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Space Cobra, The Movie

In January, Manga Video released in France the first Cobra movie. Released on July 3rd, 1982, in Japanese theaters, it was followed three months later (on October 7th) by a 31-episode TV show which got the success you know...

It's one of the first movies which, like the Osamu Tezuka's masterpiece Phoenix 2772 or RinTarô's Genma Taisen Harmagedon (drawn by Otomo), benefited from a sizeable budget. You can see the obvious high-tech result, with an animation far above what was usually done then. Osamu Dezaki (still helped by his assistants Akio Sugino and Yoshio Takeuchi, who also worked with him for the TV show) was given a free hand, so that he could create his own way the universe built by Buichi Terasawa in his manga.

So he went away from the western movie concept (which, by the way, was widely copied from Leiji Matsumoto !) and he created a true movie full of love and emotion, which those who said Cobra is based on too much action won't dislike. Of course, the true Cobra fans will be horrified by the very slow pace of the story, but don't listen to them and rather consider that movie as a (wonderful) variation on the same theme.

The script takes a few characters from the manga, Catherine, Jane, Dominique and Sandra, but also Crystal Boy (Boy for his close friends), but their part in the scenario doesn't have much to do with the TV show. A great adaptation where we can enthuse over sequences more and more tearful: the death of the sisters, but also Cobra's death (he was defeated by Boy), and then when love brings him back for a last kiss to his dying lover. An electroshock session that ranks among the greatest moments in the Japanese animation ! The movie is supported by brilliant classic background music which is very close to Yasuo Higuchi's style. He was responsible for Gundam X, Princess Sarah and... Phoenix 2772. The music for Cobra was composed by Osamu Shôji, who was also involved in Wicked City.

Manga Video decided, for the English version (and so for the French one), to change that soundtrack for a selection of the best music and songs of the Swiss group Yello, not very famous except for their final theme of the movie Ferris Bueller's day off. Remember their Oh yeah,, right ? Yello started at the very end of the 70's, and their first CD, Solid Pleasure (1980), already included very trippy space music, which is played in particular in the scene when Cobra jumps away from his prison to go and kiss his lover a last time - wonderful and unforgettable.

In addition to the new-age music, we are also granted a few techno ones pretty well done (when listened to again and again) and very good songs. Yello is a very eclectic band and takes its numerous inspirations from the whole world. For more information about that duo, which I discovered with pleasure in that movie, just click on the URL link below. And if you want some advice about their CD's, just write me and ask me about the four CD's I bought after seeing the movie ^_^.

Besides the quality of Yello's music, you can add the strength of the pictures that might gain your respect (it's normal, when you see that the key animators include personalities like Shinji Otsuka, Keizô Shimizu, Kôji Morimoto, Hidetoshi Omori, Shingo Araki and Michi Himeno !), and of course wonderful action sequences that already announce the lightning success of the TV show that followed...

Yello on the net: http://www.yello.ch/