Cyborg 009

Nine people from around the world are kidnapped by the evil Black Ghost organization, led by the tyrant Skull, to undergo experiments that would allow him to use them as human weapons to promote the production of cyborg warfare. While he succeeds in converting the group of nine into cyborgs with superhuman powers, his most reputable scientist, Dr. Isaac Gilmore, helps the cyborgs escape to rebel against Skull and Black Ghost. The nine cyborgs – from which the name of the series is derived – band together in order to stop Black Ghost from achieving its goal of starting the next world war by supplying rich buyers with countless weapons of mass destruction. After the destruction of Black Ghost, the nine cyborgs go on to fight a variety of threats, such as mad scientists, supernatural beings, and ancient civilizations.

In TV Asahi's poll of the Top 100 Anime, Cyborg 009 came in 84th.

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction described the 1966 film Cyborg 009 as an unremarkable, low-budget production with limited animation, whose action-heavy plot was nevertheless largely unexciting, making the film at best "pleasantly forgettable" apart from occasional diverting scenes. It also criticized the caricatured depictions of the African, Chinese and Native American members of the cyborg team. The encyclopedia nevertheless considered the film historically interesting as a possible forerunner of later productions about teams of humans transformed into superheroes, including the Super Sentai franchise and potentially The Six Million Dollar Man. It also discussed the 1968 Cyborg 009 television series, which the entry considered more ambitious than the preceding film, noting that despite its similarly small budget it made better use of its resources, with animation ranging from simplistic to reasonably effective.