The Netflix adaptation turned a loose anthology series into a distracting serialized narrative. The format was another significant issue in Cowboy Bebop's adaptation, and it will undoubtedly be an issue in One Piece. If live-action Luffy, Zoro, Nami, and company are equally unoriginal, unlikable, or unrecognizable, the show is a lost cause. It was no fun to watch live-action Jet, Spike and Faye interact. So long as the adaptation gives fans their favorite characters in a new medium, some fans will be happy to see them. Capturing the characters and their unique interaction is arguably more important than approximating the plot. An effort comparable to Cowboy Bebop would turn Luffy into a Spider-Man-style quip artist or Zoro into a bad Batman pastiche. Live-action Spike so effectively contradicts everything fans love about him that his first on-screen appearance had viewers giving up hope. The writing of the characters failed on such a massive level that the upcoming series may need to actively pursue failure to match it. Some failures of Netflix's Bebop are obvious enough that the upcoming One Piece series should see them coming. Producers have claimed that the series could break the record for TV budgets, but that remains to be seen. One Piece will require a far more substantial budget, or the careful eye of a low-budget master like Adi Shankar to make it work. It's hard to know whether the issue was a simple lack of funds or more complex misallocation, as much of the show looks cheap. This simple aesthetic weakness kept the series far from the modest hopes of straightforward mediocre adaptation. Netflix's Cowboy Bebop was rife with budgetary issues that ensured many of the anime's best scenes simply didn't appear. The problems begin long before a single frame is shot. Setting out to adapt One Piece is tremendously ambitious and equally ill-advised. It has run largely uninterrupted for almost twenty-five years to unimaginable success with no sign of diminishing returns. One Piece does not have the benefit of that level of ease of use.Įiichiro Oda's One Piece probably sits among the most enduringly popular works of fiction of all time. They work on the level of a big-budget fan film. They fill the space and smoothly recreate fan-favorite moments, then fade with little negative attention. The average anime adaptation, however, is better represented by Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, or Rurouni Kenshin. Look to Speed Raceror Alita: Battle Angel imperfect films, but ones that put the soul of the anime to the cinema. The best anime adaptations capture the spirit of their source material and intelligently update them to fit the new medium. Not a great one, but a serviceable live-action update that would make some fans happy just to see their favorite action scenes acted out by real humans. The astounding thing about the series is how easy it could've been to create a decent adaptation of the series. It's hard to pinpoint the things that Cowboy Bebop did wrong, there are too many to reasonably list. RELATED: Netflix's One Piece Series: What We Know So Far It was despised by fans and disliked by critics, but its tremendous failure wasn't enough to convince Netflix to give up on the concept. The single season dropped on November 19th last year, and its cancellation was made public no less than twenty days later. Learning from mistakes seems like too high a hope for a genre that exists entirely against the advice of fans and the lessons of history, but perhaps they'll start now.Ĭowboy Bebop is now, unfortunately, the name for both one of the most iconic and influential anime series of all time and a pointlessly dreadful live-action remake of the same. Anime adaptations very rarely work, and the very few that don't turn out awful are exceptions that prove the rule.
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