Cowboy Bebop (2021)

All of the good things about Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop are betrayed by poor writing, uninspired action scenes, and a truly baffling obsession with the most annoying characters in the series.

Many moments in these 10 hourlong episodes go beyond just your average cringey attempt at recapturing the magic of the source material it’s based on—it’s actively grotesque in its bastardization of the original show, which has been contorted into a full-blown black comedy by writer Christopher Yost.

What works best are the moments where Jet, Faye, and Spike just hang out, talking about everything from jazz to bathing habits to sexual preferences. ... Yet even when it attempts to delve into its characters’ inner lives, the show does so with weak writing that is neither subtle nor inspiring.

What’s missing from this gratuitous adaptation, which credits Watanabe as a consultant, is the atmosphere. Though it does have a certain pulpy, shoddy-chic, Doctor Who visual style and benefits greatly from a jazzy, dynamic new score by original Bebop composer Yoko Kanno, it can’t match the collage of aesthetics, vibes and cultural references that made its predecessor feel more like a dispatch from the future than an attempt to simulate it in the present.

“Bebop” diehards will be appalled, while newbies will struggle to imagine why people have been making such a big deal about the anime for the last 20 years. The New Zealand sets are so crummy, the cinematography so flat and colorless, and the ambiance so non-existent. ... The actors are often the only thing that pulls these episodes back from the brink of catastrophe, even if they can’t do much about the wretched dialogue.

As a whole, the new Cowboy Bebop is just so ploddingly inefficient and misguided, the idea that it could share the same DNA as its original is farcical. When it comes to stakes, the original is simply in another weight class.

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. It’s a Cowboy Bebop too fixated on checking off boxes to consider writing its own list.