Its vision of a dinged-up future looks like nothing so much as a knockoff Firefly, made for a fraction of the budget. There’s precious little of Cowboy Bebop that feels either fresh enough to demand attention or sturdy enough to promise comfort. Which, in turn, makes it difficult to imagine what the updated show could possibly have to offer nonfans.
It’s a Cowboy Bebop too fixated on checking off boxes to consider writing its own list. The zippy pacing has turned leaden, the sharp visuals reduced to muddy CG, the playful humor translated as phony laughter, the lived-in grittiness replaced with shoddy-looking sets. The series’ biggest sin, however, is that even as it dutifully retraces the steps of its predecessor, it captures none of the magic. The few deviations it does make seem primed to divide fans: Supporting characters like Spike’s former flame Julia (Elena Satine) have been given more screen time only for the writers to struggle to come up with anything for them to do, while another prominent fan favorite has been axed almost entirely. Cast: John Cho, Mustafa Shakir, Daniella Pineda, Alex Hassell, Elena SatineĮxecutive producers: André Nemec, Jeff Pinkner, Josh Appelbaum, Scott Rosenberg, Marty Adelstein, Becky Clements, Makato Asanuma, Shin Sasaki, Masayuki Ozaki, Tim Coddington, Tetsu Fujimura, Michael Katleman, Matthew Weinberg, Christopher Yost