Trivia / Cyborg 009

• Acting for Two: The five Pu'Awak Sisters were all voiced by Yuki Masuda. This trope was averted for the English dub and the Latin American Spanish dub (with each sister being voiced by a different actress).
• Cross-Dressing Voices: 007 was voiced by Machiko Soga (AKA Bandora/Rita Repulsa) in the 60's anime and movie. In the rest of the anime adaptations, he was voiced by male actors. However, as the '60s anime adaptations had redesigned 007 to be a child (see below), a female voice was probably considered more fitting. Ivan is a case of this in all incarnations of the anime, though it's averted in the English dub of the 2001 series.
• Died During Production: The original manga was never finished due to Ishinomori's death. Thus, the final planned story arc, "Conclusion: God's War" was never finished or published in manga format in the year 2000 as Ishinomori had hoped for (as his death cut the planning short). That is, until 2012, when Ishinomori's son Jou Onodera used his notes to complete it as a novel (with the anime writers having previously adapted it as a mini-arc and OVA). It has now been completely adapted into manga format and published on Shogakukan's free manga hosting website. Do keep in mind that this is all happening only in Japan. However, Ishinomori's planning notes are also said to differ from both Onodera's novel and manga adaptations to various extents, leaving it iffy on how faithful the final story may be at delivering on his intent.
• Executive Meddling:
  • In the 60s anime adaptation, 007 was turned from a forty-something former actor into a nine-year old Bratty Half-Pint Mouthy Kid who was functionally 009's Kid Sidekick along with Plucky Comic Relief. Ishinomori didn't care for this change, but had to incorporate it into the manga to some degree. The kid version of 007 got used briefly as a Mythology Gag in the 2001 anime adaptation, in a scene where 007 kept shapeshifting through different forms.
  • The continuation of the manga past the Underground Empire arc came from this and fan outcry; Ishinomori had to retcon the Bittersweet Ending and start a new tale with the cyborgs.
  • The Mythos arc's abrupt end came about when a new editor-in-chief was hired for Weekly Shonen King and ordered Ishinomori to wrap up the story as it was being dropped from the magazine soon. The editorial department had felt that the story and large amount of characters would be too confusing for children to follow.
  • The anime version of "Conclusion: God's War" was truncated to two episodes in its run on TV, with episodes 50 and 51 being cut and merged together. The DVD shows the episodes as they were intended to be seen.
• Flip-Flop of God: While the '60s anime was running, Ishinomori incorporated 007's child persona into the manga by having Gilmore upgrade him. First introduced as a permanent new form, it later flitted between Sleep-Mode Size to a Super-Deformed mode for comedy moments (during the Underground Empire arc) to being discarded and forgotten entirely and back again. A Whole Chapter Flashback that Retconned their escape so that 007 was already in child mode (or just flat-out a child) didn't help, either.
• Fountain of Expies: While he's not quite as major an example as some of the other, more notable sub-trope examples (and thus he doesn't quite rate his own entry on TVT), Cyborg 002 is still the inspiration for a lot of expies, especially among authors who were kids growing up during the earlier runs of the manga and shows. A few of the more familiar expies to English-speaking fans would be Kurtis, Roam (an expy created by Ishinomori himself, no less) and Pizza/Soldato-J.
• God-Created Canon Foreigner: Hisui Kagariya (the girl who appears in the final arc of the 2001 anime) may seem like she was a character exclusively created for the anime version of "God's War", due to the fact that Ishinomori's notes had yet to be adapted into a manga format. She did in fact exist in the drafts for the arc, but would not make her transition to the intended manga format until 2012.
• I Am Not Spock: In an interview made around 2001 Kazuhiko Inoue, who had voiced 009 in the 1979 series, said that Kazuko Sugiyama, who had played 003, would still occasionally call him "Joe" when meeting him.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Only the first eight episodes of the entire 2001 anime were originally released on DVD in the US, and only the first 25 were released in the UK and Australia. Outside of incomplete bootlegs and internet uploads, the rest remained elusive for well over a decade. This is no longer the case now that Discotek Media has reissued the series on SD-BD, which is the first time the English dub of the "God's War" OVA has surfaced anywhere.
  • The English dub of the 1980 film, produced in 1986 by Tokyo-based Frontier Enterprises, was released to VHS twice: once in 1988 through Celebrity Home Entertainment as Defenders of the Vortex with over 30 minutes cut, and again in 1995 uncut through Best Film & Video (as Cyborg 009: Legend of the Super Vortex). It hasn't been made available anywhere since.
• Missing Episode:
  • The English dubbed versions of Episodes 34-37, & 39-45 from the 2001 series are usually this. Episode 48 also only got to air in overseas broadcasts. As far as "God's War" (49-51) goes, the episodes were dubbed but remain elusive. The English scripts (complete with edits) were further adapted and utilized for the Latin American dub. Episode 38 did have a surviving English dub, but is extremely rare. Though now that Discotek Media has rescue licensed the 2001 series, these episodes will finally be seen in North America for the first time.
  • Episodes 15 and 17-26 of the 1968 anime series are also hard to track down, and don't appear to be available subbed anywhere.
• No Export for You: Only the first 10 manga volumes were published into English by Tokyopop, and those same volumes were made available digitally by ComiXology. None of the other volumes have been officially translated English. Also, the 1966 anime film and 1968 anime series have never seen the light of day in English (even complete fansubs are impossible to find). The 1979 anime's only official English release was through a subtitled version in the early 80s that aired on a few small local networks in New York, California, and Hawaii that featured Japanese programming.
• The Other Darrin:
  • As far as the dub for the 2001 series goes, Joshua Seth was seemingly unavailable to voice Joe in episodes 5 and 9, with Derek Stephen Prince filling in for the role. See The Other Marty for the full reasoning.
  • The '68 series recast the role of 004 at episode 18, with his voice actor switching from Hiroshi Otake to Kenji Utsumi.
• The Other Marty: Derek Stephen Prince was originally cast as Joe, but was fired after an unspecified amount of episodes when Sony executives didn't approve of the voice he used for the character. Joshua Seth was then cast in the role (after he'd initially planned to retire from anime dubbing) and redubbed all of the episodes that Prince had recorded for- except for 5 and 9, which they were either unable to re-record in time or that wound up airing as the original versions with Prince's vocal track.
• Role Reprise:
  • While it could be a coincidence, the Mexican Spanish dub of the Call of Justice movie brought back the same voice actor who voiced 006/Chang Changku in the 2001 TV series (Pedro D'aguillon Jr.). This is relevant because all the Mexican dubs of all the animated adaptations of the manga had different voice actors along the way and this is the only time where a voice actor from a previous adaptation reprised the same role.
  • Fuyumi Shiraishi, who had played Ivan in the 1968 series and came back to the role in the 1980 movie Legend of the Super Galaxy, counts as well.
  • In the Italian dub of Legend of the Super Galaxy, Massimo Rossi was the only voice actor from the series to reprise his role as Joe. What makes this especially noteworthy is that while the '79 anime was dubbed and broadcast around 1982, the movie had to wait until 2010 to be finally adapted and released in the country, making the gap in the reprisal of the role a whole 28 years.
  • The English cast is never consistent between the different incarnations, but Michael Sorich, who voiced 007 in the 2001 series, returned to 009 Re: Cyborg to voice 006, and Stephanie Sheh, who voiced 001 in 009 Re: Cyborg returned for Cyborg 009 vs. Devilman as 003.
• Screwed by the Network: All but the last five episodes of the 2001 series aired on Cartoon Network. The first twenty-five got rerun in the Toonami block several times, while the rest were eventually aired during the Midnight Run. Once. They stopped right before the end of the Pu'Awak arc, deciding not to air the finale or the God's War arc. This meant the scene viewers were left with was 004 screaming Viina's name after seeing her and her sisters shot by Von Bogoot. Rather curious, considering that other Cartoon Networks (like CN-Latin America) exhibited the WHOLE series, God's War arc included, around a year before this happened.
• What Could Have Been:
  • As mentioned in the Aborted Arc trope, "Angels" was originally going to be an arc to wrap up the manga, but it was unfortunately cut off on a cliffhanger when the magazine it was running in (Adventure King) dropped Cyborg 009 as a feature due to Ishinomori falling into a writer's block and being unable to continue the story. In the cliffhanger, the cyborgs learn that Ivan has the ability to upgrade them. The volume release of the Angels arc also had a footnote by Ishinomori, suggesting that the arc was difficult to write for due to him planning it to be the longest (and final) battle that the 00 cyborgs would experience. Ishinomori attempted to rewrite and revisit the storyline a few years later with "Battle with the Gods" (with it serialized in COM), but that was also cut short when the manga was dropped again- in light of fans' enraged letters over Joe and Francoise having sex and criticisms of Ishinomori's art and narrative style in the arc.
  • Before "Angels", the Underground Empire arc would have ended the manga with the now-iconic and infamous "shooting star" sequence. Before that, fans believe the Mythos arc was meant to be an earlier wrap-up, as the arc ends very abruptly with an explosion and a narration stating that there were no traces of either Cyborg team left behind (leading to the assumption that the 00 cyborgs were all dead). However, in that case, the destructive and abrupt ending was due to the manga being dropped from Weekly Shonen King, and Ishinomori not being given enough time to write out a more detailed finale.
  • Early draft designs for the characters had Jet/002 lacking the Gag Nose that he'd become known for, and Francoise/003 went through having several different hair style ideas before Ishinomori settled on her final look. Ivan/001 also lacked his bangs, while Dr. Gilmore could have had an afro.
  • The Mythos cyborgs were originally going to appear in the 1979 series in an arc after the Neo Black Ghost one, and three episodes were being drafted while Ishinomori was drawing redesigns for the characters. Unfortunately, the '79 series was cancelled at episode 50, leaving things to be hastily wrapped up with the Neo Black Ghost arc. Not all was lost, as the redesign for Helena/Artemis did eventually make it into the 2001 anime.
  • The 2001 anime was originally tended to stick a lot closer to the manga, with only Birth through Underground Empire being adapted (thus no recap episode, "God's War", or the later manga stories that were placed earlier in the chronology). The pitch trailer included the Accidental Murder in 002's backstory that was entirely removed in the actual anime. Helena/Artemis also appeared as a blonde as she had in the manga. However, 008's original controversial manga design was also present, leading to him to be redesigned in the final product, likely so the series would be able to be released overseas. 008's home country was also given as "Kenya", as opposed to the fictionalized Muamba Republic that was used in the final product. If the other profiles were also indication, the cyborgs' backstories were considered to undergo modernization or had some errors that were later fixed, with 004 being said to hail from "former West Germany" (when it was a point in the manga that he was East German).
  • Within the first drafts for "God's War", Hisui Kagariya originally had the given name of "Igusa", and her age was also given as 24 instead of 27. In addition, Shiori Takagaki had the given name of "Saori", and an altered version of Joe's backstory was to be detailed (where we would learn his mother's name).
  • Archaia's graphic novel of Cyborg 009 was labeled "Ishimori Universe, volume 1", suggesting that there were plans to adapt Ishinomori's other properties and create an expanded universe featuring all the different characters. This was confirmed at Emerald City Comic-Con 2014, where it was revealed that Android Kikaider would have been the second graphic novel release, followed by other titles (which included a sequel Cyborg 009 novel). The different Ishinomori characters would then form an Avengers-esque alliance. Sadly, due to a change-over in staff at Ishimori Productions, the plans for further graphic novels fell through.
  • The company "Comic Book Movies" had planned to do a live-action film adaptation, as well as a Western-animated adaptation. Both plans fell through, though the concept art for the latter was designed by Peter Chung and can still be seen floating around online.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Skirted close, but thankfully averted. In 1967, after publishing the end to the Underground Empire arc, Ishinomori received a lot of letters about it ranging from disappointed remarks to hate mail. Among these there was an envelope containing an anonymous letter and some razor blades. This episode upset him enough that for a while he was reluctant to pick up the series again and continue it, despite the more kind requests from other fans, and the push from his editors trying to convince him not to drop a series so successful.

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