How To Rock A Suit!

The Netflix adaptation has been cancelled but it was a masterclass in how to rock a suit and more importantly, how an alpha male should behave

- Jonathan Ho

Anticipation has been high over Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop. After all, the original created by Shinichiro Watanabe in 1998 is considered one of the greatest anime ever aired. Its blend of science-fiction, western and noir storytelling, as well as the jazz-filled score, give the anime a distinct tone that stands out from other ’90’s anime productions.

Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop was the latest in a growing list of attempts at turning classic anime into live-action shows or movies. For the most part, these have been unqualified disasters, most significantly, the 2017 Full Metal Alchemist movie garnered a dismal 28% Rotten Tomatoes rating, with a critic decrying, “Conservative fans might appreciate its craven faithfulness, but adaptation isn’t much fun when it’s just approximation, and Full Metal Alchemist behaves less like cinema than cosplay on a cinema budget.”

Did Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop feel like cosplay though? It had many of the things I enjoyed about the anime: great music, an almost steampunk retrofuturistic world with push buttons and lever technology on obviously high tech ships; elements of noir, western, and even a hint of samurai movies. More importantly, Season One served to “world build” cloaking the characters in necessary mystery that the series might unravel and study in later seasons.