Cyborg 009

Cyborg 009: Monster War • Cyborg 009: Legend of the Super Galaxy

cyborg 009 1966. Movie. 64 min. Science fiction/superhero. org Shotaro Ishinomori (manga). dir Yugo Serikawa.

cyborg 009: monster war jpn Cyborg 009: Kaiju Senso. 1967. Movie. 60 min. dir Yugo Serikawa.

cyborg 009: legend of the super galaxy 1980. Movie. 130 min. dir Masayuki Akehi. -bc

Cyborg 009 began as a manga by Shotaro Ishinomori about nine super-powered cyborgs who rebel against the criminal organization that created them and become superheroes. Despite a design style firmly rooted in the 1960s, the team has remained popular and has been revived in movies and TV shows on a regular basis since 1966, most recently in 2001.

The first movie tells of nine cyborgs (human-robot hybrids) created from eight males and one female abducted by the mysterious Black Ghost, mastermind of a global criminal empire. Spurred on by Dr. Gilmore, the scientist who made them, the first eight cyborgs revolt, repulsed by Black Ghost’s evil intentions, and go off on their own, joined by the newest, most advanced cyborg, Joe Shimamura, Cyborg 009. In retaliation, Black Ghost unleashes the full extent of his private military force to destroy them. Each of the cyborgs has a special power and comes from a different country: 001 is a baby-sized Russian psychic; 002 is a New York–born athlete who can fly; 003, the only female in the group, is a French dancer with super hearing; 004 is a German with guns and cannons built into his arms and legs; 005 is a Native American with superstrength; 006 is a Chinese cook who can shoot flames from his mouth; 007 is English and can transform into any object or creature; and 008 is an African who can survive underwater. The group’s leader, 009, is a half-Japanese auto racer, whose broken body was snatched from a wreck by Black Ghost’s men and completely rebuilt to be stronger, faster, and more resourceful than the others.

After some initial battles, Dr. Gilmore provides the Cyborgs with a high-tech ship that doubles as a submarine, and they go off on a secret mission to locate Black Ghost’s underwater headquarters. 003, the female cyborg, is abducted by Black Ghost’s minions and transformed into an evil cyborg. The team must penetrate Black Ghost’s security, rescue 003, restore her personality, and destroy Black Ghost’s capacity to wage war on the rest of the world.

In the second film, the nine cyborgs reunite to combat a new menace: dinosaur-shaped robot creatures which use ultrasound to attack and destroy the world’s cities. Dr. Gilmore equips the team’s ship with a shield that deflects ultrasound attacks and the cyborgs begin their search for the source of these monsters, Black Ghost. On their way, they pick up a mysterious stowaway, the beautiful Helena, who claims her parents were killed in the attacks, only to learn there is more to her than meets the eye. When Helena appears to betray the team by supplying information on their whereabouts to Black Ghost, Joe (009) goes out of his way to try to redeem her. Their journey takes them to Black Ghost’s undersea cavern base, where the climactic battle explodes with destructive fury.

In Legend of the Super Galaxy, the nine cyborgs are called back into action by Dr. Gilmore when a spaceship lands on Earth carrying a boy alien, Saba, who tells a harrowing tale of intergalactic villain Zoa, whose path of destruction will soon reach Earth. Saba’s scientist father has been kidnapped by Zoa in hopes of obtaining the secret of the Vortex, the super galaxy of the title, a mysterious energy field in deep space which holds the key to an endless source of power. Dr. Gilmore’s colleague, Dr. Cosmo, is interested in the Vortex himself. When Zoa’s minion, Garo, kidnaps Dr. Cosmo and 001, the baby psychic cyborg, the team decides to go into action, traveling aboard Saba’s ship to the outer reaches of the galaxy. En route they have numerous adventures and battles and must pass through the Star Gate, a galactic shortcut to their destination. Eventually the team makes it to Zoa’s space station fortress for the climactic confrontation, only to find they have to pursue Zoa into the heart of the Vortex itself. . . .

Cyborg 009: Kaiju Senso (aka Cyborg 009: Monster War, 1967, movie)

Cyborg 009 (1968, TV, black and white, 26 eps.)

Cyborg 009 (1979–80, TV, 50 eps.)

Cyborg 009: Legend of the Super Galaxy (1980, movie)

Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier (2001–2, TV, 51 eps.)

The first two movies, produced in 1966 and 1967, were not the first animated science fiction features produced in Japan directly for the screen, but they were among the earliest. As such, they represent a deliberate departure on the part of Toei Animation from the lush, fluid theatrical animation found in their features based on classic folktales (Panda and the Magic Serpent, Alakazam the Great, Magic Boy, The Littlest Warrior, and others) to the more action- and mecha-oriented direction represented by the sci-fi animation then in vogue on television (Astro Boy, Gigantor, Prince Planet, Marine Boy). The character design is crude and the character animation stiff, while the greater effort is expended on the meticulous, almost nonstop battle action involving fighter jets, warships, submarines, tanks, ray guns, and a host of giant robots, monsters, and sea creatures programmed to serve Black Ghost. There is lots of mass destruction, with neatly rendered planes, ships, buildings, and natural landscapes being blasted to bits on a regular basis.

The character design, based on that of the manga, tends toward the cartoonish, with either rounded faces and heads and bulbous noses, or sharp, angular features and massive pointed tufts of hair. Each of the cyborgs represents a different ethnic group and some of them, particularly the Chinese cook, Native American, and African swimmer, veer into racial stereotype. The one who most resembles a traditional cartoon character is the compact, rounded 007, who constantly jabbers and cowers in fear. He also provides some welcome comic relief as he transforms into all sorts of incongruous objects and creatures, including a meat grinder turned loose on an octopus and, in one comical set piece in the first movie, a mouse, followed in quick succession by a sexy feline and a bulldog (shades of Tom and Jerry). Joe (009) and Francoise (003), the two romantic leads among the cyborgs, are designed considerably more attractively, although Joe has that persistent feature of early anime hero hairstyles, the clump of hair covering part of his face.

The 1980 movie, coming in the wake of the success of the Yamato movies and the first Gundam TV series, offers more sophisticated visuals than the earlier movies, partly because it takes place in outer space and relies on breathtaking space vistas and otherworldly settings, including the various space phenomena they encounter, and a visit to another planet. There is also a successful attempt to devise original designs for the alien spaceship used by the team to make its journey. The emphasis is more on aesthetics than functions, with a reliance on warm colors, round shapes, and flowing, open tunnels rather than corridors. It’s quite beautiful and nothing like the more technically complicated (and admittedly more believable) ships seen in Yamato, Gundam, or Macross. The character design here is modeled on that of the earlier versions but softens and streamlines the cartoonish aspects, perhaps to blend in better with the more intricate backdrops. The overall tone is also more serious, with few of the absurd creatures and robot monsters, and more of a wondrous science fiction space voyage.

The first movie, clocking in at sixty-four minutes, offered a rushed but eventful introduction to the cyborg characters and their mentor, Dr. Gilmore, while the second continued their fast-paced adventures in a slightly shorter package (sixty minutes). The emphasis was on the kind of wild, fanciful action that characterized a lot of the earliest sci-fi animation done in Japan. The fact that they were in color at a time (1966–67) when their TV counterparts (Astro Boy, Gigantor, and others) were mostly still in black and white gave the movies extra cachet. (The first Cyborg 009 TV series came a year later and was in black and white.) With their bright primary colors, rounded shapes, streamlined vehicles, explosive battle action, and volatile mix of melodrama and comic antics, the movies pointed the direction that later sci-fi series (and movie spin-offs) would take, particularly in the era of Gatchaman and Mazinger Z and their mecha-oriented action, outlandish monsters, and giant robots.

Cyborg 009 may not have introduced the notion of cyborgs into Japanese popular culture, but it clearly had the most impact, dramatizing a theme which would become a staple of anime for decades to come (Bubblegum Crisis, Battle Angel Alita, Armitage III, Ghost in the Shell, etc.). It also helped popularize the concept of a superhero team and paved the way for later teams, from Gatchaman to the live-action sentai series that would later form the basis of the popular Power Rangers franchise in the U.S. What was most notable about Cyborg 009’s team at the time, however, was its multiracial, multiethnic, international team of heroes, quite an unusual concept for Japan’s famously homogeneous culture.

While the earlier movies were earthbound and focused on the cyborgs’ powers and some decidedly absurd cartoon adventures, Legend of the Super Galaxy is, in contrast, a true work of science fiction, marked by extraordinary artwork depicting galactic scenes and far-flung planetary landscapes. The journey taken by the characters has the makings of a real space epic, as they travel across galaxies over impossible distances (thanks to something called a Star Gate, fourteen years before the Hollywood sci-fi film of that title) and battle the forces of an intergalactic villain to stop him from gaining control of a powerful energy field in deep space. While it boasts plenty of action, the movie is generally quieter, gentler, and more thoughtful than its 1960s predecessors and seems far more interested in ideas about the nature of the cosmos than in standard space combat. There’s an artful quality to the imagery, a painter’s eye at work rather than a mecha designer’s. It wasn’t as overtly stylized as Galaxy Express 999 and Captain Harlock, but was definitely more dreamlike and introspective than the more influential hard-edged real-world dynamic of the same period’s Mobile Suit Gundam.

In 2001, a new animated TV adaptation aired in Japan. It relied on the original character designs, but was done via computer-created 2D digital animation, a process that simply doesn’t do justice to retro anime styles and their thick hand-painted swatches of color and brushwork. Everything looked even simpler and more cartoonish than the original animation but with muted colors, softer linework, and none of the crude charms of the 1960s versions. As with so many recent attempts to revive old animation classics in new formats, the magic just wasn’t there.

One of the pleasures of the earlier movies is the impressive array of imaginative menaces facing the heroes on a constant basis, including bomb-shooting mecha dinosaurs, dolphin spies, a giant octopus, electrical jellyfish, robot stingrays, an evil cyborg who splits into deadly positive and negative versions, a giant carnivorous plant with enveloping tentacles, and Achilles, a giant robot in the form of a mythological Greek warrior (with a strong resemblance to Talos, the giant bronze warrior come to life in the 1963 movie Jason and the Argonauts).

In the second movie, Joe and the mysterious Helena share some tender moments underscored by lyric choral accompaniments on the soundtrack. Helena is a slender, willowy, attractive blond with an ethereal quality that puts her in the company of such later anime heroines as Leiji Matsumoto’s famous 1970s creations, Maetel (Galaxy Express 999) and Queen Millennia (Queen Millennia). Helena also foreshadows Princess Tamara, a character in Legend of the Super Galaxy, with whom Joe also shares a romantic interlude.

In the 1980 movie, the climactic action takes the cyborgs into the Vortex itself where Joe experiences a cosmic discovery that acts as a mini-replay of the mind-boggling, psychedelic conclusion to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 science fiction classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Creator of the original Cyborg 009 manga, Shotaro Ishinomori (aka Shotaro Ishimori) also created Kikaider, a success in both live-action and anime versions; Kamen Rider, one of Japan’s longest-running live-action superhero franchises; and Goranger, the first in a long-running series of sentai (superteam) programs that were later noted in the U.S. for providing effects and action footage for the Power Rangers franchise.

The first two movies are still found in the U.S. only in Japanese video stores without translation. The two earlier Cyborg 009 TV series (1968, 1979) are much harder to locate, even in unsubtitled Japanese-language editions. The 1980 movie is so far available only in an English-dubbed version on VHS from Best Film & Video Corp. It was also released in a shorter video version under the title Defenders of the Vortex, with about forty minutes cut.

The 2001 TV series, a production of Avex (primarily known as a music company), was shown on the Cartoon Network in the U.S. from 2003–4 and is available on home video from Columbia Tristar. The original manga by Ishinomori has also begun to come out in an English edition from Tokyopop.

violence There is a great deal of cartoon violence, mass death, and destruction of the simplified 1960s style in the earlier movies. In the 1980 movie, there is death and destruction as the aliens attack and destroy the people of a peaceful planet, but nothing too explicit.