Quick notes about new Cobra

Posted On October 13, 2008

Cobra is one of the most sexist, cheesy and silly shows ever made. Naturally, this also makes it one of the greatest shows ever made. I first watched Cobra a good several months ago, and even after 31 episodes of this stuff, I hungered for more! Thankfully, I happened to catch Cobra right on its 30th anniversary, and to celebrate this most auspicious occasion– THEY’RE MAKING MORE. And the new one is pretty good! Almost.

I’ll get the bad stuff out of the way first: this new OVA has some absolutely fucking horrible 3D CG. You’d think that by the year 2008 all anime studios would have figured out how to use this stuff, but reality is far too cruel. There’s fucking dumb 3D robots just walking around in the backgrounds of shots for no reason at all but to look dumb and out of place. I do think that Cobra’s ship turned out ok, but that’d be better done by traditional means. The rest is horrible, though. Especially Crystal Boy in the preview for the next episode. Guh. The normal animation is fine. Not terribly fluid, but not static either.

I guess another bad thing would be that Osamu Dezaki isn’t directing, but that’s only because the original mangaka Buichi Terasawa is in the director’s chair this time. I admit that Cobra kind of feels weird without a dramatic painted still every 5 seconds, but Terasawa’s direction captures everything we love about Cobra wonderfully. Not really a surprise, I guess.

Hopefully someone will sub this. I watched the first episode raw, and enjoyed it just fine since it was mainly action oriented. And honestly, fully understanding the dialogue in Cobra isn’t necessary, but I wouldn’t mind being able to understand more of his cocky one-liners.