History Manga / SpaceAdventureCobra

** The Hell Crusaders' mothership has "HELL CRUS''E''DERS" engraved on its side.

* {{Bookends}}: The first story arc of the series begins and ends with Cobra killing a one-eyed woman. Many years later, "Over the Rainbow" began with Cobra killing a brunette woman and was left unfinished with Cobra killing a tentacle monster with the appearance of that woman. So, the entire franchise bookended with Cobra killing women.

* MenDontCry: The anime adaptation notably changes the scene of Cobra lamenting [[spoiler:Dominique]]'s death so that he's sitting next to a wall with his head low in shame but is ''not'' driven to tears like in the manga.

** A couple arcs in the series have villains who drug lots and lots of women into becoming their mindless slaves. "The Psychogun" even has one who leaves a group of half-naked women paralyzed in place, posed like statues, via constant neurotoxin injections.

Here you have it -- ''Space Adventure Cobra''. A SpaceOpera / ScienceFantasy manga by Buichi Terasawa published between 1978 and 1984, and later adapted to a feature-length anime film and then an anime TV series. An anime sequel and an OVA were released in 2009-2010.

Both adaptations were closely watched by author of the original manga, Buichi Terasawa, and preserved both the plot and style of the original. What is even more awesome, in the recent sequel titled ''Cobra the Animation'' they even recruited the same voice actors in Japan for both Cobra (Nachi Nozawa) and Lady Armaroid (Creator/YoshikoSakakibara). Preserving the character design helped a lot too.

It also spawned a {{Seinen}} WebComic sequel named ''Cobra: Over the Rainbow'', which is also serialized in ''Comic Hu'' magazine and is penned by the same Buichi Terasawa himself. Although it was meant to tie up remaining loose ends from the original series, it went unfinished after six chapters due to Terasawa's passing in 2023.

** The "Rugball", "Hell Crusaders" and "Galaxy Nights" arcs feature bird-men from Planet [[WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck Donald]].

** The "Extradimensional Race" arc features multiple allusions to ''Alice in Wonderland'', and the "Over the Rainbow" sequel is partly based on ''The Wizard of Oz''.

** A RunningGag is for Cobra to act like a PopCulturedBadass by referencing various series that would have been absolutely ancient by the era he lives in, ranging from ''James Bond'' to ''Popeye'' and ending with ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants" in "Over the Rainbow".

** The "Lightning Planet" story is the one aversion of this trope in the entire series. Cobra infiltrates a museum staffed entirely by women, steals the artifact he's looking for and escapes without any harm happening to the guards at all.
** The "Care for a Robot?" story involves a bunch of female beekeepers being killed after the bee-like robots they used were hijacked by a murderous A.I. The one woman who Cobra manages to help just gets uncerimoniously crushed by a rock in the following chase scene.

* NippleAndDimed: Zigzagged. Some scenes in the manga portray women with defined nipples and others don't. Rajaki, the feral villainess in volume 10 in particular, is topless with no visible nipples in all of her scenes, unlike how most of the borderline nude female characters either ''do'' have defined nipples or cover their breasts with pasties. Some prints of the manga, like the colored version, also censored most of such scenes.

It also spawned a {{Seinen}} WebComic sequel named ''Cobra: Over the Rainbow'', which is also serialized in ''Comic Hu'' magazine and is penned by the same Buichi Terasawa himself. Although it was ment to tie up remaining loose ends from the original series, it went unfinished after six chapters due to Terasawa's passing in 2023.

It also spawned a {{Seinen}} WebComic sequel named ''Cobra: Over the Rainbow'', which is also serialized in ''Comic Hu'' magazine and is penned by the same Buichi Terasawa himself.

** The "Wandering Women" arc has this trope as its very premise -- a crowd of sacrificial women barely dressed in valuable jewelry lifelessly drifts in the bottom of the ocean and is coveted by the villains. When the greedy and traitorous femme fatale for the scenario tries to get rid of Cobra and thinks she can claim the jewels for herself, Cobra shoots and drowns her, leaving her bikini-clad corpse to wander with all the others.
* EyeScream: Cobra blasts out the eye of the Pirate Guild leader. [[spoiler:This is part of the reason why he later recognizes him as the boss of a Casino, when he was still amnesiac.]]

* SerialEscalation: The original manga's major sagas go from a quest for an invincible shapeshifting weapon to Cobra taking revenge on a galactic overlord who's actually [[spoiler:Adolf Hitler]], to Cobra overcoming the MindRape of a giant demon identified as ''Satan'', to fighting multiple villains over a race across dimensions and then the GrandFinale where he gathers TheChosenMany to fight an EvilGod-possessed Crystal Bowie on a battle for the fate of the universe.

* CoolShip: Cobra owns the Turtle spaceship, named after its carapace-like shape. Depending of the adaptation, it is either a different ship that unfolds into a serpentine train or is a ship that looks like an animal at all.

** Cobra himself, with his left arm.
** [[spoiler:Lady Armaroid was once human, but her brain had to be put in a mechanical body to save her life.]]

* SpaceWhale: Not a whale, but in one story (later used for the first PC-Engine game) the spaceship Cobra is on in the beginning gets eaten by a giant hammerhead shark.

* ThemeMusicPowerUp: "Shi no Koshin".

* WouldHitAGirl: No man in the series has any qualms about harming and killing female enemies, including Cobra. In fact, the first story arc, the "Over the Rainbow" sequel and some other stories in-between practically ''rush'' to make him kill some femme fatale as if to underline how cold-blooded he can be.

* YourMindMakesItReal: The third arc of the new series takes place on a mountain that disappears when characters start doubting it.

* BloodSport: Rugball, a violent mix of Baseball, Rugby and American Football.

!!''Space Adventures Cobre'' provides examples of:

* ThemeMusicPowerUp: "Shi no Koshin"

* {{Bowdlerize}}: In the anime, there are some key changes to the scene of Cobra learning [[spoiler:Dominique]] had been assassinated and the subsequent MookHorrorShow. Her back was skinned and put on display, but not all the way to her legs. When Cobra is about to go on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge, he says "None of you bastards [[NeverSayDie are leaving here alive]]!" but "This is the first time in my life... ''that I'll be happy to kill all of you''" is omitted. The anime also doesn't let Cobra kill the guy he says that to by [[HangingAround hanging]], but incinerating the rest of the minions with huge laser beams ''is'' permited.

* {{Bowdlerize}}: In the anime, there are some key changes to the scene of Cobra learning [[spoiler:Dominique]] had been assassinated and the subsequent MookHorrorShow. Her back was skinned and put on display, but not all the way to her butt. When Cobra is about to go on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge, he says "None of you bastards [[NeverSayDie are leaving here alive]]!" instead of the even more vindictive "For the first time in my life... ''I'll be happy to kill all of you''". The anime also doesn't let Cobra kill the guy he says that to by [[HangingAround hanging]], but incinerating the rest of the minions with huge laser beams ''is'' permited.

A video game adaptation, ''Cobra: The Arcade'', was developed and released by Namco in 2005 exclusively for UsefulNotes/{{arcade|Game}}s. Gameplay-wise, it is ''VideoGame/TimeCrisis'' in the [[DolledUpInstallment skin]] of ''Space Adventure Cobra'', and features a card system that allows the player to save their records and earn unlocks. Earlier there had also been ''Cobra - Kokuryo's Legend'' and ''VideoGame/TheSpaceAdventure'', two menu-driven adventure games that saw release on the PC Engine. The latter one saw a Western release on the Sega CD.

* BreatherEpisode: The heist for the Dragon Crystal at the Rune Museum goes very smoothly with Cobra and Vega escaping the place while completely avoiding conflict with the museum's guards, who happen to be [[AmazonBrigade all female]]. It's the most casual and non-violent saga of the manga, and it's actually surprising for that many women to be within a square mile radius of [[DoomMagnet Cobra]] without being pointlessly killed off by villains or monsters.

* DeathByAdaptation: In the manga, Mirale Judd is a major supporting character during the final stretch of the Salamander arc. In the anime, [[spoiler:Mirale is revealed to have been DeadAllAlong, with her role instead going to an amnesiac Dominique serving as her body double.]]

* AuthorAppeal: Asses. Femme fatales. Red-haired women crawling on all fours and shooting lasers from their mouth (Rajaki in "The Extradimensional Race", the Motorcycle Girl in ''Manga/GokuMidnightEye'' and the Cyberwolves from "The PSychogun").

* MorphWeapon: The "Ultimate Weapon" is the main MacGuffin during an early story arc. When finally discovered, it looks rather inconspicuous: an ovoid fitting in the palm... from which an eye open. But then, if this eye catches sight of any weapon, it can turn into a copy of it... whether a sword, a gun or a ''tank''. And the Weapon can also turn its wielder into a freaking ''giant'' along with its own scaling up. When confronted with this, Cobra takes great care of avoiding that the Weapon could become a ''spaceship''....

* NippleAndDimed: Zigzagged. Some scenes in the manga portray women with defined nipples and others don't. The feral villainess in volume 10 in particular is topless with no visible nipples in all of her scenes, unlike how most of the borderline nude female characters either ''do'' have defined nipples or cover their breasts with pasties. Some prints of the manga, like the colored version, also censored most of such scenes.

* ProductionThrowback: In ''The Psychogun'', Gypsy Dog walks a pair of barely-dressed and feral female cyborgs called "Cyberwolves" around like attack dogs. They are pretty much the "Motorcycle Girl" from the author's ''Manga/GokuMidnightEye'' except they don't have motorcycle handlebars and are not topless.

* RobotGirl: Some of Cobra's female encounters aren't quite human. Lady Armaroid herself; the name should be an eyecatch.