Cowboy Bebop star John Cho explains why his portrayal of Spike Spiegel in the live-action Netflix series has a different hairstyle than the anime. Cho stars in the series alongside Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine, Alex Hassell as Vicious and Elena Satine as Julia. The live-action adaptation is being developed by André Nemec and written by The Mandalorian's Christopher Yost.

The original Cowboy Bebop anime premiered in 1998 and centered on a group of bounty hunters traveling around the galaxy on the titular spaceship in the year 2071 while also facing the demons of their past. The series has received consistently high praise since its debut and credited with helping introduce a new wave of Western viewers to anime in the early aughts and one of the best genre titles of all-time. Development on the live-action adaptation has been in the works since 2017 and after delays in production due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and Cho's on-set injury, the series is finally set to hit Netflix this November.

Related: Cowboy Bebop: What The Live-Action Cast Photos Reveal About Netflix's Show

With just a couple of months remaining until its arrival, Cho spoke with Vulture to discuss Cowboy Bebop. The actor spoke about the slight difference in the hairstyle between the anime and live-action portrayals of Spike, explaining it came from both a creative and practical mindset for Cho. See what Cho had to say below:

"I don’t know if I like the hair. My hair’s such a mess, and it’s very hard to make it do anything. My discussions with hair and makeup were, 'We could do this exact version that would match the anime, but I want him to look like this is natural' and 'He just washes his face and goes.' And 'I don’t want to wear a wig' — I didn’t want to [do action scenes] while having my scalp pulled. And so I had to try and make my hair grow as fast as possible before episode one. I had a really short haircut, so I was really sweating it. I was like, I gotta keep growing, I gotta keep growing."

Spike smiling a cigarrette in Cowboy Bebop

As much as the retaining of the source material's narrative is vital to fans is the character designs going into a live-action adaptation and the response to Cowboy Bebop's has been generally favorable, save for unfounded criticisms of Pineda's appearance as Faye. Interestingly enough, where Cho has expressed his fear of fan reaction to the difference in hairstyle, that element of his portrayal has been one of the most celebrated by fans thus far, with Spike's hair in the anime certainly not an easy one to naturally bring to life and his effort coming surprisingly close. It's also interesting to note Cho's explanation of the impediment a wig would bring to filming action scenes, citing the feeling of his hair being pulled back as a negative factor more than any visual impairment they may bring.

Given Cho's past work in the action genre with the Star Trek Kelvin trilogy, he would certainly have the experience to know how focused he would need to be for filming sequences for Cowboy Bebop. With the actor having injured himself for simply missing a step in one sequence, it's difficult to imagine the dangers a large wig for Spike would have posed for the actor during production. Only time will tell how fans react to Cho's new hairstyle in the series when Cowboy Bebop arrives on Netflix on November 19.

More: Cowboy Bebop Can Break The Live-Action Anime Curse

Source: Vulture