Netflix Cancels “Cowboy Bebop” After One Season
by Emily Nagle
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70252595/COWBOYBEB_ArtDept_01192RC4__1__long.0.jpg)
See you, space cowboy! Less than a month after its debut, Netflix’s “Cowboy Bebop” has been cancelled.
The live-action series starring John Cho, Mustafa Shakir, and Daniella Pineda is based on the critically acclaimed 1998 anime that introduced anime to a Western market. In a world where fans debate whether anime is better to watch with subtitles or dubbed over, the English dub for “Cowboy Bebop” is regarded as being one of the best. So, why did the live-action adaptation get cancelled?
Unsurprisingly, the show’s cancellation after only 10 episodes is most likely due to the ratings. Following its November 19 premiere, “Cowboy Bebop” was met with mixed reviews. It holds a 46% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 68% rating on IMDb. While viewers praised the casting, they had issues with the writing and special effects.
“What’s missing from this gratuitous adaptation…is the atmosphere,” Judy Berman of TIME Magazine described of the series. “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.”
She hits the nail right on the head. Personally, I watched the first episode and stopped there, because I really didn’t know how to feel about it. I remember a few years ago when it was announced that a live-action adaptation of “Cowboy Bebop” was in production, and initially, I was pretty psyched. I’d watched the anime several times, and loved that it would be coming to a whole new generation of viewers many years later. However, once I saw it onscreen, it felt…weird. The aesthetic and art style of the original worked so well, to the point where it seemed unnecessary to recreate it in live-action. With that being said, the live-action “Cowboy Bebop” didn’t add anything to the original, or accomplish something that it didn’t already do back in 1998.
“Cowboy Bebop” is available to stream on Netflix.