Cobra

I'd like to begin this post with a bit of personal history: Back in the late 80's/early 90's, the Swedish comic-book company Epix published two anthology magazines with Japanese comics. The first one was called Samuraj (sic) and featured the classic Lone Wolf and Cub, as well as The Dagger of Kamui. The second one was called Cobra and featured, aside from Pineapple Army and Crying Freeman, the manga which gave its name to magazine: Cobra or, if you prefer, Space Adventure Cobra by Buichi Terasawa. Now, I didn't read either of these magazines when they first came out, being too young at the time, it was not until some years later that I would encounter them. Let us jump forward in time to the late 90's-early 00's; during this period I was an avid fan of manga and anime and eagerly gobbled up any of it I could find, regardless of quality. At the time, a friend of the family owned a few old issues of Samuraj which he allowed me to read when we visited. It didn't take long for me to want more Samuraj and so, I began to search the second-hand stores and flea-markets for whatever issue I could find. It was during one of these hunts, that I happened upon a few issues of Cobra. I bought them and took them home to read, the titular manga was a lot of fun; it had action, an impossibly cool male lead and beautiful women in skimpy clothing. In short, my adolescent self found it as enjoyable as you might expect. However, despite this, the adventures of Cobra must have failed to capture me as much as those of Itto Ogami, for while Lone Wolf and Cub has remained one of my favorite comics over the years, as I grew older, I put Cobra out of my mind and didn't think about it for many years.

Flash-forward to more recent times. One day, while browsing the Internet, I stumbled upon an anime blog called Mecha-Guignol. The owner of the blog, a certain Landon had made a list of his top 50 anime and since I've always had a soft spot for lists, I decided to check it out. Anyway, to cut to the chase, at the top of Landon's list, ahead of such masterpieces as Cowboy Bebop and Revolutionary Girl Utena is none other than Space Adventure Cobra. When I first saw the list, I must admit that this choice surprised me somewhat. Sure, I remembered enjoying what little I had read of the manga, many years ago, but I wouldn't classify it as a master-piece or anything. That said, having not seen the anime, I thought I'd give it a watch. At the time I've been writing this, I've watched both a fair bit of the original series as well as all episodes of the more recent Cobra the Animation. There's not much different between the two regarding story and characterizations, so what I've written in this post, applies to both of them.

The first thing that strikes one in either Cobra anime is the sheer creativity on display. Both Space Adventure Cobra and Cobra the Animation are filled with interesting and unique alien creatures and locations. The first real story-arc of the original anime, the one that focuses on the search for Captain Nelson's treasure, is also a really good piece of pulp-fiction, with lots of exciting stuff happening. Space Adventure Cobra is also directed by Osamu Dezaki, so it has that going for it as well.

Now, let's have a look at the characters. First of, we have Cobra himself, who is your typical wise-cracking action-hero. These days, I'm not really a fan of that type of character.That said, Cobra pulls it off quite well, the guy's pretty charismatic and fun to watch. Then there's Lady, she's Cobra's sidekick, who is never seen outside her robot-armor and really that's all I can say about her. Yeah, as you have no doubt guessed, the characterization in Cobra is pretty shallow. Look, I'm not expecting Shakespeare from 80's pulp-space opera, but I can't help but think that some hints of depth would have been nice.

The villains are all the same; they are bad guys who do bad things and that's it. For example, take the franchise's most iconic villain, Crystal Boy. He has a really cool design (the guy really knows how to rock that hooded cloak look) and his indestructible body makes him a perfect foil for Cobra's psycho-laser. He's also quite sinister and menacing, but again that's all there is to him. He fulfills the basic requirements necessary for a villain in this type of story and that's pretty much it.

Finally, we have the women of the series and shockingly enough, I don't have much to say about them either. Pretty much all the women Cobra encounters are gorgeous and dressed in extremely little clothing and of course, unless they turn out to be evil, there's a high chance that they will eventually fall for our manly hero's charms. 

Despite this, I found myself enjoying both of the Cobra anime that I've watched. The characterization is paper-thin, but the varied and interesting world the stories take place in does a lot to make up for that. I wouldn't put either show among my absolute favorites, but they're quite fun.