Summary: >

Cobra is a tough guy who has managed to tangle with the most powerful force in the galaxy: the space mafia guild. But even Cobra can't take the heat from such an organization so he decides to lay low. Another person, Jane; is also sought by the guild and decides to seek out Cobra as he's the only one who's ever managed to evade them.

Jane indeed finds Cobra... then sort of falls in love with him. Now for Cobra this probably doesn't seem to out of the ordinary, except that this girl is one of three lone survivors of a lost planet. If the three sisters unite with the man they love then the planet will be revived. But the leader of the space guild known as "Crystal Boy" isn't just going to let either of them get away without a fight. Are you buying all this? Me neither, it's hard to swallow but they actually made an anime based off of a story THIS corny! =)

Thoughts: >

So a bit of history. Space Adventure Cobra is pretty dated - copyrighted back in 1982. It had been overlooked by anyone wishing to bring over anime apparently. Then Mathew Sweet is all like, I like anime, I should make a video with all anime. But why pay animators like those crazy people in Two Mix? We'll just use some anime no one has ever heard of. Yeah, actually I'll give Sweet some credit here, who else has single handily managed to drag some obscure anime title out of the depths for a U.S. release? Yeah I can't think of one either. Well I like the video for "Girlfriend" so Sweet made the right choice. But how about the anime behind the video?

Maybe you need to be familiar with old anime to understand this, but it has a very 80s anime feel to it. And by that I mean this strange need to have some guy having a romp around the place and shagging every girl in sight. Animation wise it's got those classic trippy colors with good budget animation that I really like. Character designs are dated, but so is this film. The weak point is the fact that the characters aren't particularly likable, and the story is sorta dumb. Yeah that's my rundown of the story: it's dumb.

Cobra is this sort of guy who is just supposed to be "smooth" for no apparent reason. He also gives pretty much no reason to like him, but I suppose this is the sort of fantasy that many otaku used to aspire to be. But lets get with reality here, can you honestly fault the motives of this guy? The lone survivors on this one planet happen to be three hot chicks that are triplets. What guy WOULDN'T give that a shot? Unfortunately it's just sort of cheap, because Jane just "falls in love" with Cobra... just because. The other two are psychically linked so the also automatically fall in love with Cobra - a sort of bang one get two free sort of deal. It's seriously no deeper than that. It's like the universe was just waiting for the right chance to promote "free love" and Cobra happened to be there.

So in order to watch this film the first requirement I'll throw out there is that you should be a classic anime fan. And by that I mean you can appreciate good old school animation and have at least some ability to overlook 80s era cheesiness. And as far as the cheesiness goes, it doesn't really have the charm of most older anime series. And actually I'd also add that if you're going to watch this show, about the most you should expect to get out of it is some sort of visual experience - the characters, plot, and music aren't all that great. Good material for a music video, not so good for an anime collection. Bottom line is that it's not recommended for most people.

Screen Caps: >