Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop Shows Hollywood Still Can’t Take Anime Seriously

Anime needs a “Batman Begins” moment

Usually when a new movie or TV show comes out, there’s a pretty good split between the audience’s reaction, and the critical consensus. With Netflix’s live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop, that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, the critics and the audience seem to be almost in exact agreement. Currently, Rotten Tomatoes’s Tomatometer stands at 49%, while the Audience score is just slightly better at 53%. And while Cowboy Bebop may have made it into the Netflix top ten, regardless of whatever commercial success they found from it, they have, by no means, hit it out of the park.

Ultimately, Netflix’s failure to create a meaningful live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop stems from the same problem Hollywood has had in adapting anime to live action for years. Filmmakers just can’t seem to take Anime seriously. This is an error made particularly ironic in the reimagining of the very show that elevated anime to the status of an art form more than two decades ago.

Netflix’s Cowboby Bebop could have been the show that turned the tide and presented a show as artfully done as the original. But it did not.

The thing is, what makes Cowboy Bebop the anime so good is the art put into it. Even…