John Cho Breaks Silence On Sudden 'Cowboy Bebop' Cancelation

Actor Jon Cho is finally breaking his silence.

Cho starred in the Netflix live-action adaptation of the “Cowboy Bebop” anime. Although it opened to critical reviews, the show’s first season ended on a cliffhanger, prompting many to wonder about the possibility of a second season.

However, Netflix startled fans when they canceled the show roughly three weeks after the first season dropped.

“Cowboy Bebop” was based on the 1998 Japanese anime of the same name. The series starred John Cho, MustafaShakir, and DaniellaPineda as bounty hunters, also known as cowboys, who hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals. Each character has an element of their past that they are looking to either uncover or hide from.

The anime has been called one of the greatest animated series of all time and received critical acclaim in worldwide markets. Many call it a “gateway series,” bridging the gap between animation and anime.

The show has won several accolades at the Anime Grand Prix. In a 2004 poll in Newtype USA, the anime was runner-up in the “Top 25 Anime Titles of All Time” competition. In 2007, Anime Insider created a list of the “50 Best Anime Ever” and ranked “Cowboy Bebop” as the number one anime of all time.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cho said that the cancelation was “very shocking,” despite the initial negative reviews the live-action series received upon release.

“It was very shocking and I was bummed,” Cho said. “But I was very warmed by the response. I wish I could have contacted everybody and gotten hugs. You can’t do that now, but … I don’t know what this is. I’m mystified a little bit about how you can connect with people that you don’t know doing your work, but I won’t question it. I will value it and treasure it. I’m just really deeply appreciative that anyone would care. It’s stunning to me.”

The news of the cancelation hit Cho especially hard, considering that he tore his ACL during production, which forced him to go into a lengthy recovery to get back into Spike’s shoes.

“I put a lot of my life into it,” Cho explained. “I’d gotten injured shooting that show and so I took a year off because of the surgery and devoted myself to rehab, came back and finished the show. It was this huge mountain for me to climb, healing from that injury. I felt good about myself as a result. We also shot the show in New Zealand, so my family moved there. It was just a huge event in my life and it was suddenly over.”

The show’s other stars, Mustafa Shakir, who played Jet Black, and Daniella Pineda, who played Faye Valentine, also expressed disappointment that the series was ending.

Shakir posted a black-and-white photo of his character to Instagram shortly after the news broke to say that he had no hard feelings with Netflix about the cancelation.

“What a cool opportunity right?!” he wrote. “I got to play Jet Black! I’ll never not be him..so to speak. That’s bad--- to me. @netflix went balls to wall for us in order to get it done. They really looked out for us when s--- hit the fan. ???? but at the end of the day business is business and this was a big ship that needed a lot of fuel. Maybe the ‘haters’ and the critics got us maybe it wasn’t as good as we thought. ??‍♂️ all I know is we got this done under the craziest conditions and I’m proud of what we did. Thank you for dreaming with us. See you space cowboys????✨”

He concluded the post, “Forever yours, Jet Black.”

Fans aren’t sure why Daniella Pineda deleted her reaction to the “Cowboy Bebop” cancelation, but the post has since been deleted.

At the time, co-executive producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach also put out a statement regarding the cancelation.

“I truly loved working on this,” Grillo-Marxuach tweeted. “It came from a real and pure place of respect and affection. I wish we could make what we planned for a second season, but you know what they say, men plan, god laughs. see you space cowboy… #CowboyBebop #whateverhappens.”

However, that tweet has also since been deleted.