General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Space Adventure Cobra

Space Adventure Cobra (SPACE ADVENTURE コブラ) is a 1982 Japanese animated science fiction film directed by Osamu Dezaki, adapted from Buichi Terasawa's manga Cobra and produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha. It premiered in Japan on July 3, 1982, runs 99 minutes, and was distributed by Toho-Towa.¹ It was the first animated adaptation of Terasawa's science fiction manga, which ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1978, was collected in 18 volumes between 1978 and 1984, and sold over fifty million copies.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	SPACE ADVENTURE コブラ (Supēsu Adobenchā Kobura)¹
Release	July 3, 1982, Japan; 99 minutes; distributed by Toho-Towa¹
Director / studio	Osamu Dezaki; Tokyo Movie Shinsha; screenplay by Buichi Terasawa and Haruya Yamazaki¹
Source manga	Cobra by Buichi Terasawa, Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1978; 18 volumes (1978–1984); over 50 million copies sold³
Main voice cast	Shigeru Matsuzaki (Cobra), Akiko Nakamura (Jane), Yoshiko Sakakibara (Lady), Toshiko Fujita (Catherine), Jun Fubuki (Dominique), Gorō Mutsumi (Crystal Bowie)⁴
Signature weapon	The psychogun, hidden in Cobra's left arm, transmutes his mental energy into a powerful laser that can curve around obstacles²
Companion TV series	Space Cobra, 31 episodes of 30 minutes each, Fuji TV, October 7, 1982 to May 19, 1983⁵

Spoilers

Story

The film tells a modified version of the first arc of the manga, in a screenplay co-written by Terasawa himself.²^•¹ Cobra, a notorious space pirate, is enlisted by the bounty hunter Jane to rescue her sister from the strange being known as Crystal Bowie, and finds himself drawn into a complex struggle over the fate of a mysterious wandering planet.⁴ In the TMS synopsis, Cobra reveals to Jane that he is the pirate with a bounty of 7 million beetle on his head; once she believes him, she asks for his help finding her long-lost triplet sisters Catherine and Dominique, and the rescue of Catherine, imprisoned by Crystal Boy, ends in her betrayal of Jane because she loves Crystal Boy.¹ A Japanese film retrospective describes the plot as a fight alongside the three princess sisters of the lost planet Milos against the conspiracy of the pirate Guild, with action as the main attraction and an adult atmosphere that includes nude and love scenes.⁶

Cobra's nemesis Crystal Bowie (called Crystal Boy in some versions) is a cybernetic space pirate whose design mixes glass, gold, claws, and guns; one reviewer called the name one of the least threatening villain names in anime while finding the character himself genuinely creepy.⁷ Cobra's partner is Lady Armaroid, a mouthless robot woman who usually pilots the ship.⁷

Production and style

Dezaki and Sugino. The film comes from the director-animator team of Osamu Dezaki and Akio Sugino, known for a high-octane yet meticulous and cinematic filmmaking style. Dezaki's usual motifs, including bright backlighting and shimmering imagery, are present, combined with a dose of spacey psychedelia: technicolor dreamscapes and brightly colored geometric patterns reminiscent of the French comic artist Moebius.² A Japanese retrospective of 1982 films presents it as an example of hand-drawn animation craft that large volumes of footage, SFX, or CG alone cannot reproduce.⁶

Influences. Terasawa conceived the series as a genre cocktail, mixing spaghetti Western, samurai stories, and spy fiction into a flamboyant space opera of surreal alien landscapes and baroque technology.³ Cobra was inspired in part by James Bond and inherits his rotating cast of female love interests; the closest comparison, according to a 2017 retrospective review, is the anime thief Lupin III, though Cobra is not quite as much of a prankster.²

Release and related works

The theatrical film was followed the same year by a television series, Space Cobra, which aired 31 episodes on the Fuji TV network from October 7, 1982 to May 19, 1983, with Nachi Nozawa as the voice of Cobra and Yoshiko Sakakibara as Lady.⁵ The franchise later expanded into further manga and anime, including the OVA series Cobra The Animation, which includes Terasawa's own directed work Cobra The Psychogun.⁸

The early 1980s marked what French researchers have called the invasion of Japanese anime in France, and Cobra (スペースコブラ) appears in that account among the series of that wave, alongside Ulysse 31 and Les Mystérieuses Cités d'or.⁹ In the United States the film is currently available streaming on Retrocrush, free with ads on Pluto TV and Retrocrush, with rental and purchase options on Fandango At Home and Blu-ray editions on sale.⁴

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film's Tomatometer listing shows no critic reviews, and its audience meter shows fewer than 50 ratings.¹⁰ JustWatch aggregates a 51% rating alongside an IMDb score of 7.1 from about 2,800 users.⁴ On the Japanese service Filmarks the film holds 3.4 out of 5 from 970 user reviews, with 57% of ratings in the 3.1–4.0 band.¹¹ A 2017 retrospective review called it "still one of the best-looking anime ever made", praising its unrelenting pace and its wondrous, surreal vision of outer space.²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Animated and short films › Japanese anime features › Released 1932 to 1998

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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