Shinichiro Watanabe a Forbes: “Chiaramente non era Cowboy Bebop”.
There is also Shinichiro Watanabe among the detractors of Cowboy Bebopthe live-action series of Netflix based on the hit Japanese anime of the same name, canceled a year ago after only one season. One of the principal creative forces behind the original work, director and/or storyboarder of many key episodes, as well as the 2001 film, in an interview with Forbes Watanabe spoke with some disappointment about the adaptation, going so far as to admit that “the value of the original anime is somewhat greater now.”
Cowboy Bebop: Cos’ha detto Shinichiro Watanabe?
“For Netflix’s new live-action adaptation, they had sent me a video to go through. It started with a scene in a casino, which made it very difficult for me to continue. I stopped there and saw nothing but that opening scene.” , Watanabe said. “It clearly wasn’t Cowboy Bebop and at that point I realized that if I hadn’t been involved, it wouldn’t have been Cowboy Bebop. I feel like maybe I should have. Though the value of the original anime is somewhat greater now.”
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly before the release of the adaptation, the protagonist John Cho he said: “We all agreed that we wanted to honor the material and also contribute something original. What we talked about more than anything was, ‘It’s in the spirit of Cowboy Bebop?'”. Many people credit Watanabe with the distinctive mix of Cowboy Bebop between Western film motifs and character traits of anime. In the interview, the director said that the anime was created in the late 90s partly because there was Star Wars: The Phantom Menace on the horizon and “Bandai thought that a new boom in the franchise was probably on its way and that spaceships would be essential. Therefore, they wanted to sell new plastic models of original spaceships. This led to their order to make an anime in which there they were spaceships”.
