Cowboy Bebop isn’t the only anime to be created by director Shinichiro Watanabe, with the likes of Space Dandy and Samurai Champloo also gaining the status of “anime classics” from the creator. In a recent interview, Watanabe didn’t pull any punches when it came to sharing his thoughts on Netflix’s live-action series, unable to make his way past the initial scene. Shinichiro also went into detail when it came to his work on The Animatrix, the anthology series that showed viewers new aspects of the universe that gave us the likes of Neo, Trinity, and more.
Working on The Animatrix, which was first released in 2003 as an anthology film covering the past, present, and future of The Matrix, gave Watanabe his first opportunity to work with creators in Hollywood, an experience that the creator of Cowboy Bebop apparently wasn’t a big fan of according to his latest interview with Forbes:
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“Now I am working on a new and original title. Most of the offers I receive these days tend to be from America and the budgets tend to be almost double compared to what I get in Japan. Back on The Animatrix, I first got to work with people in Hollywood. Working with those kinds of people is always difficult. This is because at the beginning they promised me that I could do whatever I want, but that’s just lip service.”
Cowboy Matrix
Much like with his takedown of Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop series, Watanabe didn’t hold back any punches when it came to his experience:
“Actually, I had a big altercation with a Hollywood producer on The Animatrix. He would always come with these stupid requests, just so he could identify his own contribution. As the requests were stupid and made no sense, I rejected all of them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t win in this situation, so I had to concede on some of these things. I learned from this bitter experience though. For subsequent projects, I became smarter at handling people who wanted to interfere. In that, I would send back very small corrections or adjustments just before the deadline. That tended to work.”
Watanabe then shared the surprising fact that his work on The Animatrix almost had him getting into a fight with a producer on the project:
“The original producer on The Animatrix was a really good guy. He understood my work and didn’t give me stupid requests. However, he had to leave due to family issues, but his successor was awful. So many requests. Change this, change that. It was very frustrating and if these requests were coming from the Wachowskis, I would at least respect that as they came up with The Matrix. So who was the new producer compared to that? He explained that he was the gatekeeper to the Wachowskis and unless he could be convinced, he wouldn’t bring my work to them. So when I went to Los Angeles for the recording sessions, I told the team that if I saw that producer I would just punch him in the face. The producer ended up not coming to the recordings, which is unheard of.”
The Animatrix was far from the only anthology that was created on a Western project using Japanese animators, with Disney’s Star Wars: Visions being one of the latest examples.
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