Trivia / Space Adventure Cobra

• Died During Production: Buichi Terasawa was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1998 but pressed onwards with his work on Cobra until he passed away in 2023 at 68 years old due to heart failure. This left the Over The Rainbow webcomic, a direct continuation to Hell Crusaders from the series' original run, unfinished.
• Dueling Dubs: The movie was dubbed twice into English by two different companies (Streamline and Manga UK), both in 1995, and with two completely different voice casts. The UK dub also replaced the entire musical score with licensed music from Yello. Also, despite Streamline's reputation for more liberal dubs, their dub for Cobra is actually quite a bit more faithful than Manga UK's, which took a lot of cues from the French dub (including some different character names).
• Fountain of Expies: Cobra himself has tons of them, like Vash, Ragna, Alucard, Vincent Valentine, Dante, etc. All of them all wear red and a lot of them have an unusual arm of sorts, while some others share Cobra's flirtatious and cocky personality.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • While the Streamline dub of the movie is readily available through Discotek Media's release, the Manga UK dub has not been rereleased due to legal issues with the score by Yello. As such, the only way to watch it is to track down the long out of print original release or pirate it. Additionally, the manga has been completely out of print in English territories since the abortive Viz translation (which was notably written by renowned comics writer Marv Wolfman) and can be hard to come by.
  • Every edition of the original manga's run is published without the covers each chapter had on their original Shonen Jump magazine publication. Only a few of those illustrations can be found archived online.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: According to Word of God, the hero was inspired by and physically modeled after French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo (maybe from Godard's film Pierrot le Fou). He also confirmed that Jane and Dominique were both modeled after Jane Fonda.
• The Other Darrin:
  • In the Japanese version, most of the characters' voices were recast between the movie and TV series. The recent seasons also have different voices for the characters.
  • Cobra has been voiced by various voice actors throughout the years, the most notable being the late Nachi Nozawa in the original anime series, the OVAs, and the arcade game.
• No Export for You:
  • For the longest time, only the movie was imported to English-speaking territories, though attempts were made to bring the TV show over. TMS created a pilot for the US market in 1983 written and directed by John Semper Jr. that mixed existing animation with original animation, but it was never picked up. Streamline licensed it in the late '90s, and after dubbing and releasing the movie in theaters, planned on dubbing the show with their movie cast, but their distributor, Orion Pictures, ran into financial problems and couldn't release the show or the movie on home video. The movie was released to VHS by Urban Vision in 1998, but it wasn't until 2014 that the TV series saw a release in English (albeit subtitled-only). Today the franchise is divided up between two companies: Discotek Media (the movie and TV series), and Sentai Filmworks (sequel series/OVA).
  • The manga was licensed by Viz Media in the early '90s, but they only released a few issues. The entire manga ultimately licensed by Creek & River Co. Ltd in 2015.
• Sequel Gap: The 2000-2006 Magic Doll story was only followed by Over the Rainbow in 2019.
• Sequel in Another Medium: Cobra: Over the Rainbow is a Web Comic distributed online.
• Series Hiatus:
  • The Magic Doll story was suspended in 2002 because of Buichi's health issues and only resumed in 2005.
  • Cobra: Over the Rainbow last updated in 2020 on chapter 6, ending on an inconclusive note despite promising to reveal whether Secret was Dominique or not. It remained on radio silence until Terasawa's death in 2023.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There was originally supposed to be a French movie adaptation planned, directed by Alexandre Aja (of High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes (2006) fame). Sadly, Aja confirmed in a 2018 interview that the movie has been cancelled.
  • There was also going to be a Monégasque co-produced spin-off series, named The Return Of Joe Gillian, where Cobra returns to play rugball. There has not been any update on the series, since 2016. Whether it is stuck in Development Hell or has been cancelled altogether has yet to be confirmed.

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