Cowboy Bebop creator expressed his ‘disgust’ towards live-action — Kudasai

It seems that it wasn’t just the fans who were unhappy with the utter mishandling of Netflix on ownership of cowboy bebopsince the original creator of the anime, shinichiro watanabehas admitted that he couldn’t take more than one scene from the streaming service’s live-action abomination.

The veteran anime director shared his thoughts on the highly criticized and canceled adaptation three weeks after its premiere during a recent retrospective interview with Ollie Barderof Forbes. After a brief review of his career, which includes works such as Aoki Ryuusei SPT Layzner (Blue Comet SPT Layzner), Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory and of course, cowboy bebopWatanabe was asked what he thought of the live-action of cowboy bebop of Netflixto which he revealed that, to say the least, he was not a fan.

«For Netflix’s new live-action adaptation, they sent me a video to review.» recalls Watanabe. «It started with a scene in a casino, which made it very difficult for me to continue. I stopped there and that’s why I only saw that opening scene».

«It was clear that it wasn’t Cowboy Bebop and at that moment I realized that if I wasn’t involved, it wouldn’t be Cowboy Bebop.», he added. «I felt that perhaps I should have been an active participant. Although the value of the original anime is somehow much higher now». Watanabe not only shared his disgust at the adaptation of Netflixbut also opened up about his general distaste for the Hollywood way of working.

«On The Animatrix, I worked for the first time with people from Hollywood.said the director, reflecting on his short for the animated anthology of Matrix. «Working with those kinds of people is always difficult. Because at the beginning they promised me that I could do whatever I wanted, but that’s a complete lie. In fact, I had a huge run-in with a Hollywood producer on The Animatrix.», he remembered.

«He was always coming up with those stupid requests, just so he could identify his own contribution. Since the requests were stupid and made no sense, he turned them all down. Unfortunately, I couldn’t win in this situation, so I had to compromise on some of these things.“, lament. «However, I learned from this bitter experience. For later projects, I got smarter at handling people who wanted to interfere. In those cases, I submitted very small corrections or adjustments just before the deadline. that used to work».

«In Japan, you sometimes get American-like producers. Also sometimes you find good producers in the United States», he commented. «The original producer of The Animatrix was a really good guy. He understood my job and didn’t make stupid requests. However, he had to leave due to family problems, but his successor, named Spencer Lamm, was horrible. So many requests. Change this, change that. It was very frustrating, and if those requests came from the Wachowskis, I would at least respect that, since they came up with The Matrix.».

To handle this situation, Watanabe said: “When I went to Los Angeles for the recording sessions, I told the crew that if I saw that producer I would punch him in the face. The producer ended up not coming to the recordings, something unheard of». Of course, Watanabe is neither the first nor the last Japanese creator to express enormous disappointment in the way the West treats his creations.

Font: Forbes

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