This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
Whilst the show starts out decently, it really drops the ball at the end. As an adaptation, you know changes will be made. Some of them work, some of them don't.
An interesting change in this adaptation is the dynamic between the Bebop crew. In the original anime, their bond was rigid. They were broken people, tied together by circumstance who on the surface treated each other like sh*t, but who still cared for one another. In this adaptation, they seem to get along better. Jet and Spike have a far more quippy buddy-buddy relationship and Fey doesn't have a habit of continually walking out on the rest of the gang. It is because of this that the way this season ends feels both wrong and unexpected.
Jet also is a dad now and his former flame from the anime now is his actual ex-wife. This change was not necessary perse and in the end, had a rather negative effect on the ending of the season, but it also lead to a few really cute and wholesome moments.
Fey's background has been altered in the slightest, swapping out the character of the scheming Docter Bachus from her backstory with a con-artist stepmother who played center stage in what probably was the best episode in the series. She and Fey had great chemistry and had they made Fey more of a con artist in this show, it would have been a nigh perfect addition to her backstory.
I will compliment the show on its fight scenes. The first two episodes especially shine in this department, with a beautifully choreographed and edited fight in a casino and a church's bathroom respectively. I am by no means a martial arts expert, but the way Spike fights in this show seems rather similar to the same "be like water" fighting style that he employs in the original, often managing to use the attackers' movement against him.
The villains of the original show that got adapted into this show were done rather dirty, and here I must delve into spoiler territory. Let's start with one of my favourite villains of the original show: Doctor Londes. This cult leader, loosely based on the real-life Heaven's Gate cult, was one of the scariest characters in the original show. He created a cult that was centered all-around leaving separating the soul from the body by uploading it through a game console, a process that killed many of his followers. In the end, he turned out to be a paralyzed teen hacker whose only means of interacting with the outside world is through a digital avatar. He was a scary and tragic villain in the original show and here they just turned him into a rogue AI who kills people for the sake of killing people. How nice.
Mad Pierrot is another example of a villain done wrong. Where in the original anime his backstory was handled rather well and gave us logical explanations for his weaknesses without them necessarily being spelled out for us, the way the live-action show introduces all info on him is.... well, it is heavy-handed on the one hand (they literally have to state he hates dogs, rather than using visual storytelling) and lackluster on the other hand (they never state that he has the mentality of a little kid, thus making the conclusion of his fight with Spike feel like it kinda came out of nowhere). I will say that Josh Randall did a fine job performing the role, it is just that the writing was bad.
Speaking of bad writing, Viscious. I am most impressed with how they handled him. I never really liked the original Viscious that much. He was your typical moody badass antagonist, who had a largely unexplored backstory and unknown motivations, next to his hatred for Spike. Though that last complaint is mostly fixed in this new adaptation, it must be said that the way the character is portrayed here is honestly kinda terrible. The original Viscious was vague but menacing. This Viscious is honestly not that threatening, mostly coming across as a whiney rich kid whom no one takes seriously at all. They took a menacing character and kinda just made him feel like a joke. Also, the position he is in by the end of the season is bound to piss people off. It pisses me off.
The ending of this season is where the story truly diverts entirely from the anime. SPOILERS, the series ends with Spike and Viscious their epic Chruch fight being interrupted by Julia, who shoots Viscious, berates Spike for not trying to rescue her from Viscious and then takes over the Syndicate. Julia was an underdeveloped character in the original show and they tried to fix that here. But I honestly do not know how to feel about this. The twist feels almost out of nowhere, because though we have seen that Julia is capable of standing up for herself earlier in the show, we also have seen her disdain for the criminal lifestyle, which is something she has now actively accepted by the end of the show. My feelings on it are mixed and I have my doubts if this decision will pay off in season 2.
On a final note, this show is a bit of a mess. Enjoyable, but far from perfect. 5/10… Expand
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