Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier

Cyborg 009 is a classic anime from 1966, the translation to TV of Ishinomori Shoutarou's manga. I remember the original episodes were reaired where I live some years ago, so I could watch some of them. Awesome. Now, enter Cyborg 009, the new 2001 anime. It's the same characters from the original, in a new anime. The story of the manga is retold in awesome color, fantastic art and animation, and superb music and storylines. All the 00 cyborgs from the manga return and the action is non-stop, superbly written stories and wonderful anime art. The anime art is exactly identical to the one seen back in the 60's. Hardcore Anime fans like me will recognize the cute anime used in the dawn of the style, which was the same used in Tetsuwan Atom, (known as Astroboy in the U.S) Tetsujin 28, and others back in the time. That is great, since the show brings back to life the original style. True, today´s anime style has evolved, but it still looks very very similar to the one used in its first days. And that is perfect.

I always loved Ishinomori-sama's manga, and seeing his classic Cyborg 009 back to life in these days is incredible. This is, without exaggeration, one of the best anime of all time. The stories and the characters are touching, you will be moved to tears in every episode. It's so deep, so real, so cute, I can't explain it with words. The visuals are incredible, beautiful colors, fantastic trademark anime animation, and perfect illustrations. There is nothing that is not good in it, well, you can expect that from anime. The stories are so well written. you can't help wondering how they do it.

There's no way I could really describe how great this anime is. But one thing is sure, Ishinomori-sama has once again lived up to his reputation as one of the greatest masters of anime and manga. And Cyborg 009 will always be on top of anime and manga history. Awesome

This is one of the best anime and manga series of Japan.

It's been around for 40 years but it's anime never had an English before.

This here is the only Cyborg 009 series that got it's own English Dub.

It's a good one too where all the characters sound the way they should.

The whole series is about 9 prototype cyborgs who were once regular humans. Each of them was capture by the Black Ghost Organization. Lead by a mysterious being, The Black Ghost who wants to achieve in world domination. The 9 Cyborgs left and betrayed Black Ghost because they prefer world peace than to see the world in pain.

Each one is different from the other. With their skills and teamwork they'll be able to defeat anything the Black Ghost uses to stop them including other cyborgs and machines that are lethal.

The downside is they only released the first 8 episodes of this series on DVD. And I read that there's more than 8 episodes. I think it deserves to have full treatment like other anime do. I hope a different distributor will get the rights to this and the other Cyborg anime for a better treatment in releasing them on DVD.

Cyborg 009 was created by Shorato Ishimori (before changing his name to Ishinomori in 1986) and ran on weekly comic magazine "Shonen King" in the '60s. Ishimori had a very international flair for his comic characters, as many character he drew had "unknown" nationality or existed outside normal framework of country (like Mutant Sabu was Japanese, but he really didn't belong to Japanese race because he was a mutant). Cyborg 009 I think is a first fully integrated super hero team in history of comic and animation. All came from different country which included native American, and native African. In fact I think it's the first integrated team in drama history period. Early Cyborg 009 showed some influences from different sci-fi comic of the time such as Eight Man (by Jiro Kuwata, Kazumasa Hirai) being able to accelerate to enormous speed by depressing the accelerator switch hidden in his mouth, and Submarine 707 (by Satoru Ozawa) where subs Black Ghost uses looks exactly like Submarine 707. But asides from this, Cyborg 009 is considered to be Ishinomori's signature masterpiece although there are other better known works of his (such as Go Rangers, Kamen Rider, and Kikaida) because all his subsequent super hero stories shows influences of Cyborg 009. The story is somewhat dark for the comic of its time, as the main character was an ex delinquent orphan who escaped juvenile prison (never was main protagonist in Japanese boys comic an ex-con before 009) and was picked up and converted into a cyborg by Black Ghost. No one actually knows about their existence, and they battle the world conquest schemes of Black Ghost in secrecy, and although they have super powers, they can never reveal themselves to the public. So all of them in a way are perpetual orphans. In a way, this was a story ahead of its time from a human perspective. The plot of this series stays fairly true to the original comic with beautiful art work. Kadokawa publishing in Japan recently released the complete works of Ishinomori for a whopping $5000 which encompass 770 titles of his works. It might be interesting to read Cyborg 009 in its original form from this collection.

This is an engaging story that involves some good-hearted rebel cyborgs versus the big corporate machine...in every sense of the robotic and figurative word. It's an adventure that includes a social message, even though it wasn't written for the US audience.

Poor 008, though. His English voice actor must be learning the business. Maybe his reading will get smoother as more episodes are revealed.

The closing theme, "Genesis of Next" by globe is one of my J-pop/trance/dance favorites. IMHO, it's worth tracking down the single or globe's "Global Trance" CD. It was a really neat surprise to hear it on my telly!