This week's Top Page is dedicated to Naoyoshi Shiotani's Blood-C: The Last Dark having its French premiere at Annecy 2013.

Naoyoshi Shiotani's feature film debut, Blood-C: The Last Dark has been selected for Annecy 2013. Read the details here.

Omnibus film Anime Mirai (including Production I.G's Li'l Spider Girl) has been selected for the Feature Film Competition at Seoul's animation festival SICAF 2013. Read the details here.

Hiroyuki Okiura's A Letter to Momo is the closing movie at Nippon Connection 2013 in Frankfurt, Germany. Read the details here.

Read the fourth and last part of our interview with 009 Re:Cyborg director Kenji Kamiyama here.

April 2013: Week 4

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Naoyoshi Shiotani's Blood-C: The Last Dark having its French premiere at Annecy 2013.

Naoyoshi Shiotani's feature film debut, Blood-C: The Last Dark has been selected for Annecy 2013.
Read the details here.

Read the fourth and last part of our interview with 009 Re:Cyborg director Kenji Kamiyama here.

October 2012: Week 2

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Naoyoshi Shiotani's Blood-C: The Last Dark having its European premiere at Sitges 2012.

Hiroyuki Okiura's A Letter to Momo is Best Animated Feature Film nominee at the 6th annual APSAs. Read the details here.

Production I.G and director Masaaki Yuasa are running a Kickstarter fundraising program to produce Yuasa's short film Kick-Heart. Read the details here.

Naoyoshi Shiotani's first full-lenght feature film, Blood-C: The Last Dark is having its European premiere at Sitges 2012, where it is screening in the festival's Official Fantastic Competition section. Read the details here.

Blood-C: The Last Dark is also having its UK premiere at the 3rd Scorland Loves Animation festival. Read the details here.

Scotland Loves nimation is also screening Shiotani's directorial debut, Tokyo Marble Chocolate. Check the details here.

Toshihisa Kaiya's directorial debut, Li'l Spider Girl and the whole nime Mirai project are having their European premiere at the 3rd Scotland Loves Animation festival. Read the details here. Check the Li'l Spider Girl info page here.

September 2012: Week 3

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Naoyoshi Shiotani's Blood-C: The Last Dark having its European premiere at Sitges 2012.

Naoyoshi Shiotani's first full-lenght feature film, Blood-C: The Last Dark is having its European premiere at Sitges 2012, where it is screening in the festival's Official Fantastic Competition section. Read the details here.

Blood-C: The Last Dark is also having its UK premiere at the 3rd Scorland Loves Animation festival. Read the details here.

Hiroyuki Okiura's award-winning A Letter to Momo is screening in September at Buster 2012 (Copenhagen) and at the 25th Helsinki International Film Festival.

Toshihisa Kaiya's directorial debut, Li'l Spider Girl and the whole nime Mirai project are having their European premiere at the 3rd Scotland Loves Animation festival. Read the details here.
Check our newly added Li'l Spider Girl info page here.

August 2012: Week 3

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Naoyoshi Shiotani's Blood-C: The Last Dark and Hiroyuki Okiura's A Letter to Momo, both awarded at Fantasia 2012.

Naoyoshi Shiotani's first full-lenght feature film, Blood-C: The Last Dark was awarded with the L'Ecran Fantastique Prize at Fantasia 2012. Read the details here.
Hiroyuki Okiura's A Letter to Momo was greeted with the Public Prize at Fantasia 2012. Read the details here.

Hiroyuki Okiura's award-winning A Letter to Momo is screening in September at Buster 2012(Copenhagen).

July 2012: Week 2

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Saya, as seen in Naoyoshi Shiotani's feature film Blood-C: The Last Dark.

Blood-C: The Last Dark is having its simultaneous international premiere in Korea at PiFan and in Canada at Fantasia this July.

Hiroyuki Okiura's award-winning A Letter to Momo is screening at Fantasia, in Melbourne and at Buster 2012(Copenhagen).

June 2012: Week 5

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Saya, as seen in Naoyoshi Shiotani's feature film Blood-C: The Last Dark.

Blood-C: The Last Dark is having its simultaneous international premiere in Korea at PiFan and in Canada at Fantasia this July. Don't miss it!

January 2012: Week 4

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Saya, as seen in the forthcoming Naoyoshi Shiotani's feature film Blood-C: The Last Dark.

Check our Blood-C: The Last Dark info page here.

December 2011: Week 2

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Saya, as seen in the forthcoming Naoyoshi Shiotani's feature film Blood-C: The Last Dark.

A Letter to Momo was awarded Excellence Prize at the 15th Japan Media Arts Festival. Read the details here.
Check our newly added Blood-C: The Last Dark page here.
Read the second and last part of our interview with Ren Ishimori and Ryo Hirata, the two character designers of Oblivion Island here.
Kenji Kamiyama is working on a new feature film, 009 RE:CYBORG. Read the details here.
A Letter to Momo is going to have its Middle East premiere at the 8th Dubai International Film Festival. Check the details here.
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The omnibus Anime Mirai is one of the five movies selected for the Feature Films Competition category of the 17th Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival (SICAF 2013), to be held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, from July 24 to 28, 2013. This year the festival selected 152 works among 1225 entries from 53 countries

Anime Mirai ("the future of animation") is a collective project from four leading Japanese production studios selected by the Japan Animation Creators Association (JAniCA) under the patronage of the Agency for Cultural Affairs for the purpose of training young animators on-the-job. All key animators have been selected among staff with less than five years of experience.
The four episodes are, Juju the Weightless Dugong (directed by Hiroshi Kawamata), Pretending Not to See (directed by Shinpei Miyashita), Li'l Spider Girl (directed by Toshihisa Kaiya) and Buta (directed by Kazuhide Tomonaga). Production I.G produced Li'l Spider Girl, directed by Toshihisa Kaiya.

Supported by its broad and intense international network, SICAF aims at one of Asia's biggest international animated film festivals, presenting new technology and new trends of animated films. SICAF is an ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film d'Animation) recognized film festival that attracts more than 100,000 visitors and participants every year.

Screening schedule:
TBA

SICAF 2013 Official Website:
http://www.sicaf.org/2013/eng/

© 2012 Production I.G

Hiroyuki Okiura's award-winning second directorial effort, A Letter to Momo has been selected as the closing film of the 13th Nippon Connection Film Festival (Nippon Connection 2013), to be held in Frankfurt, Germany, from June 4 to 9, 2013. A Letter to Momo will be screened after the festival's award ceremony.

Nippon Connection is the largest festival for Japanese cinema in the world showcasing exciting and creative cinema from Japan, from of avant-garde films, to anime and blockbusters as well as documentaries.

Screening schedule:
Date: June 9, 2013 (Sun)
Time: 19:45
Place: Mousonturm Saal

Nippon Connection 2013 official website:
http://www.nipponconnection.com/nc-2013-english.html

© 2012 "A Letter to Momo" Film Partners

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Kenji Kamiyama's new stereoscopic 3D feature film, 009 Re:Cyborg.

Read the fourth and last part of our interview with 009 Re:Cyborg director Kenji Kamiyama here.

Naoyoshi Shiotani's feature film debut, Blood-C: The Last Dark has been selected for Annecy 2013. Read the details here.

Omnibus film Anime Mirai (including Production I.G's Li'l Spider Girl) has been selected for the Feature Film Competition at Seoul's animation festival SICAF 2013. Read the details here.

Hiroyuki Okiura's A Letter to Momo is the closing movie at Nippon Connection 2013 in Frankfurt, Germany. Read the details here.

March 2013: Week 5

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Kenji Kamiyama's new stereoscopic 3D feature film, 009 Re:Cyborg.

Read the fourth and last part of our interview with 009 Re:Cyborg director Kenji Kamiyama here.

009 Re:Cyborg is having its European premiere at the British Film Institute in London, UK on April 4th, 2013. Check the details here.

009 Re:Cyborg is screening in competition at the Future Film Festival 2013 in Bologna, Italy. Check the details here.

009 is also screening at Imagine 2013 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Check the details here.

March 2013: Week 1

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Kenji Kamiyama's new stereoscopic 3D feature film, 009 Re:Cyborg.

Read the third part of our interview with 009 Re:Cyborg director Kenji Kamiyama here.

Hiroyuki Okiura's A Letter to Momo is screening in competition in Lisbon at the Monstra Animated Film Festival. Check the details here.

February 2013: Week 4

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Kenji Kamiyama's new stereoscopic 3D feature film, 009 Re:Cyborg.

Read the second part of our interview with 009 Re:Cyborg director Kenji Kamiyama here.

January 2013: Week 4

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Kenji Kamiyama's new stereoscopic 3D feature film, 009 Re:Cyborg.

Due to server maintenance, this site may be down temporarily from 7:00 am until evening (Japan time) on February 3, 2013. E-mails sent to our addresses during the maintenance period may not be delivered. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Read the first part of our interview with 009 Re:Cyborg director Kenji Kamiyama here.

Hiroyuki Okiura's A Letter to Momo received the Prize of Excellence in Animation at the 36th Japan Academy Prizes, and it is one of the five nominees for the Best Animation of the Year Prize. Read the details here.

A Letter to Momo celebrates its Swedish premiere at the 36th Goteborg International Film Festival. Read the details here.

Okiura's film is also screening in competition at the 32nd Anima film festival in Brussels. Read the details here.

December 2012: Week 4

This week's Top Page is dedicated to Kenji Kamiyama's new stereoscopic 3D feature film, 009 Re:Cyborg.

We would like to thank all the people around the world who are supporting Production I.G, and wish all of you a peaceful and prosperous 2013!

Naoyoshi Shiotani's award-winning full-length feature film debut, Blood-C: The Last Dark is part of the Official Selection at the 37th Annecy Animation Film Festival, to be held in Annecy, France from June 10 to June 15, 2013. The screening in Annecy marks the film's French premiere.

Annecy Artistic Director, Marcel Jean, commented on this year's selection that "Japanese production has particularly stood out through the number and quality of science fiction, horror or genre films."

Established in 1960, the Annecy Animation Film Festival is the world's oldest and most prestigious animation film festival. This year, the festival received 2461 entries from 88 countries, of which 87 were feature films.

Screening schedule:
Date: June 10, 2013 (Tue)
Time: 18:00
Place: Decavision 4

Date: June 14, 2013 (Fri)
Time: 10:30
Place: Decavision 3

Annecy 2013 official website:
http://www.annecy.org/home/

© 2012 Production I.G, CLAMP / Project BLOOD-C Movie

Kenji Kamiyama's highly anticipated stereoscopic 3D feature film, 009 Re:Cyborg is having its European premiere at the prestigious British Film Institute in London, UK, on April 4, 2013. Director Kamiyama and producer Tomohiko Ishii will be attending the screening. A Q&A session with the two guests will follow the screening.

Kamiyama and Ishii will also attend the Scottish premiere of the film, to be held on April 6th at the Glasgow Film Theatre.

009 Re:Cyborg is slated for theatrical release in the UK from June 2013.

BFI screening information:
Date: April 4, 2013 (Tue)
Time: 8:20pm
Place: NFT1

GFT screening information:
Date: April 6, 2013 (Sat)
Time: 1:25pm
Place: GFT 1

For more information, please refer to the following official websites:

BFI
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/preview-009-re-cyborg-3d

GFT
http://www.glasgowfilm.org/theatre/whats_on/5076_009_re_cyborg_3d

© 2012 009 RE:CYBORG Production Committee

Kenji Kamiyama highly anticipated stereoscopic 3D feature film, 009 Re:Cyborg is one of the nine feature films nominated for the Platinum Grand Prize at the 15th Future Film Festival, to be held in Bologna, Italy from April 12 to 17, 2013. The screening at the Future Film Festival marks the movie's Italian premiere.

The Future Film Festival is one of the most prominent international genre film festivals in Italy, showcasing the latest trends of digital technology and animation (whether 2D or 3D) in modern filmmaking.

Screening schedule:

Date: April 14, 2013 (Sun)
Time: 12:00
Place: Cinema Lumière

Date: April 15, 2013 (Mon)
Time: 22:00
Place: Cinema Lumière

Future Film Festival 2013 official website:
http://www.futurefilmfestival.org/

© 2012 009 RE:CYBORG Production Committee

Re:Cyborg, 27 Years Later - PART 4

Let's talk a bit about the technical side of the project. This movie is done in full CG, which is still unusual for Japan. And it is in stereoscopic 3D, which is even more exceptional.
I have been always advocating a more substantial introduction of computer-generated animation in this country. 009 Re:Cyborg is the natural evolution of a short film Oshii directed a few years ago, and it was meant to be in 3D from the very beginning. Hand-drawn animation, which is the prevalent technique used in Japanese productions, doesn't match well with stereoscopic cinema, simply because you have to film in traditional 2D and then convert into 3D. The only way to create native 3D images is to work with the computer from the very beginning, so I had a good opportunity to experiment. The result is a 2D-looking stereoscopic 3D full CG animated film. I think nobody has ever tried that before.

The characters look more like traditional 2D cell animation.
I do not consider the computer as a replacement to hand-drawn animation, but as a tool that help us to expand the potentials of what can be achieved on screen. I wanted to keep the distinctiveness of Japanese animation in terms of visual rendering, and I was not interested in pursuing photorealistic effects or reproducing every single and subtle human movement relying on massive use of motion capture. We followed, if possible the opposite approach, subtracting instead of adding information. With CG animation you can have 24 different images every second, the same rate of live action filming. But for this film, we reduced them to 8 per second, which is the standard in traditional 2D hand-drawn animation.

Wasn't the staff puzzled at such request?
Let's say that when I explained to the animators that I wanted a hand-drawn feel to the animation, each of the CG staff interpreted this directive their own way. I had to start with a lecture about the rules I had been following in making animation. You start from very basic things, for example the number of different frames used to render lips movement when a character talks.

What advantages did you find in using 3D CG?
The biggest advantage is indeed the fact that with CG you can correct and modify much easier and quicker than in hand-drawn animation. Another cool thing is that you can test different camera movements, lights and lenses, a kind of luxury you definitely cannot afford otherwise. Same for the characters’ acting. For this reason, there's more interaction between the director and the animators. With hand-drawn animation, usually there's only one general meeting with the animators at the very beginning, then the rendering is very much up to each individual. This time I sat with the animators in front of the monitor and discussed with them the best thing to do. I think it was much more fulfilling for both.

How about disadvantages, if any?
Well, it was something I discovered this time, but... in 2D you prepare the main design sheet, and then the animators just follow them. In 3D you have to create the model for each single prop appearing on screen.

Do you have a message for the fans?
Remakes of popular properties tend to be negatively perceived by the audience a priori. However, I believe that the original reinterpretation of classic characters is steadily establishing itself as an important component of today's popular culture. It is my hope that this 009 Re:Cyborg could stand as the first of many future projects related to the 00-series cyborgs.

(4 - end)

© 2012 009 RE:CYBORG Production Committee

Kenji Kamiyama highly anticipated stereoscopic 3D feature film, 009 Re:Cyborg is part of the official selection of Imagine: 29th Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival (Imagine 2013), to be held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands from April 8 to 17, 2013. The screening at Imagine 2013 marks the movie's Dutch premiere.

An affiliated member of the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation, in its previous editions the AFFF has awarded filmmakers such as Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), David Cronemberg (eXistenZ) and Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away)

Screening schedule:

Date: April 10, 2013 (Wed)
Time: 20:35
Place: Eye Room 1

Date: April 11, 2013 (Thu)
Time: 18:30
Place: Eye Room 1

29th Imagina: AFFF official website:
http://www.imaginefilmfestival.nl/en/

© 2012 009 RE:CYBORG Production Committee

The Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese government announced the 30 winners of the 63rd Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) Art Encouragement Prizes on March 12, 2013. This year's winner of the MEXT Art Encouragement New Talent Prize in the Media Arts category is director Hiroyuki Okiura for his work on his second directorial effort, A Letter to Momo.

The jury commented the award as follows:
"It can no longer be ignored that the outstanding craftsmanship and tireless efforts of many professional artists in the animation industry in this country have greatly contributed to the spreading of the Cool Japan image abroad. Hiroyuki Okiura is undoubtedly a major presence among them. He took the challenge of conceiving, writing and directing his own work. And by making full use of the two hours of the movie's runtime, he succeeded in convincingly portraying the coming of age of the young protagonist, Momo Miyaura. There's enough to thrill any film producer around."

The MEXT Art Encouragement Prizes began in 1950, and the Rookie Award was added in the 1960s. This is the fifth year in which prizes were awarded in the Media Arts category, which focuses on newer expressions of art through media such as animation, manga, and video game art.

Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs official website (Japanese only):
http://www.bunka.go.jp/

© 2012 "A Letter to Momo" Film Partners

Re:Cyborg, 27 Years Later - PART 3

How much were you familiar with the original comic?
Cyborg 009 was that kind of comic book you could always find at the doctor's waiting room. It was that popular. However, I think my generation was more familiar with the TV anime adaptation made in 1979. When I got involved in the project, I obviously read it through from beginning to end.

Did you have any favourite cyborg at the time?
Perhaps Albert (004), the German guy. I guess it was because he looked more "cyborg" than any other in the team.

The design of the nine cyborgs has been drastically... updated.
I decided to rely on Gato Aso for the character designs, as I had the honour to work with him at the time of Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, where he did an excellent job. This choice came from the idea of abandoning the cartoony style of the original comic and pursue a more realistic and cinematic approach to it. We spent time in finding the right balance without disappointing the fans. But a Mohican hairstyle could not possibly fit with a Native American bearing the name of Geronimo.

And Jet's nose is gone, too.
Can you believe it's the first thing the fans here commented? But it could not exist in the world of 009 Re:Cyborg. I asked Aso-san to design a handsome American guy, as I was aware the original Jet was very popular among the female audience. We did keep the aerodynamic feel to it in his hairstyle, though.

Other major changes?
GB was a kind of funny character in the comic and in the previous anime adaptations. Aso-san's design made him a handsome young man, but he changed again with the 3D modeling, where he became this rather cool mature man. We also arranged Ivan's front hair, which constantly covered his eyes in Ishinomori's design, as we wanted to see his facial expression. Chang Changku is possibly the closest to the original design. When the early modeling came up, somebody said it strangely looked like Oshii-san, but I swear it was not intended. Joe was a quick one, too. We just arranged his hairstyle so it could work in 3D. For Françoise, her iconic item, or the hair band she's always wearing, did not match very well with the adult image we were looking for, but eventually we kept it.

(3 - to be continued)

© 2012 009 RE:CYBORG Production Committee

Hiroyuki Okiura's award-winning second directorial effort, A Letter to Momo is one of the twelve animated feature films selected for the Feature Competition of the 12th Monstra - Lisbon Animated Film Festival (Monstra 2013), to be held in Lisbon, Portugal, from March 7 to 17, 2013.

The jury in this competition consists of Spanish director of animation Anna Solanas, Brazilian filmmaker Chico Liberato, Japanese director and graphic designer Mirai Mizue, Bulgarian director Theodore Ushev and Portuguese composer Paulo Curado.

Monstra - Lisbon Animated Film Festival is strongly committed to show the best in animation from all over the world and promotes new dialogues between the art of animation and the performance art, the interactivity, among others. Started in 2000, the festival was attended by 36,000 people in 2012. Films from 48 countries have been selected for the 2013 edition.

Screening schedule:
Date: March 12, 2013 (Tue)
Time: 19:30
Place: Cinema City Alvalade, Sala 1

Date: March 15, 2013 (Fri)
Time: 14:30
Place: Cinema São Jorge, Sala 3

Monstra 2013 official website:
http://www.monstrafestival.com/

© 2012 "A Letter to Momo" Film Partners

Re:Cyborg, 27 Years Later - PART 2

Was the script difficult to develop?
Yes and no. I knew exactly where I wanted to land the story upon and what I wanted to convey. However, I wasn't really sure about which way I should take to get there. More than once I had this feeling of traveling through a foreign land. The character development for the "new" Joe proved to be especially challenging.

Talking about Joe (009), in the early poster artwork he is depicted wearing the high school uniform, which never happened in the original comic. This looked very new and unexpected to the fans.
In the original comic he is publicly known as a car racer named Hurricane Joe. But cyborgs do not age, and he could not possibly remain exposed to the media in his never changing 18-year-old appearance. So we developed this idea of Joe living his life as an eternal high school student, a situation that is causing great psychological distress to his mind, but that he is unable to get away from. Any reference to the situation of the young generations in this country is, of course, intended.

Joe and Jet seem to be central to the story.
When you work with this kind of material, you easily fall into the common place of creating a guest character or a villain that becomes the centre the whole drama revolves upon. I wanted to avoid that, especially because this is the first animation adaptation of Cyborg 009 in more than a decade, so I rather concentrated on building the story around the nine cyborgs and how they interact with each other and cope in a more realistic world setting. As Jet is from the United States, he is in the position to have a wider vision of what it is happening in the world. The falling out he had with Joe was easy to imagine as the two are the most exuberant personalities in the bunch, and perhaps the two most powerful cyborgs, too.
I also tried to restore a more active role for Françoise (003) and her much debated affection for Joe. In the comic book, especially in the shorter chapters, Joe was always having a romantic involvement with the female guest character, but as I said, focusing on guest characters was not what I wanted to do. Françoise has been watching over Joe for 27 years, but she has developed a way to cope with this situation and express her feelings in her own way.
In general, however, I was careful to have each cyborg give their contribution to the story, although I had only 100-some minutes and there were nine of them.

(2 - to be continued)

© 2012 009 RE:CYBORG Production Committee

Hiroyuki Okiura's second directorial effort, A Letter to Momo was awarded the Prize of Excellence in the animation category at the 36th annual Japan Academy Prizes.

Started in 1978 and operated by the Nippon Academy Prize Association with the mission of supporting the advancement and development of cinematic art, technique and science, the Japan Academy Prizes added the Animation Category six years ago, and A Letter to Momo is one of the five animated movies awarded for this 36th edition. Winners become nominees for the Best Animated Feature Film Prize, that will be conferred by the jury during the official ceremony on March 8, 2013.
Movies released in Japan between December 11, 2011, and December 15, 2012 are eligible for the prizes, and a committee of 3,931 academy members voted on 171 films submitted for consideration.

In the past years, Mamoru Oshii's The Sky Crawlers and Shinsuke Sato's Oblivion Island both received the same prize.

Japan Academy Prizes official website (Japanese only):
http://www.japan-academy-prize.jp/prizes/36.html

© 2012 "A Letter to Momo" Film Partners

Re:Cyborg, 27 Years Later - PART 1

Cyborg 009, the original comic series that Shotaro Ishinomori started in 1964, is now considered a classic in Japan, where its influence is comparable to what X-Men is to Americans. How did you approach the task of making a new movie from this highly respected milestone in the Japanese manga and anime culture?
Our idea from the very beginning was to answer to the question, what would these nine cybernetically enhanced heroes do if they were living in present days? In the original story, they turn against those who transformed them into cyborgs against their will -in other words, their own creators- and eventually win their long battle. But after this victory, they decide to continue to fight, this time for world peace. Through the various story arcs of the comic series, they ask themselves in many occasions about the meaning of their battle and of "justice" itself. However, Ishinomori did not write new pages after 1987, and we are not to know what happened to the nine 00-series cyborgs after the end of the Cold War. So the movie starts in 2013, after a three decade-long blank -to be precise, 27 years- in the actual comic timeline.

Of course the next question is: and what happened?
If you think about cyborgs in a realistic way, you assume they'd require a certain degree of maintenance, which would also be rather expensive. So expensive that nor even the Gilmore Foundation can afford it. And since their role as an impartial multinational peace keeping force was deemed exhausted with the end of the Cold War, the team scattered. Some of them went back to their home countries and found employment within organizations big enough to keep them in shape, and interested in exploiting what they could do best. So GB (007) works for MI6, Jet (002) is with the NSA, and Albert (004) is an instructor for the GSG-9 (*). Some degree of indifference toward Doctor Gilmore and the whole idea of working as a team is there, too. The Chinese cyborg, Chang Changku (006), is a successful entrepreneur who operates a world-scale restaurant chain. In the original comic, whenever Chang Changku tried to open a new restaurant, he inevitably failed.

Which brings us to the next question: what kind of enemy would the 00-series cyborgs face in the 21st century?
Of course that was our big question, too. I took inspiration from two of the most ambitious and thought-provoking story arcs in the original comic, which also happened to have been left unresolved, where the nine cyborgs question the very principle of "justice" they had been fighting for, and their own role in this world. I reduced the fantasy elements and introduced more serious and modern political issues. And I transferred everything in the very near future, as the movie starts in February 2013, just three months ahead the opening date of the movie in Japanese theaters. We can say that our world changed from the Berlin Wall era to the post 9/11, and so it changed for super heroes conceived under a different political and social situation. I had 007 say the line, "When did we stop being the good guys?" which somehow epitomizes the premises of the movie. I cannot really add more to it as this would result in a spoiler...

(*) Great Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (Military Intelligence, Section 6), United States' National Security Agency and Germany's counter-terrorism unit Grenzschutzgruppe 9, respectively.

(1 - to be continued)

© 2012 009 RE:CYBORG Production Committee