Altered Carbon: Resleeved
dir. Jō Nakajima (Netflix, 2020)
This anime film has obvious potential to explore the Japanese side of Takeshi Kovacs’ heritage, but instead ignores every subtlety of both his characterisation and the Altered Carbon universe, preferring a chunky, gore-laced computer-game playthrough, fed beak-to-beak to John Wick–starved hatchlings.
Altered Carbon, Season 1
(Netflix, 2018)
The television series succeeds in capturing the slick, dystopian setting and jaded noir cyberpunk vibes of Richard Morgan’s novel. Beneath the SF layers, however, the plot is then twisted out of shape with the introduction of Kovacs’ sister as a major player.
Woken Furies
by Richard K. Morgan (Del Rey, 2005); audiobook read by William Dufris (Tantor Audio, 2006)
Morgan’s great anti-hero and brutish cyberpunk imaginings are lessened here by wallowing writerly indulgence, gratuitous, cringeworthy sex scenes and a narrator who guesses at pronunciations and whose hard-boiled American take on Takeshi Kovacs entirely disregards the character’s Japanese / Eastern European ethnicity.
Broken Angels
by Richard Morgan (Victor Gollancz, 2003); audiobook read by Todd McLaren (Tantor, 2015)
Reprising antihero Takeshi Kovacs, Morgan expands upon his racially diverse though otherwise cynical SF future beyond cyberpunk. More world-building than story, Broken Angels suffers from awkwardly explicit sex scenes and—in audiobook form—from jarring mispronunciations and McLaren’s faux-jaded characterisation of Kovacs.