Cowboy Bebop Creator Shinichiro Watanabe Stopped Watching Netflix’s Live-Action Series After 10 Minutes: It Was “Tough To Continue” - 8days Skip to main content

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Cowboy Bebop Creator Shinichiro Watanabe Stopped Watching Netflix’s Live-Action Series After 10 Minutes: It Was “Tough To Continue”

Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop, starring John Cho, debuted in November 2021 but was axed three weeks later.

Cowboy Bebop Creator Shinichiro Watanabe Stopped Watching Netflix’s Live-Action Series After 10 Minutes: It Was “Tough To Continue”

If you were let down by Netflix’s live-action version of Cowboy Bebop, you’re not alone: Shinichiro Watanabe, the creator of the anime the series is based on, is just as disappointed.

In an interview with Forbes, Watanabe revealed how upset he was with the streaming service’s take on his beloved anime, which starred John Cho as bounty hunter Spike Spiegel. The series was launched in November 2021 to poor reviews (47 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), but was handed the pink three weeks later.

“For the new Netflix live-action adaptation, they sent me a video to review and check,” Watanabe told the outlet. “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 and I realised at that point that if I wasn’t involved, it would not be Cowboy Bebop.'”

The opening scene he was referring to is in the first 10 minutes of episode one. 

Watanabe added, “I felt that maybe I should have done this. Although the value of the original anime is somehow far higher now.”

While disheartened by Cowboy Behop’s cancellation, Cho was moved by fans who petitioned to save the show. “I put a lot of my life into it,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in March 2022. “I’d gotten injured shooting that show and so I took a year off because of the surgery and devoted myself to rehab, came back and finished the show.

“It was this huge mountain for me to climb, healing from that injury. I felt good about myself as a result. We also shot the show in New Zealand, so my family moved there. It was just a huge event in my life and it was suddenly over.

“It was very shocking and I was bummed. But I was very warmed by the response.

“I wish I could have contacted everybody and gotten hugs. You can’t do that now, but … I don’t know what this is. I’m mystified a little bit about how you can connect with people that you don’t know doing your work, but I won’t question it. I will value it and treasure it. I’m just really deeply appreciative that anyone would care. It’s stunning to me.”

In the Forbes piece, Watanabe also talked about his early relationship with Hollywood, which started with The Animatrix, the 2003 collection of animated shorts inspired by The Matrix, where he contributed two segments.

It wasn’t always a pleasant experience, Wantanabe recalled.

“Back on The Animatrix, I first got to work with people in Hollywood,” he said. “Working with those kinds of people is always difficult. This is because at the beginning they promised me that I could do whatever I want, but that’s just lip service.

“Actually, I had a big altercation with a Hollywood producer on The Animatrix. He would always come with these stupid requests, just so he could identify his own contribution.

“As the requests were stupid and made no sense, I rejected all of them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t win in this situation, so I had to concede on some of these things.

“I learned from this bitter experience though. For subsequent projects, I became smarter at handling people who wanted to interfere. In that, I would send back very small corrections or adjustments just before the deadline. That tended to work.”

 

Photo: Geoffrey Short/Netflix

Watch exclusive 8 DAYS interviews on meWATCH and Mediacorp YouTube Channel.

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