Saibôgu 009

This is a wild anime film, feeling like it's just making up stuff as it goes along and not caring a single bit for consistency or genuine storytelling. I respected it at first, and found it pretty fun how someone would just use a power and then another character would be like "oh yeah he can do x crazy thing," but it only stayed endearing for so long.

At least Cyborg 009 is pretty short, at just over a hour long, and the old-fashioned animation has its charms as well. There's fun to be had here, and it kind of hit the spot for me in parts, given I watched it late and wasn't really up for something more complex. There are sequels to it I may check out at some point. It was a decent but definitely flawed watch, as far as sci-fi/action anime flicks go.

CYBORG 009 (1966) is a 64-minute Japanese animated theatrical movie based on the manga (comic book) by Shotaro Ishinomori (creator of KAMEN RIDER and other popular anime and live-action sci-fi films and TV shows). It was followed by two additional Cyborg 009 movies and three different TV series. While this was not the first work of Ishinomori's to be filmed, it was one of the earliest as well as one of the first animated sci-fi theatrical features in Japan. It tells of nine cyborgs (human-robot hybrids) created by scientist Dr. Gilmore, who is employed by the evil criminal entity Black Ghost. When the cyborgs revolt and go off on their own, joined by Dr. Gilmore and the newest, most advanced cyborg, 009, Black Ghost unleashes the full extent of his private military empire to destroy them.

Each of the cyborgs has a special superpower: 001 is a baby-sized Russian psychic; 002 is an American 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 an American Indian with super strength; 006 is a Chinese cook who can shoot flames from his mouth; 007 is British (what else?) and can transform into any object or creature; 008 is a black African who can survive underwater; and 009, the group's nominal leader, is stronger, faster and more resourceful than the others. The opening sequences show how 009 came to be a cyborg, the only character afforded such treatment. He's a half-Japanese race car driver (shades of SPEED RACER!) whose broken body is snatched from a wreck and taken to Black Ghost where he's completely rebuilt, as displayed in a helpful diagram.

After some initial battles, Dr. Gilmore gives the Cyborgs a new high-tech boat/sub and four of them 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. 009, joined by 006 and 007, must penetrate Black Ghost's security, rescue 003 and destroy Black Ghost's capacity to wage war on the rest of the world.

Like much early Japanese animation, the human characters are rather cartoonish and detract from the overall serious tone of the sci-fi adventure. The compact, diminutive 007, constantly jabbering and quick to cower in fear, is most like a traditional cartoon character, but is also the funniest of the group, as he transforms into all sorts of incongruous objects and creatures. At one point, while fighting a giant octopus, he transforms first into a meat cutting knife, slicing one tentacle into little pieces, and then into a meat grinder to reduce another tentacle into minced octopus. At another point, he turns into a mouse to sneak into the underwater base, only to be terrorized by a cat. He then transforms into a sexy white feline and when the male cat expects a kiss, becomes a bulldog and scares it away, offering an unmistakable echo of the classic Tom & Jerry cartoons.

While the character design is somewhat crude, the battle action involves huge fleets of planes, ships, subs, tanks, etc. and is surprisingly well-executed. The film boasts almost nonstop action, much of it patently absurd. Sea creatures and other animals all have a malevolent purpose and include a school of missile-toting sharks(!). In one sequence the cyborgs all use their individual powers to destroy attacking fighter jets until the entire wave of jets, which had been seemingly endless, is destroyed. After a while, it becomes just too relentless and one wishes for some of the introspective moments found in a later 009 movie, CYBORG 009: THE LEGEND OF THE SUPER GALAXY (1980).

This first movie was followed by KAIJU SENSO (aka MONSTER WAR, 1967, listed on IMDB as SAIBOGU 009: KAIJU SENSO) and then a black-and-white TV series (1968). The franchise was revived as a 1979 color TV series which led to the aforementioned 1980 movie. More recently, in 2001, a new version of CYBORG 009 appeared on TV in Japan. The first two episodes of the new series rework scenes from this first movie. Reviews for the other two movies are also up on this site.

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 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 (in the original story plot !) 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. If you can see this and its 2001 version which is fairly true to the original story together it will be even sweeter. Kadokawa publishing in Japan recently released a 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.