(TV SERIES) Cowboy Bebop Season 1 - Probably Better if it is an Original Series Rather than a Live Version Remake of the 1998 Popular Anime Series

As mentioned in one of my earlier post, last week there were a bunch of new series and movies released on Netflix. I happened to start watching this few days ago, which took me a while to finish as I could only see 2 or maximum 3 episodes per night. Anyway it was something that interest me as it was a live version of an anime series that I watched first (also available on Netflix) and enjoyed. OK, let's get to it then.

Brief Story Line

Set in the year 2171, Spike Spiegel (John Cho - Wish Dragon, Star Trek Beyond etc) was working as a bounty hunter together with his partner Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir - Luke Cage season 2, The Deuce TV series etc) on their spaceship called Bebop. They later met with another bounty hunter named Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Mercy Black etc) who subsequently became part of their crew.

Spike had a completely different past before joining Jet, as he used to work for the crime Syndicate with one of their leaders Vicious (Alex Hassel - Suburbicon etc), whose wife Julia (Elena Satine - Revenge TV series etc) was a famous singer. As Spike, Jet and Faye tried their best to capture the highest bounties in the solar system, the past would soon catch up with each one of them. 

So how would the story conclude? Find them all in this series.

End of Brief Story Line

Now I said above that before watching this series, I purposely watched the original 1998 anime series of the same title few weeks ago. That one had 26 episodes overall with around 25+ minutes each, so compared to this series of 10 episodes (with around 39-52 minutes), the anime was longer. The challenge of making a remake of anything successful, be it TV series or movies was to maintain the high quality the original had, or even a better version. This is no exception. 

I have had the pleasure of watching the original series which to me was fantastic and brilliant. For a series made in 1998, that one was certainly ahead of its time. It had some awesome visions of the technology and social aspects, but most importantly was the story telling. When I watched it, at first I was a bit surprised by the quite mature theme and it did not even feel like the usual anime where the animation were sometimes ridiculously fun. Instead it felt a bit serious, though there were the occasional lighter moments in certain episodes. In addition, it also had a very surprising and rather anti mainstream ending.

However, when I watched this series, somehow there was no such feeling of amazed or in awe. In fact, it felt a bit mediocre. Some of the cast were actually fine and did their job nicely, as they basically were able to replicate the characters from the anime. Unfortunately there were radical changes to few of the characters that personally to me made them less interesting. The specific one was Vicious who was shown to be a bit comical and not cool at all, unlike in the anime. Also Julia whose seldom appearance and mysterious feel was what made her interesting. But in here she was shown quite regularly as she became part of the main cast. Despite Elena Satine's effort to make her similar to the anime series' character, but the way she was written, especially her character development was too far off. 

At least the 3 main characters were almost the same. John Cho to me was able to portray Spike Spiegel nicely, with his posture, body language and also his fighting style. Meanwhile Mustafa Shakir was great as Spike's best friend Jet Black. Daniella Pineda felt a bit different at first, but as the story progressed, I could still see her as Faye. Although understandably some male fans might be disappointed with her new appearance. It's a good thing that even if there were some rewriting on their background story, their main characteristic still felt similar. 

In term of actions, some of them were quite good like in episodes 3, 8 and 9. While the rest were just so so. I enjoyed the first and second episode and I actually liked the 9th episode which despite deviating from the anime series, but I think it was a good one. The final episode was not really what I expected but I could understand the intention. Btw I am a bit confused with the criticism of the special effects as I thought they looked good enough, especially the creation of the space ships. The music was nice, though not as nice as the anime. I think it's lacking a bit of the jazzy tunes which could be heard frequently there but not too much here.

Overall this probably would be more entertaining had I not seen the anime series yet, as I could not help but making comparison against the two series. Objectively, this should be an enjoyable series with its story and engaging characters. Now I cannot say that I did not enjoy this one at all, because I still like it though not as much as the anime series. Let's see if they proceed to make a second season and who knows the writers might be able to make it more interesting as it tried to be out of the original series' shadows.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Additional notes:
Cowboy Bebop anime series was created and animated by Japanese Animation Studio Sunrise. Its production team was referred to as Hajime Yatate which consisted of director Shinichirō Watanabe, screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, mechanical designer Kimitoshi Yamane, and composer Yoko Kanno.