an image of a drawing of a man with a gun in his hand
FRANCOIS EPIN ART & DESIGN CONSULTING

131 - Space Adventure Cobra (スペースコブラ) Armanoid Pencil and coloured…
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Estimate €150 - €250
Sale commission
Description
Space Adventure Cobra (スペースコブラ) Armanoid Pencil and coloured pencil animation created for the anime series based on the work of Buichi Terasawa (寺沢 武一). Produced by TMS Entertainment 1982–1983, Japan Armanoid — Lady Armaroid in the original Japanese version — has always been Cobra’s legendary partner. Her real name is Esmeralda — she was once a woman, a princess according to some accounts, whose consciousness and identity have survived within a mechanical body of Martian manufacture. She is no ordinary robot: she is a person whose flesh has given way to a metallic alloy, a human being whose body has become armour. Armanoïde’s design has a direct and well-documented connection to the work of Hajime Sorayama — a Japanese illustrator whose *Sexy Robots* series, published from 1978 onwards, defined an aesthetic of the chrome-plated female robot that would permeate Japanese visual culture in the decades that followed. Specialist critics put it bluntly: Armanoïde is ‘clearly modelled on Sorayama’s Sexy Robots series’. Bodies with polished aluminium surfaces, anatomically feminine curves reproduced in metal, light reflected off forms that are both mechanical and organic: Terasawa transposes into animation what Sorayama created with an airbrush on paper. Sorayama also designed the original Sony AIBO — the world’s first commercially available companion robot — and his polished aluminium sculptures are now exhibited in museums and feature in collaborations with global fashion houses. The parallel between the two works raises the same fundamental question — the one Sorayama himself posed when speaking of his super-realist style: how close can metal be brought to the body? At what point does the machine cease to be armour and become skin? Armanoïde is precisely this limit personified: a woman whose flesh has become chrome, whose body has become armour, and whose reflective armour signifies both absolute protection and lost humanity.
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About the sale Knights, Armour and Samurai + Animation Art Selection
Auction location
Auction time 06/28/2026 at 3:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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