Cobra’s premise at first seems one doomed for failure. In a world where all girls walk around in ridiculously revealing clothing, an invincible superman walks around and pretty much succeeds at everything he tries. Characters should be flawed, but Cobra is one of those guys who is perfect in every single way. Noramlly this would lead to rather boring television, but the creativity that has been put in the stories, along with Cobra’s charisma make this into a surprisingly enjoyable series.
The adventures, and the different places that this series shows make for a perfect light-hearted watch. The stories are nearly all well told and while they may not make too much sense at times, they’re well paced and built up and manage to draw you into its atmosphere.
I probably like this show even better than the original Cobra series of 1982. While that one was more of an action-series that focused on killing bad guys, the 2010 Cobra puts a lot more focus on adventures and exploration and instead of Cobra killing hordes of bad guys, it’s much more about his interatcion with the side-characters that happen to be tagging along with him.
On top of that, this series can boast the best soundtrack of shows that premiered in the past Winter-season. Yoshihiro Ike is a brilliant composer, and here again he delivers an exciting and perfectly fitting soundtrack to accompany the series. The graphics all look solid, but the animation itself is sub-par.
The arcs that this series decided to show differ a bit in quality. The mountain climbing arc is by far the best, while the two longest arcs at the beginning and end tend to drag on for a bit too long than necessary, and their plot twist may be a bit too non-sensical than what’s good for this series.
Cobra isn’t a series you want to go to for depth or realism at all. The stories are all very simple and the characters are all more charicatures than that they resemble actual people. But here’s the thing: it knows what it is, and it does this well. Cobra the Animation was very obviously made by passionate fans of the original Cobra 1982-series, who wanted to do the source material as much justice as possible. And you know what? They succeeded.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 – Rather cheesy at times, but knows how to draw you in. |
| Characters: | 7/10 – Caricatures, Cobra is god-moded, but they all have their own charisma. |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 – Animation isn’t impressive, but the graphics are. Plus a fantastic soundtrack. |
| Setting: | 8/10 – The Cobra-universe is full of interesting places and settings. |
Need to catch up with Cobra. What started as a guilty pleasure, turned into genuine entertaiment.