Cyborg 009 The Movie: Legend of the Super Galaxy (1980)
This is a first watch of an older film. I'm assuming people reading this will have some knowledge of the "Cyborg 009" franchise, so I'll forgo the backstory of the main characters in my synopsis. Years have passed since the cyborgs defeated the Black Ghost organisation, with all of them except 001 retuning to their home countries and leading normal lives. Dr Gilmore and 001 have been living at the laboratory of Dr Cosmo with Cosmo continually pestering him about his theory of the existence of a super energy in space he calls the Vortex. However Dr Gilmore is not interested and prefers a peaceful retirement. An alien space craft enters the atmosphere and lands in the ocean, causing odd phenomena. Reluctantly Dr Gilmore decides it's big enough of threat to mankind to call on the cyborgs to help investigate the alien ship.
An alien child from the ship soon makes contact with Dr Gilmore and the cyborgs. He calls himself Saba, and is from the distant planet of Komadar. Saba explains that his planet had been destroyed by invaders from the planet Dagas, with his mother and the rest of the crew on his ship killed by soldiers as they tried to escape. Saba explains that Dagas' leader, Zoa intends to use the energy of the Vortex to conquer the universe. The commander of the Dagas military, Garro, appears via a hologram and confirms that Zoa will be the new ruler of the universe. Three ships from Dagas are discovered heading towards the moon. The cyborgs plan to confront the small fleet from Dagas, however 001 and Dr Cosmo are kidnapped by Garro and his men. It is revealed that Dr Cosmos was kidnapped to extract his knowledge of the Vortex from his mind. The cyborgs and Saba set out to Dagas in order to stop Zoa's plans and save 001 and Dr Cosmo.
This film has a very interesting production history. With the overwhelming success of the movie version of "Galaxy Express 999", naturally Toei wanted to get more anime into theatres. "Cyborg 009" was their next choice. Interestingly it had no connection to the 1979 TV series which was being broadcast that time. The two productions were created in tandem and weren't connected in terms of plot. A scenario put forward by Shotaro Ishinomori, the creator of the original manga, was rejected, perhaps because Toei wanted an interstellar epic like "Galaxy Express 999". They instead tuned to an American, Jeff Segal, who had worked mostly on Hanna-Barbera shows. He turned in several scenarios, one of which eventually became this film.
One of the changes that Segal made to the characters was the physical appearance of 008. He informed Toei that Pyunma's original design was a bit too much of a racial stereotype and they should change it if they wanted to sell the film overseas. The revamped character design was apparently based on Sidney Poitier, however long time readers of the original manga were taken aback by the redesign. Toei wanted Rintaro to be the director in order to replicate the success of "Galaxy Express 999". But it seems he had a lot of difficulty with the screenplay and dropped out of the production. Directorial duties finally went to Masayuki Akehi, whom most anime fans would be hard pressed to recall any of his works. He directed several super robot anime back in the 1970s and would go on to direct the "Queen Millennia" movie in 1982, but that's it in terms of memorable works. There are no other staff of note who worked on this film to be honest. The film did eventually get an English language release; a badly dubbed and edited "kid vid" release called "Defenders of the Vortex" in the late 1980s in the US.
The movie itself is very typical of sci-fi anime films of the era. You can see clearly that Toei thought big sweeping epic space operas was the formula to box office success. As a result it's quite colourful with plenty of psychedelic and surreal looking sequences, and some fairly well choreographed battle and fight sequences. I'm really going to be honest here and say where the film falls down is the meandering plot. Part way through the film, there is a sort of side quest to save the people of the planet of Fantarion, which is brought on after the cyborg's ship is damaged in battle and they need a planet to land on and make repairs. This leads to the introduction of the planet's leader, an alien princess called Tamara. She's very much a heroine in the mould of anime films of this genre. I really wish this section of the film was the main focus and I think it would have made for a better film, though the fate of Tamara was rather cliched.
As per many epic Toei space operas of the era, the film is quite long, breaching the two hour mark. There is a lot of faffing about early on in the film after Saba and the main characters from Dagas are introduced before we get into the actual meat of the story. A lot of this material could have be cut with no consequence to the film's story. In fact it would have tightened the film up and made it far more interesting. The other issue I have with anime films of this era is there just isn't much science in these types of science fiction films. It's far more fantasy than anything else. The reveal as to what the Vortex is at the climax of the film was more than slightly silly and a tad frustrating. As was the fate of one of the cyborgs, with the writers taking away the impact of it at the end of the film. Adding to the annoyance of that scene is the explanation of what happened to that cyborg, which again is just nonsensical. Overall, it's a well animated and lovely looking film for it's era. Some editing of it's runtime would have really helped the film as well as some better scripting. It's certainly not the jewel of the "Cyborg 009" franchise, but you may enjoy it for what it is.
