Live-action anime adaptations are a mixed bag, and they usually fall on the miss side. The two media often have clashing aesthetics—so a realistic take loses the distinct “anime” feel, while a faithful one can come off as cheesy or uncanny. For every Speed Racer that works, there’s an Attack on Titan that doesn’t, and the less said about that Dragonball movie, the better.
But modern streaming platforms have turned the tide. Suddenly, solid anime adaptations are everywhere: a Fullmetal Alchemist film trilogy, multiple seasons of Alice in Borderland, and even high-budget takes on The Last Airbender and One Piece. Now, another fan-favorite anime is getting live-action treatment, though the ghost of an old failure lingers. According to Variety, Tomorrow Studios— the team behind the One Piece adaptation— is tackling Samurai Champloo, Shinichirō Watanabe’s samurai period thriller.
This isn’t the first time Watanabe’s work has been adapted to live-action. He’s also the creator of Cowboy Bebop, the cult-classic sci-fi anime that got a 2021 TV adaptation panned by critics and audiences for losing the source material’s heart and soul. Even Watanabe, credited as a consultant on the series, had reservations.
“For the new Netflix live-action adaptation, they sent me a video to review and check,” he told Forbes in 2023. “It started with a scene in a casino, which made it very tough for me to continue. I stopped there and so only saw that opening scene. It was clearly not Cowboy Bebop, and I realized at that point that if I wasn’t involved, it would not be Cowboy Bebop.”
Can another Watanabe anime adaptation break this curse? Tomorrow Studios assures fans Cowboy Bebop was a lesson, not a bad sign for what’s next. This time, Watanabe will have more input. “We’ve learned,” producer Mark Adelstein told Variety, “having the creator there to bless the creative is really important.”
Cowboy Bebop arrived early in the current adaptation boom, so maybe the kinks hadn’t been worked out yet. Hopefully, producers have learned from experience when switching between media. Samurai Champloo’s Edo setting is filled with Watanabe’s signature hip anachronisms, so staying true to the original tone is critical. Let’s hope, deep into Netflix’s anime era, the streamer (or whichever platform hosts the new series) proves Cowboy Bebop was just a fluke.