Cowboy Rebop

The already infamous live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop premiered last night on Netflix. The whole season was dropped but I've only watched one episode because I have a life. But actually I didn't hate it. It has a lot of flaws but I wouldn't call it a shit show.

Almost everything brought over from the anime works. The plot about the Red Eye fugitives, the design of the ships, the world building, and Yoko Kanno's music all work. The new material Kanno's recorded blends smoothly with the old stuff and it's really cool seeing the old ships in live action simulating cgi.

The action sequences so far don't work at all. As I expected, John Cho moves too slow (we could call him "John Slow"). As an actor he's decent, though, and I'm warming up to the idea of an older Spike. It makes the fact he's already built a new life subsequent to a tragic past make a lot more sense.

Mustafa Shakir will take some more getting used to. He gives a good performance and his eyes are really striking but he has a vulnerability about him that jives oddly with the tough guy dialogue. He always seems on the edge of cracking. It's awkward with the dialogue, especially some of the oddly sadistic stuff he and Spike say now. That's a big difference from the anime--Spike and Jet never gloated and laughed about putting a bullet into some small time thug before. It's particularly odd with Jet who's supposed to be more mature but it also robs Spike of a lot of his cool.

It seems like they might have made Spike less skilled at martial arts to compensate for Cho's lack of ability. He actually has a fight with Faye at one point and it actually seems almost even. We also don't get the cool moment where Spike is the only one who's able to fight Asimov under the influence of Red Eye.

The show does a lot of Sin City-ish emulation of animation that mainly just undercuts the sense of reality. Daniella Pineda's not bad though I still don't like her costume, especially her generic leather jacket. I'll keep watching.