Netflix has done a great job transferring Cowboy Bebop to live-action, visually, it is stunning, casting and dialogue feel spot on and they have the flippant attitude that made the anime great down to a tee, maybe improved on it a tad, but what is missing will be obvious to fans of the original.
Behind Bebop's wisecracks and stylish jazz-infused presentation is film noir/ pulp fiction done really well (think frank Miller's Sin City). In each episode of the anime, the little guy, the common man gets the short end of the stick, crushed between a rock and a hard place, all the characters, especially each episode's guest characters live on borrowed time and eventually their luck runs out. In the anime, this dynamic produces a regular feeling of bittersweet dissatisfaction, with the live-action I expected that feeling to be more intense and a storytelling strength to be leaned into.
We can't help it, most of us make bad decisions in spite of our best intentions, and we often can't change course with our behaviors, the result is often disappointing but benign, an unwritten book, a dream that isn't achieved......but sometimes the result is more tragic. Cowboy Bebop's bounty hunters occupy a space where they deal with a lot more tragedy than hope and much of it is self-inflicted, an environment of fuck ups and nihilism.
With this adaptation, the sadness, loneliness, and futility aren't quite there but this version is fun, I am enjoying it, unfortunately, the heartache and feeling of impending tragedy in most episodes were half the original show's charm unfortunately. We all have to carry that weight, the weight of existing.....until we don't.
