The second television anime adaptation of Cyborg 009 aired from March 6, 1979 to March 25, 1980, on TV Asahi. It was co-produced by Toei Company and Sunrise (then known as "Nippon Sunrise"), and was directed by Ryosuke Takahashi. It ran for 50 episodes. It also was the first Cyborg 009 series to air in the United States.
Overview[]
Five years after the defeat of the Black Ghost organization and returning to their average lives, the 00 Cyborgs are called back into action to fight off cyborgs based off the Norse Gods, followed by a new enemy organization known as the Neo Black Ghost.
With this new adaptation, aspects from the 1960s animated works were discarded; 007 was no longer depicted as a 9-year old boy and was now at his proper adult age, while the character designs and color schemes were generally closer to Ishinomori's artwork.
Most of the series' plot is original, but the first nine episodes ("The Universe Tree Yggdrasil" arc) are loosely sourced from the "Edda" chapter of the manga that was published in Kodansha's Shojo Comic in 1976, along with carrying along the "Gods vs. Humanity" theme from the discarded "Battle with the Gods" arc.
"Due to the social climate at the time, the appearance of the Black Ghost Organization was put off because the setting of arms trafficking dealers seemed old-fashioned. Instead, gods were set. The cyborg soldiers have already surpassed the existence of humans. The opponents they must defeat must be even more than that. And they had to be more than just a stereotypical villain in Ishinomori's works. The material of a god met these conditions. However, in the original series, Ishinomori had depicted the soldiers fighting "angels" and "the battle with the gods", as the names suggest...or rather, he had tried to depict those. However, both of these projects were put on hold by this point. As the phrase "the continuation of the Angel arc is..." was often heard after that, it was widely believed that the idea was only in Ishinomori's head, and that it would be a while before it was made into a manga. Naturally, an anime adaptation would have been an option at this point, but since the Angel arc was the final chapter of "009", a different approach was taken. That's when the material of Norse mythology came up."
Ishinomori briefly oversaw these episodes, but Ryosuke Takahashi ran into a writer's block and decided the story about "Gods" was too much for him to figure out beyond those nine stories. so the story would be ended there and the direction of the series would change for a time. It was then decided to create an extended, "filler" sort of saga afterwards ("The Warriors' Vacation") in which the characters could have any sort of battles and trouble go on in their time off, while the Neo Black Ghost was forming in the background. It was then decided after that to shift focus to the Neo Black Ghost organization; while there was also a Neo Black Ghost in the ongoing manga at the time, the anime had its own take on the concept, with different characters (Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu) that were newly-created by Takahashi.
The remainder of the series had complications in its production which lead to its cancellation at episode 50, and the pre-emptive wrap-up of the "Neo Black Ghost" arc, which had originally been scheduled to last until a 52nd episode. The reason for this cancellation had to do with the toy sponsor Takatoku pulling out of the production along with Nippon Sunrise, leaving the finale of the Neo Black Ghost arc to be compressed and rushed.
"While we were working on the Neo Black Ghost arc, I and the other staff members began to feel confident that we could create a Gods arc, so we started introducing Odin and others, but it's a shame that it ended halfway through." - Ryosuke Takahashi
The cancellation affected a new version of the "Mythos" arc, which was being plotted out at the time and had been planned to follow the Neo Black Ghost arc as the true finale and to revisit the hanging plot thread of the cyborg Odin, with plans at the time for the series to wrap up in September 1980 instead of in March.
At the time the cancellation order came, three episode scripts of the 1980 Mythos arc had been drafted out of the thirteen that were planned, and Ishinomori had also contributed redesigns of the Mythos Cyborgs. While some staff had hope that they could maybe do this arc some day, as expressed in interviews in Animage, it was not to be (although some of the designs were influential to the 2001 series; in particular, Helena was replaced by Artemis, while Poseidon received a more prominent role).
Characters[]
The 00 Cyborgs[]
.jpg){kind=link}
The 00 Cyborg team (sans 001 and 007)
Allies[]
- Dr. Isaac Gilmore
- Ghandal
- Dr. Cassel
- Liz
- Sahaal
- Catherine
- Paul
- Jacob
- Jiro
Enemies[]
Norse Gods Cyborgs[]
Neo Black Ghost[]
- Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu
- Dr. Gamo Whisky
- Kilados
- Igor
- Dr. Gordon
- Rigella
- Khan
- Red Shadow
- Dr. Cassel
- Liz
- Kiltor
- Clark
- President Gingal
- Harris
- The Messengers from Hell
- Gorg
- Tsutomu
- Garuda
Others[]
- Cochise
- Lola
- Sahaal's and Lola's Child
Episode List[]
- The Awakening of Gods
- The Giant that Sleeps in Ice
- The Demon of the L'Arc de Triomphe
- The Star Of Africa
- Sleep, Giants of Legend!
- I Desire Not the Tears of a Goddess
- Trap of The Gods
- The Violin that Cries Out for Love
- The Village of the Cosmic Tree
- Friendship in the West
- The Resurrected Phantom Fuhrer
- I Won't be Turned into a Fighting Machine!
- The Shapeless Assassin
- The Boy Who Came Riding on a Dolphin
- The Terror of the Anomalous Vegetation
- The Duel at West Side
- The Catastrophe of X must be Averted!
- Vampire of Our Heart
- Marchenland, The Man-eating Island
- The Desert of Deception
- Sleep for All Eternity, The Dinosaur Deinonychus
- The Challenge of Neo Black Ghost
- The V2 Operation: A Battle to the Death!
- Protect the World Peace Conference!
- Gilmore, Our Benign Father
- Demolish the Weapons Route of the Fiery Desert!
- Long Live the Princess!
- Destroy the Realm of the Cyborg
- Run Oscar! With Peace in your Heart!
- Joe! Follow your Father!
- The Kick of Death! The Suicidal Soccer Match of Assassination
- Trap of The Fairy, the Luxury Liner
- The Lonely Boy
- The Bell of Love Will Ring Tomorrow
- A Sad Memory
- Battle at the Casino
- Escape from the Great Forest
- The Wild Cries of the King Lion
- Cheers to the Radish Actor!
- The Last Race
- Tragic Mistake
- Searching for Parents
- The Secret of the 3 Brothers
- The Island of Death
- Oriental Messiah, Pt. 1
- Oriental Messiah, Pt. 2
- The Secret of the Four, Pt. 1
- The Secret of the Four, Pt. 2
- The Terror of Shangri-La Operation Must Be Averted!
- The Demise of the Neo Black Ghost
Production Staff[]
- Director: Ryōsuke Takahashi [1]
- Producers: Yoshiaki Koizumi (TV Asahi), Takashi Iijima , Takeyuki Suzuki
- Animation Direction and Character Design: Toyoo Ashida
- Art: Shigemi Ikeda , Nobuto Sakamoto, Miyamae Mitsuharu, Ichiro Nakano
- Sound Direction: Katsumi Ota
- Special Effects: Mutsuko Shibata
- Casting Director: Toshio Furuichi (Aoni Production)
- Production Cooperation: Nippon Sunrise
- Production and Copyright: TV Asahi, Toei Animation
Voice Cast[]
- 009: Kazuhiko Inoue
- 001: Sachiko Chijimatsu
- 002: Keiichi Noda
- 003: Kazuko Sugiyama
- 004: Keaton Yamada (as Shunji Yamada)
- 005: Banjō Ginga (as Takashi Tanaka)
- 006: Sanji Hase
- 007: Kaneta Kimotsuki
- 008: Kōji Totani
- Professor Gilmore: Kōsei Tomita
Theme Music []
Opening[]
Performed by Ken Narita and Koorogi '73
Ending[]
Someday
Performed by Koorogi '73
Releases[]
On June 4, 2015, Toei announced that the series would be re-released in Japan on Blu-ray in commemoration of the franchise's 50th anniversary and the release of Cyborg 009 vs. Devilman in the fall. The first volume of the set was released on September 9th, 2015 and the second one would be released on November 11th, 2015. Both sets contain 5 discs and have extras, including booklets on the development of the show and content that originally came with the LaserDisc and VHS releases back in 1999.[2]
These would also include the Animage articles on the series, which contained early looks at the team members' origins (some which changed for the series, some which never got mentioned). The "Mythos" arc outline is also included with the extras.
The series had a subtitled US broadcast run in the 1980s, on UHF stations such as WJNU in New York and New Jersey, an unspecified station in San Francisco and KIKU in Honolulu, Hawaii. A common practice in those days for TV stations and networks to save on storage costs was to magnetically wipe tapes so they could be re-used or to throw them away. (The cult British sci-fi show Doctor Who is an infamous example of this). It is presumed by viewers who remember seeing the show that all the tapes of the subtitled version of the series have been destroyed, as no video releases were made for any format in the years since its broadcast.[3]
Tie-in Manga[]
Two manga adaptations of the anime itself ran as monthly features in Kodansha's TV Magazine and Shogakukan's TV-kun. These tie-ins were aimed at elementary school-age readers. Shotaro Ishinomori was not involved in their creation, with the TV Magazine manga being drawn by Yoshiki Tsuchiyama, and the TV-Kun version being drawn by Sugar Sato (who would go on to illustrate the manga of Cyborg 009 The Movie: Legend of the Super Galaxy).
Neither feature has been fully reprinted, though there have been requests by fans for the publisher Fukkan to do so [4].
Trivia[]
- Due to the Weekly Shonen Sunday phase of the manga being done to run alongside the anime series, Joe's car "The Stranger", Gilmore's mansion, and the Dolphin II were concepts that were imported into a few stories.
- Joe was depicted with brown hair in early concept art and some early merchandise for the Yggdrasil arc, but his design was tweaked so that he'd be blond instead. Curiously, the aforementioned Weekly Shonen Sunday run also depicts and refers to Joe as being blond.
- Articles in Animage around the time of the series' airing had confirmed "Birth" and "Assassins" to have happened in the series' past (with accompanying illustrations), although this would display some oddity with Tsutomu being a re-imagined version of 0013 as well. Episodes like this had been written as a way of fanservice and nodding back to the manga later in the show's run, ignoring the fact the cyborgs could have encountered such similar to identical characters already. This is also the case for Kramer's cyborg body resembling 0011, and the brief homage to 0012 in "Marchenland, the Man-Eating Island".