Space Adventure Cobra

Serves best as an introduction to the Space Cobra series. A 1982 movie with great visuals that holds up today. Note this movie is a retelling of episodes 1-12 & there are two English dubs to this film: Manga UK & Streamline Pictures. The UK version has a soundtrack done by Yello & various changes in its script. This review covers the Discotek release which should be the Streamline dub.

Premiering a few months before its television anime, Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie delivers what you expect in anything Cobra related being; sexy women, stylish visuals, great soundtrack, science fiction & manly action. That being said, ... the movie's plot is an alternative form of Cobra's 1st manga story arc which was adapted in the anime version of that same year.

To quickly summarize the story, Cobra is a space pirate with a bounty on his head who comes in contact with a bounty hunter named Jane who then asks for Cobra to rescue her sisters Catherine & Dominique. Along the way, they encounter "The Guild" a mafia group filled with space pirates. The movie version has various differences from its manga storyline which in some cases seems almost better than its source material.

The main difference is Jane being Cobra's main love interest while in the anime it was Dominique, however this is presented better through the newly made up mythology. While the triplet sisters were human in the anime, the film decided for them to be part of this ancient alien civilization who hold the secret to the most dangerous weapon in the galaxy. Their unique traits as a species are lot more explored in the film as it presents this theme of passionate love which at the time was a recurring trend among 80's shonens such as City Hunter, Fist Of The North Star & Saint Seiya.

Cobra's villain, Crystal Boy, also makes an appearance yet he is presented a bit different from his anime counterpart. Crystal Boy is portrayed a bit more sadistic in this film as he tends to make these facial expressions & often having close ups of his read bulging eyes. Another key difference is Crystal Boy not using his signature hook but instead uses his ribs like a spear. Aside from those changes he still remains as threatening & stylish as ever.

In terms of visuals, this is a great film as it was directed by Osamu Dezaki who knows how to make eye pleasing scenes. The character designs are improved in this film such as Jane having blue hair to contrast Cobra's blonde hair & red jumpsuit. The same goes for Crystal Boy as he looks his best in this film giving a more "pop art style". As for Cobra, the only significant change in his design are his boots being black instead of red.

Space Adventure Cobra is set in a "Star Wars like" world where various aliens & robots inhabit different planets. Cobra himself is a mix of James Bond & Han Solo, although his comedic side isn't shown in the film. The movie is a good starting point to get into Cobra & its English dub is good enough, especially in its 90's release date. However, I've only seen the Discotek release which contains the Streamline Pictures dub. I've heard its Manga UK release had several changes including dialogue, names, & even soundtrack which too many viewers came off as an odd movie experience.

Essentially, it's a good movie but serves as a taste for the 1982 anime series "Space Cobra" which explores more of its universe & Cobra's character.

Well it finally happened. After years of searching, I finally found an Osamu Dezaki anime I liked more than the one with the angsty boy who never does anything and the sweet girl who sings about dangos and ended up dying in the last third because it’s not a touching drama until someone is dead. Now I admit to never seeing any of Dezaki’s non-Key films, let alone finishing any one of his f*cking long series that drag so much that they make me want to throw my hands in the air, turn off the screen, and go hang around on Twitter like an anti-social ... nerd. I did notice that almost all of them are franchise films though. Golgo 13? Hamtaro? Black Jack? The only two films he directed that are attached to series he also did are Aim for the Ace and Space Adventure Cobra.

The latter is what I’m looking at for in this review and apparently it’s a different interpretation of what happens in the series, but I’m not going to be doing any comparisons as I won’t be finishing the series until the second part gets released in a few weeks and it wouldn’t affect the quality of the film in any way. In other words, it wouldn’t increase nor decrease just how fucking AWESOME it was.

I’m no stranger to the Cobra franchise due to watching that revival from a few years back, but in case you guys haven’t seen it (and not many of you jackasses did because you’re awful people who would rather watch a shitty Nodame sequel during that cold dark Winter of 2010) I’ll fill you in. Cobra is a wanted man with the highest bounty in the universe who is handsome, strong, and all-around perfect to the fact that Jesus Christ worships him. He has a female assistant named Lady who dresses in some metallic suit and does fuck all, and together they go adventuring across the stars, helping out women dressed in clothing so skimpy you’d probably mistake them for the cast of Highschool DxD - except with blond hair – and fighting bad guys who you know Cobra is going to beat the crap out of, but they’re so varied and entertaining that you don’t give a shit.

Most notable of the bad guys is Crystal Boy, who’s basically the Joker to Cobra in that whilst you know he’ll never be able to win, he’s the archenemy of the show that provides a great contrast to our hero due to Cobra’s most powerful weapon not affecting him, having legions of henchmen to do his bidding, and being much more interesting than our main…okay he doesn’t quite reach that level of Joker-dom. But he kicks ass nevertheless.

It’s basically pulpy space opera at its best and if you have something against that, then obviously you were born with genes so recessive that it’s a miracle you can operate an electronic device to read this review.

Cobra’s adventures pretty much rely on whatever substance is given to him and whether he can chew on it harder than that oversized cigar he always carries in his mouth, and in this particular adventure, the substance given to him is how he deals with “love”. That’s right. Love. A weapon so powerful that Ma-Ti from Captain Planet could use it to cause more damage than all the Smash Ball attacks from Super Smash Bros Brawl combined if the show had been written by someone who knew what AIDs actually was. And not with just one lady. But three. Sisters. It’s the harem anime movie we’ve always wanted, and it was made years before that blasted genre existed.

The actual story details elude me, partly because I was too busy admiring Cobra’s muscles and charisma and practically everything that I’d want to be if I was space-travelling - let alone be in real life – and partly because I don’t get what the actual importance of the grand plan was. Apparently those three sisters I mentioned above are the only ones left of some doomed planet and when two of them die or all three fall in love with the same person, that planet gets revived. Whilst I can understand reviving a civilization, I don’t really get what Crystal Boy gets out of it. He becomes ruler or something? He gets enough cash to make Scrooge McDuck weep? He makes his gold metallic body shiny to the point that he’ll have the power to blind his enemies when light refracts off of him? I’ve seen plotlines in Legend of the Galactic Heroes that were easier to understand than this.

Also, the whole bounty-hunter sister just disappearing into the other sister because she fell in love with him? Yeah, how does that make sense?

The only part I really understood, besides Cobra being the invincible hero who wins in the end obviously, was the way the film deals with the whole romance angle. Cobra and the first sister fall in love. They eventually get separated because of that disappearance mumbo-jumbo I mentioned earlier. The second sister falls in love with Cobra, but he’s not ready to move on so soon and resists. The third sister is brainwashed by Crystal Boy to love him and when she eventually gets free (not a spoiler because that plot point is more predictable than Barney the Dinosaur singing “I Love You” at the end of every fucking episode of that fucking show), she (actual spoiler) rejects the whole love thing and basically dooms her planet so that its power – whatever the fuck that was - can’t be used for evil.

Considering that Dezaki is known for directing dramas, I don’t think this was all an accident. I think he purposefully wanted this particular Cobra story to be a metaphor for what Seo Kouji tries and fails to do in every single thing he writes. You see Mr. Kouji, you don’t have to have the most unlikeable people on the planet go through angry misunderstanding after angry misunderstanding for over two-hundred f*cking chapters (which is the equivalent of like a three to four-cour series) to show the pains of first love, moving on, and the final inevitable conclusion. Sometimes, all you need is a flawless guy with a gun for his arm sailing through space on his ship with his lady cyborg fighting men made out of crystal and aliens that would give the one in Star Wars a run for their money. It surprisingly works a lot better than trying to emulate real life. Or not so surprisingly because experience has shown that anything that tries to emulate real life is almost always less realistic than Dragonball F*cking Z.

Being a guy who has a soft spot for romance at heart and more love for the whole space western thing than Justin Bieber has for being a massive douchebag, it was pretty much guaranteed I would love this movie. But the icing on the cake that really complements how awesome it is is the animation/art direction. Maybe it’s because I’m used to the shit production of Magic Bus’s revival, but the visuals in this thing blew me away. It doesn’t exactly make you feel like you’re in space, Gravity-style, or anything, but it does a great job of adding atmosphere to the whole shebang beyond just moving pictures. It’s kind of like how we thought the N64′s polygon graphics looked impressive at the time, but when the Gamecube came into town, not only was the eye candy causing us to need glasses 3x faster, but suddenly the opening to Mario 64 causes more nightmares than learning that someone on this godforsaken planet thought it’d be a good idea to make another Garbage Pail Kids film.

In other words, go see this movie unless you hate awesome things. You monster!

WARNING - THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

I'll start off by saying my review is not at all reflective of the rest of the Space Adventure Cobra series - simply the one I've watched. Cobra is a Gary Stu. This needs to be said simply because male characters need to be called out just like female characters. Does this mean one can't enjoy the movie? No, but it's not a bad idea to go into the movie a bit wary.

The next thought popping into my head regarding the Anime is how "that's not how love works". This movie definitely tries playing up the true love angle for ... the viewers, yet no matter how the series tries painting the interaction as something more than lust on the part of the characters, what we have is a guy lusting after three hot babes who just so happen to be triplets which is supposed to be one of those wet dreams guys have.

I also felt the narrative rather sexist with how the viewer ends up hit over the head regarding how a female protagonist needs a man to save her. We've a brainwashed female, but two females who don't know anything but the need to find their true love because they need a man that much. Added, the planet needs a woman of just the right proportions and only one female of these proportions exist - the Queen.

Wait! But doesn't the lives of these three girls end tragically meaning that the Gary Stu doesn't get his happy ending? While your classic Mary Sue often ended up with a happy ending and the guy she wanted the classic Gary Stu often ended up with their love interest dying. After all, that means no kids to tie them down and they can have as many love interests as possible. The dynamics between a Mary Sue and a Gary Stu changed because of differing expectations, but he's a Gary Stu none the less.

Was there anything enjoyable about this movie? I'm actually a fan of B-movies, so I loved watching how bad this one was, but I knew this would be one of those rides when I saw the bouncing head earlier on. For me, that made this a lot of fun - but for others - no, not fun at all.