Cyborg 009/Trivia

• Executive Meddling:
  • In the 60s anime adaptation, 007 was turned from a forty-something former actor into a Bratty Half-Pint Mouthy Kid who was functionally 009's Kid Sidekick along with Plucky Comic Relief. Ishinomori didn't care for this change, but had to incorporate it into the manga to some degree. The kid version of 007 got used briefly as a Mythology Gag in the 2001 anime adaptation, in a scene where 007 kept shapeshifting through different forms.
  • The continuation of the manga past the Underground Empire arc came from this and fan outcry; Ishinomori had to retcon the Bittersweet Ending and start a new tale with the cyborgs.
  • The Mythos arc's abrupt end came about when a new editor-in-chief was hired for Weekly Shonen King and ordered Ishinomori to wrap up the story as it was being dropped from the magazine soon. The editorial department had felt that the story and large amount of characters would be too confusing for children to follow.
  • The anime version of "Conclusion: God's War" was truncated to two episodes in its run on TV, with episodes 50 and 51 being cut and merged together. The DVD shows the episodes as they were intended to be seen.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: The 2001 Dub has many of these, even some in the exact same voice. For example: Ivan as Gomamon. 009 as Tai (or Ken in a pair of episodes), a minor henchman in the Cyborg 0013 pair has the same voice as Henry from Digimon Tamers. Take any voice and look it up on Wikipedia and there will be a full list of roles that the voice actor has performed. Some will be more familiar than others.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only the first eight episodes of the entire 2001 anime were released on DVD in the US (the UK and Australia were a bit more fortunate and got the entire first half). Outside of bootlegs and internet uploads (which still don't cover the episodes after Episode 34, Episodes 38 & 46-48 not withstanding), the rest remain elusive. And only ten manga books have been translated into English, with Tokyopop's release only covering up to the end of the Underground Empire arc (which itself was going to be the original ending to the series).
• Missing Episode: Usually twelve, but has gotten down to three.(Two of the three are the two middle episodes of the Pyschic Assasins arc unfortunately.) Only one person, so far, has ever been able to upload a significant account of the series in English past the episode 34 mark (including the last dubbed episode of the series), but the account has been deleted, meaning all episodes afterwards are currently lost to the general public. Fans of the series would greatly appreciate if anyone with dubbed versions of Episodes 35, 40, and 41 would make them available. (Heck, scripts of the three missing episodes and an audio track of how of each of the one time characters that appears in Episode 36 would sound would work. [Because there are many instances of Hey, It's That Voice!in this series.])
• The Other Darrin: As far as the dub for the 2001 series goes, Joshua Seth was seemingly unavailable to voice Joe in episodes 5 and 9, with Derek Stephen Prince filling in for the role. See The Other Marty below for the full reasoning.
  • The '68 series recast the role of 004 at episode 18, with his voice actor switching from Hiroshi Otake to Kenji Utsumi.
• The Other Marty: Derek Stephen Prince was originally cast as Joe, but was fired after an unspecified amount of episodes when Sony executives didn't approve of the voice he used for the character. Joshua Seth was then cast in the role (after he'd initially planned to retire from anime dubbing) and redubbed all of the episodes that Prince had recorded for- except for 5 and 9, which they were either unable to re-record in time or that wound up airing as the original versions with Prince's vocal track.
• Screwed by the Network: As mentioned above, all but the last five episodes of the 2001 series aired on Cartoon Network. The first twenty-five got rerun in the Toonami block several times, while the rest were eventually aired during the Midnight Run. Once. They stopped right before the end of the Pu'Awak arc, deciding not to air the finale or the Gods War arc. This meant the scene viewers were left with was 004 screaming Viina's name after seeing her and her sisters shot by Von Bogoot. Rather curious, considering that other Cartoon Networks (like CN-Latin America) exhibits the whole series, Gods War Arc included.