The Change That Has Fans Looking Twice At Jet In Netflix's Cowboy Bebop

After experiencing several production delays, including when actor John Cho suffered an injury on the show's set (via The A.V. Club), Netflix's live-action remake of the 1998 anime classic, "Cowboy Bebop," is finally here. On November 19, all 10 episodes of "Cowboy Bebop" Season 1 dropped on the streaming service. Set in the year 2071, "Cowboy Bebop" stars Cho as Spike Spiegel, an expert bounty hunter with a shady criminal past. Alongside Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) and con artist Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda), Spike travels through space, hunting down crooks while aboard the "Bebop" spaceship. However, things become complicated when Spike's past comes back to haunt him in the form of his old enemy, Vicious (Alex Hassell).

The new version of "Bebop" has already been met with divisive reactions from fans as well as critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the Tomatometer score for "Cowboy Bebop" Season 1 currently sits at a rotten 49%, while the average audience score is 52%. Notably, the show's lackluster critical reception may have something to do with some of the changes that were made to the original material. As one fan wrote on Reddit, "this [version] feels like they gutted the characters and story, just keeping the style and music [of the original]."

With all that said, there's one difference between Netflix's "Cowboy Bebop" and the original anime that has especially upset fans, and it all has to do with Mustafa Shakir's Jet.

In a Reddit thread dedicated to Netflix's "Cowboy Bebop" adaptation, u/ReallyFnCleverName asked, "What's up with Jet always talking about his daughter in the first episode... I don't get how all the sudden he has an 8 yr old he's constantly talking about. I don't understand why they feel that dynamic is even needed." The detail the user is talking about creates a major difference between the live-action and anime versions of Jet's character, as the former cop-turned-bounty hunter doesn't have a daughter in the original anime series.

As u/PXB_art points out, it's an odd detail to give to an already paternal figure. "I always appreciated Jet being 'fatherly' without necessarily being a father himself," the Redditor wrote. "[The] live-action 'Bebop' low key implies that you can't be this way without having a kid." Elsewhere, one fan noted that it doesn't make much sense for Jet to be a bounty hunter if has a child, and in the original show, Jet only took on the career "because there was literally nothing keeping him in one place." 

Ultimately, it looks like making the live-action version of Jet an actual father is one decision that veteran fans of the anime definitely could have done without.

You can currently watch both the original 1998 anime and the new live-action "Cowboy Bebop" series on Netflix.