YMMV / Cowboy Bebop (2021)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Julia's handling a Deconstruction of Spike's Single-Target Sexuality? The anime made her the love of his life and someone who he was willing to sacrifice his Found Family for. However, we never knew the reason why. Here, it's made clear that Spike never really knew her that well and idealized her to the point of putting her on a pedestal when she was a selfish self-interested criminal like himself.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: In "Blue Dog Waltz", Stax, the capo boss, mentions that it rains diamonds on Neptune (hence why dogs are "harder to move on the black market than diamonds"). While it sounds like a typical Sci-Fi invention, it actually does rain solid diamonds on Neptune and Uranus.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: A live-action adaptation of one of the biggest Sacred Cow shows in anime was only ever going to lead to this reaction. Fans of the original anime were going to not like the adaptation on principle (especially with Netflix's track record of live-action anime adaptations not doing well^note until One Piece (2023) broke that streak a couple of years later), while critics were going to compare it to the anime no matter what, and it got lambasted online rather hard. Not helping matters is how the creators and actors chose to respond to the vitriol with mutual hostility, which only puts fans off even more. Despite increasingly good ratings via Nielson's ratings among the general public, the show got cancelled after one season almost three weeks after it came out for unknown reasons, but many claim it was due to the backlash it caused online.
• Awesome Music: One thing that most people can definitely agree on is that the music, like in the original anime, kicks ass. And not just the tracks that were from the original. Even the new songs made specifically for this version of Cowboy Bebop are excellent and capture similar feelings and vibes as the original. Makes sense, as the original composer and performers returned for this version.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The fact that it was Jet's old partner who set him up and framed him as a dirty cop is fairly obvious practically from the first scene of the episode. Then again for anyone who saw the original anime, this falls into more It Was His Sled.
• Complete Monster:
  • Caliban is the de facto head of the three Elders, and the source of the solar system's current suffering at the hands of the Red Dragon Crime Syndicate. Running the Syndicate with bloody efficiency that results in daily assassinations and massive drug trafficking of the dangerous Red Eye, Caliban also implemented the brutal "Pits", a brutal underground fighting ring where homeless and orphaned children are made to fight each other—sometimes lethally—in exchange for shelter and food. A horrid excuse of a father and husband to his family, Caliban subjected his wife and son to such terrible abuse that his wife killed herself at Caliban's goading, an act Caliban made his son Vicious watch. Caliban then raised Vicious into a homicidal, raging sociopath that kills dozens to secure Syndicate reign, and when Vicious finally tries to stand up to his father, Caliban tries to kill Vicious and the man's lover Julia for crossing him.
  • "Session 6: Binary Two-Step": The AI Cy-Baba killed and absorbed the minds of 3,000 people in a jealous rage at humans for having bodies. Resurfacing as "Dr. Londes", when Spike Spiegel investigates its cult, Londes forces him to see repeated simulations of his lover turning to despise Spike before dying, hoping to break Spike's will and absorb his consciousness as its latest victim.
• Critical Dissonance: Reviewer consensus: a series So Okay, It's Average, especially because way too many shows that came between the original anime and this production borrowed freely from it in terms of looks and plot and thus it does not feels any different. Consensus amongst the fans of the original anime: an abomination that made mistakes in all points big and small and needed to die. The solar flare-level firestorm in social media (with the ever present recommendation to just watch the original show) was one of the biggest contributors to the show being Cut Short.
• I Knew It!: Those who read the news about the casting for the show suspected that the producers will show Ed later on. Turns out they were right.
• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Where's Ein?" A joke that Ein was the only universally accepted part of the adaptation and whenever he's not on the screen, audiences would be asking this.
  • The Nostalgia Critic presents Cowboy Bebop, stemming from the scene of Ed's first appearance being shot in a way that resembles a typical Doug Walker skit. People have also compared the scene to JesuOtaku dressing up as Ed in To Boldly Flee.
  • See You Space Cowboy… NOT!!! ^Explaination  In the wake of the show’s sudden cancellation after only one season, the hatedom quoted this take on the anime’s Signing Off Catchphrase.
• Narm:
  • Woodcock's blackmail/black male pun has become infamous for how utterly ridiculous it sounds, to the point where it's arguably become the show's Signature Scene for many of its detractors.
  • Santiago's "You'll never know true power until you've tasted the testicles of a man who's wronged you." Sure, it's menacing when you know he's literally eating their testicles, but out of context it sounds like he lets his enemies teabag him, or gives them oral sex.
  • While Faye playing Big Damn Heroine when she rescues Jet, Spike and Kimmie in the last episode starts out as a cool moment, her Badass Boast of "Welcome to the ouch, motherfuckers!" which for some undermines the mood and makes the viewer cringe rather than keeping the energy up.
• One-Scene Wonder: Edward's appearance at the end of the final episode, despite how short the scene is, certainly made an impression on viewers thanks to the character's signature style of high energy and humor reminiscent of the original anime, for better or worse. However, because the series was cancelled after just one season, that's all we get.
• Questionable Casting: Many casting announcements drew confusion among fans, but none more so than John Cho as Spike Spiegel. Race Lift controversy aside, he was nearly 50 years old at the release of the series (whereas Spike was in his mid-20s in the source material) and mostly known for comedic roles, on top of not resembling the character at all (Spike was 6'2" for starters). This did cool a little when the show was released, with most reviews starting while he's a little too laid back from his original, Cho at least gets the character's mannerisms down and he does a good job on the action scenes.
• So Okay, It's Average: What more of the positive reviews tend to fall under. While it in no way will compare to the anime, many did a least give props for trying to be true to the original while likewise wanting to differentiate itself as well. Praise going to the music, the Bebop set and CGI during the space scenes. Most even stating when the show focused on the Bebop crew and their bounty hunts/plots, it's a fun time. However, the series is hampered by some very awkward direction for the leads that come off as stilted at best and outright goofy at worst. Likewise pacing issues as well between the a and b plots (the A being the Bebop crew and B being the ongoing story with the Red Dragon Syndicate), with the Vicious/Julia storyline often being chided as uninteresting and pace breaking in the middle of the main stories. Still, general consensus is it's not a bad watch compared to other Netflix anime adaptations and pretty decent when all is said and done and that it had the potential to get better if Netflix hadn't cancelled it as fast as they did.
• The Scrappy: The series' portrayal of Vicious is one of the frequent complaints about it. Criticisms include that he appears too frequently and many of scenes with Julia are distracting Padding, Alex Hassell's overacting, and the character's more temperamental personality meaning he lacks the coldness and mystery that made him so sinister in the anime.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • To say the least, die-hard fans of the anime weren't exactly happy with a few of the changes of the series since a lot of the more well known stories deviate from their episodes. Some have argued that is to help with the new one hour format (since the original series is only twenty minutes per episode) and that it keeps the stories from just being one-for-one from the anime, but it still comes off a bit clumsy in a few aspects.
  • The announcement that Faye would have Adaptational Modesty also caused this reaction.
  • Julia shooting Spike out of the window during the church scene got slammed HARD by fans of the anime, who felt like not only was it was a major disservice to the original scene but making Julia a possible antagonist undermines Spike's past and his motivations, removing what made the original scene and Spike's character meaningful.
  • Changing Vicious from a cold-blooded, highly skilled assassin to a much less competent and threatening upstart who owes his high position within the Syndicate to Nepotism received a ton of criticism from fans of the anime. His childish and petulant personality also got similar criticism, to the point where some compare him to Draco Malfoy or Viserys Targaryen.
  • Changing Mad Pierrot into a Psycho for Hire Vicious sends after Spike. The original episode that featured him was successfully horrifying because Pierrot was a super-powered Psychopathic Manchild who decided to go after Spike for no particular reason other than to please his corrupted idea of "playing", which adds to the horror (imagine being stalked by a flying Nigh-Invulnerable Monster Clown who decided to treat you like his plaything to death) and showcases how even when Spike isn't looking for danger (he bumps into Pierrot after spending the night playing pool in a pub) danger follows him everywhere.
  • Another criticism was the casting of Daniella Pineda, a Hispanic, as Faye who is from Singapore, meaning they race-swapped one of the more prominent Asian characters in the main cast.
  • The changes in Gren's character from a man whose body was wrecked by cruel experiments to the point where he grew breasts and was forced to use that deformity to continue working for Vicious to simply a non-binary individual was seen as a major disservice to the character.
  • The overabundance of Gender Flip in general has likewise been criticized. While most don't mind one or two characters, the series has a handful of them, most shifted to women. Mao Yenrai especially caught flak for doing this to the character since the live action loves to expand on aspects from the anime and he barely had much screentime in that version. Yet here, changing him to a woman just makes the character feel so foreign (on top of her motivation shift in this series too).
  • The fact that in this continuity, the name Spike Spiegel is an alias, also received flak from fans. While at first it made sense, given that Spike faked his death and wouldn't be using his real name. But when you learn his original name was Fearless, it reaches Narm territory. Apparently in this continuity, members of the Red Dragon Syndicate are named after their personalities.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: While the show received a great deal of criticism for its writing and its departures from the story and tone of the original series, one common point of praise for it was the performances of its actors, in particular the main trio of Spike, Jet, and Faye, whose chemistry many regarded as a high point of the show.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: A common criticism of the show is that it attempts to faithfully recreate the more surreal, stylistic and atmospheric aspects of the original anime, but comes with half the show filmed and performed more traditionally and blending the two came across very awkward and unnatural. The big example being Ed's appearance at the end of Season 1 where the actor's attempt at capturing the character's exaggerated mannerisms, which is freeing in animation, results in a performance that looks incredibly ridiculous, if not unintentionally terrifying, in live action.
• Unfortunate Character Design: With her round goggles, bright orange sideways-pointing hair and penchant for pulling very wide grins, several people have noted that Radical Edward resembles a live-action Angry Kid.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: For all the complaints of the series' aesthetics, it's clear that a lot of time and money was spent getting the visual effects right. Everything is modeled down to the last intricate detail, with the effects houses going to the trouble of getting even the reflections correct — which isn't an easy or cheap thing to do even for the biggest Hollywood blockbusters.

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