Fans Blast Netflix’s ‘Cowboy Bebop’ for Changing This Character

The debate over the differences in fan opinion and reviews has been everywhere you look these days, with a quartet of recent blockbuster movies in particular highlighting that some titles are being enjoyed a great deal more by the audiences they’ve been geared towards, rather than the critics who weigh in with their analysis.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eternals, Red Notice and Ghostbusters: Afterlife all currently boast user ratings on Rotten Tomatoes that are significantly higher than the critical consensus, and none of the four appear to have been hindered in terms of either box office takings or viewership figures by the negative responses.

However, in a most unexpected turn of events, Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop series has found both sides of the divide in complete and total agreement, with the current RT scores sitting on a bang-average 51%. The anime adaptation has been trending online for all of the wrong reasons, with Faye Valentine one of the top topics of discussion after her characterization left a lot to be desired.

I’ve only seen the first episode, and if that’s any indication… Ms. Pineda has no clue who Faye is, the highlight of her in the episode was screaming “Fuck you” at Spike and Jet from a Toilet… and nothing about that screamed (lol) Faye Valentine. https://t.co/0xrzNnMFNw

— Nazo (@NazoXIII) November 21, 2021

lmao did these guys really think Faye Valentine…WASN’T a nuanced complex character? that making her a two-dimensional girlboss was like, more feminist? https://t.co/8fOyapngFd

— jenn ???? (@spooky_coochie) November 21, 2021

I really feel like the question of “did the show understand Faye Valentine” is “are they willing to give her diarrhea for most of an episode.” https://t.co/9F96WIW9E5

— Yaz Minsky (@Yaz_Minsky) November 20, 2021

“We noticed that Faye Valentine was noticeably not awful and comically one-dimensional in the original Bebop, so in the live action we corrected this.

“We also noticed that watching the the original doesn’t make you want to throw yourself into the ocean, a major oversight.”

— Arryn Diaz ???????? (@DoctorPizzaMD) November 20, 2021

Click to zoom 

Why did they make Faye Valentine a theatre kid

— Chesapeake Bae ???????????? (@katemcgowanyay) November 20, 2021

It’ll be interesting to see whether or not Cowboy Bebop ends up getting a second season, because it doesn’t really matter what the critics and the diehards think, as long as it draws in enough eyeballs to justify further investment. It’s a shame to see it being greeted so tepidly, though, when it was one of the year’s most hotly-anticipated projects for a lot of people.