Wait wha? Ok... that was stupid, just read the wiki, but other than crit, I mean really? I thought it was good for what it was I mean you can do what you can do in anime at all, it just isnt possible....but for a live action type of one I thought it was perfect, and you establish characters in the first season, and get more into the live aspect of what the chars are when you start over from the beginning like they did. Screw the critics seriously.
Honestly if it wasent for my choice of netflix movies/tv series(oddly that isnt anime), I would have never known it was even on there. Even the actors were good and getting their footing and such. Could it have been better? yes, but every series can be, especially in their first season when they are trying to find their footing and even keel in knowing what is possible and what isnt.
I hope they do bring it back and ignore the idiots who wanted it gone.
I agree. I've been a huge fan of the original anime since it first came out. It's up there as one of my favourite shows of all time. And I really enjoyed the live action. I thought John Cho, Mustafa Shakir and Daniella Pineda were all exceptionally good and captured the key aspects of the anime characters perfectly, within the context of the new show. And I thought Eden Perkins (even in the tiny glimpse we had of them in the final moments) absolutely *******
nailed Ed! SO good, physically and vocally! Just perfect. The secondary cast were all great with one glaring exception (see below). The sets designs, ambience and special effects were all top notch. Mostly, the vibe was perfect too - I loved all the noir references and the jazz aesthetic. I also thought
most of the changes they made to the existing plots, and they way they integrated 'existing' points of reference into the various 'new' plotlines was clever. Mostly. So far so good, and I ceetainly enjoyed it enough to really want a second series.
The one BIG thing that didn't work for me was the foregrounding of the Spike/Julia/Vicious stuff. I thought that was a huge mistake. I can see why they did it - to make it drive real-time relevance and jeopardy in the present day and to give Julia and Vicious more active roles - but it works so much better as the almost abstract haunting from the past that it is in most of the original anime. There's a melancholic quality to Bebop that comes from the three leads being unable to move on from their pasts and trapped in limbo. Bringing that past into the present gives them agency to change things that they shouldn't have if you want to keep that feeling.
That was made worse by two things. I disliked them making Julia betray Spike and turn into the villain at the end. I thought that was wrong for the character and for the show. Regretting a lost love who died is one thing. Regretting a lost love who went bad and shot you out of a window is quite another, and it weakens Spike's entire character arc going forward. And the actor who played Vicious was a) physically totally miscast and b) an absolutely terrible actor! Vicious may be many things but a hulking. beetle-browed, lantern-jawed brute he is
not! I very rapidly grew weary of his mugging and gurning. Everyone else was so subtle and nuanced, and then suddenly every time he was on screen it was amateur hour. Truly terrible. The guy who played Asimov in the first episode would have been a much better Vicious IMO.
That said, I'd have been very happy to see the adventures continue. I think the addition of Ed would have been brilliant. I really wanted to see what they'd do with 'Mushroom Samba' and 'Toys In The Attic'! And I'd like to have seen their take of Hard Luck Woman too. But, as seems all too common nowadays, even before it opened there was a hugely vocal bunch of toxic 'fans' rage-spewing all over the internet, sending death threats to anyone involved (over a single photo in some cases), downvoting every mention of it anywhere, and drowning out any positive voice. So a head of negativity had built up which it was always going to struggle to overcome. Add to that a fairly so-so critical reaction, and the verdict on the show's viability was inevitable really. A great pity.
I feel really sorry for the cast and the crew, though, who worked really hard on it, and from a place of love and respect. They deserved better.
At least we'll always have the original, though. There's that.
