Cowboy Bebop Releases an Evocative Shot-for-Shot Trailer for The New Series on Netflix

I am a difficult person to please. I have a love/hate relationship with media. I understand the power of media, I realize the depth of control media has over society. When I spend my time with media, I have to feel like I spent my non-renewable natural resource of time, is being spent on something of merit.

Go ahead. You’re right. I am a connoisseur. Or a snob. I can admit it. Television and movies have such an outsized effect on our society, I feel like I only want to interact with the best of it.

Shinichiro Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop is the kind of media I live for.

If you haven’t had the pleasure, make the story of three-hard luck bounty hunters trying to make their way in a cesspool of a solar system, onboard the intrepid spaceship Bebop, your next priority.

One of the best things about this show is the intro. The band Seatbelts amazing opening jazz sequence puts you into the mood for the mercurial stories of the Bebop. The anime fuses this amazing music from Yoko Kanno into a animated sequence which further defines the style of the story; fast, frenetic, intense, you feel as if you can almost connect to the pulp-noir spirit of this story.

It is my favorite introduction to any anime series. Today, I was given a gift. I got to watch live actors taking on the roles of these characters and enjoying what I was seeing. It was like seeing a friend you haven’t run into in a while, and they still look good.

It gives me hope I will get to enjoy this series. But, and here where the rubber hits the road for me, I would have preferred they hired the production team of the first series and tell me some new stories. I am saddened this venerable anime series which didn’t need enhancement. It was already perfect.

The only way it grows more perfect is to tell me new stories. Give me further adventures, give me another reason to love your series. As wonderful as this opening sequence is, and it is wonderful, a tiny seed of discontent pinches my joy like a pair of too-tight shoes.

I am heartened that a new generation will get to enjoy a series for the first time and experience the connection I did with this story. But I still would have preferred something new. Yes, I know. Nostalgia mining.

They have found something I just might watch. Even though I already know how it ends.

Enjoy the video. Looks like fun.

Netflix’s Cowboy BeBop series stars John Cho, Alex Hassell and Daniella Pineda, and arrives November 19, 2021.

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