Some people call him “the space cowboy.” Others know him as “Fearless.” Lately, he’s been going by the name “Spike Spiegel”: intergalactic bounty hunter.

The protagonist of “Cowboy Bebop,” a beloved anime series from the 1990s that has been given the live-action treatment by Netflix, is the quintessence of cool: a lithe gunslinger modeled on the late Yusaku Matsuda, with a pinch of Lupin III.

For years, there was talk of him being played by Keanu Reeves in a big-screen adaptation, but that was before the 2017 “Ghost in the Shell” debacle called time on Hollywood’s pernicious habit of casting white actors in non-white roles.