Re: Netflix
Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2021 6:06 pm
I am posting in anticipation of Netflix releasing a live action Cowboy Bebop this coming Friday. I have low expectations given live action remakes of amazing anime have a terrible track record.
I became a fan of anime in an era when access was limited. My first exposure was to a show called G-Force that played in the afternoons at a time when we could only watch it in the summer. It kicked off afternoon cartoons and started while we were still in school most of the year. But my friends and I loved it. Years later I found out it was an Americanized version of a very popular Japanese show that, in it's original form, was much more layered. But at 6-8 years old, just because I was reaching the age of accountability didn't mean I was ready for depth in my cartoons. But I do think the emotion in the show was part of the attraction. These weren't Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd characters.
But that wasn't the show that made me genuinely crave anime over western cartoons as a kids. That distinction goes to a show that came on Saturday mornings when I was in the fourth grade - Robotech. Yeah, it was the airplanes turning into robots that first captured my imagination along with running battles in the streets between what I learned to call Mecha and giant aliens. But the hook was really set in through relationship between the title character and the his movie star love interest. I cried as a kid when she died. Cartoons aren't supposed to make you cry. People aren't supposed to die who aren't the bad guys. It may have been the first tragedy in drama I really engaged with outside of books like Where the Red Fern Grows. TV was not the vehicle for tragedy.
A couple of years later Voltron came out and again, it's Americanized version was fun but the bits of story that snuck through are what made it stand out even as it established a knowledge of the tropes.
Skip ahead to my freshman year in high school. One of my friend's older brother had a group of Junior friends we'd hang out with before classes. One of them turned out to be a huge anime fan with a connection in Japan who sent him VHS American machine compatible shows you couldn't get easily in the States. When I told him about discovering Robotech as a kid he asked did I knew that it had been sanitized for Saturday morning cartoons? but he had the series in it's original Japanese version and since I seemed to be a real fan and would appreciate it he'd let me borrow it. That began the next stage of anime fandom for me.
That was around the very early 1990s. By the mid-90s Blockbusters and other venues had made anime movies more accessible if still very niche. Classic movies like Akira were joined by new classics that came to the states almost as quickly as they appeared in Japan. The anime of my youth had a look that had evolved some but the mid-90s saw more obvious experiments in animation styling. It was in this period where Cowboy Bebop arrived. It's style was unique, the animation it's own while recognizable, the world building enticing, and the storytelling masterful. Bebop was a true genre defining show that stands the test of time as few from the era manage.
So this Friday (11/19) Netflix premiers their live action take on it. I can't pretend to be excited because it can't possibly live up to the original. But because it is Bebop I'm unavoidably curious. I do hope it leads some to check out the original. And if it turns out to even be just ok, then cool. The Bebop world is one that feels like it could belong in the 2016/2022 collapse of the matrix we are experiencing.
I became a fan of anime in an era when access was limited. My first exposure was to a show called G-Force that played in the afternoons at a time when we could only watch it in the summer. It kicked off afternoon cartoons and started while we were still in school most of the year. But my friends and I loved it. Years later I found out it was an Americanized version of a very popular Japanese show that, in it's original form, was much more layered. But at 6-8 years old, just because I was reaching the age of accountability didn't mean I was ready for depth in my cartoons. But I do think the emotion in the show was part of the attraction. These weren't Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd characters.
But that wasn't the show that made me genuinely crave anime over western cartoons as a kids. That distinction goes to a show that came on Saturday mornings when I was in the fourth grade - Robotech. Yeah, it was the airplanes turning into robots that first captured my imagination along with running battles in the streets between what I learned to call Mecha and giant aliens. But the hook was really set in through relationship between the title character and the his movie star love interest. I cried as a kid when she died. Cartoons aren't supposed to make you cry. People aren't supposed to die who aren't the bad guys. It may have been the first tragedy in drama I really engaged with outside of books like Where the Red Fern Grows. TV was not the vehicle for tragedy.
A couple of years later Voltron came out and again, it's Americanized version was fun but the bits of story that snuck through are what made it stand out even as it established a knowledge of the tropes.
Skip ahead to my freshman year in high school. One of my friend's older brother had a group of Junior friends we'd hang out with before classes. One of them turned out to be a huge anime fan with a connection in Japan who sent him VHS American machine compatible shows you couldn't get easily in the States. When I told him about discovering Robotech as a kid he asked did I knew that it had been sanitized for Saturday morning cartoons? but he had the series in it's original Japanese version and since I seemed to be a real fan and would appreciate it he'd let me borrow it. That began the next stage of anime fandom for me.
That was around the very early 1990s. By the mid-90s Blockbusters and other venues had made anime movies more accessible if still very niche. Classic movies like Akira were joined by new classics that came to the states almost as quickly as they appeared in Japan. The anime of my youth had a look that had evolved some but the mid-90s saw more obvious experiments in animation styling. It was in this period where Cowboy Bebop arrived. It's style was unique, the animation it's own while recognizable, the world building enticing, and the storytelling masterful. Bebop was a true genre defining show that stands the test of time as few from the era manage.
So this Friday (11/19) Netflix premiers their live action take on it. I can't pretend to be excited because it can't possibly live up to the original. But because it is Bebop I'm unavoidably curious. I do hope it leads some to check out the original. And if it turns out to even be just ok, then cool. The Bebop world is one that feels like it could belong in the 2016/2022 collapse of the matrix we are experiencing.
