Cobra (manga)

• 1. Introduction

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  Cobra, the manga series by Buichi Terasawa, opens not with a hero striding across a starfield, but with an ordinary office worker named Johnson who is bored. One Sunday morning, Johnson's robotic servant Ben suggests he visit the Trip Movie Corporation, a business that lets customers experience a dream as if it were real. Johnson asks for a harem and a battlestar. What he gets instead is the memory of an entire hidden life. That moment of recollection drives everything that follows, and it would make Terasawa, who was twenty-two years old and almost unknown when the series launched, into one of the defining names in Weekly Shonen Jump history. How did a series rooted in spaghetti westerns, James Bond, and Barbarella sell fifty million copies in Japan? And why, decades later, are French filmmakers and filmmakers of international renown still chasing it?

• 2. A Hero Built from Films

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  Buichi Terasawa invented the Psychogun before he invented Cobra. He wanted a hero who could carry a concealed weapon, and the solution, a cybernetic arm that doubles as an energy cannon, preceded the man who wields it. The character Cobra himself grew out of what Terasawa described as "spaghetti westerns with a James Bond-type spin to them", crossed with Japanese stories about a wandering swordsman. From Bond, Terasawa also borrowed the concept of multiple women circling the main character.

  The French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo and his "phlegmatic style" in Breathless (1960) and That Man from Rio (1964) supplied Cobra's particular brand of cool. The then-rising actresses Dominique Sanda and Catherine Deneuve lent their first names to the Royal Sisters. One of Cobra's chief enemies, Crystal Bowie, was named as a tribute to English musician David Bowie.

  Jane Fonda's performance in the science-fiction film Barbarella (1968) served as a direct model for Terasawa's character Jane, whose hairstyle he borrowed from Princess Aurora in Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959). For panel layout and narrative rhythm, Terasawa drew on the work of manga artist Osamu Tezuka, who mentored him. Terasawa said plainly, "Without him... Cobra would never have existed."

• 3. Six Years in Jump

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  Cobra first appeared in a 1977 one-shot edition in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump, a year before its serialization began. Regular publication ran from the 6th of November 1978, issue to the 12th of November 1984, issue, covering six years of weekly chapters. Shueisha then collected the run into eighteen tankōbon volumes, released between the 15th of August 1979, and the 15th of August 1985, under the Jump Comics line.

  A reprint edition titled Space Adventure Cobra followed, running in ten volumes from the 10th of February 1988, to the 10th of November 1998. Additional kanzenban editions came from both Shueisha and Media Factory across the 2000s; Media Factory's twelve-volume set appeared between the 23rd of August 2005, and the 23rd of June 2006. The series was also released as an e-book for a limited period.

  In the United States, Viz Communications published a partial English edition in 1990, covering twelve books and focusing on the origin story and the Royal Sisters' saga. Dialogue was adapted by American comic book writer Marv Wolfman under Viz's Viz Select Comics line. A fuller release arrived in 2015, when Creek and River published a fifteen-volume full-color Kindle edition in the United States, including sequel material and color remakes of select original story arcs.

• 4. Anime, Film, and Animation

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  Tokyo Movie Shinsha adapted the manga into Space Adventure Cobra, a feature film released in Japan on the 23rd of July 1982. Director Osamu Dezaki and co-writers Terasawa and Haruya Yamazaki focused the story on Cobra's involvement with the Royal Sisters and his fight against Crystal Bowie. Manga Entertainment brought the film to British theaters in 1995; an American dub produced by Carl Macek's Streamline Pictures reached American theaters the same year through Tara, and Urban Vision later distributed it on VHS in 1998.

  The anime television series Space Cobra, also directed by Dezaki alongside Yoshio Takeuchi, aired on Fuji Television between the 7th of October 1982, and the 19th of May 1983, running thirty-one episodes. Terasawa attended weekly screenplay meetings and sometimes rewrote scripts himself. The series reached North American audiences through Nozomi Entertainment in two releases in 2014, and was later licensed by Discotek Media, which issued a Blu-ray edition on the 29th of September 2020, including an experimental English dub for the first two episodes.

  For the series' thirtieth anniversary, Guild Project and Magic Bus produced the Cobra the Animation line. The first OVA, The Psychogun, was written, storyboarded, and directed entirely by Terasawa himself, released direct-to-DVD between the 29th of August 2008, and the 27th of February 2009. A sequel OVA, Time Drive, followed between the 24th of April 2009, and the 26th of June 2009. The television series Rokunin no Yuhi aired on BS 11 between the 2nd of January 2010, and the 27th of March 2010, directed by Keizo Shimizu. The Cobra the Animation OVAs were among the best-selling anime for two weeks after release.

• 5. France and the Live-Action Chase

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  The Space Cobra anime television series was a major success in France in the 1980s. Le Monde's Frederic Potet said it "marked a whole generation of young viewers", and Joel Metreau of 20 minutes asserted it gained a cult following. Director Alexandre Aja and filmmaker Luc Besson are among the French figures who grew up as fans.

  In 2008, Terasawa said he had received a Hollywood offer for a live-action adaptation, describing it as "off-the-record". Two years later, Aja publicly announced he had purchased the rights, calling the original manga one of his childhood favorites. By 2011, Aja had written a script with Gregory Levasseur, with production held by Aton Soumache and Dimitri Rassom at Onyx Films and Studio 37. The projected budget exceeded $100 million.

  A teaser poster with a scheduled release date of mid-2013 was unveiled, but in September 2013 Aja acknowledged that making the film would be "very hard" since "to do a new kind of Star Wars, is expensive." By July 2014 the estimated budget had risen to over $150 million. Aja cited one persistent stumbling block: "When I think 'who the heck is going to play that Cobra?', I become unable to move forward." The release of Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 required him to rework aspects of the project to distinguish it from that film. In April 2018, Aja revealed that the film had been in preproduction at Lionsgate until a regime change; the incoming staff judged the budget of US$130 million too high, and the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens had also factored into the cancellation.

  On the 13th of June 2025, at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, French company Mangouste Anim announced it had acquired the rights to produce a new Cobra animated series, stating simply that "Cobra will return to the screen."

• 6. Legacy and Influence

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  Approximately fifty million copies of Cobra have been sold in Japan, placing it among the best-selling manga series in the history of Weekly Shonen Jump. Wizard magazine named the English version one of "The Top 25 Translated-To-English Manga of All Time." Writing for Anime News Network, Jason Thompson called Cobra "a significant piece of manga history."

  According to French scholar Marie Pruvost-Delaspre, Cobra's humorous style and sexual innuendos influenced manga City Hunter, which launched in 1985. Shinichiro Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop (1998) owes its nostalgic appearance to Cobra, and Space Dandy (2014) draws its ironic tone from it. Manga author Kentaro Miura was influenced by the Psychogun when designing the prosthetic hand for Guts, the protagonist of Berserk, which launched in 1989. Video game designer Hideki Kamiya cited Cobra's "provoking look", ironic style, and ability to shift from a smile to a serious face as the inspiration for Dante in the Devil May Cry series.

  Terasawa continued adding to the story until late in his life. He announced in February 2016 that he would create a new saga addressing the unresolved resemblance between two characters, Dominique and Secret. The resulting sequel, Cobra: Over the Rainbow, began digital release on the 19th of November 2019, through Comic Walker and Niconico Manga. The sixth and latest chapter was published on the 19th of April 2020, before Terasawa died in September 2023.