Lord Salamander is the primary antagonist of the Space Adventure Cobra franchise. He is the mysterious leader of the Space Pirate Guild and one of Cobra's greatest archenemies. It is ultimately revealed that he is in fact an energy projection of a still-living Adolf Hitler, still hungering for conquest after 3000 years.
He was voiced by Hidekatsu Shibata in the original anime series.
Appearance[]
Lord Salamander appears as a huge dark purple humanoid figure with blank yellow eyes and a rather muscular build. He wears samurai armor with a cape. If needed, he can grow into gigantic size. It's later revealed that this form of his is a mere energy projection of his true body, a mummified Adolf Hitler.
Personality[]
Lord Salamander is very sadistic, demonstrated when he skins Dominique alive, and displayed further when he is shown organizing underground bloodsport rings for entertainment and laughs satisfyingly when one wrestler brutally beats the other one. He also doesn't stand anyone being against him, having them executed and Cobra hunted down for intervening with his business. To conquer the universe, he plots elaborate strategies to force worlds to submit to him as their absolute ruler.
In the final battle, Salamander proves himself to be worse than ever, willing to bombard worlds and kill billions of people just to force them to acknowledge him as their ruler, with anyone showing a hint of resistance will face their world's utter annihilation. He also has no qualms killing his followers merely to keep his plan a secret. His true identity makes it even worse, as he really is Adolf Hitler, still hungering for conquest after 3000 years.
Biography[]
Lord Salamander is the leader of the Space Pirate Guild, an intergalactic criminal organization that terrorizes planets. Believing that Salamander killed his love Dominique, Cobra intervened with his business, thus Salamander had him hunted down, forcing Cobra to receive plastic surgery and have his memories erased, living a dull live as office worker Johnson. In truth, Salamander brainwashed Dominique into becoming his prophet, Miral.
When Cobra regains his memories, he alongside Lady Armaroid intervene with Salamander’s business once again, forcing the crime lord to send Crystal Bowie to deal with them. Meanwhile, Salamander also kills several of Cobra’s friends. Cobra would then rescue Dominique, but she’s still in amnesia.
Eventually, Salamander launches the ‘Goddess of Death’ plan to conquer multiple planets at once, by having his followers on 12,000 worlds lauch their statues of the Goddess into space so he can use them to bombard their planets until they submit to him. In the process, he also kills all followers to prevent anyone from learning of his plan.
Cobra and an amnesiac Dominique then confront and have a fight with Salamander in his headquarter. As Cobra reprograms the statues to destroy each other instead, he also realizes that Salamander is an energy projection by someone else and shoots his real body, killing him. Afterwards, Cobra goes in to see the body, which turns out to be Adolf Hitler’s. Dominique would then regain her memories, leaving Salamander’s goals for conquest and power in vain.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Prior to the reveal of his true identity, there are foreshadows of him being Adolf Hitler:
- He calls his master plan the Third Reich.
- The salute that his subordinates give him is the Nazi salute.
- His subordinates refer to him as "the Fuhrer".