TV

John Cho Is Very Handsome And Totally Badass In ‘Cowboy Bebop’

We need to talk about John Cho.

by Merryana Salem  23 November 2021
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Netflix’s live-action remake of iconic anime sci-fi series Cowboy Bebop stars John Cho as infamous pretty-boy bounty hunter Spike — and no one can handle how handsome he is.

It’s entirely possible when I say ‘no one’ and I just mean me, but John Cho is in fine form in Cowboy Bebop, combining his best chaotic comedy chops from Selfie and Harold and Kumar with his under-appreciated action skills, as glimpsed in the Star Trek films.

The series follows a trio of bounty hunters in the year 2071. Together, the trio — Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda), and Spike Spiegel (John Cho) — crew the good ship Bebop, and travel the galaxy collecting bounties to stay afloat in a corrupt corporate-run universe.

The original anime series ran for a single season in 1998, but continued to influence popular media for a long time to come. Joss Whedon cited the series as one of the main influences for Firefly. And the animated sequence from Quentin Tarintino’s 2003 classic Kill Bill Vol. 1 was directly inspired by Cowboy Bebop‘s unique stylised violence. The series itself also changed anime forever in a number of ways.

History aside, it’s extremely important to note just how suave, handsome, and generally perfect John Cho is in this role. This man! The hair! The way he wears that suit! I know very little about anime, but I know a handsome man when I see one.

Of course, many fans of the original series have critiqued Cho’s casting, claiming he’s too old to play this wise-cracking space cowboy. To those fans, I simply ask: what’s your beef with older men being sexy and badass? Do you think DILFs are unrealistic in a world where Tijuana is a planet?

In an interview with Vulture, Cho was asked to comment on the backlash against his casting, which aged Spike from his late 20s to Cho’s late 40s. “I am strangely better suited at this age. I don’t think I would’ve done justice to the emotional depth we tried to give Spike,” he said. “What I’m better at, being older, is showing weakness and vulnerability and love.”

I won’t speak to whether or not Netflix’s live-action series does justice to the original, but if you’re into funky space cowboy showdowns and handsome John Cho, this is the show for you.

Cowboy Bebop is streaming on Netflix.