Shinichiro Watanabe Spills the Tea on the Live-Action Cowboy Bebop, The Animatrix

Shinichiro Watanabe revealed some interesting things about his experiences working with Hollywood.

Firstly, Watanabe clarified the amount of involvement he had in Netflix's live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop: Practically none. Although Watanabe is officially credited as a consultant, he has not actually watched a single episode of the show from start to finish. "They sent me a video to review and check. It started with a scene in a casino, which made it very tough for me to continue. I stopped there and so only saw that opening scene. It was clearly not Cowboy Bebop."

Watanabe then continued that he realized that it would not be Cowboy Bebop unless he became more involved. He chose not to do this, although he does wonder if maybe he should have. He added that on the positive side, the original anime seems to have more value nowadays.

 

>The original creator calls your adaptation trash, lol.

 

Saw the headline earlier, but didn't click on it since the one being used was a "Bounding into Comics" article, so I don't acknowledge those. Good to see this from another source.

 

There's literally a dozen sources you can read it from.

 

Shame he was t more involved I liked the live action, it wasn't perfect but I thought spike and jet were done well. Not sure why he gave up at the casino scene at the start of first episode, that seemed very cowboy bebop to me but hell not gonna argue with the guy that created the source material.

 

Yeah, but didn't go out of my way to look for it. Just thought it was usually "Bounding" exaggeration.

 

You didn't want to find out if he threatened to punch the producer?  

 

Doesn't necessarily mean much. It's not really position to judge from objectively. They're too close to it. King hates Kubrick's Shining and it's fairly universally regarded as a masterpiece.That's not to say anything about Watanabe's assessment here, but between bitterness and arrogance an original creator disliking an adaptation really doesn't hold much weight on its own.

 

I read that article a few days ago I think and honestly my first impression was that it doesn't make Watanabe look very smart. By his own admission he watched maybe 5 minutes of one episode and then past judgment on it and declared that it would have been better if he had been involved. Lol

 

But I guess if ‘Bounding’ runs it, it somehow becomes fake news.

 

That is how many people here view the site, though Bounding are right sometimes. But they have reported rumors that have proved to be false as well.

 

I almost want to check out Netflix Bebop... but I don’t want to send them the wrong message and make them confuse my curiosity for interest.

 

Who hasn’t?

 

I took it, those 5 minutes was all he needed to see that they didn't share his vision on what makesCowboy Bebop, Cowboy Bebop. When its something your passionate about, it doesn't take long to realize " this is on some bullsh!t" which is probably why he wished he was more involved, but I doubt that wouldn't have made much of a difference, once they get the IP they can do what they want, and what they wanted was their version of Cowboy Bebop.

 

I dunno, he got one whiff and bailed. Sounds smart to me. He didn't stick around to watch the whole mess.

Especially if it's the thing you created.

 

YARR HARR FIDDLE DEE DEE
BEING A PIRATE IS ALRIGHT TO BE
DO WHAT YOU WANT CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE
YOU ARE A PIRATE

 

Don't let other people make your choices for you.

I don't know how to describe it without suggesting that I'm endorsing it so I'll just say that it's not categorically bad, it's just...different?