Cowboy Bebop

I've got a feeling that they might get some unknowns to play the main characters. Keanu Reeves may end up playing Spike after all, but that's one of my guesses for the character.

So, when the time filming comes in April 2019 or we get more information, should we create a separate page for the series in question?

Edited by gjjones on Dec 14th 2018 at 11:44:58 AM

If Netflix is specifically casting an Asian for Spike (why? If anything he’s implied to be Jewish), then no, Keanu Reeves won’t be.

Also casting an Asian for Spike is dumb. He’s not Asian. Faye is, but he isn’t.

Spike was inspired by Yusaku Matsuda, so it wouldn't be that far fetched to cast him with an Asian actor. Coincidentally, Killing Game, The Most Dangerous and the Execution Game, which starred Matsuda were all scored by Yuji Ono, who also composed one of other influences for Cowboy Bebop, Lupin III.

Edited by harkko on Dec 15th 2018 at 8:21:47 AM

The ethnicity of the various characters isn't particularly important to their individual character arcs or the plot as a whole, though I do think it's important to show the setting as a diverse one rather than culturally monolithic, so you can toy with the backgrounds of individual characters without much problem as long as they don't all end up being the same. Faye is canonically Asian (I believe it's mentioned in secondary materials that she's from Singapore, but don't quote me on that), Spike has a German family name and can be read as ethnically Jewish, and Jet is probably supposed to be American but isn't coded as black outside of being voiced by Beau Billingslea.

That said, they seem to be looking for a Bruce Lee type for Spike, and that's a pretty explicit influence on the character, so I find it hard to fault them for that. Jet being black isn't in the original Japanese version, but the dub is so iconic that it would feel like whitewashing if he wasn't black in the live action version.

...what is Ed though?

Ed is Ambiguously Brown, so you could make a case for her to match almost any background.

Edited by NativeJovian on Dec 15th 2018 at 12:50:04 PM

Apparently Ed has no set demographic pre-requisite for casting, which is good because getting the feel of Ed is way more important than anything else (that and in the show she's Ambiguously Brown so it could go a multitude of ways, rather than be considering a Race Lift or whitewashing).

x3 - That Brooklyn 99 picture making the rounds would totally have me buy Terry Crews as Jet.

Edited by Beatman1 on Dec 15th 2018 at 1:02:45 PM

Spike's a guy who works for what amounts to one of the triads on the biggest melting pot in the system, Mars. With that in mind, sure he has a stereotypically Ashkenazi-sounding name, but that doesn't mean he has to be European. People intermarry and adopt, and that's without a huge multinational diaspora in the wake of a global catastrophe like the Gate Disaster. If they want to cast Spike as Asian as a kind of nod to the subject matter's own influences, why not?

Ed's real name being Francoise Appeldelhi, I believe the theory is that Ed is at least part-Turkish based on her dad's full name being mostly Turkish with one word that might be German — Turkish immigrants being (relatively) common in both Germany and Japan — as well as sounding a bit like the Turkish phrase for "check, please." A French name like Francoise wouldn't be unheard of in a family of German descent, or it could be saying something about her mother, or whatever. But yeah, it's all pretty up in the air with her. Finding some kid with the talent to can capture her personality and body language in live action is going to be one hell of a trick to pull off.

Edited by Unsung on Dec 15th 2018 at 11:25:47 AM

Of course when the Netflix series premieres, I’m also predicting that a famous composer might rearrange Yoko Kanno’s music and not mess up the theme song.

Let's hope the series doesn't get a very bad backlash.

Edited by gjjones on Dec 30th 2018 at 11:34:45 AM

So, to restart this thread, it looks like Netflix has posted the Cowboy Bebop series on their website.

Edited by gjjones on Dec 31st 2018 at 1:00:15 PM

Pierrot Le Fou, Jupiter Jazz, Hard Luck Woman, Ganymede Elegy, all in live action...

They better have some damn good directors. The problem I have with a lot of live-action series is the pacing and lack of visual flair that a lot of even mediocre anime series have.

Random question, did they ever really explain what a data dog is/does? I saw some speculation that the cat in the lab from "Pierrot Le Fou" was a data cat (which makes sense, having a random cat would be really odd) but still begs the question... what's the point?

Regarding Spike as Asian: He didn't strike me as not Asian. Honestly always assumed he was at least of partial Asian descent.

If Spike didn't do the whole meditation thing in the first episode, or given that speech to that kid he was teaching martial arts in a later episode, I'd have assumed he was a white dude. Compared to Motoko Kusanagi who I'd have assumed was a white woman at a glance, but the name immediately says otherwise.

Never lived a day in Japan, and my experience of Asian culture is limited to a handful of things like Seven Million Yen, the Death Note films, Ruroni Kenshin, Battle Royale, Train to Busnan, and a crap ton of anime - the majority of which don't emphasize much realism anyway - so I wouldn't really know how to discern that to begin with.

Kind of amusing really.

...was Spike dreaming?

I always wondered what Faye expected to find when she went back to her family home in Hard Luck Woman considering it had been over 50 years.

Even if the house was still around, there was no guarantee her family still owned it.

Edited by Cortez on Apr 19th 2020 at 8:05:48 AM

I think part of her expected to find nothing, but she still wasn't prepared for the reality of actually *seeing* it. She spends so much time trying to convince herself of all these cynical platitudes, but she's really still quite young and naive, underneath it all.

Not only is there a second season planned for the live-action adaptation, but production was temporarily shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.

×2

I can see that, especially since while she looked sad, she didn't seem surprised, at least that was my take.

And maybe seeing her old classmate gave her some hope that she might find an aged relative. Though i wonder if that really would have been any better.

Probably not her parents, since if they survived the gate accident, they would have probably died of old age in those 50 years anyway.

Sunrise and Funmation just got a ton of anime industry people together including Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts to do a tribute recording of Real Folk Blues. All proceeds will be going to the CDC Foundation and Doctors without Borders (MSF) in support of the fight against COVID-19:

• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GwE0wwMmKE
• Bandcamp: https://funi.to/2VS1oc8
• Spotify: https://funi.to/2WfIoDr
• Get the vinyl: https://funi.to/2Yke6SN

Edited by ashlay on May 1st 2020 at 2:27:00 PM

Just in time for the live-action version, the original Cowboy Bebop anime is coming to Netflix worldwide on October 21, 2021!

Not to mention many of the original Japanese voice actors from the Cowboy Bebop anime will reprise their roles for the Japanese dub of the live-action series.

Cool. My plan to rewatch the whole series will begin four days after that because I want to rewatch one episode a day.

Double cool but... "can the Japanese dub be accessed in Netflix Philippines" is the question I want answered on Nov. 19.

Watched the epsode with Mad Pierrot as part of my rewatch

1)Spike is an idiot of the highest order

2)I think I saw some red liquid (Red eye) during the experiments they doing on Tongpu,which would explain a lot

So the anime is on Netflix. Yay.

Anyone know if the movie is available to stream anywhere? It just occurred to me that it's a Halloween movie so I'd like to watch it.