Cover of Cyborg 009: God's War’s Japanese DVD release.
Cyborg 009: God's War was a 3-episode OVA series created and aired as the final portion of the 2001 anime adaptation of Cyborg 009. It spans episodes 49 through 51, and was the earliest adaptation of Shotaro Ishinomori's unproduced final story for the manga.
When the English dub of the Cyborg 009 series was produced through 2003, it is said that all 52 episodes were dubbed, including God's War and the recap episode "The Yomi Group" (which aired between episodes 47 and 48).
However, Cartoon Network USA cut the broadcast of the series short, stopping it at episode 47. "The Yomi Group" and episodes 48-51 were broadcast in Australia sometime through 2004-2005. Episode 48 later was leaked online due to a fan having recorded and ripped it for a video upload, but the three episodes of "God's War" remain elusive.
The scripts for the English adaptation were later utilized for a Latin American dub of the series, which included these OVA episodes. The scripts contained edits that were made due to violence and time restrictions, for the original purpose of being aired on Toonami, as had been the case with the other 48 episodes.
As Sony Pictures never released the entirety of this dub on home video, and several other episodes have been difficult to find due to their limited airings, it is uncertain if the God's War episodes will be ever uncovered.
Adding to unlikelihood is the fact that Sony has been unable to legally stream Cyborg 009 on their Crackle service since 2011, owing to rights issues that were unexplained at the time.
It was later revealed that Ishimori Productions had "frozen" the rights to the 2001 anime after Sony's license expired, leaving it unavailable to be licensed by any further companies and making it more impossible to ever see a legal release of the dub, particularly these episodes.
According to a representative working for Turner Broadcasting, JEArgumedo, on the AnimeNewsNetwork forums[1], Cartoon Network has saved all their programming content in their archives but some can simply not be re-aired due to rights issues (as in the case of 009). It is thus entirely possible the three episodes of "God's War", "Yomi Group", and episode 48 may lie in their tape archives along with the rest of Cyborg 009, including the possibility that the unedited first-run episodes (eg: "Assassin of Flash" with original lines) may also be in storage.
Production Staff[]
- Script Translation: Travis Anderson
- ADR Direction: Michael Sorich
Voice Cast[]
Due to the dub's non-union status as well as the English versions of these episodes currently being unavailable, only the main voice cast is known.
- Joe Shimamura/009: Joshua Seth
- Ivan Whisky/001: R. Martin Klein
- Jet Link/002: Kirk Thornton
- Francoise Arnoul/003: Dorothy Elias-Fahn
- Albert Heinrich/004: Peter Doyle
- G-Junior/005: Beau Billingslea
- Chang Changku/006: Steve Kramer
- Great Britain/007: Michael Sorich
- Pyunma/008: Darian M. Sewell
- Dr. Isaac Gilmore: Simon Prescott
References[]
- ↑ http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3010404&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30 AnimeNewsNetwork thread " Do Edited-For-Television Versions Of Anime Get Preserved?", October 12, 2015.