> One of the few valid criticisms (not to gush, but I’m a fan to be sure) of the original is that Vicious is a thinly written villain.
This I don't agree with, not that Vicious is or isn't thinly written, but that it is valuable or an improvement that he is "fleshed out". Spike's narrative in the source is built on his memories and recollection of people, not who they are. The lack of dimensionality has a purpose. Jet has a similar issue and both of them are forced to confront the gap between their recollection of people and what those people actually thought/felt, and that's big because both of them have staked major parts of their personhood on the ghost of their nostalgia and self-centered sense of tragedy. Finding out the world is other people doing other things was the point and you can't recover the impact by removing the entire mystery.
As I said elsewhere, Bebop is more related to 70s New Hollywood than the American adaptation is, Coppola's The Conversation has a similar bent where someone is haunted by their past but misinterprets the present and future on behalf of their own guilt only to discover reality had nothing to do with a POV that was always their own misperception. If you actually followed all the side characters around the movie would be pointless.
This I don't agree with, not that Vicious is or isn't thinly written, but that it is valuable or an improvement that he is "fleshed out". Spike's narrative in the source is built on his memories and recollection of people, not who they are. The lack of dimensionality has a purpose. Jet has a similar issue and both of them are forced to confront the gap between their recollection of people and what those people actually thought/felt, and that's big because both of them have staked major parts of their personhood on the ghost of their nostalgia and self-centered sense of tragedy. Finding out the world is other people doing other things was the point and you can't recover the impact by removing the entire mystery.
As I said elsewhere, Bebop is more related to 70s New Hollywood than the American adaptation is, Coppola's The Conversation has a similar bent where someone is haunted by their past but misinterprets the present and future on behalf of their own guilt only to discover reality had nothing to do with a POV that was always their own misperception. If you actually followed all the side characters around the movie would be pointless.