"It's just different" is like the thing people say when describing something bad but don't want to call it bad.

 

I dunno man… I saw the scene of Spike in the church… and that was most definitely bad. But I am curious about other things.

 

Ultimately, I didn't mind any of the overall plot changes. Not a whole lot of point in watching it if it was going to be exactly the same as the original.

But it didn't balance the camp and the gravitas very well. You've got the climactic church stand-off, when suddenly Faye rolls in playing cavalry with a "La Cucaracha" horn, completely killing the mood.

I had no qualms about Vicious as the fake-out big bad. His shallow edgelord schtick is best left in the context of the 90s.

I actually liked the live-action rendition of the eco-terrorist episode better. The monkey virus in the original was beyond silly. The use of weaponized terraforming agents instead was far more on-point and disturbing.

Jet's casting was spot-on, and John Cho's Spike was passable-to-good, but of course no candle to Steve Blum or Koichi Yamadera. I didn't mind them toning down Faye's sexpot/femme fatale stylings, but they softened her too much on the other side too. I missed when she'd spontaneously pick petty fights with Ein, and all her other decidedly unlady-like behaviours.

I wish the editing style had been as gutsy as that pre-release trailer, where they leaned into the coloured panel transitions from the opening sequence. The aesthetic of the show itself didn't do enough to stand out.

I'll certainly not go so far to say it was "good", but it was entertaining, and it was far better received by general audiences than by anime-first fans, which is the point of these types of adaptations in the first place. It was fun to analyze in a "for want of a nail" sense, how it seemed to be tweaking the "destinies" of the characters in a fan-fic-y sort of way, but sadly, we didn't get to see where that was going with the series' premature cancellation.

 

Alright... so I watched episode 1.
Now let me say that I don't have a lot of love for the anime, so I'm not overly protective of it.

As for live action adaptations of the Cowboy Bebop we already had one: it was called 'Firefly'. Ok... not an official adaptation, but still...

From what I understand the Cowboy Bebop anime was a 'love letter' to Western entertainment. However, this live action show is western entertainment trying to be a live action anime... of the anime... that is supposedly a love letter to western entertainment. And since it apparently misunderstood the anime this show failed.

The casting: Pineda is passable as a version of Faye... no problem with Jet... I don't think Cho was good for Spike. Too old looking. Plus... if they were going to change what Faye wears then couldn't they put Spike into something that looks like it fits?

The visuals looked top notch. No issue there.

The style- aesthetic, the music, the overall story, the color palette... I get it: this show is trying to look and sound like the anime. But the only reason why I got it is because I saw the anime. The anime already had a built-in audience to appeal to. This show has to attract the non-anime fans.

Taken at face value this show comes of pretty stupid. And confusing. There's no hook to get people to watch further episodes to figure out these characters, who they are, what they do, why they do it... or even how this universe works.

I can see why it failed.

 

Your post pretty much echoes my thoughts on the show and casting.

Ultimately, I think Cowboy Bebop is definitely a product of its time and it's like trying to capture lightning in a bottle twice. CB has been referenced and homaged so many times by other media like Firefly that remaking CB as live action comes full circle and feels like it's treading a well worn path that others have already taken that it becomes predictable and old hat from the get-go.

I can only add that the Netflix show definitely dropped the ball with the villains/antagonists. Vicious was too over the top and silly to be taken as a serious threat,

Spoiler

but Julia's character assassination was the most egregious as her sudden heel turn and betrayal of Spike pretty much ruins his character backstory as well. (Subverting viewer expectations in all the worst ways possible.)

I get wanting to give Julia more personality and agency as a character, and they could've leaned more into her forming a splinter faction of the Red Dragons to fight Vicious but the way the writers did it in this show was just bad on all fronts. Just disappointing since I actually did like how the main trio of protagonists were starting to gel and bounce off each other as found family up until the very stupid final episode.