This Week in Anime
The Legacy of Buichi Terasawa
by Christopher Farris & Steve Jones,
The anime and manga world lost yet another legend with the recent passing of Buichi Terasawa, the author behind the iconic 1978 manga series Space Adventure Cobra. Join Chris and Steve this week as they dive into Terasawa's works that made him one of the legends in the industry.
Space Adventure Cobra TV is currently streaming on RetroCrush and YouTube, while Space Adventure Cobra Movie is streaming on RetroCrush and Pluto TV. Goku Midnight Eye is also currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
This TWIA is age-gated for nudity. Viewer discretion is advised.
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Chris
Steve, retrospectives on manga and anime creators have become a recent regular feature here on TWIA, but I wish this one came about because of happier circumstances. We just found out last week that on September 9, manga author, artist, and all-around legend Buichi Terasawa passed away from a heart attack at 68.
Steve, retrospectives on manga and anime creators have become a recent regular feature here on TWIA, but I wish this one came about because of happier circumstances. We just found out last week that on September 9, manga author, artist, and all-around legend Buichi Terasawa passed away from a heart attack at 68.
It's a tragic loss, and the turnout of mourning reactions from fans and fellow professionals was huge. Understandably, since Terasawa was an absolute luminary in the industry.
Steve
It's a sad occurrence and a tremendous loss, no doubt. Still, what better way to honor and pay tribute to the man's legacy than to use this opportunity to look back on his oeuvre and discover some newfound appreciation for his pioneering spirit? Plus, we rarely have a chance to do all that while posting a ton of bare cartoon asses. And having just digested a sampling of his work, I can confidently say that this is how Terasawa would have wanted to be remembered.
It's a sad occurrence and a tremendous loss, no doubt. Still, what better way to honor and pay tribute to the man's legacy than to use this opportunity to look back on his oeuvre and discover some newfound appreciation for his pioneering spirit? Plus, we rarely have a chance to do all that while posting a ton of bare cartoon asses. And having just digested a sampling of his work, I can confidently say that this is how Terasawa would have wanted to be remembered.
Looking back, indeed. It's always bittersweet how it can take the death of a famous creator to motivate fans to clear their stuff out of a long-standing backlog. We saw this with Kentaro Miura's passing in 2021, a cause for many people to check out Berserk. And while I had seen Goku: Midnight Eye, Terasawa's actual most famous creation, Space Adventure Cobra, was something I always told myself I'd get around to. So this must be when I finally raise a drink and a cigar to the cool old guy and his red-suited rapscallion.
I was more or less in the same boat. I knew of Cobra, but the anime adaptations sat on my backlog for a while. Luckily, they've become more readily available recently, thanks to RetroCrush and some YouTube uploads. It'll be gone by the time this column goes live, but it was super cool of TMS to put the movie up for free this weekend in honor of Terasawa. There are lots of really kind and touching messages in that comment section, which we all know is a rarity for YouTube.
Being able to easily enjoy Cobra in anime form (especially the movie, temporary as it was) is welcome. However, it must be stated that much of Terasawa's original manga has yet to be officially available in English. You can get ebook versions of Cobra's full-color CG sequel series, but virtually nothing else.
Yeah, it's unfortunate! For instance, the original Cobra manga only got a partial localization by Viz back in the early '90s and nothing since. And if Cobra isn't even getting licensed, you can bet we've never gotten any of his lesser-known and weirder stuff, which is a darn shame for an artist of his stature. While researching, I found out he was a super early adopter of using computers to assist in manga creation, which we all take for granted now. I'd love to see what those rough experiments looked like while he was figuring all that out with the limited tools he had in the '80s and '90s.
His series Takeru was the "world's first" digitally-created manga series. Even if we can't read this material over here, we can get a glimpse of some of it courtesy of Terasawa's still-up, 90's-as-all-hell official website.
That, as they say, is the stuff.
That, as they say, is the stuff.
The dream of Geocities is somehow still alive and well, thank god.
I highly recommend poking around his entire web zone, but let me briefly highlight Gun Dragon, a manga he put together with 1999-core CGI backgrounds/props and live-action models serving as the main characters.
I grabbed some sample pages off the French version (of course, France gets all the good manga), and it is an aesthetic to behold.
It feels like a motivated artist who saw computer programs and said, "You can make comics on these things?" and just went hog-wild experimenting with how to do that.
Granted, one motivator for pursuing alternate ways of producing art might have been Terasawa's health struggles later, including a brain tumor in 1998. The surgery eventually left him paralyzed on the left side of his body. Nonetheless, the manga creator that he is, Terasawa kept on producing manga all the way to a Cobra sequel series titled Cobra: Over The Rainbow in 2019! He could not be contained.
He was a man on a mission. And like many great artists, it's tempting to theorize and mythologize how he grew into his voice. Except, in Terasawa's case, we have a definitive point of genesis. It was 1968, and like many other 13-year-old boys that year, he saw the movie Barbarella and it changed his life.
There is a reason that Cobra, in all versions of his story, almost immediately gets involved with a sci-fi space princess named Jane.
Also, why do 99% of the women in the franchise dress like this?
Granted, other influences exist, such as Disney films (introduced to Terasawa by his mentor, Osamu Tezuka) and James Bond. These are also gleefully worn on Cobra's tight red sleeves.
He's not shy about his love for all this stuff. A 2013 interview with Terasawa has him cite Star Wars as one of his favorite movies, finding the simpler, pulpy sci-fi action "groundbreaking." It's funny to think that Cobra was created in that mold and would then define so much of it for future creators.
He's not shy about his love for all this stuff. A 2013 interview with Terasawa has him cite Star Wars as one of his favorite movies, finding the simpler, pulpy sci-fi action "groundbreaking." It's funny to think that Cobra was created in that mold and would then define so much of it for future creators.
It's so immediately apparent how much Cobra owes to Star Wars and all the earlier sci-fi serials. But just as Cobra can turn his mental energy into fuel for his trademark Psycho Gun, Terasawa manages to mold his various influences into something familiar yet uniquely compelling. I don't have a good answer for how he does it, but there's something about the freewheeling nature of Cobra, both the character and the series, that's infectious to watch.
It also helps when you get someone like Osamu Dezaki to translate your delightfully gonzo manga ideas into an appropriately gorgeous and surreal film adaptation.
It probably shouldn't be that surprising, but god, wow, Terasawa's art and design sensibilities with Dezaki's directorial abilities do turn out to be a match made in heaven. The version of the movie showcased on YouTube by TMS was only the dub version. That turned out to be okay because it let me more easily focus on these visuals at all times while also not worrying about including subtitles on any screencaps posted for this column since this is a film dedicated to showing you the coolest image you've ever seen what feels like every two seconds.
Though, as a side-note on that dub, shout-out to Dan Woren as Cobra and his dedication to sounding like he's got a cigar in his mouth for every line he delivers where Cobra has a cigar in his mouth.
Though, as a side-note on that dub, shout-out to Dan Woren as Cobra and his dedication to sounding like he's got a cigar in his mouth for every line he delivers where Cobra has a cigar in his mouth.
For anyone curious, the subbed version on Retrocrush is just as good. And I mean, I knew it'd be good, but I wasn't expecting how psychedelic the film would be! And how good a time Crystal Boy would be having in it.
This is a bad guy who delights in being an overly tall, see-through skeleton cyborg who might be named after David Bowie. He yanks his golden bones out of his body and stabs you with them. All-timer villain.
Yeah, Crystal Boy/Bowie (depending on which iteration you're watching) has one of the greatest bad-guy character designs in all fiction. And he's the perfect example of Terasawa transmuting his cosmopolitan set of influences into something striking and entirely his own.
I like the big crane game claw he gets in the TV anime.
I like the big crane game claw he gets in the TV anime.
The Cobra TV anime helps confirm the raw staying power of Terasawa's artistic ideas. It can't look as lavish or streamlined as the movie, but the appeal of the setting and Cobra asserting his place in it still comes through as strongly as ever. It helps that they got Dezaki back to direct it, and don't worry, you can tell it's him.
It's a very "don't fix what ain't broken" approach.
Even though the stories, especially at the start, are similar, I think it's advisable to go through both the movie and the TV show if this is your invitation to check Cobra out. The TV anime, in particular, gets the proper lead-in to the main story hook about Cobra coming out of a self-imposed five-year memory wipe to restart his space adventures (something I wasn't aware of, even with the cultural osmosis perpetuated by this series). It also immediately starts with confirmation that Terasawa has his fingers on the pulse of the human condition.
Cobra's a template where continuity isn't an important factor, and from what I can tell, even the manga's sequels and spinoffs dipped back into retellings of his origin story. The anime rebooted in 2008 with a pair of OVAs, followed by a new TV series. What's neat, though, is that Terasawa was closely involved in many adaptations of his work. In the Right Stuf interview you linked earlier, he says he attended the weekly script meetings for Dezaki's TV series. He's also credited as the director of some of those anime, like Raven Tengu Kabuto and the reboot Cobra OVAs. You don't see a lot of mangaka who are that hands-on with this stuff.
It means that even absent a way to read his original manga, having the Cobra movie and series available on places like RetroCrush and TMS's YouTube channel is still an acceptable way to celebrate Terasawa's legacy, given how involved he was in their production. That comes through in the central appeal of watching these. I'm not surprised, but a little frustrated at how effortlessly cool Cobra is to me. I'm a huge fan of anime like Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop, which owe at least some of their stylings to Cobra's influence, to say nothing of how much I enjoy similar series from the same era like VOTOMS and Dirty Pair.
Cobra was always going to be 100% My Shit, so I can only hope a posthumous thanks to Terasawa for creating it is something his spirit will accept from me.
Cobra was always going to be 100% My Shit, so I can only hope a posthumous thanks to Terasawa for creating it is something his spirit will accept from me.
It's just plain fun. Downright goofy at times. I love how Cobra gets a badass hoverbike scene in the film, but in the TV series, he wipes out trying to do a cool trick and has to carry his bike on his back the rest of the way home. How can you not love that?
It all happens while the incredible montage music keeps going; it's perfect. So much of that fun comes from the effectiveness of the central character himself. Yes, Cobra is "cool" in the way that so many of Terasawa's leads are. But he also has those moments of goofiness that spin out of his freewheeling approach to living his life unburdened by rules or expectations.
Also, not for nothing, but I was surprised at how little of a scoundrel Cobra turns out to be, given the era and the genre he hails from. The dude loves the ladies, but his manner of approaching, working with, or helping them can often come off as downright chivalrous, especially compared to later descendants like Gene Starwind or influential components like Bond.
Also, not for nothing, but I was surprised at how little of a scoundrel Cobra turns out to be, given the era and the genre he hails from. The dude loves the ladies, but his manner of approaching, working with, or helping them can often come off as downright chivalrous, especially compared to later descendants like Gene Starwind or influential components like Bond.
Very true. Nobody will rush to call Cobra a feminist masterpiece, but it's surprisingly inoffensive. Every woman is a bombshell in a space bikini who wants to smooch his Psycho Gun. However, even that feels like an antediluvian brand of horniness instead of anything terrible.
As we have covered, Terasawa's creative output contains multitudes, so if you want a brand of bawdiness apart from mere metal swimsuits, some of his other material might be more your speed.
Some of that speed may be derived from women who have handlebars.
Goku: Midnight Eye is the hard-boiled cyberpunk retelling of Journey to the West you didn't know you were missing in your life.
Goku: Midnight Eye is the hard-boiled cyberpunk retelling of Journey to the West you didn't know you were missing in your life.
This one flung Terasawa's sensibilities being adapted from the early 80s to the late 80s, this time hooking him up with Yoshiaki Kawajiri. That'd be the Wicked City director, so you probably know the sort of sex and ultraviolence this one gets up to.
It's the same dude who did Cyber City Oedo 808, which astute readers may recall we covered earlier this year. Among other stylistic similarities, both OVAs feature Norio Wakamoto voicing the same guy.
They even give Oedo 808 a shout-out in an Easter Egg in the second Goku OVA! Terasawa got wholly sucked into the interconnected Kawajiri-verse, where he was a natural fit.
It is highly entertaining in all the right (and several wrong) ways. My favorite is that our hero is allergic to shirts but not neckties, so nearly every shot of him emphasizes his man cleavage. As with Cobra's skintight jumpsuit, these details help Terasawa appeal to a wider audience.
By the way, you are not prepared for what he wears under that sports coat.
By the way, you are not prepared for what he wears under that sports coat.
The fact that Goku, like Cobra, can still be drawn like he's the coolest motherfucker alive, even when he's rocking that look or occasionally getting owned like a doofus, is proof of the power of Terasawa's craftsmanship.
He truly embodies the noir spirit, which goes a long way towards making Midnight Eye work regardless of whether Goku is receiving inexplicable cybernetic upgrades or facing down murderous peacock women who hypnotize people with the power of this era's brazen fanservice.
He truly embodies the noir spirit, which goes a long way towards making Midnight Eye work regardless of whether Goku is receiving inexplicable cybernetic upgrades or facing down murderous peacock women who hypnotize people with the power of this era's brazen fanservice.
There's so much to love about Goku. He feels like a 12-year-old's conception of a cyberpunk private eye, and I mean that in the best way possible. And yes, of course, that includes terrible attempts at one-liners.
He racks his brain and the entire internet for the most powerful weapon available, and he uses that wellspring of knowledge to turn his car into the Batmobile.
He racks his brain and the entire internet for the most powerful weapon available, and he uses that wellspring of knowledge to turn his car into the Batmobile.
Sure, Cobra's Psycho-Gun is an iconic cool sci-fi weapon, but only Goku here could give us something as galaxy-brained as an interdimensional missile launcher.
This kind of cool factor was the name of the game for OVAs of this era, and Terasawa, who did scripts for both of them based on his manga, took to it like a grizzled duck to hard-boiled water. It's fun just how natural a fit his approach is to this take on the material, from the way Goku's Monkey-King-evoking muttonchops also recall Cobra's classic 'do to the ostentatious ariel ballet of multi-story vaults he does off of his physically impossible cyber-power-pole.
This kind of cool factor was the name of the game for OVAs of this era, and Terasawa, who did scripts for both of them based on his manga, took to it like a grizzled duck to hard-boiled water. It's fun just how natural a fit his approach is to this take on the material, from the way Goku's Monkey-King-evoking muttonchops also recall Cobra's classic 'do to the ostentatious ariel ballet of multi-story vaults he does off of his physically impossible cyber-power-pole.
I even laughed at the overly straightforward way he invokes the hard-boiled misogyny of classic noir. Parallel to Cobra, all the ladies in this are either femme fatales or henchwomen, but the show commits so hard to those stereotypes that, in this setting, it wraps around to amusing.
This was my take as well. Given what has transpired there, that's a patently absurd monologue for the second Goku OVA to end on. But it's the same absurdity as the style it's aping (no pun intended) and owns it in the stupidest way possible. The second Midnight Eye is a bit messier and a little less appreciably outlandish than the first (there are 100% fewer little dudes riding naked handlebar-robot women, for one). Still, that pitch-perfect punch-line ultimately brought it up for me.
Terasawa makes it work. He writes a character who can deliver this line stone-faced and sells it to me. The man was a prodigy when it came to pulp.
It had been a while since I'd gotten to enjoy Goku (It aired on US TV back in the day, on premium cable channels, natch), so it was heartening to be reminded of what a ride Terasawa took us on with this one. The other good news is that, unlike the scattered availability of so much of Terasawa's other anime, the Goku OVAs are both streaming up on Crunchyroll, and classic-anime culture vendors Discotek has a new Blu-ray release out just next month.
I can't express how happy I am to see the handlebar lass front and center. Hopefully, more license rescues and localizations will be in the pipeline for Terasawa's other works. I'm intrigued by the slice we got here, and I'd love to see more.
It shouldn't take the untimely passing of a storied creator to spark releases of more of their stuff. But with the sort of interest this kind of event always spurs, it can at least be something of a consolation. Cobra had a whole 2010 reboot anime series that had been licensed but has since lapsed and isn't available in English anymore. He created the 90's series Karasu Tengu Kabuto, which has never seen these shores.
Admittedly, these limitations mainly apply to our English-speaking selves. As you mentioned, more of Terasawa's stuff has been released in France, where his influence was even more directly felt. Luc Besson, director of The Fifth Element, even met with him, on account of being a massive fan!
Admittedly, these limitations mainly apply to our English-speaking selves. As you mentioned, more of Terasawa's stuff has been released in France, where his influence was even more directly felt. Luc Besson, director of The Fifth Element, even met with him, on account of being a massive fan!
At one point, there were even rumblings about a Hollywood Cobra film. Terasawa got around! He might not be a household name (even when only counting households familiar with anime), but this corner of art would look different without his works and influence. While it feels far too soon to say goodbye to him, he's already achieved the kind of immortality that all great artists do.
As I believe he would want me to, I will drink to that!
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