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If there was one anime to remake in order to appeal to an adult Western audience, this would be it. As long as the writing, overall production, and characters keep audiences engaged. It would be very interesting if this show managed to develop a fanbase of sci-fi fans that normally would not watch anime.

Since I was a teenager, having always loved Corgis but never actually owning one myself, I'd always joked with my cousins (Bebop fans) and family (not so much) that I was going to eventually get a Corgi and name it Ein (as I'm sure quite a few others have done over the years). I'd never gotten a dog of my own after striking out on my own, but was finally planning on getting one in the spring of next year.

Good thing I didn't get it earlier, though, as I would have had to have drowned it when the live-action series came out. =/ (okay okay, renamed it...)

Because, yeah, a meaningful reference to something only the true fans would get and appreciate is one thing. But something every Netflix couch potato has seen and, quite likely, would watch once and either drop or forget about (as again, I think the best we're able to hope for with this show, with who's already involved, is that it's as mediocre as the rest of Netflix's midrange lineup), would ruin the whole thing and quite likely make me and little Ein embarrassed over the whole affair.

Hipster exclusive mentality, sure, but valid nonetheless. Anime smile

;;

And I mean, come on. The producer of MTV's Teen Wolf and a run-of-the-mill Marvel writer right off the bat. No one can blame us for having very little hope for this endeavor.

Eesh, i don't know about this.

Cowboy Bebop is very graphic anime as well as drama in space. I mean CGI alone would murder normal productions. There better off trying to do a new reboot of the anime vs making live action one with questionable understanding of the original plots and what made it work.

They got it all backwards. Death Note should have gotten a Netflix series while Cowboy Bebop should have gotten the standalone film treatment. At least with DN it was in a setting where a modest budget made sense. CB has an egad number of backstories that would make Firefly look like...the first half of season one's Babylon 5?

There are a few anime that I think in theory Hollywood should be able to do without needing to chance the characters or settings. Mainly those anime are the ones either set in the US/England/Europe or some kind of fantasy setting that does not sound Asian.
In theory, this adaptation should at least be decent. Casting shouldn't cause a controversy.
Yet, most likely instead of the best person chosen for the role it will be the person who fits into the PC agenda regardless of if it makes sense or not.
I'm not a scriptwriter, but how hard is it to get a story where you might have to do some minor tweaks only and go and completely get it wrong?
Someone mentioned the Dragonball fiasco. How hard was it to write a script about an alien baby crashing onto Earth and being picked up and raised by an old man...oh wait that sounds like Superman...hmm? I wonder if that is why they decided to make Dragonball into a high school movie with superpowers?

I enjoyed Cowboy Bebop and I'm cautiously optimistic, but we'll see if this ever sees the light of day how it goes.

Last edited by Spoofer on Wed Nov 28, 2018 7:34 pm; edited 3 times in total

The problem isn't how difficult the plot concept and/or the world/characters can transition over to American audiences, the problem is that there are only a handful of Western television writers, directors, and cinematographers around at present who could handle the themes, narrative structures, depth, and cinematic brilliance found within Cowboy Bebop, and certainly none of them are attached to this at present, and foreseeably into the future. Let alone how tough it is to capture lightning in a bottle the first time around, and how much easier it is for us as anime fans to identify with the overly-emoted (in the good way) animated characters in the medium, whereas live-action portrayals always offer their own take with far more conventional acting, and the sort of actors these anime IP cash-ins feature are typically in no way equipped to carry the sort of weight required to pull an intensely character-driven series like Bebop off. I'd probably take Keanu over the types of actors I imagine this thing will snag.

It's valid to be optimistic and all solely for the sake of being so, but at present, there is very little reason to have any degree of realistic faith that this will be anything beyond a mediocre attempt at recreating something far beyond the grasp of even average television creators. Not even Joss Whedon would be able to do this property justice, and he already quasi-tried with his own unique take. Noah Hawley and Vince Gilligan would be the only two that immediately spring to mind that I'd have hella faith in actually producing something with a fair shot at being decent, and considering Hawley did Legion (which I admittedly haven't seen yet), it probably would've been something right up his alley. Ron Moore if he could tone down the grimdark and have a solid outline in place from the start, though it still wouldn't be as good as if someone like Hawley helmed it. Maybe even Shawn Ryan, David Milch, or Alan Ball (I haven't seen True Blood to know if that rises above the cheese, but otherwise he'd probably fit). Or some of these up and coming Netflix showrunners who know how to blend meaningful narrative with cinematic beauty and have received significant critical buzz. EDIT: Or damn, if Michael Mann (successfully) returned to television for it.

Imagine how well Call Me Call Me could be recreated/reimagined with this level of live-action craftsmanship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK13Mbs_pdo

But the executive producer of Prison Break and MTV's Teen Wolf and the writer of two schlock Thor films? Get the hell out of here...

Dragon Ball and Death Note are the ones that practically anyone could have made without ****ing up, since from a narrative standpoint they're both almost entirely straightforward. And yet they both still managed to be trainwrecks. Not that I've seen ScarJo GitS yet, but as is pretty apparent solely from the trailer and from everything I've read, it abandons all of the complexity of the original property and instead offers a cliched paper-thin Hollywood Blockbuster facsimile of "thematic depth". Given that its writers also worked on X-Men films and Bayformers, that too is hardly a surprise. It did look pretty nice though, but that's hardly the most important factor for anyone who actually appreciates solid storytelling.

You get utter hacks working on a project, and you predictably get subpar s*** as a result. And so far it's not looking good for Bebop.

But I'd certainly love to be wrong and to have to eat my words.

Zof wrote:

They should have cut their teeth on something easier like Baccano.

Baccano has none of the cultural relevance (or level of relevance) that Bebop has though.

dm wrote:

Joss Wheedon already did this. It was great.

Yeah and got canceled and led to an underperforming movie.

Sticks wrote:

But mostly, it’s all about the American producers who want to slap their own name or take on the show to make it their own. PLUS, making money is more important to them then the actual heart of the story that made it popular in the first place.

Makes sense when you realize that when your movie costs 7 to 10 figures to produce making money is what it's "supposed" to do. Especially when you want to make a recurring series of works.

Though that doesn't necessarily apply to Netflix.

Sticks wrote:

What they should be doing is give their budget the original Japanese animation studios and let them use their own resources to produce their own live-action series. Imagine what they might come up with using Hollywood money. It might stay true to the original creators vision.

It also might be sub-par like Japanese produced live action adaptions typically are. Plus no studio is going to actually do that and not be inolved in the process in any significant way.

Sticks wrote:

But you never know. Maybe this time they’ll get it right. We still need to see how Alita: Battle Angel will do, and I’m hoping they got it right. James Cameron has been wanting to make that movie in like forever, b

Cameron isn't making the movie though.

meiam wrote:

Why wouldn't they just revive firefly instead? Seems like they'd get the same outcome but have way less problem doing an adaptation. Plus the positive buzz would be very strong, rather than mix response tilting to negative.

Because why would Netflix revive a show that was cancelled more than a decade ago and had a movie that my or may not had made back it's production budget. Using actors who're are much older than they were when the show originally ran.

If you want your Firefly fix might as well stick to the comics.

This is going to be horrible. I know it in my heart. The right people are not making these adaptations. These people making the adaptations just don't understand the material, they don't understand the aesthetics and inherent Japanese style that endears them to us, which is why we consistently end up with Evolution, Fist of the North Star with Gary Daniels and Malcolm McDowell, Death Note Netflix (the reception to which can be described as "split" at best), ScarJo GitS, the live-action Akira film which people have been trying to get made for 16 years at least. Who knows how Alita is going to turn out? But I'm confident Bebop will crash and burn. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see. But I really think the American film industry needs to give up trying this. For now anyway.

For the record, I think Japan isn't much better at these.

The only thing thats working in their favour is the fact there is actually a very thin overall plot line they need to follow. Even the anime itself only has like 4 episodes that actually follow it; the majority being random stuff one episode to the next. The music is main concern for me, followed by the cast. I don't care about whitewash blah blah bs, they just have to do their roles well. However this will most likely be terrible much like 99% of live action remakes. Only live action I've seen that I actually thought was decent was Rurouni Kenshin.

"If it's a Remake Of A Classic, RENT THE CLASSIC!"
[Jay Sherman, _The Critic_]

doomydoomdoom wrote:

This is going to be horrible. I know it in my heart. The right people are not making these adaptations. These people making the adaptations just don't understand the material, they don't understand the aesthetics and inherent Japanese style that endears them to us, which is why we consistently end up with Evolution, Fist of the North Star with Gary Daniels and Malcolm McDowell, Death Note Netflix (the reception to which can be described as "split" at best), ScarJo GitS, the live-action Akira film which people have been trying to get made for 16 years at least.

.....okay I'ma break this down a bit

DragonBall is based off of A Journey To The West which last I checked was not inherently japanese hell even DragonBall itself is not inherently japanese since most of the characters aren't even ethnically Japanese/Asian to start with.

Fist Of The North Star was inspired by works such as Road Warrior so it wasn't inherently japanese either which I assume you're making this argument specifically with regards to the martial arts used which I believe are based off of Japanese and Chinese Martial arts.

Death Note is japanese in it's source material yes but nothing that absolutely had to extend to any it's adaptations.

GiTS is rather complicated.

It's hard to make a call about Akira considering it's still in developmental hell but it's something they can pretty much change in various ways and still tell more or less the same story that the manga and anime told.

^ I think they are referring to the style that shows from what they made, not the tidbits of material that may have inspired it in the first place. And a live action remake is far from something being loosely based off something else. It is a tough thing to actually put into words though without going around in circles in a never-ending debate. Trigun is another one I love that isn't what you'd call having a typical Japanese feel to it.

If they went ahead and had Shinichiro Watanabe directing writing or boarding it in some capacity I could get on board. If this were a Knockin on Heaven's door type standalone project within the continuity that happened to be live action, I could get on board. But from what it sounds like, they basically cut Watanabe a check to shut the fudge up and now they are gonna do whatever they want.

Cowboy Bebop told its story exactly as it needed to be told, in the medium it needed to be told in. What other spin is there to put on it? What else is there to be said? This is like adapting Watchmen. You could do it, but what's the point? It's like all of these Disney "live-action" renders of their old cartoons. It's just really expensive cosplay.

Sadly, we are still at the point where most of Hollywood doesn't really get anime. If they did there are a million other things they could adapt, with more open ended concepts and stories that they could take in any number of directions.

Dynamo- wrote:

^ I think they are referring to the style that shows from what they made, not the tidbits of material that may have inspired it in the first place.

Even if that was the argument they were trying to make saying they have an inherent japanese style (even when half those shows don't) is still bizarre.

If Cowboy Bebop has such an inherently japanese style why is it more popular in the west than in Japan?

Did some cleanup. Let;s cut it with the white washing and other social commentary. SOme people also need to cool it with the complete over exaggeration soapboxing. Thanks.

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