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Questions are good things. They are there to get to know others and to find the common ground with each other, with the people we want to love. Well, I would think that the biggest thing I need to learn is to love myself. I think at least. I like lists, I make lists, mainly about anime and manga that I want to read and watch. And sometimes about American books too. My life does revolve around things that I consume. And I do not know if I am fine with that. I would like to fancy myself that I like philosophy, but in truth, I like the idea of philosophy. In the sense, philosophy means the love of knowledge, because we cannot know everything. So we need to start with things that we do not know, even though there are many famous figures in philosophy, I do not want to read from them. Because the biggest thing that I do not know if myself. And, as I am right now, I am more interested in filling the emptiness in me, if that makes sense. But I like questions. So, I went out and looked for que...

009-1 - anime review. "Underwhelming spy anime"

Score: 5/10

"Mylene Hoffman, a beautiful cyborg spy with the codename "009-1" lives in an alternative world where the cold war never ended, continuously on-going for 140 years. The world is split into two factions, the West and the East block. A masquerade of peace between the two is slowly dissipated as the conflict occurs. Through politics, the two factions battle over supremacy over technology to threats of a nuclear attack. Mylene Hoffman, teaming up with three other agents, gets surrounded by deception, chaos, and rivalry as she carries out missions assigned by her superiors." - myanimelist.net

This is the adaptation of 009 no 1; a manga made by Ishinomori Shoutarou that was published in 1967-1974. This adaptation was made in 2006.

I sadly can't really recommend this, the premiss is good, cold war spy show is the future kind of thing, but it sadly does nothing new, and seems a little bit middle in the road. It is a shame since there is imagination in this, the source material is not a bad one, Ishinomori Shoutarou is a talented mangaka and the style the artist caries is unique and has creativity in it. It is a shame that the animators weren't able to use their tools, animation, to bring the story to life creatively and more playfully.


The producers in this anime were Aniplex, TBS, Sony Music Entertainment. The licensors were ADV Films and Funimation. It was made by studio Ishimori Entertainment. The director, chief animation director, and character designer was Konno Naoyuki. Episode director, storyboard, and animation director was Oomori Hidetoshi. The music was made by Iwasaki Taku. It is a 12 episode every one of them around 25 minutes and the show has the rating of R-17 for violence and profanity, and I would like to ad nudity because there are a few suggestive scenes.

The fact that it contains adult themes doesn't really match with the art-style chosen. I would have gone with a more playful attitude towards it since it would have fit the story better. And that doesn't mean that the adult themes need to be excluded from the show. There is a fine balance here, that wasn't found in my opinion.

 The animation style and the character design is reminiscent of the original character. That gives them a nice retro feeling. I think that the character design is beautiful and eye-catching. The animation is beautiful, and I can recommend it just for that. It has a refreshing design and stands out between the other anime out there. "Even more amazing is how the creators of the anime have transferred the atmosphere of Cold War, hippies and sexual revolution that was so central in the sixties to an alternate future of cybertechnology so that everything fits very seamlessly. This has been achieved mainly thanks to the excellent musical score and flawless animation." - Safc, anidb.net

And even though I like characters, I do feel like some of them look like they are from two different anime. There is a style clash between the main characters and the side characters.

The opening and the ending for me was a little bit unmemorable. Not my style.

 The episodes take inspiration and play homage to retro spy fictions. The episodes are self-contained and have a finished-and-done-with attitude towards it. I can't really recommend it, seeing that for a spy show, it is not as good and not as memorable. It is actually quite middle of the road, something that doesn't really do anything new. And this is not really about the source material, this was made in 2006, they should have taken it into consideration that they are adopting an older material and take some creative liberties with it. Either with storytelling or with the animation style to make it stand out a little bit. With this, it is just an okay show.

 The plot kick in only in the last three episodes, which is pretty standard, but the characters are a little bit boring and we don't really get that used to or invested in them. The episodic format fits it a little bit more, even though I don't mind the story that had grown out from this it is decent.

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