Harmagedon Outta Here

So recently we went out on a snowy November night through accident-choked streets to Toronto’s Hudson's Bay Center, where the Japan Foundation was hosting a screening of the 1983 film Genma Taisen / Harmagedon. We promptly got lost in the men’s department of the Bay, got ourselves turned around, onto the elevator, and into the Japan Foundation's screening room, just as the film opened with shards of destroyed planet sailing past the Moon. 

By the time most Western anime fans were able to see 1983’s Genma Taisen, or Harmagedon as the English language text would have us call it, they'd already ingested most of the anime Harmagedon would inspire. They'd seen Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira and similiarly apocalyptic Rintaro works like X. They'd probably even watched Project A-Ko use KFC pitchman Colonel Sanders to spoof Harmagedon without knowing what Harmagedon was. They'd seen a thousand psychic teenagers glowing red or green or blue or yellow, battling ultimate evils with flashing mental beams. Harmagedon was old news, stodgy, unfashionable, not nearly edgy or bloody or violent enough for anime fans circa 2003.

And you know what, if you take Harmagedon out of the context of 1983, they just might have a point. It's a long, indulgent, prog-rock concept album of a film that makes you feel every minute of its two-hour-plus running time, the latest in an interminable odyssey of Japanese animated science-fiction epics that meandered their way through Youths in Arcadia and strolled past the Legends Of The Super Galaxy (130 minutes each), wandered over Towards The Terra (a relatively terse two hours), and poked their way through all one hundred and forty-five spine-destroying minutes of the aptly-titled Be Forever Yamato. What I'm trying to say is that anime films in the early 1980s were long, baby, and if your attention span has been destroyed by three-second Adult Swim interstitial bumpers, you’re going to find the early 1980s anime film aesthetic paralyzingly dull. 

But slide Harmagedon back in that 1983 context. Put it up against the space robots, the Matsumoto blondes, and everything else that was happening in the contemporaneous anime world, and you've got something special, a New Age epic fantasy of Earth’s psychic warriors recruited by the universal love consciousness to do battle with the forces of chaos and evil that infect the outermost galaxy and our innermost selves. 

a few of Harmagedon's Psionics Fighters

This film is director Rintaro's cinematic coming out party, filled with terrific bursts of color swooping and bubbling and popping out of the darkness whenever psychic powers are emanating or lava is bursting or flames are leaping. Parts of Harmagedon are perfect pieces of film-making - where alien cyborg Bega and psychic princess Luna try to scare-start Joe's ESP by freezing Shinjuku and smashing a construction site, where the intangible, roller-skating Sonny and his gang loot a ruined New York and are machine-gunned by the NYPD, where every authority figure is possessed by monsters from beyond space, including amiable, elderly doctors, and the smiling old man just stands there amidst the molten rock of an erupting Mt. Fuji to tell us he's in charge of destroying the Earth. 

three faces of Genma

Harmagedon was Katsuhiro Otomo’s anime debut, smashing the audience with his aggressively realistic characters, all frantically struggling to survive the disintegrating urban cityscapes they’d been dropped into, Tokyo and NYC ruined and chaotic, the familiar landmarks drowned in dust or the East River. It’s a film that feels like a trial run for Akira, because it is, and anime hadn’t seen anything like it, certainly nothing like the cyborg survivor Bega. A symphony of excellence in mechanical design, Bega is all rounded shapes and interlocking parts, his armor shifting and molding itself into new shapes to counter every threat, a mecha aesthetic so far removed from the typical super robot/real robot anime tropes that it might as well actually be from another planet. 

All this is on top of art direction by the five-time Anime Grand Prix award winner Takamura Mukuo. If you watched Galaxy Express or Adieu 999 or his later Dagger Of Kamui or that Devilman OVA or, say, Stop! Hibari-kun, or any number of other anime productions, you'll recognize his stunning background work; his sweeping landscapes, his operatic, lushly lit clouds, his gigantic architectural structures looming against ominous skies, all crimson and azure and emerald and oily grey browns, a perfect accompaniment to the Madhouse animation. Madhouse is, of course, Madhouse, delivering stunning scenes of big-screen animation that no one in Japan or anywhere else on Earth was doing that year.

Harmagedon's post-Genma Tokyo 

Adding the international cherry on top of this confection of talent is legendary prog rock keyboardist Keith Emerson, whose work with The Nice and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer had moved the synthesizer from a electronic gimmick to a stadium-pleasing weapon of mass rock entertainment, and whose score for Harmagedon capably moves from profound to whimsical, with the occasional visit from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. 

Without flamboyant producer/publishing empire heir Haruki Kadokawa and his aggressive film production schedule, Harmagedon might never have been made. Kadokawa had flipped a stodgy publishing house into a pop-fiction juggernaut, turning his mass appeal fiction into crowd pleasing cinema blockbusters. Harmagedon was Kadokawa’s first animated film, to be followed by Dagger Of Kamui, the sadly neglected Time Stranger, Manie Manie/Neo Tokyo, Five Star Stories, and Silent Mobieus before Haruki found himself doing a stretch in Shizoka Prison on a cocaine smuggling conviction. It’s a helluva drug, kids. As a paperback bestseller turned motion picture extravaganza, Kadokawa’s Harmagedon resembles the bloated, baroque, literary-pretentious middlebrow epics Hollywood spent decades shoving into America’s long-suffering eyeballs; even when these movies succeed, they remain emblematic of an era of lavish excess. When we say anime is "a medium not a genre," this is what we're talking about, that Japanese animation can give us both cheap exploitative genre trash and crowd-pleasing mainstream spectacle.

we heard you liked Hamagedon so we advertised Harmagedon during Harmagedon

If you’ve seen a Japanese cartoon in the past thirty years you know what Harmagedon’s about: a Japanese teen's awakening ESP power drafts him into the front lines of the Ultimate Battle Between Good And Evil. Our mopey hero Joe Azuma won’t try out for the baseball team, is dumped by his girlfriend, and generally has a case of the teen angst. Then he meets Luna and Bega and he’s suddenly having visions of cosmic love entities millions of light years distant, manifesting his latent psychic powers against the forces of Genma, seen here as shape-changing devils that can take the place of your classmates or your friends or your local beat cop. Joined by an international crew of psionic warriors, Joe struggles through a world demolished by cataclysms and overturned by chaos, towards the final psychic showdown with Genma. 

Harmagedon had a long road to the screen: the original early 60s manga ran in Weekly Shonen Sunday with a script by former 8 Man author Kasumasu Hirai and art by future Kamen Rider creator and record-breaking manga-ka Shotaro Ishinomori. Hirai, one of Japan’s SF giants, would go on to author the “Wolf Guy” series (itself the basis for a Sonny Chiba film), the Japanese Spider-Man manga, and a slew of other fantastical works. He’d adapt the ‘67 Genma Taisen manga into a series of Genma Taisen novels that would continue for decades in 2008, and he’d write the Ishinomori-drawn Genma Wars Rebirth manga for Tokuma Shoten's Monthly Comic Ryu for five years beginning in 1979. This would become the basis for that ‘02 Genma Taisen anime series that people don’t talk about much. 

Harmagedon, 1960s style. Trigger warning: cartoon stereotypes

After destroying his hand writing all those Genma Taisen novels in longhand, Hirai was an early adopter of the word processor. He was also an early and influential member of Shinji Takahashi's God Light Association, a syncretic, New Age precursor to today's Happy Science. The more overtly religious overtones of Harmagedon begin to make sense when you learn the author probably believed wholeheartedly in a universal super-consciousness striving to enlighten all sentient beings to their innate spiritual and psychical nature. 

Ultimately, in spite of its all-star creative talent, its thirsty-for-international-blockbusters producer, and its occasional bursts of cinematic energy, Harmagedon spends a lot of time spinning its new-agey wheels. The film has the pieces and the pedigree to be great, but all the ingredients never quite come together. In between Harmagedon’s discrete moments of visual excitement, there's a lot of quiet filler, the film moving in little funhouse-ride bumps from one scene of blank-faced characters silently staring at each other, to another scene where blank-faced characters silently stare at each other. Himself a jazz musician, Rin Taro knows it's what's in between the notes that counts, but in Harmagedon he is still finding his tempo. 

we all knew the NYC real estate bubble would pop eventually

Speaking of music, with Harmagedon's soundtrack Keith Emerson is never allowed to deliver the kind of prodigious electronic synthesizer freakout he’s famous for - and if you aren’t going to let him go nuts, why hire him? Go on, look up footage of Keith playing keyboards while suspended upside down forty feet in the air before an audience of twenty thousand cheering fans. You don’t hire that guy to *not* freak out. 

The cast of characters is a Cyborg 009-style parade of tokens and stereotypes, from the Indian mystic to the big Native American, from the Middle Eastern Turban Guy to the Chinese girl who practices kung-fu in her little Chinese outfit. The American Sonny made the jump from what was even for 1967 Japan a dated and offensive black-kid stereotype to a very 1980s African-American NYC teen, decked out with baseball cap, track suit, sunglasses, roller skates, and Walkman. Harmagedon’s Sonny is a welcome flash of style, but the audience goodwill vanishes immediately at the sight of his white-flight stereotype gang, a racist suburbanite’s nightmare fantasy of ignorant, heavily armed black looters. It’s a shame, too, because that scene is one of the best-directed of the film, a Sergio Leone ambush in the deserted streets of Fifth Avenue.

Harmagedon attempts to address racism head-on when Luna’s prejudice-induced failure to psychically connect with Sonny is called out by Bega. “Is it because he’s black?” he rebukes. That’s right; her racism is so obvious that even 4,000 year old cyborgs from other galaxies can pick up on it. Luna, herself a Transylvanian princess (?) isn’t given a whole lot to do other than to bounce exposition off Bega and, in the fashion of Ishinomori’s Cyborg 003, act as an ESP switchboard operator keeping everybody in touch. In between these duties she’s allowed a few costume changes and makeovers, eventually winding up in what appears to be one of Pat Benatar’s outfits. 

1980s style icon Luna

Meanwhile our hero Joe gets a realistic and satisfying character arc from self-obsessed depressed teen to responsible young adult, only slightly marred by the weird sister complex that probably seemed charming and heartfelt to Japanese audiences, but not to that crowd at the Japan Foundation, palpably cringing at the scene where Joe’s erstwhile girlfriend realizes every other woman in Joe’s life will always play second fiddle to Joe’s sister. 

Joe wanders into a Smokey The Bear fire prevention film

By the time our heroes are levitating above Mt. Fuji, directing scintillating rays of sheer mental force towards the fiery dragon form of beyond-space-and-time evil, somewhere past the two hour mark, that Japan Foundation audience was ready to wrap this up and go home. We’d seen the destruction of Bega’s home planet, we’d watched Luna escape a destroyed 747 and greet the awakened Bega. We’d witnessed Joe move out of self-obsessed sister-complex teenhood, and we’d seen every one of Joe’s friends possessed and/or murdered by Genma’s demons. We’d taken the extended tour of important story beats from five or six Genma Taisen novels and sometimes they fit into the larger narrative and sometimes they just made the hard Japan Foundation seats even harder. Yes there are cushions, but mine was on the floor and I didn’t see it because we showed up late and it was dark, so I guess that one’s my fault. 

Not that I didn’t know what I was getting into. My first glimpse of Harmagedon was during the back end of Reagan’s first administration, in the sorely missed Turtles Records & Tapes at Belmont Hills Shopping Center in Smyrna GA - once one of the largest shopping centers in the Southeast, now long demolished. I was a 14 year old prog rock nerd flipping through the ELP section, trying to decide between “Tarkus” or “Brain Salad Surgery,” distracted by a Keith Emerson record with Japanese anime characters on the sleeve, surely a match made in heaven as far as I was concerned. I still have that record. 

remember to save your Turtles Saving Stamps!

Then again, this was the 1980s and Japanese pop culture was infiltrating wherever it could, meaning the bleeping and blooping heard from your local arcade or pizza palace may have been inspired by a Japanese cartoon. This certainly was the case with the 1983 Data East / Nihon Bussan (you may know them as Nichibutsu, the guys who gave us “Crazy Climber” and the strip mah jong video game) laser-disc videogame Bega’s Battle, which used footage and characters from Harmagedon. You may hear “laser-disc videogame” and think of Dragon’s Lair or Cliff Hanger in which gameplay involved joystick movements timed to filmed elements, but Bega’s Battle merely used footage from Harmagedon as background and interstitial elements. Playing Bega’s Battle meant more traditional raster graphics as you controlled Bega in his top-down shooter quest to protect Luna and gather the Psychic Warriors for the ultimate battle with Genma. Did I first see Bega’s Battle in the no-name arcade tucked discreetly behind Turtles in Belmont Hills? Or was it rocking the 2001 arcade in the mall that became the convention center that now hosts our local anime con? Or was it in that weird arcade with the bootleg “Crazy Kong” cabinet, over next to the Japanese grocery store that had the rental VHS tapes, the place where I rented and saw Harmagedon for the first time? Fun fact: a 130 minute film will not fit on an SP-recorded 120 minute tape. But we watched it regardless, clawing meaning from the images in that untranslated Japanese movie, inspired by the glowing colors and the demolished Tokyo and the promise of anime as a cinematic force above and beyond kid-vid TV robots. 

Central Park Media would acquire Harmagedon and release it as an English-dubbed VHS and as a dual-language DVD, which is how most 00-era anime fans (and that November Japan Foundation audience) would see it, a seventeen year old archaeological missing link between the 80s overlong SF epic and the more accessible, more action-oriented post-Akira spectacle years. Harmagedon would become a fashionable sneer target for gangs of self-described ‘experts,’ unthinkingly echo-chambering the received “this movie is trash” opinion. And sure, entertainment is a subjective thing, and you can’t expect the 2003 or 2013 cohort to have the same artificially-lengthened attention span we’re cursed with, or to appreciate the shock of the new for something that they didn’t get to see “new” in the first place. But casually dismissing or judging a film out of context, well, that’s foolish. I suggest Harmagedon detractors treat themselves to Haruki Kadokawa’s next animated feature Kenya Boy - you know, the one about the Japanese boy lost in Kenya who is befriended by a benevolent tribesman, becomes a wilderness warrior, rescues the blonde White Jungle Goddess, and defeats the Nazi atomic bomb factory with the help of a giant snake god - and then re-examine their Harmagedon feels. 

admittedly, shelling out $39.95 might color my perceptions a bit

I believe they’ll find, as the Japan Foundation found, that even though the film at times stumbles with clunky updates of very 1960s characters and concepts, perhaps is a little too forceful in delivering its channeling the ascended masters New Religion backstory, and maybe is overlong and indulgent in the very specific way that only a free-spending and possibly substance-addled producer can deliver, even with all this baggage the power of Harmagedon cannot be contained by fire or ice or the ruins of several solar systems worth of civilization, that when this movie works, it works exceedingly well, and that to abandon those moments is to deprive ourselves of everything we watch these cartoons for in the first place. That’s what Genma wants, and we can’t let the Challenge of the Psionics Fighters go unanswered. Can we?

-Dave Merrill

Tao says "fight the power!"

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THE SUPER GALAXY REVUE: CYBORG 009; THE REVUE; OCT. 8 2014

A few weeks back I had a chance to join nine special people on a fantastic trip to the outer reaches of the cosmos – and all I had to do was ditch work for a few hours!  The Revue on Roncesvalles is an older theater with comfortable seats; the perfect host for JFTOR/TAAFI’s screening of CYBORG 009 Gekijō Ban: Chō Ginga Densetsu aka Legend Of the Super Galaxy aka Ultra Galaxy Legend aka Defenders Of The Vortex.  The Cyborg 009 film was screened in Toronto as part of the Japan Foundation’s fall anime series, using a subtitled 35mm print from the Japan Foundation library.

The 1980 009 film is an interesting choice to program here in the 21^st century.  Not only does it act as a coda to the never-aired-here 1979-1980 Cyborg 009 TV series, but it reflects the cinematic anime SF of that era; that is to say, voyages across the universe that bend the laws of time and space and last more than two hours, taking a generous approach to the patience of the audience and the limits of forward momentum in terms of storytelling.

Super Galaxy Legend takes place years after the Cyborgs have defeated their various enemies and returned to their normal pursuits of auto racing, ballet, cooking, entertaining, and floating around in sleepies. Dr. Gilmore has retired and putters around the International Space Center, built next door to his former Cliffside home. His pal Dr. Cosmo is all abuzz about discovering the energy source that caused the Big Bang and working out some kind of method of controlling it and ending that pesky energy crisis that we were all worried about in 1980.  It’s this energy source, “the vortex,” that our Super Galaxy Legend swirls around.  

From the destroyed planet Comada comes alien boy Saba in a wildly impractical space cruiser, seeking Earth’s aid against the evil Zoa and his Dagas Corps. Saba’s father Dr. Colvin was also researching the Vortex, until he was kidnapped by Zoa, who seeks to control the Vortex for universal domination. Will the Cyborgs aid Saba?  Sure they will, especially after Zoa kidnaps both Dr. Cosmo and Cyborg 001.  Pressed into action, our remaining cyborg soldiers suit up for one more battle against evil.  You'll feel every bit of the 400 light years past the galaxy as the 009 crew and Saba journey through the 2001-trip-sequence style Star Gate; Legend Of Super Galaxy dawdles past long pans of spaceships and landscapes and planets, and yes, there’s the mandated-by-law sequence where our spaceship passes every planet in the solar system in order as it leaves the solar system. How else would you know they were leaving the solar system, I ask you?

That’s the hallmark of this era’s anime movies. Instead of the slam-bang action of, say, Star Wars, they recall the pompous, ponderous Majesty Of Outer Space thoughtfulness of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The films are bloated and overlong, swelling with orchestral soundtracks and improbable mind-expanding sci-fi super-constructions, enough to overwhelm any viewer. However, they aren’t without their more prosaic charms; Phoenix 2772 never forgets cartoons should be funny sometimes, Be Forever Yamato leavens its Dark Nebulas and Double Proton Bombs with tragedy and temptation, and Queen Millennia’s clash of civilizations leaves no one untouched. However, Cyborg 009 Legend Of Super Galaxy loses the human touch somewhere out in the galactic wastes.

Director Masayuki Akehi was deep in a career that included Mazinger Z, Prehistoric Boy Ruy, Gakeen, King Arthur, Danguard Ace, SSX, Saint Seiya, and Yu-Gi-Oh, as well as films as disparate as the noisy, incoherent Grandizer-Getta Robo G- Great Mazinger Final Battle Ocean Beast and the thoughtful Queen Millennia. Here in the 009 film his reflective side gets a workout, without a whole lot in the way of drama or action. Not enough happens in this film, and what does happen is fairly standard SF cliché, giving us a cinematic experience that is all cosmic, dreamy, pastel colored sizzle without much steak.  Sure, there are some Star Wars-inspired outer space dogfights, and a pit stop on planet Fantarian for some standard-issue princess rescuing, and a climax aboard an evil, ultimate-weapon-equipped space station; but these typical SF film tropes were poor momentum builders even in 1980.

 

a helpful guide to the super galaxy

Audiences aren’t even given a lot of Cyborg. The gang gets more screen time here than they do in the recent RE: Cyborg, but just as in their latest outing, there simply isn't enough 008 fire or 007 shape-changing or 005 lifting or 001 crying.  Of course, 1980 audiences had just enjoyed fifty TV episodes of Cyborg 009 battling cyborgs and gods and evil triplets; perhaps the producers felt they could dispense with the frivolities and instead concentrate on blowing minds. Certainly this is where Ishinomori was going with the 009 manga, away from the action and towards philosophical pondering of Big Questions.

And let's make this very clear. This film works hard at being weird and alien. The ridiculous blown-glass-ornamentalism of Saba's space cruiser (with a whimsical name – call her “Ishmael”) is only the first step into a glossy, strangely colored film that takes us to Fantarian, a wild fake-Aztec freakout of degenerate tribesmen, lake monsters, eerie vegetation, and crumbling temples. The squat, hateful Dagas swarm through their ugly, brutalist space fortress, and a 2001-style trip through the Star Gate takes us an infinity beyond the usual nuts and bolts, engineerist milieu of a typical 009 adventure.

Even with their new, rounded character designs, the Cyborgs feel like guests stars in their own movie. The script doesn't give them a lot to do outside their defining characteristics of Heroic, Tragic, or Comedy Relief. 009 and 003 make goo-goo eyes at each other a few times, and the totally superfluous detour to planet Fantarian allows Queen Tamara to shamelessly throw herself at Joe in an attempt to give the film some sort of relationship-related tension. Perhaps there are some six-year-olds in the audience who really think 009 is going to ditch his cyborg pals for a purple space lady, but the rest of us know better. This is a woman in a Cyborg 009 cartoon who's making a play for Joe and that means her time is almost up. I'm not saying 003 is responsible; I'm just saying they all wind up dead. 

After a space journey filled with SF tropes, the film wraps with yet another cliché as Zoa is destroyed by the Real Ultimate Power that he himself wished for, the power that also allows Joe to wish everything OK again (which might sound a little pat, but be honest, it beats the heck out of whatever the hell happened at the end of RE: Cyborg).  Joe’s big tall wish also brings fallen Cyborg 004 back to life, in a scene edited out of Japanese TV versions of this film, for considerations of time and also because it is a goofily tacked-on piece of drama-ruining hackwork.  

The print was a bit scratchy, but still enjoyable – as was explained before the show, it was a library print that had literally been all over the world. I was curious how the surprisingly sizable audience would take this film, which is, to be fair, full of characters they don’t know on a mission to oddly named planets, protecting the universe from a poorly explained menace. This is where the movie could have benefited from spending a few of those one hundred and thirty five minutes on a bit of Cyborg exposition or Cyborg backstory.  However, the crowd seemed to laugh at the right parts (and a few of the hackier dramatic turns) and the gosh-wow SF material seemed to wow appropriately.  It’s tempting to say that there’s much about this movie that is too “1980” to really click with 2014’s audiences – but at the same time, last year’s RE: Cyborg left fans unsatisfied too. It may just be that single films are not the best way to use nine or ten characters to push boundaries and explore new thematic elements; the stories of a manga creator as ambitious as Ishinomori may after all be best suited for manga.

Other films in JFTOR’s Wednesday night series include the ninja historical drama Dagger Of Kamui, which is also punishingly long but sports ninjas and a Mark Twain cameo. Also appearing is the sold-out Akira and the 2009 autobiographical feature Mai Mai Miracle. If you’re free Wednesday nights, head for the Revue!  You can find out more about JFTOR here. See you in the Revue!

my favorite promotional photo from the premiere because why not

THE CYBORG 009 STORY

It’s the 1961 World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle. Robert Heinlein is the guest of honor and “A Canticle For Liebowitz” takes the Hugo for best novel. In the crowd is manga-ka Shotaro Ishinomori, covering the show for Shuiesha. A resident of the famous ‘Tokiwaso’ apartment house with manga giants like Tezuka, Hideko Mizuno and Fujio-Fujiko, Ishinomori shared their speedy, cinematic, big-foot style and by ‘61 already had more than 75 different published works to his credit. 

Shotaro Ishinomori

Shotaro Ishinomori’s comics would go on to have an almost immeasurable impact in Japanese and global pop culture, creating children’s adventure heroes like KIKAIDER, KAMEN RIDER and what we’d call “sentai” with GORANGERS. He’d explore economics with JAPAN INC, Edo-period detective stories with SABU & ICHI’S ARREST WARRANT, big city soap opera drama in HOTEL, manga about Charlie Parker, TV ghosts, magical girls and mischievous robots along with illustrations for the first Japanese edition of Frank Herbert’s DUNE. His work would inspire animation, live-action film and TV projects, and thrill generations of readers throughout the world for decades.

A few months prior to the Seattle Worldcon, neurophysiologist Manfred Clynes and psychopharmacological pioneer Nathan S. Kline had coined the word “cyborg” in the journal “Astronautics” to describe the artificial modification of the human body to suit different environments. As an “exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system”, the concept would fuel practical and impractical research, but the term itself would be a boon for science fiction writers. SF had long been combining humans with machines or computers – the first example dates from 1879 - but now a sleek, futuristic word defined the concept. It’s unknown if the Clynes & Kline “Cyborg” paper was discussed at Worldcon, but as we’ll see eventually the term found its way to Ishinomori. After completing his circumnavigation of the globe he returned to Tokyo and got right back to work on manga like MUTANT SABU, an adaptation of the cult Toho monster film MATANGO THE FUNGUS OF TERROR, and, for Shonen King in 1964, something called CYBORG 009.

From around the world, nine people are kidnapped by the evil Black Ghost organization, a shadowy group dedicated to promoting war as a profit-making enterprise (even described as “merchants of death’, a callback to the devastating 1934 expose of war profiteers and the munitions industry). Our nine victims are transformed into cyborg soldiers to allow BG to bring war to the far reaches of the universe. However, they turn against Black Ghost. Along with their creator, Dr. Gilmore, the cyborgs battle Black Ghost’s attempts to recapture or destroy them and escape, free to try and fit into a world that no longer calls them human. The series’ cold war backdrop of military conspiracies, continent-destroying super weapons, and nuclear wars started by hateful third parties was balanced by science-gone-mad Frankenstein stories and tales emphasizing the tragedy of being turned into a cybernetic war machine. This is manga that dares to ask, can you be turned into an ultrapowerful cybernetic fighting machine, and still have a human heart?

As a manga series CYBORG 009 was a hit for Shonen Gahosha’s Shonen King weekly, which also featured KAIBUTSU-KUN, the Jiro Kuwata BATMAN manga, WILD 7, GALAXY EXPRESS 999, and LOCKE THE SUPERMAN. Ishinomori’s combination of super-mechanical SF action and the tragic drama of people turned into machines was a winner with Japanese manga readers, and the first series lasted fifteen volumes’ worth.

Ishinomori even tried to end it, but the readers demanded more, so just like Nishizaki and ARRIVEDERCI YAMATO, Ishinomori was forced to rewrite his own story to keep his characters alive. CYBORG 009’s manga adventures would continue through eight separate story arcs across nine different manga weeklies and monthlies, from 1964 until 1981 (in 2003 Tokyopop would release the first arc of the CYBORG 009 manga in North American markets across ten volumes with varying degrees of success). 

CYBORG 009’s cast stands out in a manga field full of loner heroes - a diverse group of individuals each with their own special abilities and temperaments. And while several of the cyborgs’ appearances border on racist caricature, every character – from the requisite Japanese leader to the African rebel to the Chinese cook – is portrayed as a human being, not a token or a prop. When they aren’t defending the world, they’re living their own lives as actors, restaurateurs, ranchers, or race-car drivers.

The Cyborgs:

001 is the infant Ivan Whisky, who’s brain was restructured – by his own father, believe it or not - giving him incredible psychic power. Unfortunately this is incredibly taxing and he sleeps for weeks at a time, which may explain a few things on the part of Dad’s motives, who might have just wanted a good night’s sleep.

002 – Jet Link, the feisty big-nosed American, was taken right off the streets of New York City where his gang – The Jets – spread terror through synchronized dance routines. His character is named after James Dean’s character in GIANT, the ranch hand Jett Rink. As a rebuilt cyborg, jet engines in both his legs allow him to fly at supersonic speeds of up to Mach 5.

003 was a French ballerina named Francoise Arnoul until the Black Ghost restructured her as the ultimate detecting device with super sight and hearing. No relation to the French actress of the same name. She’s the typical ‘big sister’ token girl character, always demurely serving coffee, playing nurse or babysitting 001. Even her cyborg powers are largely passive. Is there a romance between 003 and 009? In spite of the difference in age and life experience, sources say “yes”.

hey, pictures don't lie

004, German Albert Heinrich, escaped from East Berlin with his girlfriend in a zoo truck, but a hail of Vopo bullets killed her and seriously wounded Heinrich. Kidnapped en route to the hospital by Black Ghost agents, his body was almost completely rebuilt. One hand has machine gun fingers, another hand contains a super sharp blade, and depending on who’s animating the character, one or all of the knees and elbow joints contain missiles. A cynical character, he’s bitter about his rebirth as a war weapon, and who can blame him?

005 is the giant Apache Geronimo Junior. Even before he was cybernetcized, he had enormous strength and the strong spiritual nature typical of mass-media depictions of aboriginal peoples. After the Black Ghost was through, G. Jr. became immensely powerful and nearly indestructible.

006, Chan Chan Ko, was a Chinese cook. His culinary skills remain, even though now he can blast super hot fire from his mouth that can be both a weapon and a tunneling mechanism allowing him to burrow through the earth. The degree of stereotype involved in his character pretty much depends on the year the animation was made – if it’s the 60s you can count on quite a bit.

007 naturally hails from Great Britain. In fact his name is Great Britain! As an English actor he was legendary on the stage, but alcohol was destroying both his career and his life. His abduction by Black Ghost probably saved him from decades of staggering his way through countless embarrassing cinematic turkeys. Now his natural gifts of mimicry are increased a thousandfold as his body is able to shape-shift into just about any form regardless of size or complexity – mice, lions, missiles, coffee grinders, dolphins, you name it, he’s changed into it. In the 60’s era 009 anime he was depicted as a small and annoyingly voiced child.

008 is the African revolutionary known as Pyunma, who was changed into a specialist underwater cyborg. Early iterations of this character were astoundingly racist stereotypes, but subsequent character designs have, slowly, developed into something 009 fans can proudly display to others without reservation or embarrassment. As the only cyborg with actual military experience, his tactical knowledge comes in handy.

Our leader 009 was the last cyborg built and as such is the most advanced. Joe Shinamura was a half-breed orphan with a background of abuse and neglect that, nevertheless, failed to change his nature as a kind, decent human being with a strong sense of shonen-manga-hero justice As a command-and-control cyborg he’s fast and strong, and his ‘acceleration switch’ can propel him at speeds up to Mach 5. This can be traced directly to Alfred Bester’s legendary 1956 novel THE STARS MY DESTINATION, in which vengeance-driven spaceman Gully Foyle has himself rebuilt as a military-grade cybernetic commando whose amazing speed and reaction time is controlled by a switch concealed within a tooth, just like Cyborg 009. Coincidence? I think not.

Professor Issac Gilmore, their creator, worked willingly with Black Ghost until he learned their true intentions, and then he conspired with the Cyborgs to escape. Cranky, irascible, driven, yet with a fatherly heart.

For Americans such as myself, nosing our way into the confusing new “Japanimation” world via American comic book fandom, CYBORG 009 was a great door opener. Science-fiction adventure starring alienated superheroes in a world that fears their power? Sounds a lot like the X-MEN comics we’d been reading. But while Marvel’s mutants would sink into a confusing morass of never-completed storylines and endless parades of new characters, CYBORG 009 followed Ishinomori as he moved beyond superpowered fistfights and explored themes of sacrifice, humanity, evolution, spirituality, and man’s place in the universe, in adventures involving mind-expanding journeys across time and space.

CYBORG 009 would be animated on, let’s see, seven? Eight? Nine separate movie and TV occasions, with varying degrees of animation, entertainment quality, and faithfulness to the source material.

recent DVD release of the first Cyborg 009 movie

The first film, simply titled CYBORG 009, was released in July of 1966 and featured a radical re-design of the Cyborg characters as they moved through a streamlined version of their escape from Black Ghost. The character designs and costumes were given the squat, ovoid Hajime Numai treatment, including 007’s reinterpretation as a small child – obviously an identification character for the kids in the audience. The Yugo Serikawa animation moves in fits and starts, placing slick motion sequences next to long stretches of nothing. It’s the studio’s first attempt at an animated film based on a currently running manga property, and clearly in the same trail then being blazed by Mushi Productions’ ASTRO BOY and TCJ’s series ASTEROID MASK, YUSEI SHONEN PAPII, and TETSUJIN 28.

CYBORG 009 - MONSTER WAR

The sequel, CYBORG 009 - MONSTER WAR, would be produced by the same creative staff and released in March of 1967. This film is sometimes titled “Underground Duel” because that’s what the label on my VHS cassette read back in 1985. I spent years spreading the misinformation because I was too lazy to research it myself. As the film contains more “underground” than “monster”, it’s a natural mistake. 009 and the gang set out in their super air-ground-submersible to battle a league of giant monsters which are carrying on giant-monster tradition by decimating the world’s shipping, ports, natural gas storage tanks, and cities. Along the way they rescue the mysterious Helena, who leads them into an underground world populated by giant carnivorous plants and the evil Cyborgs 0011 Plus and Minus, and eventually to the lair of Black Ghost himself. But is Helena their friend or enemy? Unlike other Toei films of the 60s like GULLIVER’S TRAVELS BEYOND THE MOON or SINDBAD THE SAILOR, the CYBORG 009 films wouldn’t make it to American audiences, but Spanish-language theaters got their 009 under the title “Astroboy 009”. In Finland it was “Superagentit 001-009”.

The next year Toei brought CYBORG 009 to TV in a 26 episode series, repurposing the theme song from the films but losing the color. Many outstanding stories from the manga would appear in the TV show, including the “Mad Machine” South Pole story and the sad tale of Kubikuro the cyber-dog. Other plots were all over the map, from giant Inca robots to spy stories, Jekyll-Hyde monster tales, fleets of skeletal Imperial Navy pilots, and in general a lack of coherence or narrative logic; villains all have squads of faceless minions to be slaughtered and Dr. Gilmore has whatever scientific device necessary to advance the plot, from electron microscopes to orbital multi-stage rockets. 

The ’68 series is, again, not at all far removed from your typical SPACE BOY SORAN or SPACE KID JUN episode. The animation is still stiff in places but the character designs and action are moving away from the clean, round look of the early 60s – you can see a rougher, more confident hand in many scenes. Also one episode has a quick gag where 007 transforms into a surprised-looking James Bond.

subtitles by "Nanto", hairpiece by House Of Gilmore

1968 series episode titles:

1. Terror Of The Mysterious Men

2. Challenge Of ‘X’

3. Confrontation At The South Pole

4. Space Demons

5. Ah, Kubikuro

6. Rescue Galleria’s King

7. The Schoolbus

8. The Girl With The Golden Eyes

9. The Devil Walks Tonight

10. Royalty of the Golden Earth

11. The Golden Lion

12. Sky Giants

13. Secret Of the Devil’s Castle

14. Cursed Desert

15. Tragedy Of The Animal Man

16. Ghost Of The Pacific

17. Phantom Alliance

18. My Father, The Demon’s Apostle

19. Terror Of The Nuclear Submarine “Sea Snake”

20. The Final Escape

21. Phantom Cavalry

22. Spirit Of Vengeance, part 1

23. Spirit Of Vengeance, part 2

24. Challenge Of Love’s Mistake

25. Back From The Dead

26. Death Is The Peace Of Soldiers

The powerful finale features demonic toys plotting to cause worldwide nuclear war by stirring up trouble between two hostile nations. In a chilling dream sequence, one general imagines a peaceful world annihilated by atomic war in a montage that calls to mind the famous “Flower” television ad the LBJ campaign aired – once – in 1964.

in your heart, you know he might

The final episode would also use a plot point from the climax of the first 009 manga arc – having destroyed the Black Ghost satellite in orbit, 009 is unable to maneuver in space and starts to burn up upon re-entry into the atmosphere. Watching him burn brightly from the ground, two children make a wish on the beautiful falling star. As we all know, 009 was saved at the last minute by 002, but the sequence has a haunting, almost Ray Bradbury beauty to its poignancy. And well it should, as it’s the plot of the Ray Bradbury short story “Kaleidoscope”, itself the basis for EC’s WEIRD SCIENCE story “Home To Stay.”

the rumored Wood/Ishinomori connection

It would be ten years before CYBORG 009 would return to the animation world, with fifty episodes of Toei’s 1979 CYBORG 009 series on TV Asahi. Character designs changed again, now matching the manga costumes, but with a sketchier look more representative of late ‘70s anime styles. 007 became an adult, 008’s freakish stereotype became less objectionable, and everybody got scarves and giant boots and the occasional Yoshinori Kanada directed action scene. Two long story arcs pitted the 009 team against what appeared to be ancient Norse gods and a revived Neo Black Ghost, led by cybernetic triplets Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. The series was subtitled and broadcast on a few Japanese-language TV stations in America, notably California, Hawaii, and New York. Naturally the series was broadcast widely Europe, the Middle East and Asia; they get all the good cartoons.

The 1979 series doesn’t attempt to retell or reboot or waste any time, from the first moment we’re thrown into a world where stone giants claw their way to the surface to warn the human race that the Gods have returned and boy, are they pissed. Rogue cybernetic surgeons rebuild boxers and soccer players with tragic results, disaffected youth join gangs, misguided scientists abuse sea-people, and through it all our Cyborgs struggle against injustice and fear. It’s a more mature anime series that deals with the energy crisis, the oil shock, prejudice, revolution and war along with the giant monsters, pirate submarines, killer plants, ancient astronauts, and UFOs. The evil triplets and Neo Black Ghost first appear in episode 22 and from then on dominate the series with their various plans to conquer the world and destroy the 009 Cyborgs, not necessarily in that order.

As the series climaxes we learn that Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu, sons of an evil Tibetan sorcerer, were non-cybernetic humans when they murdered their way to the top of Black Ghost. However, once they achieved their goal, doubts set in. Were they evil ENOUGH? The triplets ordered top Black Ghost cyber- surgeon Gamo to remove all the “good” parts of their bodies and replace them with cybernetic parts, so as to make them completely evil. This kind of ethics-based biological determination might not make any sense in the real world, but in the CYBORG 009 context it sells.

sponsored by Takatoku toys

Completing his work, Gamo realized he had enough body parts left over to make a complete human – the result is Gandar, the “Jesus Of The East”, who is, you guessed it, completely good. When his good works start interfering with the Triplets’ evil plans, the stage is set for a world-shaking explosion aboard Black Ghost’s Shangri-La Project satellite! Can 009 and the cyborgs survive to reach the end of their television series?

final-stage Evil Triplets vs Gandar, the Jesus Of The East

As the 70s progressed, the CYBORG 009 manga became wider in scope, sending our heroes across the universe in mind-bending adventures through time and space that questioned the nature of reality and man’s place in the universe. Reflecting this sensibility, as well as the current SF anime boom, the 1980 Toei film CYBORG 009 LEGEND OF SUPER GALAXY (or “Legend Of The Super Vortex” or “Meta Galaxy Saga” or “Super Galactic Legend”, take your pick) would see our nine heroes voyage into space.

As a mysterious spaceship that resembles a blown-glass ornament lands on Earth, 001 and Gilmore’s pal Dr. Cosmo are kidnapped by the devil Zoa. Leader of the Dagas Corps, a heinous gang of space monsters, Zoa is out for total control of the Vortex, an amazingly powerful glowing space light that can do whatever it needs to do to advance the plot. Luckily, on board the blue spaceship is Saba, an alien boy whose own father has also been kidnapped by Zoa. Saba has come to Earth to ask the Cyborgs for help defeating this menace to intergalactic civilization. Though it’s a million light year journey that may be one-way, the Cyborgs agree and soon they’re zipping their way across the universe through the 2001-style ‘star gate’. There’s a pit stop on the ravaged planet Fantarian where 009 shares a moment with beautiful, purplish Queen Tamara, and then it’s straight into the headquarters of the Dagas Corps and into the Vortex itself for a climax that defies the laws of time and space.

Ishinomori and his League Of Lady Cyborgs promoting 'Super Galaxy'

Super Galaxy will be back after these messages

Those looking for brutal outer-space action may want to throttle their expectations back a notch or two for this film, which is a dreamy, almost meditative journey through elaborate galactic fantasies and cosmic landscapes that you might find airbrushed on the side of a van or on a Roger Dean album cover. Yes, it’s prog rock anime, spacey, metaphysical and a little pompous. The film resembles Toei’s 1982 space fantasy QUEEN MILLENIA, and that’s no surprise as both movies share animation director Yasuhiro Yamaguchi, who was also responsible for the rounded, smoother character redesign of our cyborg heroes.

While unsparing in its display of the wonders and beauty of the universe, the film’s rather deliberate pace makes viewing more of an endurance contest than a pleasure. Released on video in North America on two separate occasions, SUPER GALAXY even made it onto UHF television in a few markets. The dub is unspectacular; 006 and 007 are rendered incomprehensible by attempts to mimic UK and Chinese accents, and the 009 cyborgs are inexplicably referred to as “The Galaxy Legion”. You might still be able to pick this one up on VHS for a dollar somewhere, it’s worth it. Beware of edited versions; one cut near the end changes the tone of the film considerably.

And for nearly twenty years, that would be it for CYBORG 009 animation. However, in 1998 an animated version of the Ishinomori tokusatsu classic ANDROID KIKAIDER stunned audiences with a combination of slick retro character designs and seriously great animation. Could a new Cyborg 009 series be on the way? Avex’s 2001 CYBORG 009: THE CYBORG SOLDIER series was fantastic, a colorful, well animated adventure with a sweeping storyline that embraces both world-spanning action and quiet moments of introspection. 

Viewers needed no previous 009 experience to enjoy the show – but it’s packed with visual references to every other animated incarnation of CYBORG 009, so fans familiar with the storyline and the characters can enjoy spotting a robot design from 1966 here, a villain from 1968 there. Jun Kawagoe’s direction is evocative, both in the action scenes and in slower moments, and the character designs by Naoyuki Konno seem to be channeled directly from the original comics. In fact the series includes two unfinished 009 chapters, and concludes with the never-before seen finale of the story, written by Ishinomori on his deathbed in 1998. THE CYBORG SOLDIER respects previous interpretations while at the same time bringing new ideas and visual concepts to the mix, and it does so beautifully.

Coming as it did in the middle of North America’s anime boom, CYBORG 009 – at least some of the series - was broadcast on Cartoon Network as part of its Toonami block. The melancholy mechanization of Ishinomori’s life work struck a chord with American anime fans, and finally CYBORG 009 began to get the kind of fan interest in the States that it had enjoyed in Japan for decades. The show got a great launch in the States, including a DVD release, and then, like so many other series in those fad-driven days, it just got walked away from. Heck, the final episode didn’t even air in Japan, instead going direct-to-video. What is this, GALVION? Or are we seeing the end of broadcast television and the start of new Japanese-cartoon delivery systems, as digital technology moves away from mass markets? I don’t know. What I do know is that the DVD is available for a ridiculously low price and you’d be foolish to not own it.

When it was announced in September of 2010 that Panasonic and Production IG had produced a Mamoru Oshii-directed CG 3D CYBORG 009 short, at least American anime fans knew what the heck ANN was talking about. THE REOPENING, as this short was titled, was shown at the CEATEC Japan 2010 trade show in Chiba. And if that hyper-realistic piece of 009 animation wasn’t enough, in 2011 we learned that Kenji “Eden Of The East” Kamiyama, who directed a 009 Pepsi NEX ad, would be directing a 3D CYBORG 009 feature from Production IG , titled 009 RE: CYBORG, for release in the fall of 2012. Teaser trailers promise a new, more realistic look for the 009 Cyborgs and hint at action sequences that put CYBORG 009 into a class with the best.

RE: CYBORG caught the attention of a Japan thanks to ad campaigns centered around Panasonic 3D televisions, and the subsequent film confused audiences with a film that went nowhere fast but looked terrific getting there, giving us tremendously well-animated scenes of 005 destroying lots of things, 009 accelerating, 003 and 009's relationship becoming animation canon, all wrapped up in a story that makes less sense the more I think about it. 

You got Cyborg 009 in my Devilman. Well YOU got YOUR Devilman in MY Cyborg 009!

The next CYBORG 009 animation project somehow tapped into the desires of every Showa-era anime nerd and, rather than a high-tech re imagining, gave us an unabashed wallow in 1970s anime nostalgia. 2015's CYBORG OO9 VS DEVILMAN brought Go Nagai's demon-fighting demon up against Ishinomori's cyborgs in a rollicking adventure that starts where both their 1970s adventures stop, written and drawn with their decades-old TV adventures as a template, yet building on both, in a fashion similar to the successful contemporaneous  re-interpretations YAMATO 2199 and GUNDAM ORIGINS, and unlike YAMATO 2199, became available in North America simultaneously with Japanese release on the streaming service Netflix.

2017 wasn't two months old before yet another CYBORG 009 animation project appeared, the all-CG CYBORG 009 CALL OF JUSTICE. Built on the RE: CYBORG template, our heroes are re-designed once again; the subsequent computer-animated series premiered here on Netflix in March of 2017. So far, the show's callbacks to the 60s series and RE: CYBORG haven't made up for the stiff, Playstation cut-scene visuals, the wooden animation, and the plodding pace. With none of the zip or the panache of darn near every other current Japanese animated production, CG or otherwise, CALL OF JUSTICE may be a slight recursive detour on the animation path of Cyborg 009. We here have faith, however, that Shotaro Ishinomori's cyborg soldiers will continue into the 21st century. 

-Dave Merrill

editors note: portions of this article have been expanded upon and/or cybernetically enhanced to include subsequent productions. 

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