There is no denying that Netflix Cowboy Bebop had a reverence for the original, but that reverence didn’t translate into a good understanding of what made the anime so special. Although it has all the trappings of Cowboy Bebopthe Netflix series deviated in one important area that left the series feeling empty in a way its inspiration never did.
Just watching the first episode of the live action series, it is easy to see that something is not right in the way the series presents itself. Sometimes it seems Bebopwith the original music being reused, or the faithful recreation of the opening title sequence, but for the most part, there’s a sense of something being incomplete. The first episode is actually a great point of comparison because it’s very similar in both series, but the differences that stand out can help identify what the live action series is doing wrong.
Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop Is Missing a Key Element
One thing that makes Cowboy Bebop So relatable and relatable is its willingness to criticize the social order seen in the series. Elements of class discrimination are common in anime, and there is a feeling of hopelessness that permeates many of the series’ characters. Even for good people who find themselves in a bad situation, their destiny is already written by the very world in which they live.. Cowboy Bebop has a cyberpunk-style world in many ways, with powerful megacorporations dominating the entire solar system, leaving nowhere to escape.
The Netflix series pays lip service to this idea, having its first villain, Tanaka, complain about these very issues as the first lines of dialogue spoken in the series. However, despite the positive points Tanaka is making, the series immediately makes him seem like nothing more than a violent lunatic.reveling in the destruction and power that crime is bringing to him. Tanaka’s gang doesn’t even seem to have a real goal in their violence, as they are already transferring the money they are stealing. He is violent just for the sake of being violent.
The Tanaka segment is original to the Netflix series and does not come from the anime. It was designed to introduce Spike as a character, first and foremost, establishing his aloof attitude as well as his fighting prowess. It does a good job, but it’s a poor introduction to the world of Cowboy Bebop. The anime is much more sympathetic to most bounty heads than this, making many of the episodes have a bittersweet tone. Tanaka is not a good person in a bad situation; he’s just a generic villain and it’s much less interesting to see him taken down as a result.
Netflix’s changes also harm the series’ messages
There’s one big change in the first episode that really underlines this point: the formation of Katerina Solensan. In the anime, Katerina is a poor woman, married to Asimov and who dreams of a better life on Mars; all she ever wanted was to live peacefully in a safe and comfortable place. In the Netflix series, Katerina is changed to be the daughter of a corporate billionaire, Ellis Montgomery, who simply ran away with her bad boyfriend in hopes of starting a new life outside of her father’s control.. It may seem like a subtle distinction, but it actually changes the story substantially.
This change in Katerina’s character completely erases her previous motive. In the anime, for example, Katerina has never been to Mars and thinks of it as a paradise. Everything will be fine if they can get to Mars, and it’s immediately apparent what a hopeless dream this really is. This is why Spike takes pity on her in the first place; he can identify with the desire to run away and start a new life somewhere. In the Netflix series, Katerina has been there before, albeit apparently as a child, making it less of an imagined paradise for her.
Trying to escape his father’s influence is a much less relatable motive for Spike, so it makes less sense for him to be so invested in her safety, especially to the point of fighting Faye. Then there’s Asimov himself, who is pretty much the same in both series, right up until the end. In the anime, Asimov is too excited about Bloody Eye to consider their situation, and Katerina, realizing how desperate this has become, has to kill him herself. In the Netflix series, Katerina effectively gives up on life when she could have surrendered because Asimov is already dead.
Cowboy Bebop needs these social critiques to succeed
This type of social criticism is not exclusive to the first episode – it is a key and recurring element of Cowboy Bebopa part of the series’ identity. By removing and minimizing these ideas, stories lose some of their impact. Katerina’s fate is still tragic in the live action series, of course, but it’s much less tragic than in the anime’s series of events. Her tragic situation, a dreamer trapped in a world of crime, helps set the tone for the entire series, and changing it so casually has a huge impact on how the series reaches viewers..
The fact that the Netflix series is much less sympathetic to bounty heads detracts from the series’ themes and tone, removing the more complex idea of ​​crime as a tool of last resort for those in desperate situations and making it more of a generic bandit type . . It even subverts some of the world-building done by these characters, making Bebopthe world seems less dystopian than it really is. Netflix Cowboy Bebop it sounds hollow for these reasons, which is why it can’t live up to the original.