Collateral spoiler alert about Fry's dog?

John Cho is perfect, and they even nailed
his hair which, when you think about it,
Spike's character is 90% the hair.

Can I--did you watch the live action Cowboy Bebop? I ask because I'm going to talk about it and I'll probably be spoiling elements of it and, I don't know, maybe you want to watch it? Just, be warned. Also, I don't write reviews of things. I mean, the last thing anyone needs is more recommendations for things to stream and what if you hate it? Then it's on me. So just know that I'm not saying you should watch this, I'm just saying holy shit, what's up with live-action Spike? But we'll get to that. 

If you were never into the anime upon which the new show is based, just know that it's an acquired taste. It's probably one of those things where you had to be just the right age when it aired on Adult Swim in the early aughts. That is, too old for Pokémon, but young enough to have had a Fight Club poster on the wall of your dorm. I don't know, look, if you cried when Fry's dog died on Futurama, then you probably get this.

It's the xennial of anime.

Although Spock shouting "Khaaaan!" in
Into Darkness was, inarguably, hot garbage.

Anyway, I liked it for the most part. I've tried to temper my nerdish instincts when it comes to revivals of things I enjoyed in my younger days. Like, I spent way too much time back in the early twenty-tens losing my mind over the Star Trek reboots and how the new thing was different from the old thing and therefore hot garbage. Which, it wasn't. It was just different, and that's fine. I've matured. There's nothing wrong with taking creative liberties.

Right? Yes, I'm talking to you, live-action Cowboy Bebop. This version replicates many of the costumes, designs, plots, and even shots exactly that you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a straight up recreation of the anime. Like, it looks and sounds like the cartoon and it all works pretty well even if there is something a little cosplay-y about it.

Above: evidently a shot from season 2 where
the Bebop crew attends ComiCon on Ganymede.

Although given that we're basically relying
on lunatic billionaires for space exploration now,
 another couple hundred years wouldn't have hurt.

The show's aesthetic faithfully duplicates the cool-but-weird space noire of the anime without feeling like a Blade Runner knock-off. The sci-fi elements like the space stations and the Bebop itself are more or less unchanged although the timeline's been bumped a bit further into the future. The anime was set like, fifty years from now (seventy from when it first aired), which never seemed like enough time to populate the solar system. This show however is more like a hundred and fifty years into the future, so it's a bit more plausi--ok, a bit less implausible. 

Above: series antagonist Vicious, seen here
in a still from the live-action adaptation.

But these are three dimensional real people playing these characters now, and each episode is more like forty-five minutes compared to the original's twenty-two, so the creators of the new show decided to flesh everyone out a bit more. Some of these changes work, like Jet having a family, and Ana (Annie in the cartoon) and Gren going from unrelated side characters to important series regulars. And some changes don't, like Vicious going from a cold sadistic nemesis for Spike to an incompetent goon with both rage and daddy issues. But oh no Spike, oh no...

While far from the worst thing Joss Whedon
is guilty of, I think the blame for characters'
constant quipping can be laid squarely at his feet.

So again, John Cho is great. His version of Spike varies from the cartoon in that he's a lot more talkative and that's fine. Anime Spike spent a lot of time brooding or grunting monosyllabically between long drags of his cigarette where as live-action Spike engages more with the other characters particularly Jet. It's a choice that better fits both the actor and the contemporary trend towards quippier writing. What's a little harder to watch is the flash back to his Syndicate days in which he massacres a rival gang. Like, we watch Spike shoot everyone. Everyone. I think he even kills a kid.

And in fairness that was always his backstory, but goddamn. It's brutal, and seeing the always lovable John Cho murder it out in live action and HD it made it a lot harder to root for the character from then on out. Anyway, like I said, I support creative liberties in adaptations like this, but yikes, interesting choice turning your lead character into a sociopath nine episodes in to a ten episode series.

Wait, maybe the chain-smoking ex-hitman turned
bounty-hunter maybe isn't supposed to be a role model?