Cybersix is an Argentinian/Italian Comic Book written by Carlos Trillo and drawn by Carlos Meglia, first published as weekly installments in 1991 for Skorpio, an Italian comic magazine. In addition to the original 113-installment run, it later got spun off into a 45-volume series of books. The series has also been translated into French (separated into 12 volumes) and Spanish (6 volumes in 1993). Unfortunately, an English version never saw the light of day, but a wonderfully adapted 13-episode animation done between Japan and Canada did.
The story centers around Cybersix, the sixth of five-thousand artificial humans in the "Cyber" series created by Dr von Reichter. Von Reichter destroyed 4999 Cybers due to their tendency towards disobedience and doesn't intend to let his last one get away. Cybersix hides in Meridiana city, hunting her creator's other monsters in order to survive and trying to blend into society under the alias Adrian Seidelman, a male school teacher.
The original graphic novels are all quite rare to find in print, though ebooks of the Spanish and French versions are available from EBOOKEE.
An English fan-translation of the French is available as well, though it was worked on by two different translators.
Besides of the animated series, there was also a short-lived live-action series made in Argentina made in 1995. Good luck finding much of it though, as it is almost entirely lost.
These comics provide examples of:
- All Germans Are Nazis: Dr von Reichter and his associate Krumens.
- Animated Adaptation: Various aspects of the show were changed from the comics; Detective Enrique is an Expy of Do, but became a friendly and honest cop instead of a corrupt patrolman, the Monsters of the Week were mostly original creations added by the show's writers, and of course all the sex, nudity, and blood were removed.
- Artificial Human: Dr von Reichter's expertise lies in creating numerous kinds of Artificial Human, all of whom use Sustenance as fuel:
- He created the Cyber series to be his servants and destroyed them when they started showing tendencies toward disobedience. disobedience. The Cyber series has superhuman physical abilities and intellect, but relatively low Sustenance reserves.
- The Technos succeeded the Cybers. Apparently stronger and more intelligent, they have integrated themselves into society.
- Fixed Ideas, who serve him with their brute strength, are strong and intelligent, but only capable of following the orders given them.
- Types have the best of both worlds, being physically and intellectually superior to all who came before them. They can also establish a Psychic Link that lets them probe the minds of lesser models.
- José, Von Reichter's "son" is the peak of his engineering work.
- Von Richter's age is also handwaved as him making himself new bodies in the years after the war as the current one grew too old.
- Art Evolution/Progressively Prettier: Lucas is fairly ugly-looking in the first episodes. As the series progresses, his design changes slightly to be a little more handsome as befitting his role of Love Interest.
- Art Shift: During the Yashimoto arc, there are several pages drawn in different comic styles while he's knocked out. Cybersix battling Reichter's goons in the style of the McDucks takes the cake, though.
- Art-Style Dissonance: Despite the cartoonish art style, the plot of the comic is very dark,violent and sexual.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Lucas makes his debut in the comic by saving Adrian from a group of bullies, personally slugging the one who had his fellow teacher up against the wall in a Neck Lift.
- He also meets the mysterious lady in black in much the same fashion, clubbing a Type who was strangling Six and saving her life.
- Bondage Is Bad: Maura's abusive client calls up Do to solicit him for sex while in bondage gear.
- Calling Your Orgasms: Done by, of all the characters who have sex, José.
- Can't Have Sex, Ever: Cybersix considers this to be, morally, an aspect of being a genetically engineered "monster". Later after some Character Development, she comes to accept herself better and does want to get with Lucas, but is concerned that there might be some sort of incompatibility, like a virus or some chemical that might harm him. Once this concern is gone (thanks to a friendly doctor) though...
- Captain Ersatz: Betty "Boom"
- Clark Kenting: Cybersix's "Adrian Seidelman" persona, who is male, wears glasses, and brushes "his" hair differently.
- Clone Jesus: In the final comic, Von Reichter tries to clone Jesus. And this ends causing his downfall and the destruction of his organization.
- City Noir: Meridiana in the comics, unlike the Animated Adaptation, is a very dangerous city filled with crime.
- Daydream Surprise: Pulled often, usually involving sex with Cybersix/Adrian.
- Dead Person Impersonation: After escaping from Von Reichter, Cybersix comes across a car crash. One of the victims is Adrian Seidelman, who she notices bears a resemblance to her. She steals his identification papers, buries him away from the wreck and assumes his identity.
- Do Androids Dream?: Referred to as 'resistored dreams' in the first chapter.
- Dumb Muscle: Played with in regards to Fixed Ideas. They're programmed to perform a task and to take any action which would aid them in that task. When speaking to one, they seem observant and articulate, but they can be deceived into performing actions against their interests by claiming that doing so will help them with their tasks.
- Erotic Dream: Frequent.
- Everyone Has Standards: Lori may be a Clingy Jealous Girl to an absurd degree, but she can't stand people who abuse kids, having been abused herself.
- Everyone Looks Sexier if French: Big Bang, who is constantly depicted wearing a stereotypically French beat striped shirt, is the most desirable male in the series.
- Everybody Has Lots of Sex
- Evilutionary Biologist: Dr von Reichter.
- Fanservice: Cybersix constantly appears naked in almost every chapter of the comic.
- Flashback: There are several extensive flashbacks to explain Cybersix's backstory, particularly how she managed to survive and her relationship to Data 7.
- Yashimoto also gets one explaining the events leading up to his investigating Cybersix.
- Big Bang gets two, one from his own perspective and one from von Reichter's.
- Flawed Prototype: The Cyber series, who had too much free will to carry out von Reichter's evil plans.
- A God Am I: Dr von Reichter.
- Go Seduce My Archnemesis: One of von Reichter's plans involves seducing his enemies with a woman who kills whomever she has sex with. She kills one of her targets but ultimately fails when Lucas refuses to make love to anyone but Cybersix, and she seduces José instead.
- Big Bang was supposed to seduce Cybersix at one point, too.
- Gratuitous English: The comics Yashimoto wants to write about Cybersix all have English titles and taglines. "Chipwoman"?
- Happily Adopted: Cybersix was once this. For several years she lived happily alongside the slave who helped her escape Von Reichter and adored the man enough to consider him her father. Sadly, he was killed protecting her once more, and his photograph is a beloved Tragic Keepsake for her.
- Head-Turning Beauty:
- Lori thinks of herself in this way, but it's unclear if the other characters do.
- In a Single Bound: Cybersix can jump buildings pretty easily, the explanation being that the Cybers were created with the genes of an acrobat.
- Lori could do this as well, actually being from an acrobat family.
- Informed Attractiveness: The art style of the books is pretty harsh, but we are told that Lori is the most attractive of the human characters. Cybersix is the said to be the Fairest of Them All, and it's a little easier to believe.
- Rebecca Limon is also referred to as being irresistible, despite her gritty depiction.
- Insistent Terminology: Cybersix constantly refers to herself as a monster, and corrects Lucas when he calls her a genetic experiment or anything nicer.
- Lampshade Hanging: At one point, Cybersix wonders how Adrian's clothes manage to hide her breasts, and remarks that they're getting larger.
- Last of Her Kind: Out of 5000 Cybers, Cybersix is the only one who managed to survive.
- Leave No Survivors: Dr von Reichter wiping out the Cybers.
- Live-Action Adaptation: Prior to the animated series, there was a very short-live action show made in the year 1995.
- Love at First Sight: Lucas with Cybersix.
- Mad Scientist: Dr von Reichter, the evil Nazi variety.
- Mistaken for Cheating: In one story, Lori follows Adrian to his apartment, where she sees a beautiful nude woman talking to someone, assuring them that they love them and promising to spend the night cuddling. Although Lori doesn't know it, this is Six assuring Data-7 that she'll spend some time with him later. When she hears this mysterious woman saying she'll go out the window, the curious Lori (who has acrobatic training) follows and finds this woman and Lucas in bed together. Lori angrily calls her out for also sleeping with Adrian and storms back to Adrian's apartment to confront him, going through the window, discovering Data-7 in the bed, and barely getting out with her skin. So, at the end of the day, Lucas and Six got into a fight, Adrian looks like a jerk who slept with his friend's girl, and Lori thinks he's a zoophile.
- Ms. Fanservice: When it comes to fanservice tropes, Cybersix has the full deck:
- Combat Stilettos (good for kicking monsters with)
- Leotard of Power (stolen from a prostitute, no less)
- Hell-Bent for Leather
- Impossibly-Low Neckline
- Most Common Superpower
- Mythology Gag: In Volume 4, the therapist (Irish Coffee) and secretary (Sahara) are both from a previous comic by Cybersix's creative team, regarding a psychic therapist.
- One Thing Led to Another: Lucas' excuse for having sex with Rebecca Limon.
- Our Angels Are Different: It seems that angels can be born in mortal bodies in Earth (preferably with permission) and return to Heaven when their body dies. They also have a supernatural awareness of future events, but trying to change them can get them into trouble with both good and evil forces. Also, they can lose their divine grace if they perform a particularly egregious sin in their host body, meaning Cessation of Existence when that body dies.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Although she denies being one when Lucas asks, Cybersix has fang-like canine teeth and drinks Substance from the other artificial humans by biting their necks.
- Out-of-Genre Experience: The Angels and the Damned arc introduces, you guessed it, two actual angels incarnated as humans on Earth into this sci-fi story. Also cherubs.
- Out with a Bang: One of von Reichter's creations is a woman who causes painful death in any man she has sex with with in two days via an untraceable virus.
- Phlebotinum Dependence: Cybersix and all of Dr von Reichter's other creations require "Sustenance" to survive.
- All except for his first, Big Bang.
- The Pornomancer: Chrysalide and Big Bang both.
- Precocious Crush: The precocious José wants to make it with the adult Cybersix.
- Ripped from the Headlines: According to the introduction to the comic, the idea for doing a story about the tortured life of an escaped genetic experiment was inspired by the Elsa and Mario Rios incident that made headlines in the mid-80s.
- Secret Project Refugee Family: Cybersix and Data 7, even though they aren't the same species. Cybersix even thinks of Data 7 as her biological brother because he was once a Cyber.
- Selfcest: In order to allay his/her own insecurities, Adrian actually once deliberately concocts and tells Lucas a story about Cybersix 'visiting his apartment' and kissing him, to gauge Lucas's reaction.
- Self-Disposing Villain: Discussed in the first chapter when Lucas stops her from killing a hostile Techno, only to have the Techno throw himself off a building while trying to attack her.
- Shout-Out: Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet who maintained four separate poetic identities. He's referenced quite often, and given that Cybersix has three different identities herself, with good reason.
- Sinister Schnoz: Dr von Reichter has a really large and pointy nose.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The comic teeters on the edge. Meridiana is a squalid, corrupt place full of enemies, and terrible things happen to the main characters, but there are also allies and even people who seem evil or insane might have Hidden Depths.
- Slip into Something More Comfortable: Cybersix seems to spend all of her free time wandering her apartment naked, though instances of her saying this are always directed at the reader.
- Even while working on Adrian's curriculum, she makes a throwaway comment about how insufferably hot it is and spends the rest of the scene nude.
- Stalker with a Crush: Lori to Adrian, big time. Overlaps with Yandere, below.
- The policeman Do as well, to Cybersix.
- Stoic Spectacles: Adrian.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Cybersix's disguise as Adrian to hide herself from von Reichter.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: One of Von Reichter's plans involves having all his Technos drink a formula which taints their Sustenance with a corrosive and hallucinogenic poison that only affects Cybersix. Fortunately her new friends save her. And it turns out that the formula causes a pox on their skin, so it using it risks blowing the Technos' cover.
- There Are No Therapists: Inverted. Nearly everyone in this comic is screwed up, and the good news is that there are therapists. The bad news is most of them don't seem to realize they can be helped.
- Those Wacky Nazis: Von Reichter is explicitly stated be an ex-Nazi and performing inhuman experiments during the war.
- Two-Person Love Triangle: played with a twist. The fact that Cybersix's alter ego is her love interest Lucas's male coworker has led him to believe that they have a thing for each other.
- In fact, Cybersix once deliberately provokes Lucas to have a jealous reaction towards 'Adrian' in regards to herself.
- Vapor Wear: Every female character, but most notably Cybersix, who apparently doesn't even bind while dressing as Adrian.
- Curiously, Cybersix does have a drawer fully stocked with frilly panties in her apartment.
- Villainous Cheekbones: von Reichter and Krumens.
- Wretched Hive: Meridiana is described as enormous, sordid, fiery, violent, and irresistible. Adrian and Lucas also live and work in the slums, to boot. One of the locals notes that the city seems to be getting worse and worse of late, too, like a bad comic book. This is strongly implied to be due to Von Reichter and José stacking the place with Technos and Types in influential positions.
- Yandere: Lori.
- You Need to Get Laid: Big Bang's reaction when Cybersix reveals that she's a virgin.
