Cyborg 009

I actually didn't expect it, but I like the show! The whole "superpower group but each one has a specific power" is kind of nice to see even for a show / movie this old. I mean, some of it was quite cliche of course... well from that time anyways, (the main guy is a handsome, clean-cut bishie, the main girl is obviously the main girl because she's either the only one or the only pretty one, and you have the comic relief character, who in this form, is a tiny dude who can turn into anything).
Overall, if I was from that time, I think ... I would be obsessed with it. It's like an old Japanese version of the Avengers.

The action scene are done well for it’s time and it’s entertaining to see how the Cyborg are overcoming whatever the organization is throwing at them. All of the cyborgs have their own unique abilities and they show it off how they are working with each other.

For the voice actors, they have done a decent job. The voices matches the character design and their personality. Even if some of them look like stereotypes, I’m surprised that they brought a nice voice for each of everyone where they could had easily done it the other way around.

I have no problem with how the character looks like, ... for the most part. But the design on their villain is too silly for me. I mean this is the guy who supposed to bring war to the world right? With those things being his actual mouth?

Besides that, the animation can suffers sometimes with repeated shots and sequences. This is troublesome since was on the big screen and not in the smaller screen, but I let these thing pass since it was made in the 60’s, where even Disney was doing it.

It follows the source material well, even if they changed Joe from being juvenile to a race car driver since he would look better I guess. But this movie is more of an adaptation than a retelling, which I think the movie suffers the most of. The story seems to be cover the first chapters of the first arc and the last chapters of the second arc. Which weird in the narrative when you consider 2/3 of the movie introducing the characters and escaping Black Ghost, just to have a time-skip and a final fight at the climax.

Even if we spend most of the movie introducing these characters, we know more about the cyborgs power than their personality. If you go through the movie, it also seems that this movie is more aimed at the leader of the group rather than the group itself, which can be a disappointment for those who wanted to see a chemistry with all the characters.

The movie is good for those who wants to skip the first two story arcs of the manga, but for those who already have, this movie will not give you anything new. Especially that first tv series started two years afterwards.

But I can say that the opening was nice :>

Go and see it if you are into some cheesy 60’s Cyborg action.

I remember seeing this back in the 80s on a Blockbuster VCR tape, back when finding any kind of anime was an adventure. Frankly it wasn't super memorable. I can remember a few things though. My initial reaction was "Astroboy clone." But it was better in the artwork and animation, About average for its day, but would be pretty rough for a modern crowd.

In fact, about average describes everything about it. There was nothing really exceptional or groundbreaking about this. About the only thing I can say was better than average, was the dub. Unlike most dubs of the day, this was not completely ... laughable. It held it's own OK.

I can't find it in me to recommend to a modern audience, though. It doesn't hold up well, at all. If I was grading this today it would be about 45/100. Failing and not even quite mid. Might only be viewed as a curiosity of the earliest days of anime.