Cowboy Bebop may be our most faithful anime adaptation yet!

Whenever adapting from a different medium, there is bound to be some real growing pains. It took decades for filmmakers to nail comic books. One big reason is that it took them decades to get filmmakers who respected the source material. Sure, there may still be big differences between the MCU and the comic books, but they still embody the same style and feel of the comics. Unfortunately, the anime adaptations haven’t quite gotten it down yet — though they have gotten closer.

Most recently, Alita: Battle Angel likely got the closest to its source material. It was adapted heavily, but that was mostly for consolidation purposes as opposed to needless changes to actual content. As we make our way to more beloved franchises like Cowboy Bebop and One Piece, it’s become increasingly important that filmmakers continue following that trend. 

With that in mind, some of the stuff coming out of the Cowboy Bebop camp is encouraging. The live-action Netflix adaptation started its production some time back, but had to delay due to star John Cho getting injured. As such, details have been fairly sparse on what we can expect. However, writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach guaranteed fans that “We ain’t playing Bebop, Bebop is playing us.”

“You can’t look at Cowboy Bebop and say, ‘Well, it’s just a take-off point. We’re going to give them different hair and different clothing, and we’re gonna call it something different. And it’s just sort of gonna be a loose thing,’” he told io9. “If you’re doing Cowboy Bebop, you’re doing Cowboy Bebop. You know? It’s kind of like doing Star Wars.”

RELATED – Live-Action Cowboy Bebop & One Piece Producer Gives Updates On Anime Adaptations

So, if you’ve been sitting back, concerned there’d be a serious lack of Jazz in it, fret not. 

“You’ve got an entity that is very much a kind of gathering together of influences that were very important in post-war Japan: jazz, American pop culture, the whole sort-of cowboy thing, reality television,” Grillo-Marxuach continued. “So, you’re looking at a show that’s already a commentary on the influence of American pop culture with Japanese culture in the future, in space. And then we’re taking that and then we’re…trying to translate that not just in English, but also a format that is not the original format of the show.”

Speaking of format — don’t expect this to be a one-to-one adaptation either. Because of its hourlong style, it will have its own narrative as well. So, while it will certainly maintain that Cowboy Bebop feel, this is not meant to be a replacement for that original anime series.

“You’ve got a show where you have 26 episodes that are full of very colorful villains, very colorful stories, very colorful adversaries, bounties, and all of that,” he continued. “We’re not going to go one-to-one on all of those stories because we’re also trying to tell the broader story of Spike Spiegel and the Syndicate, Spike Spiegel and Julia, Spike Spiegel and Vicious, and all that. But we are looking at the show and saying, ‘Who are some of the great villains in this show, and how can we put them into this into this broader narrative?’ So that we are telling both of the big stories that Cowboy Bebop tells.”

RELATED – Cowboy Bebop: John Cho Wants Live-Action Series To Stay Strange

I can certainly see his point here. While the original Cowboy Bebop has an overarching narrative, there are also plenty of one-off episodes that are mostly standalone. For better or worse, it seems like they’ll be nixing those in order to make a more cohesive overall narrative.

“Everybody has a different idea of what the best version of a show is, and a lot of Cowboy Bebop fans believe that the anime is the best version of that show. We hope that we can convert them to look at our version of it, and think that it’s a wonderful translation, a wonderful addition to the original canon,” he said. “We’re deep enough in a world that where fandom is important to the existence of shows, that people like me don’t ever really lose sight of that. I think that there are always going to be tone-deaf reboots of things and all of that, but we’re fans. You know, we come at this as fans. We love genre, we love science fiction, and we love Cowboy Bebop.”

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SOURCE: io9