Cobra Kai Season 3: With any reboot series, it’s often the Easter Eggs that are the most endearing for longtime fans of Karate Kid. The creators of Cobra Kai have been on point with this, so Daniel’s return to Okinawa is full of tributes to The Karate Kid Part II.
Even this sequel had an early Easter egg before Easter eggs were even a thing. When Daniel and Kumiko go dancing at a retro 50’s club, the song that plays is “Rock Around the Clock”. It was the theme song of Happy Days – the ’70s TV show where Pat Morita had a recurring role as soda store owner Arnold Takahashi. Here are some ways in which Cobra Kai season 3 pays homage to The Karate Kid Part II.
The following Cobra Kai Season 3:
First of all, a reminder of what happened in The Karate Kid II. The sequel was the most financially successful film in Mr. Miyagi’s (Pat Morita) Tetralogy. It brought together almost all of the cast from the first movie, but only for the sequel cameos. The story picked up immediately where the first movie left off, right after Daniel’s first victory at the All-Valley karate tournament. Kreese (Martin Kove) was so mad at the loss of Johnny (William Zabka) that he begins to suffocate him. The chokeholds are a choreographic motif repeated in later fights between Kreese and Johnny in Cobra Kai. Miyagi saved Johnny from Kreese, but instead of finishing him off, he honks his horn.
After that, Daniel and Miyagi left the rest of the cast behind and headed to Okinawa. Ali (Elisabeth Shue) did not return for the sequel. She was replaced by Kumiko, a new love for Daniel. And Johnny stayed in California, so he was replaced by a new rival, Chozen. Aside from the opening scene, the sequel’s cast and location are completely replaced with the exception of Miyagi and Daniel. It was a bold move, but it worked.
The Final Fight in Cobra Kai Season 3
The final fight between Daniel and Chozen was flawed on several levels. As Kumiko performed a traditional fan dance on a platform surrounded by a moat in the central courtyard of an ancient castle, Chozen rushed forward and challenged Daniel to a fight to the death. However, Daniel rocks on the bridge, the moat only seems to be about a foot deep. There was a large audience watching Kumiko’s dance recital but when Daniel and Chozen start their deathmatch, no one is trying to break them.
Instead of intervening, Miyagi and reformed Sensei Sato (Danny Kamekona) lead the audience to spin their spinning hand drums (known as den-den daiko) to inspire Daniel to use the new secret hand technique. that Miyagi taught him. But if it’s a Miyagi-do secret, wouldn’t Chozen know too? He had the same grandmaster as Daniel, the father of Miyagi (Charlie Tanemoto).
And if it was so secret that Chozen didn’t know it, why would the public understand that den-den daiko had something to do with karate? The final fight is a silly attempt to squeeze some poetry into the film’s climax, but it doesn’t make much sense when you step back and look at it logically. In a painfully predictable conclusion and a significant knockout blow to the why would the public understand that den-den daiko had something to do with karate?
What else we know?
The final fight is a silly attempt to squeeze some poetry into the film’s climax, but it doesn’t make much sense when you step back and look at it logically. In a painfully predictable conclusion and a significant knockout blow to the, why would the public understand that den-den daiko had something to do with karate? The final fight is a silly attempt to squeeze some poetry into the film’s climax, but it doesn’t make much sense when you step back and look at it logically. In a painfully predictable conclusion and a significant knockout blow to the cobra Kai Easter Egg, their fight ends exactly like the one between Kreese and Miyagi at the start of the movie. Instead of finishing Chozen, Daniel honks his nose.
Because The Karate Kid Part II took place in Okinawa, it was an outlier and difficult to integrate into Cobra Kai. The den-den daiko was shown several times, but it was as far as they could go. The only logical way for Cobra Kai to bring up The Karate Kid Part II was to bring Daniel back to Okinawa.
