Hopefully by now you're able to accomplish something that I never dreamed would ever happen, not in a million, billion years - you're able to turn on your television and watch episodes of Shotaro Ishinomori's Cyborg 009 on American cable.

Because I am a GREAT, BIG, DROOLING, NO-FOOLING FANBOY of this show, I feel it's up to me to make darn sure that when you sit down with your TV guide in one hand and your remote in the other and a frosty cold one close by to watch Cyborg 009, you'll be fully informed as to the provenance of this remarkable series and you'll have a full appreciation of its importance to the field of Japanese animation and Japanese pop culture in general. I'm fully aware that I already penned a mash note to Cyborg 009 elsewhere on this site. Well, I'm entitled to another one.

Arguably the most influential manga artist in Japan (not counting the God Of Comics, Osamu Tezuka), Ishinomori's career started in 1956 when the 18-year old cartoonist went to work in Tezuka's studio. Within a few years Ishinomori was himself a name to be reckoned with. What's interesting is not only the range of his manga titles - from romance to SF adventure to comedy to historical drama to superhero action to economic treatise to soap opera - but the success Ishinomori had in producing his work in other media. Anime versions of his comics were appearing in the mid 1960s, and at the same time he was producing stories solely for TV, like Rainbow Soldier Robin. By the time his Kamen Rider live-action series appeared in 1972, Ishinomori was a master at what entertainment executives today call "synergy" - the comic promoted the TV show, which promoted the toys, which promoted the comic. The runaway success of Kamen Rider led to a fruitful relationship with Toei's live-action department, and Ishinomori's creations would grace the television screens from then on. This live-action hero stuff is known as "tokusatsu" (Japanese for "special effects"), and to most Americans it means "sentai show"-- but in Japan it might as well be called The House Ishinomori Built, because he created it all. Kamen Rider is a hero franchise matching Ultraman in popularity; the five-team hero show that we know here as Bandai's Power Rangers started with Ishinomori's Goranger; and the hero robot adventure show got its start with Kikaider. When he wasn't creating characters for Toei he was writing films like Message from Space. His 60s manga Genma Wars was adapted into film by Rintaro and Katsuhiro Otomo as the 1983 movie Harmagedon. It wouldn't be the first time top animation talent lent itself to Ishinomori stories - key animation on his 1969 Toei film The Flying Phantom Ship was by none other than Oscar-winner Hayao Miyazaki.

Oh, and he was drawing manga, too. In the 1980s he rebooted his Kamen Rider franchise with Kamen Rider Black, a stripped-down, back-to-basics story of bug-man versus man-bug. His Hotel manga became a mainstay of Big Comic For Men. His Japan Inc., the leader in the "economic history manga" field, became one of the first manga volumes to be released in the States as a manga volume and not a 32-page American-style pamphlet. He also embraced the Nintendo generation by drawing Legend of Zelda comics, which even ran in English in Nintendo Power magazine!

Along with Cyborg 009, Ishinomori is also known for such hits as The Flying Ghost Ship, Kamen Rider, and Kikaider.

By the time of his death in 1998, his TV works were finally beginning to affect America, with the success of Saban's Power Rangers and Masked Rider. And as I sit and watch Kikaider on the Cartoon Network in 2003, I'm fairly astounded that after nearly forty years of Ishinomori anime productions, Kikaider is the first to make it to American television. I'm also astounded that I was able to make it this far into this article without once mentioning Cyborg 009.

Serialized in MANGA KING starting in 1964, Cyborg 009 is the story of nine individuals from all over the world who are kidnapped by the evil organization BLACK GHOST and turned into fighting machines against their will. Rebelling against Black Ghost with the aid of their creator Dr. Isaac Gilmore, the Cyborgs battle both the evil organization and a society that condemns them as less than human.

The combination of super-mechanical SF action and the tragic human drama of people turned into machines was a winner with Japanese manga readers, and the first series of manga lasted fifteen volumes' worth. Ishinomori even tried to end the series, but the readers demanded more, so just like Nishizaki and Arrivederci Yamato-- or more recently, Toriyama and Dragon Ball-- Ishinomori was forced to rewrite his own story to keep his characters alive.

From left to right and top to bottom: Ivan Whiskey, Jet Link, Francoise Arnou, Heinrich Albert, G. Junior, Chang Chang-ko, Great Britain (no kidding!), Puma, Joe Shimamura.

Part of the appeal of the series is the cast of characters - a diverse group of individuals each having his or her own special abilities and temperaments. Today we see these characters as being insultingly stereotypical, and in fact, they are. I'm sure an American comic featuring these characters from the same period would have been full of smarmy, patronizing attempts at heavy-handed moralizing. And in fact, they were. What saves 009 from being a collection of propaganda caricatures is the characterization. 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.

009 was but two years old when the first anime version appeared - 1966's Toei feature film Cyborg 009. This hour-long movie took great liberties with the manga version - redesigned characters, new backstories, and flat, UPA-style animation made this movie a unique vision, clearly remodeled for a younger audience. The sequel Cyborg 009: Underground Duel is similar.

However, Toei produced Cyborg 009 for television in 1968, and this 26-episode Black & White series was incrementally closer to the original comics. Perhaps it's the lack of color, but this show is a lot more entertaining than the film. Manga stories are adapted in their entirety and some original scripts match or even surpass the source material - the last episode in particular features nuclear terror caused by evil toy dolls and a H-bomb sequence lifted directly from an American 1964 presidential campaign commercial (hint -"In your heart, you know he might").

It would be ten years before Cyborg 009 would return to the animation world. Toei's 1979 Cyborg 009 series ran for 50 episodes, with all-new episodic storylines featuring the 009 team battling what appeared to be ancient Norse gods and a revived Black Ghost, led by cybernetic triplets Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. Character designs changed again, now matching the manga costumes, but with a sketchier look more representative of late 1970s anime styles. Though the show was not without a certain Gatchaman-style "hero team battles monster of the week" flavor, the two main story arcs kept things from getting too repetitive.

In 1980 Toei capitalized on the Yamato/Star Wars SF trend and sent the Cyborgs to outer space in the film Cyborg 009: Legend of the Super Galaxy. This visually stunning and glacially paced film transported our heroes across time and space to rescue Queen Tamara and battle the evil Dagas Corps. Released on video in the US as Legend of the Super Galaxy (or alternately, Defenders of the Vortex), this indifferently dubbed film failed to endear the Cyborgs to American audiences.

Persistance of Nine: Cyborg 009 through the ages, from a 1966 feature film to a 2002 TV series.

And for nearly twenty years, that would be it for Cyborg 009. However, in 2000 a new Kikaider animation appeared. Featuring amazingly retro character designs - think Kikaider, only more retro - and a story that stripped the original show of its rubber-suit, screaming-children silliness, Kikaider: The Animation was a hit. I think it was about two minutes into this production that our Japanese friends looked at each other and said, Well, I guess 009 is next.

I had serious reservations about a revival of the Cyborg 009 series. Remakes have been attempted before of anime shows, and it's a hit or miss proposition. Sometimes a gem will appear, but for the most part revivals have been respectful, delicate affairs like the 1980 Astroboy series; adequately worshipful but lacking in the entertainment department. On other occasions remakes share nothing with the original but the name.

I shouldn't have worried. The new Cyborg 009 series is fantastic. It's a colorful, action-packed adventure cartoon that has great animation and a sweeping storyline that embraces both world-spanning adventure and quiet moments of introspection. You need no previous experience with 009 to enjoy this series - and yet, the show is 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. Creating a look that is at once both retro and ultramodern can't be easy, but 009 does it.

One thing that really makes this show stand out are the backgrounds. There are some absolutely gorgeous skyscapes and landscape backgrounds used in this series. Put this together with the characters and the direction and you get a unique spectacle for the small screen.

According to promotional material for the series, this new 009 show is the first anime incarnation to be developed strictly from Ishinomori's manga. This 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. It's true that this means 009 fans are seeing yet another version of the Cyborg's creation, but after fifty-odd versions of Captain Harlock, revisionism is something we come to expect from Japanese cartoons. What's important is that this is the best it's ever looked.

What makes Ishinomori's manga creations unique are his characters - ultrapowerful fighting machines with tragic pasts and uncertain futures. His bigfoot style of cartooning may hearken back to Tezuka's influence, but the resemblance ends there. Tezuka's heroes and heroines may suffer through adversity, but they don't let it get them down the way Ishinomori's characters do. Haunted by loneliness and battered by fate, his heroes are heroes not because of their gadgets or muscles, but because they don't give up.

Will the melancholy mechanization of Ishinomori's life work strike a chord with American anime fans? Is 2003 the year that Cyborg 009 makes it in the United States? As a fan favorite in Japan for thirty-nine years, it's a show that has tremendous otaku influence and genuine pop-culture icon status. Whether or not history will repeat itself on this side of the Atlantic remains to be seen.