Just finished it.
The Good
Mustafa as Jet Black was absolute PERFECTION. Dude even sounded so much like the Anime voice actor I could close my eyes and think I was rewatching the damn Anime. He killed the mannerisms of Jet too.
John Cho did a good job of making his interpretation of Spike his OWN. He didn’t try to copy the effortless cool of the anime spike but he did bring his own swagger and confidence to the role.
The cinematography was dope. They did a good job bringing the world of Cowboy Bebop to life.
The soundtrack was AMAZING. Yoko Kanno can do NO wrong.
The Bad
The writers and directors didn’t get the “tone” of the anime right. They leaned wayyyyyy too heavy into the comedic aspects of the anime so that when you get to the last two episodes where the dramatic elements are really supposed to kick in they oftentimes felt flat and unconvincing. I mean its almost EMBARRASSING how they dropped the ball on the tonal shifts that the anime excelled at.
Trying to give Julia and Vicious meatier backstories…I get it. I really do. But the execution was mostly terrible. The actor who played Vicious was trying his HARDEST to give Vicious some layers and I give him credit for it but the writing let him down. The character was fukking awful except for episode 9 when they went into the backstory of Spike and Vicious and Julia. He came alive then but by that point it was too late.
Julia didn’t fair much better. There was literally NOTHING about her that I believed would make Vicious fall desperately in love with her or Spike obsess over her. There was no mystique. No cunning. No femme fatale seduction. No real intelligence or strength of character. She was just some bimbo singer who could (barely) carry a tune. The actress was miscast and the writing and the direction they took Julia was unbelievable, cliche, and unexciting. They would have done better of sticking to the anime and having her on the run and then give her a stand alone episode showing her adventures on the lam for three years.
They did the same thing to Faye. Reduced her to bad comic relief and a forced sex scene that felt very much “thrown in there” for the hell of it. I agree with the showrunner’s decision to tone down the character’s skimpy clothing, but they didn’t have to COMPLETELY strip the character of her sex APPEAL because thats part of what made her dangerous. I got tired of her after the millionth time she called Spike or Jet a “dikkwad”. She was another character who had absolutely NO LAYERS whatsoever.
Ed- What the fukk was that?!?!!?! Her minute of screen time just screamed “Cheap Cosplay”. It was bad bad BAD. Everything ABOUT it was bad. Truly terrible scene to end on and an AWFUL introduction to the character.
Overall I feel all the characters suffered from bad writing and the decision of the showrunners to lean too heavily into the comedic aspects of the series. There was no levity, no moments of reflection, no real lessons learned. These are things the anime excelled at. It gave the characters depth BEYOND their snarky personalities and cool demeanors. These renditions of the characters, besides Mustafa’s Jet, lack any depth. They are not fully realized people. I didn’t believe Spike when he’s looking at Julia for the first time in THREE YEARS and says “I thought about you every day”. I didn’t believe Faye when she says finding out about her past means everything to her. I didn’t believe Vicious when he screams at Spike “YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE MY BROTHER!”.
I only believed that Jet truly loved his daughter (and they even fukked that up in the end) and that Spike, Jet, and Faye had indeed created a sort of “family” by episode 8. The chemistry between the trio was there. It just wasn’t mined properly.
All in all it was a mildly entertaining distraction completely devoid of the heart of what made the anime so compelling and special. Cho, Mustafa, Pineda, and Hassell all gave their very best efforts but the writing team let them down HORRIBLY. The female characters plus Vicious get it the worse because in trying to update their characterizations, they completely stripped away what made them compelling in the first place. Faye Valentine doesn’t NEED sexy clothing to be interesting. But she needs something other than unfunny jokes and punchlines. Julia doesn’t NEED to be the little more than a prize for two men to fight over, but she also could still carry an aura of mystery and danger to her that suggests there’s something more to her than just “the bad guy’s girl”.
I’m going to give this first season a generous 6/10 because of the music, cinematography, fight scenes, and Mustafa’s masterful performance as Jet. They need to replace the writers if they are going to do season 2 and recast Julia and the godawful whoever the fukk that was playing Ed.
