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Cowboy Bebop (Netflix, November 19), update: aaaaaaaand it's been cancelled

Ghost_MH

By Ghost_MH
in The Performing Arts Centre

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skillzdadirecta

skillzdadirecta

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmbiguouslyJewish

 

It's not like thinking he's Jewish is rare. Fair enough that the series creator says it's just a coincidence but it's not like people are reacting to nothing.

Sure... I'm not saying they're reacting to nothing. I'm saying it's the first time I'VE ever heard it. Never occured to me once that Spike was anything but Japanese or Chinese given that he was a member of the Mars Triads and that "Spike Spiegel" isn't his real name :shrug:

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Jason

Jason

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33 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

Arguing about the ethnicity of fictional cartoons for whom their ethnicity meant literally nothing to their character.

 

2 hours ago, Jason said:

But then Jet wasn't black in the anime either so they're clearly just not hewing too closely on that front. In this instance I'd say neither really matters though given that neither's racial/ethnic identity really ever came up in-show IIRC.

 

:p

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Kal-El814

Kal-El814

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A few episodes in I feel the same way about this as I do about V for Vendetta. I like that movie but it is a terrible adaptation of the comic. The Netflix Cowboy Bebop isn’t bad so far, but it is a stunningly bad adaptation of the anime. I don’t know how someone who watched and loved the show could write the dialog in this version. Maybe it’ll change as I finish the season, but.. man. This is fucking weird.

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Kal-El814

Kal-El814

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7 minutes ago, silentbob said:

Planning to watch an episode or 2 tonight when I return from work. For the ones that people have seen. Do you think with some improvement in one direction or another, that they can make it a series that can appreciated by fans/non fans alike 

 

I’d guess that fan opinion is going to be split. Some parts of it are quite good, but the observations about inconsistent visual quality and the fight scenes not being great are pretty valid, a few episodes in.

 

Again, it’s weird. In some ways it really looks and feels like the anime but in others it’s just… a completely different thing. Faye so far is unrecognizable as an adaptation of the character from the original show. Vicious and the Syndicate stuff seems like it’s going to be expanded and pretty different as well.

 

It’s weird.

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Ghost_MH

Ghost_MH

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55 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

I’d guess that fan opinion is going to be split. Some parts of it are quite good, but the observations about inconsistent visual quality and the fight scenes not being great are pretty valid, a few episodes in.

 

Again, it’s weird. In some ways it really looks and feels like the anime but in others it’s just… a completely different thing. Faye so far is unrecognizable as an adaptation of the character from the original show. Vicious and the Syndicate stuff seems like it’s going to be expanded and pretty different as well.

 

It’s weird.

 

Then here's the big question. Is it possible to completely divorce yourself from knowledge of the originals series. If so...how is it with that in mind? My wife has always had zero interest in Cowboy Bebop. Odd, because she loves other Watanabe anime like Kids on the Slope, but Cowboy Bebop was always a shrug from her. She's enjoyed the trailers and we were planning to catch an episode of two tonight after the kids went to bed. It's she in for a bad time?

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Kal-El814

Kal-El814

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37 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Then here's the big question. Is it possible to completely divorce yourself from knowledge of the originals series. If so...how is it with that in mind? My wife has always had zero interest in Cowboy Bebop. Odd, because she loves other Watanabe anime like Kids on the Slope, but Cowboy Bebop was always a shrug from her. She's enjoyed the trailers and we were planning to catch an episode of two tonight after the kids went to bed. It's she in for a bad time?

 

It’s hard to say, since I can’t divorce myself from what I know about the show at this point. Eventually I came to like V for Vendetta as its own thing, but I hated it for a while because it was just a bad interpretation of the book. I’m not at that level with Cowboy Bebop. I don’t hate it, it’s just really different. 

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silentbob

silentbob

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So I watched the first episode and they have stuff I like and others that are ok. I thought Cho would be wrong for the role and so far, he is proving me wrong. Rest of the cast seems good too, and the cgi overall looks great. Some of the sets and look though, come off cheap looking in some ways. Almost like fans reenacting some of their fav scenes from a movie in front of a green screen. If they get a 2nd season. I would love to see if they can somehow ask the kind folks at Disney’s The Mandalorian  and use some of their tech to pull it off. I’ll continue to watch in hopes I get more, but hope for improvements.

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ort

ort

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Watched the first episode and it was better than I was expecting but still weird as hell.

 

It's almost too close to the anime. Things play very differently in different mediums, and what works in animation sometimes just feels strange in live action.

 

I don't know. I'll keep watching. I'm not sure I'm really enjoying it all that much, but I'm also not immediately hating it, so I guess that's something.

 

More than anything it just makes me want to watch the animated original.

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SimpleG

SimpleG

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12 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

Translating anime to live action is simply very difficult. I'm curious to see this weird thing though.

Yea even though I cant get through 99% of anime so my opinion doesnt mean much but bringing it to live action makes it seem much worse. Seeing something like One Piece with a guy has super stretchy arms and I am like "yup , seems legit" and seeing it live action are miles apart. Maybe being animated helps with suspension of disbelief or something.

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Kamusha

Kamusha

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I personally never found the appeal in translating animation to live action. Maybe it’s because animation is a more expressive medium than live action so these adaptations always feel like an inherent downgrade even if it tries its best. Speed Racer may be the only one that actually works.

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Keyser_Soze

Keyser_Soze

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2 hours ago, Komusha said:

I personally never found the appeal in translating animation to live action. Maybe it’s because animation is a more expressive medium than live action so these adaptations always feel like an inherent downgrade even if it tries its best. Speed Racer may be the only one that actually works.

 

The best live action adaptation of a manga was Ping Pong or Nana, both amazing movies. They were turned into anime after the live action versions.

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Ghost_MH

Ghost_MH

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3 hours ago, Komusha said:

I personally never found the appeal in translating animation to live action. Maybe it’s because animation is a more expressive medium than live action so these adaptations always feel like an inherent downgrade even if it tries its best. Speed Racer may be the only one that actually works.

 

There's some stuff that I think would work amazingly well going from anime to live action. Unfortunately, it's not really the stuff studios may be interested in adapting. Inuyashiki would make for a phenomenal live action film. I can even think of a few older actors that could really pull off the role, too. I know studios have been eyeing My Hero Academia for live action adaptation, but I think My Hero Vigilantes would make for a better. I think Berserk could be done really well as a live action series. Just keep it TV-MA on HBO. What's most popular may not always be the best choice. I think Leiji Matsumoto's entire catalog would be amazing as a live action. Just give it all to me. Galaxy Express 999, Captain Harlock, Queen Emerlandas, Battleship Yamato. I'm going to stop now because I know that last one will never happen and that makes me sad.

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elbobo

elbobo

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Watched the first 3 episodes. Great budget and the overall feel is close enough but as mentioned translating anime to live action is just so hard, the closer you try to stick to the source material the harder it will get, but this is a damned if you do damned if you don't case, if they did make more changes to make it flow better as a live action all the anime fans would bitch up a storm about it.

 

Despite his age I find Cho to fine as Spike except for the fight scenes where it is glaring that he is not a martial artist and is just going through VERY blocked out choreography, this is what most likely makes the fight scenes feel so stilted.

 

Mustafa Shakir is great as Jet, honestly this is as good as it could get.

 

I found Vicious to be an "eh whatever" villain in the anime and much worse in the live action, another victim of trying to keep it close to the original. 

 

The show is brightly lit but somehow devoid of color even in HDR.

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Jason

Jason

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I've only seen the first episode so far but I liked what I saw. Going off some of the conversation above about this, maybe it helps that I don't actually remember many specifics of original since I haven't watched it in ages, so I'm not just sitting here comparing it to the anime as much as I would if it was fresh in my mind? I like that they're doing something different with the stylization.

 

As for the slightly weird lack of fluidity in the combat, a thought occurred to me: have they ever explicitly said they're not using the manga as one of their sources and that they're exclusively going off the anime? Because the pauses kind of made me feel like maybe they're trying to make the combat feel like individual comic panels, which was also what they seemed to pretty clearly be going for throughout this one teaser trailer, shifting scenes by shifting them around like comic book panels.

 

 

[edit] Plus, you know, that's also how the opening titles sequences for both versions are stylized. :p

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Ghost_MH

Ghost_MH

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55 minutes ago, Jason said:

I've only seen the first episode so far but I liked what I saw. Going off some of the conversation above about this, maybe it helps that I don't actually remember many specifics of original since I haven't watched it in ages, so I'm not just sitting here comparing it to the anime as much as I would if it was fresh in my mind? I like that they're doing something different with the stylization.

 

As for the slightly weird lack of fluidity in the combat, a thought occurred to me: have they ever explicitly said they're not using the manga as one of their sources and that they're exclusively going off the anime? Because the pauses kind of made me feel like maybe they're trying to make the combat feel like individual comic panels, which was also what they seemed to pretty clearly be going for throughout this one teaser trailer, shifting scenes by shifting them around like comic book panels.

 

 

[edit] Plus, you know, that's also how the opening titles sequences for both versions are stylized. :p

 

That's what I was wondering as well. I actually don't remember much detail of the series either. I wasn't quite as head over heels about it as others were when it came out. Cowboy Bebop came out just around the time fansubs shared over the Internet was getting big, so there was a ton of oddball anime I was watching at the time. That was arrive the when I got a warning from my ISP for hosting an FTP for a group that was subbing Vandread.

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Anathema-

Anathema-

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Seen a few episodes in the background now, I think the thing I want to share is how I think a lot of the difficulty in transliterating anime comes from the editing. The instincts seem to run completely contrary in live action. It creates a discordant tone and COWBOY BEBOP has it bad, the likes of which I haven't felt since I watched THE SPIRIT.

 

It's like, the parts of a scene that are supposed to be snappy are instead languid and the parts that are supposed to have a breath seem rushed through. Sometimes back and forth in the same scene. Tonal whiplash. 

 

When your set direction and artistic design attempt to recreate the tone and aesthetics of another medium the rest of the project has to follow through as well. I think most of the other issues of the series would be easier to suspend your disbelief over if the camera wasn't spending every moment aggressively yanking you out of the experience.

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Rodimus

Rodimus

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I'm in the middle of the live action series. I a big fan of the original. I am so far really missing Ed. I also noticed that live action less than half the number of episodes as the anime but about twice as long. I'm curious if this is going to be dragged out into a 2nd season.

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