad. There are plenty of elements that work very well. Visually, the show does a good job of capturing the atmosphere of the original. Mustafa Shakir is excellently cast as Jet Black - notable as the only character who genuinely feels like their anime counterpart - and Spike and Jet have much more interaction in the Netflix show. The changes to Julia's story make her character a lot more interesting than the original, where she didn't have a lot of agency. The disappointment isn't that this show was destined to be bad, but that it had the potential to excel. If the writing had done more to preserve the appeal of the original, this show could've been spectacular.
Overall, the Netflix version of Cowboy Bebop is entertaining enough to watch, but still finds itself in the shadow of the original it tries to adapt. Perhaps therein lies the real problem. If this had been a brand new story that was heavily influenced by Cowboy Bebop, it probably wouldn't have received such negative reviews. Unfortunately, any adaptation will always invite comparison with the original and, especially with the original Cowboy Bebop being so iconic, any wasted potential will always be on full display. The best way to change that would be for future writers to learn from the mistakes made adaptations like this one.