Netflix Cowboy Bebop

I enjoyed the show and would have easily watched a second season. I wonder if the cancellation has anything to do with the passing of the anime's original writer?
 
I’ve seen little to no talk around here about this one, but I’m really frustrated by the cancellation. Anybody else who watched and shares my disappointment?
Like you, I'm saddened and dismayed by the cancellation. I posted this earlier on the 'cell phone/communicators' thread in the 'Replica Props' forum.

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, 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.
 
I enjoyed the show and would have easily watched a second season. I wonder if the cancellation has anything to do with the passing of the anime's original writer?

Very unlikely, I would have thought. I suspect it was a purely commercial decision on the part of Netflix. Keiko Nobumoto's early passing is a terrible shame, though, and very sad. Her episodes of the original anime series are some of my absolute favourites. She was a producer on the live action, but I don't know how much actual creative input she would have had, and I wouldn't have thought that her untimely death would have had an effect on the cancellation.
 
Well, the cast and crew were pretty toxic themselves especially the actress playing Faye who posted that snarky video (which she later removed) in response to legitimate criticisms from fans.
I feel really sorry for the cast and the crew, 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.
I have to respectfully disagree. I don't think they came from a place of love and respect at all. Too many changes were made to the characters and too much of the writers' own biases found their way into the script. The only goal should've been staying as true to the original as possible otherwise don't make the show.

But there is still the original like you said and I think most anime work better as just that. Don't even bother trying to make it live action.
 
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For me I think part of it is Netflix’s binge model coming to a head and creating problems. Love it or not a show like The Mandalorian becomes much more of an event in people’s households than something that is dumped all at once. You don’t have time between episodes to talk or speculate, or suggest that people watch it. It’s just THERE. Which to me leads people to watching a couple episodes and then forgetting as the next thing gets dumped.

Also, I hate this trend of shows not getting a chance to grow and learn what was well received and what wasn’t. Season 2 of a show like this could have course corrected and really led to greatness. Instead we’ve got another dead end property and waste of potential. It seems in a way that TV can’t be fun or quirky now, it has to be an instant mega hit and a lot of times tinged with grimdark angsty characters. I could care less about Squid Game, but now it’s the Netflix darling and if another show doesn’t match the numbers then it’s dead.
 
I honestly couldn’t connect with it, made it to episode 4 and kind of lost interest

Beautiful scenes, and it looked like a ton of practical effects/props

Just couldn’t connect
 
I honestly couldn’t connect with it, made it to episode 4 and kind of lost interest

Beautiful scenes, and it looked like a ton of practical effects/props

Just couldn’t connect
Which is fair, surely not everything is for everyone, I’m just frustrated with how these metrics work surrounding viewership. Some of these old sci-fi shows like Babylon 5, or Farscape would never have gotten the runs they did in a market like this. But please Netflix make yet another season of Stranger Things.
 
Which is fair, surely not everything is for everyone, I’m just frustrated with how these metrics work surrounding viewership. Some of these old sci-fi shows like Babylon 5, or Farscape would never have gotten the runs they did in a market like this. But please Netflix make yet another season of Stranger Things.
I’m a huge stranger things fan, last season left me like “whhhhhat”.. didn’t feel it either

I know how you feel though, I was super excited for dark crystal, and loved it! Then sadly Netflix didn’t re new it..

The money spent on the props, puppets and worlds made.. what a shame..

I can’t imagine bebop being cheap either.. a lot of the sets were amazing, and like I said the air planes, the interior space ships.. was beautiful
 
I’m a huge stranger things fan, last season left me like “whhhhhat”.. didn’t feel it either

I know how you feel though, I was super excited for dark crystal, and loved it! Then sadly Netflix didn’t re new it..

The money spent on the props, puppets and worlds made.. what a shame..

I can’t imagine bebop being cheap either.. a lot of the sets were amazing, and like I said the air planes, the interior space ships.. was beautiful

Completely agree on the Dark Crystal revival. One of the most beautifully imaginative and creative things I've seen in years. Just as good as the original film, which is one of my all time favourites. I absolutely loved it, and I was gutted when they didn't renew it. :confused:

At least we know that Arcane is getting a second season... so occasionally something of real quality does get the recognition it deserves.
 
I definitely think the die hard fans of the anime killed the pre-release buzz. I get that the show isn’t perfect, but it deserves some room to breathe and grow. I wonder if it would be more popular had they made it more of an “inspired by” take and just done monster of the week episodes with various bounties. Although that format again suffers with the binge model.
 
I'm only through ep 9, but I have many mixed feelings.

I like the look, I'm actually surprised how accurate the sets and ships are, and I don't mind that they aren't line-by-line adaptations of the source material. They're closer than expected, actually. Faye is cast, clothed, written and performed differently, but I don't dislike this Faye and can go with it. And keeping the same music stylings is a plus.

Sometimes the tone is way too goofy, and it makes the mistake of letting the actors KNOW it's a goofy scene so they ham it up inappropriately. Like the very first scene in ep1. (Example: Abrahams and the Zuckers insisted, for the most part, that the acting be played straight in Airplane!, and that's a huge reason why the movie works so well.) Tanaka seems to think he's in the Speed Racer movie or something. It's just too much. Also, the music is mixed way too low in that scene. We know what machine guns sound like, let the music do some of the work.

At other times the tone is way too dark and grisly. The Red Eye lab workers: nude and their eyes/mouths sewn up? Oookay. And okay, Vicious is a sicko and gets off on killing them, I get it. But the score is so lively it's like they want US to get off on it. It's really icky. Similarly, the S&M brothel. I would imagine those who are really into that stuff wouldn't be too crazy being made fun of, and from the other point of view, it was (like the lab workers) weirdness for the sake of it. It didn't serve a purpose.

I can be a foul mouth myself, but I find the profanity rather gratuitous. That, and occasional subject matter of conversation: I'm okay with a ball shaving conversation in a Tarantino film, but here?

I didn't need all the filling in the blanks they're doing. I don't need Jet to have a kid, I don't need to see much of Spike's Syndicate history.

And they wait until Ep 9 to show a flashback to Vicious' history with his dad? Wouldn't that have worked better earlier in the season, like before the episode where he killed him? Getting context for something several episodes later does not work.

And they just abandon Ein? Really?!

But the worst part is Vicious, both how he's written but especially how he's directed and performed. It is SO much cringe. Just terrible.

It's a little sad it wasn't renewed, but not much.
 
I definitely think the die hard fans of the anime killed the pre-release buzz. I get that the show isn’t perfect, but it deserves some room to breathe and grow. I wonder if it would be more popular had they made it more of an “inspired by” take and just done monster of the week episodes with various bounties. Although that format again suffers with the binge model.
There was very definitely a concerted effort by some ‘fans’ to kill the live action show before it even opened. I left the Cowboy Bebop sub-reddit for a while as it became way too toxic to be fun anymore. Every new photo or interview or clip was greeted with a deluge of negativity all out of proportion to what was being shown. Lots of gatekeeping too - you couldn’t possibly be a ‘true fan’ if you showed any positivity or hope for it. There's this desperate desire to ‘win’ at all costs, as if those with a slightly different opinion are an opposing team. Some people seem to think that if they personally aren’t interested in something it must be wiped from the face of the earth so that no-one else can watch it. Even now, the CB sub-reddit is 50% posts filled with triumphant gloating by the ‘winners’, glorying in the disappointment of those of us who were quietly enjoying the show. ‘Fandom’ at its very worst.
 
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There was very definitely a concerted effort by some ‘fans’ to kill the live action show before it even opened. I left the Cowboy Bebop sub-reddit for a while as it became way too toxic to be fun anymore. Every new photo or interview or clip was greeted with a deluge of negativity all out of proportion to what was being shown. Lots of gatekeeping too - you couldn’t possibly be a ‘true fan’ if you showed any positivity or hope for it. There's this desperate desire to ‘win’ at all costs, as if those with a slightly different opinion are an opposing team. Some people seem to think that if they personally aren’t interested in something it must be wiped from the face of the earth so that no-one else can watch it. Even now, the CB sub-reddit is 50% posts filled with triumphant gloating by the ‘winners’, glorying in the disappointment of those of us who were quietly enjoying the show. ‘Fandom’ at its very worst.
I don't know about that. I was a big fan of the original and have been (slowly) watching this version and I didn't think that it was all that great. I felt like that it couldn't decide whether or not it wanted to be a faithful adaptation of the anime or be its own thing. Some things were done right, like Faye, minus the costume, but overall it felt flat to me like they were trying too hard. Neither Jet nor Spike has really connected with me so far and the location sets feel too present day Earth to me. I realize that they're often on planets or moons with environmental domes, but it felt like that they really were in that kind of environment.

I'll finish watching it, eventually, but I'm not exactly sad that it got canceled.
 
Bumping up an old thread here, I actually worked on the show, I was also in it as an extra, here's my cameo in the show, I was also standing directly behind spike in a couple shots too, mainly when the camera is over behind the bar, but the camera crops it out there, they also changed my part from being an action extra, since I was not tall enough to be knocked over by Hakim, but I am visible very briefly in this part when Jet runs in
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I personally had a lot of fun working on the series, was long nights and cold as **** during shooting, I mostly hung around in the gun truck after my work in the Prop department was done, I cut out one of Spikes Jerichos and 2 of Jett's Rhino's, the Rhino was completely ballsed up though from the mold, I wish I was able to get a Solid rubber stunt of Spikes Gun, the hero gun was also the last one ever made and had to be imported from Japan, I got to help in the mold making process for a few of the guns, and I also have some props kept from the series, mainly stunt props, here is a picture from when I was with Riley who not only double Hakim, he doubled for Vicious too
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And this is a shot I took with Byron after we had shot the eco terrorist scene at the train station, it was absolutely freezing, seeing Adrienne Barbeau on set though was an unforgettable experience, especially as an Escape from New York fan, Byron was also incredibly funny too, Danielle is surprisingly shorter than me
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I was really looking forward to season 2 as well, to get into doing more prop work and even more extra work. I also had fun talking to the prop department and when I mentioned that Keanu should have been cast as Spike, they all agreed, I even said that he could play Vincent had they used him in Season 2, due to his age. I also loved the anime, I binged it multiple times as well before working on it, and watching the netflix series, sure it's got bad parts, but if people can always just watch the original over again. I also wish that Jason was cast as Spike instead of John Cho, I saw him on set in costume during the filming of my scene, and he is practically a dead on look alike as Spike, I even bought a Spike Spiegel figure to get John and Jason to sign too, but that sadly won't happen
 
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