Ah, one of the lost Sony UK DVD releases (along with various Jackie Chan adventures boxsets, the latest Astro Boy TV show and Heavy Gear: The Animated Series), this kept on appearing on schedules while I was at Videolog, only to continually bumped into the future.

Shotaro Ishinomori’s iconic James Bond homage is one of those series that is going to be continually revisited by the anime industry, either as adaptation (it’s had three so far) or by reference and homage (too numerous to mention).

See also the entry I wrote for the top 100 anime list.

Cyborg 009 – Three Movies (66,67,80) , Three TV Series (68.79. 01) and Live action movie due in 2008.

It has the quite the longevity.

A creation of the late Shotaro Ishinomori (Kamen Rider, Kikaider), Cyborg 009 is the tale of 9 humans turned into super powered cyborgs by the evil Black Ghost group and their battles with their nefarious creators. Ishinomori essentially created the modern superhero genre in Japan with the Cyborg 009 manga in 1963, and continued to dominate it through his lifetime.

The 2001 version seems dogged with release problems, Sony having constantly rescheduled it's UK release in a similarly crummy way as they did with Astro Boy and Jackie Chan Adventures. Which is annoying as it is pretty damn faithful to the original material (007 isn't turned into a kid as he was in the 1968 version).

1968 Version:

1979 Version:

2001 Version (US Opening):