SPIKE COWBOY BEBOP BLACK AND WHITE SERIES

I appreciate this element of anime Cowboy Bebop so much because it’s literally the exact opposite of one of my biggest gripes with shows like Doctor Who. The impact that each new character had wasn’t on the universe, but on the crew of the Bebop that served as an anchor for the audience.

They were allowed to simply exist as relatively small pieces in a vast universe, and it lent them an authenticity that is hard to find in any medium, not just anime. Not only did it allow the show to jump between genres from episode to episode, it meant that characters and their stories didn’t have to be connected or be a part of some grand design.

SPIKE COWBOY BEBOP BLACK AND WHITE SERIES

It’s fun to see how memorable characters, locations, and moments wind up making their way into the narrative, while also streamlining things and steering away from some of the elements that might not have necessarily worked in a live-action series in 2021.īut, that lack of a single overarching storyline was a big part of what made anime Cowboy Bebop so special. It’s a good idea, and probably the best way to pay homage to the original anime while allowing it to have a fresh feel and an identity of its own that plays out like a remix of the anime. Unlike anime Cowboy Bebop, which was almost entirely constructed of self-contained stories that were only tied together by playing into the backstory or development of one of the main cast, live-action Cowboy Bebop takes several of those iconic stories and restructures them around the overarching narrative of Spike vs. The biggest change of the adaptation is in the way the narrative is structured. But it’s missing that free-flowing quality that was so integral to the original, and being built around an overarching narrative means that the world of the live-action show feels much smaller than it did in the anime.Īt last, they created a new genre in itself… It’s more polished, more technically impressive, and more tightly constructed. Live-action Cowboy Bebop, on the other hand, is more like an album. Cowboy Bebop the anime is like a concert-it’s looser, more freeform, and while it can seem aimless at times it’s never afraid to simply go where the mood takes it, whether it’s Ed and Ein going on a bizarre odyssey to find food before accidentally taking some magic mushrooms or Spike coming face to face with the specters of the past. The best way to describe the difference between the two is, appropriately enough, in musical terms. Any adaptation of the series, regardless of the medium it’s in, is a tall order, and the fundamental question surrounding the new Cowboy Bebop is whether or not this new show even has any reason to exist. If you’re not, in the words of the great Cab Calloway, hip to the jive, let me fill you in: Cowboy Bebop is one of the few anime that is almost unanimously regarded as being among the best of all time, one of the best gateways into the genre for people who are interested in the medium, and a huge part of why anime became as big in the western hemisphere as it did. Live-action anime adaptations aren’t necessarily new for Netflix-and given that they are currently working on a One Piece adaptation they’re not likely to stop anytime soon-but this is Cowboy Bebop we’re talking about. Let’s get this out of the way: to say I was skeptical about Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop is…an understatement. The following contains spoilers for Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop, along with the original anime

Spike cowboy bebop black and white