The production design is colorful and CGI-heavy, with neon-hued opening credits that imitate the series’s predecessor (complete with Kanno’s “Tank!” theme) artificial-looking spaceship exteriors and skylines and an array of visual details that pulls from Japanese, Latin American, and Middle Eastern cultures. The musical cues are brassy, jazzy, and often directly evocative of the original, thanks to the return of Cowboy Bebop composer Yoko Kanno. Nemec, his writing team (including veterans from Lost in Space, Sons of Anarchy, Thor: Ragnarok, and Lost), and directors Alex Garcia Lopez and Michael Katleman (who split the first season) go the route of extrapolation and expansion. The first ten episodes of Cowboy Bebop, arriving on Netflix on November 19, straddle that too-close/not-close-enough line. Adaptations are always a tricky business: strictly imitate the source material and be accused of a lack of creativity veer too far away from what is perceived as the original’s soul, rhythms, or vibe, and be accused of missing the point. It wasn’t all a dream, as Cowboy Bebop’s Julia would muse, but a slow swell of popularity and praise building into a crashing wave of nearly universal acclaim.Īll of which is to say that showrunner André Nemec has a long legacy to honor with Cowboy Bebop - and that his level of success varies. As anime became more mainstream in the United States, in part because of Cowboy Bebop, the show’s appearance on best-of-TV lists and growing presence on streaming services drew in more viewers - creating its own kind of ouroboros loop. The Cowboy Bebop universe expanded into printed form with different manga editions in the late ’90s. Its 26 episodes and the 2001 movie Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door have been dissected, screenshotted, and GIFed. The animated series, first a hit in Japan in 1998 and then an anime gateway for American viewers when it aired on Cartoon Network’s freshly launched Adult Swim block in 2001, has reached rarified cult-classic status. With his soft eyes and firm voice, he has the unique ability to ground an absurd premise but also rise to its ludicrous demands, and his duality is the most rewarding component of the uneven, much-awaited Netflix adaptation of Cowboy Bebop. Consider the films that became commercial or critical hits (the Harold & Kumar franchise, Searching, Columbus) and the collection of TV series canceled too soon ( FlashForward, Selfie, Go On, The Exorcist) - none of them suffered because of Cho. John Cho’s unassuming magnetism is simultaneously well-established and underappreciated in his time. Spike Spiegel (John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda), and Ein the corgi all make the jump to live action with ease.
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