I’m finally ready to admit something: Netflix and I have a toxic relationship.
There are days when I love it, of course. When I need my Breaking Bad or Seinfeld fix, or when a new season of I Think You Should Leave or Love Is Blind drops, Netflix is my boo.
But there are just as many days when it hurts me so, so deeply. Like today, for instance, when Netflix revealed who would be playing the character of Kazuma Kuwabara in its live-action adaptation of the anime Yu Yu Hakusho. Japanese actor Shuhei Uesugi has landed the important role, and I can’t think of anyone less well-suited. But bad casting shouldn’t surprise me—Netflix has never nailed the anime-to-live-action translation, and it never will.
In Yu Yu Hakusho—an action-comedy about a high school delinquent who dies and then comes back to life with a mission from the Underworld to take down demons and whatnot—Kuwabara is our hero Yusuke Urameshi’s best frenemy. He’s a loud-mouthed jerk who loves to pick fights, although it turns out to all be posturing; he loves kittens and ultimately wants to be good to people.
In the original anime, Kuwabara is the least attractive member of the otherwise very hot cast of characters. He’s designed to have a square head, sunken-in eyes, and a garishly stiff red pompadour. His face is usually adorned with band-aids. He’s not cute!
But, as I texted my friend earlier today, Netflix’s take on Kuwabara is hot as heck. Have you seen a photo of Shuhei Uesugi?!
“Why is he hot.” I wrote to my friend Patrick, a fellow Yu Yu Hakusho fan, immediately after seeing the casting news. “WHY IS HE HOT.”
“Yea not nasty enough,” Patrick wrote back, correctly.
The lack of nastiness is a frustrating sign that this adaptation of one of my favorite anime growing up is going to, well, suck. It might not be fair to judge something that doesn’t exist yet. But what Netflix’s Yu Yu Hakusho does have going for it—it’s actually helmed by a Japanese creative team with Japanese stars, so no whitewashing here, for once!—is obscured by the lack of fidelity to the actual source material, not to mention Netflix’s disastrous track record in this genre.
Not that the streamer has ever shown interest in fidelity when it comes to its adaptations. Its insistence upon grabbing beloved IP and reshaping them into unrecognizable garbo (that’s Allegra Frankish for “garbage”) is a consistently irritating move to me, a person who can still watch the OG Yu Yu Hakusho if I want to and pretend that Netflix never did a damn thing to it.
That’s the constant battle I’m fighting: I hate that Netflix gobbled up Death Note and spit out its own awful movie, with Nat Wolff as a shrieking sociopath and Willem Dafoe as a CGI demon. (Okay, Dafoe was pretty good casting.) This Americanized version of a distinctly Japanese story about a selfish teenager named Light, who can kill anyone he wants by writing their name into his demonic notebook, was almost parodic. Netflix turned Light into someone somewhat likable, as opposed to recognizing that he was one of the worst people ever.
And now, Netflix is going to do it all over again, with the Duffer Brothers (Stranger Things) working on their own live-action take. Jesus, take the wheel.
Netflix’s version of Cowboy Bebop only lasted one season, which is one season more than it deserved. Its reimagining of the classic anime was unrecognizable buffoonery. Besides its well-done remake of the anime’s iconic opening credit sequence, Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop failed to show off any of the series’ stylishness, looking like a generic sci-fi show and navigating the plot like a boat with no rudder.
I don’t have to watch the live-action Death Note movie or Cowboy Bebop show if I don’t want to. Netflix has the original anime streaming too, and that’s what I actually want to watch. Yet I continue to get so angry every time the streamer announces that it has licensed yet another beloved anime IP to make its own version of it. Netflix’s adaptations are not getting people acquainted with the original anime, really—they’re likely turning them off the concept entirely, because they are so bad.
Maybe my issue is this: Anime is a huge, huge industry, yet it often goes unsung by the mainstream American press. But what does get written up is the Cowboy Bebop show and the Death Note movie. I have a feeling we’ll see scores of reviews of the upcoming One Piece adaptation, which I expect will be an affront to the series’ zillions of fans.
The mainstream’s exposure to anime is often limited to these abominations, and it grates on me. I’m going to watch the OG Death Note or Cowboy Bebop, but I’m not sure you will.
I will always love anime, and Netflix can’t ruin that. Even if it makes its own version of one of my personal favorite anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is currently streaming on the platform, I’ll still be able to watch the original whenever I want.
Which is why, after all these years and all this pent-up rage, I’m ready to make peace with Netflix and its awful live-action anime. Kuwabara doesn’t look nasty enough, but that’s fine, because I’ve figured out what I can do: I’ll just recuse myself from watching.
