Cowboy Bebop (2021)

This was neither as bad as I thought it could be nor as good as I hoped it might be. The vast majority of the blame I think has to go towards the scriptwriting, which has a Joss Whedon-esque self-referentiality to it that completely undermines the philosophy of the original and, more than that, is just bad on its own merits. ("Welcome to the ouch, motherfuckers" should not get past the writer's room.) The most interesting swing-and-miss of the show was the decision to dedicate a huge amount of time and energy towards Vicious and Julia. The anime's depiction of them — scant — works because we don't need to know that much about them. They're caricatures whose nuances we can paint in on our own. By the time the season wrapped up, I actually enjoyed some of the shades we got — the flashback episode was perhaps my favorite in the show, and ironically it's the one where they weren't forced to hit the same plot beats of the original — and then the characterization of the finale is tired, a hook for a second season.

I am not sad that this show didn't get renewed: it didn't deserve it. At the same time, I don't regret watching it: I groaned and sighed a lot, but it was fun. (And the acting I thought was really well done; the core three cannot be m