As part of my senior project, I'll be watching a lot more anime on, well, cyborgs. For this latest review I'll be covering 009-1, a more mature take on cyborgs from Shotaro Ishinomori, the same mangaka who made Cyborg 009. 009-1 is also among the first manga aimed at young adults, made all the way back in 1967. How does the anime fare, made 40 years after the original publication?
009-1. Ishimori Productions.
The whole 1960s - 70s theme is maintained despite the very recent adaptation, and its a little hard not to laugh at the consistent Cold War references. Luckily, the very dated setting is made tolerable thanks to my seeing The Woman Called Mine Fujiko a few months ago. That said, both shows have their female protagonists shamelessly sleep around with men and women alike in order to extort information and get the job done; the super spy femme fatale always relies on her body, doesn't she? What really takes the cake is the boob machine guns 009-1 has, thoroughly vanquishing any level of badass Mine Fujiko has. Like, seriously? I thought boob guns were just a bad Austin Powers joke. I wouldn't be surprised if 009-1 is the origin for a lot of weird 70s tropes.
The story doesn't make a huge deal about Mylene Hoffman (009-1) being a cyborg; this was before Masamune Shirow turned the genre into a mind boggling posthumanist study. I didn't know she was part mechanical for most of the first episode. She infiltrates defenses and obtains information and kills other spies, as one would expect, making for a uninteresting opening salvo. As the series progresses, Mylene stops being a stoic superweapon and develops a personality, a welcome change that breathes life into 009-1's decades old plot conventions. About halfway into the series we get Mylene's origin story, and then she loses her secret agent stiffness altogether, crying in several episodes as her job starts taking its toll. A desire for freedom and childlike innocence become central to the story, an unexpected motif introduced through the completely random "mutant children" conflict. The message is a beautiful one, but not employed as smoothly as I would have liked.
The animation style mimics the manga's visuals in the same way Leiji Masumoto's anime adaptations mimic his works. Unlike Masumoto's latest adaptation Ozma, 009-1 looks very good as an anime. Young boy characters are the main visual aberrations, with freakishly huge eyes often shadowed by massive bangs. It mirrors the Astro Boy look, which always threatens to grow more dated with each new installment of that series.
As far as promoting female manga heroines in an age I assume there were few of them, it can be said that 009-1 is a brave first step; whether or not this is a step in a good or bad direction is another matter. Traditionally it seems women can only find empowerment through heavy dependence on their sexuality, using their bodies as work tools (I'm still baffled by the boob guns). I think stories often make the error of simplifying dangerous women into sexual slaves inside of an inescapable system of patriarchy audiences aren't even aware of. VivisQueen writes an excellent description of The Woman Called Mine Fujiko, detailing that as a femme fatale Fujiko worked because "sex is part of her but it does not define her either in presence or absence... she is merely a woman enjoying life as it befalls her. Her mystery is that there is no profound internal dynamic driving her: she is not torn up with angst, she is not ablaze with all-consuming hatred, but neither is she a cheery shoujo princess wanting to save the world through self-sacrifice." I personally don't think the 009-1 anime set out to make a similarly ambitious statement. And since the show doesn't explore its cyborg roots much either, it's safe to say that one isn't missing out on a whole lot for not seeing this series.
Maybe
the 009-1 manga will be better.
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