009-1

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Mylene, in action

009-1 (Zero Zero Nine One) is a spy-fi anime series based on a manga series by famous manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori. It was first broadcast on Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) in Japan in October 2006. The original manga was named "Zero Zero Ku-no-ichi", a pun on kunoichi and a reference to the main character's occupation as a spy, and was serialized in Weekly Manga Action from 1967 to 1970, then returned briefly in 1974. It concerns Miléne Hoffman (Mirēnu Hofuman; "Mylene" in the English translation), a female cyborg with machine gun breasts who works as a secret agent. Prior to the anime, it had been adapted into a live-action drama for Fuji TV in 1969 entitled "Flower Action 009ノ1".

Although it was also created by Ishinomori, and features similar themes, this seinen manga, despite the "00" name and the cybernetized protagonists, has no relation to his previous work Cyborg 009, a shōnen manga (although in the original manga, the cyborgs from Cyborg 009 actually make appearances in some chapters).

The dubbed version of the series can currently be watched for free on Funimation's official video portal here

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This series contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Mylene
• Amazon Brigade: Mylene and her teammates.
• And the Adventure Continues...: In the anime. When the smoke clears from the final story, Mylene and Zero are able to pass off her rebellion as a secret mission so she can avoid being punished as a traitor. There's still work for her to do.
• Artistic License Physics: In the finale on the Moon, 9-1 and Loki are flying above the surface in a shuttle type craft, being chased by two other such craft. They first deploy a parachute, which is then cut loose after opening to block their enemy's view. Then, when the second craft continues chasing, the fuel tank is hit and they're forced to use ejector seats, with a specific mention of the Moon's lower gravity as a reason why they'll be able to avoid the shuttle tailing them. This works, and forces the chasing shuttle to crash - with the two characters parachuting to safety on the surface. The problem? Parachutes can't work on the Moon, because it has practically no atmosphere to speak of! One wonders how they could get the gravity right and still completely neglect that fact.
• The Baroness: Rosa Klebb variation in the first anime episode; Mylene actually seduces her for info on her mission.
• Break the Cutie: Mylene's backstory of orphanhood, abuse and secret agent missions, which makes her a...
• Broken Bird
• Busman's Holiday: In episode 5.
• Censor Suds: When Mylene gets out of the bath in the 2nd episode.
• Chainmail Bikini: Not the whole thing, but when Mylene gets captured, and her captors know about her...secret weapons, they'll usually slap a metal bra on her to keep her from using them.
• Clothing Damage
• Combat Pragmatist: Mylene thinks Egg's habits are silly and pointless. The way she beats him is notable. She reveals that her earrings allow her to track and dodge incoming bullets and takes them off. Egg in turn tells her that his eyes allow him to read her next move and agrees to fight their next duel at night. Mylene wins and reveals that she lied -- her super sensitive hearing is built into her body.
• Cyanide Pill: Mylene has one of these (apparently in a compartment in her mouth or a tooth, as there's no other place it could have come from). When captured, she tricks the one guard on duty into kissing her, tongues the pill into his mouth, and then unlocks her restraints and escapes once he's dead.
• Da Chief: Number Zero.
• Dirty Communists: The Cold War never ended in this world.
• Eye Scream: One unlucky soldier in the first episode takes stiletto heels to the eyes.
• Femme Fatale: Mylene, as one of the very rare protagonist examples. She uses her female charms as a weapon, aside of her Action Girl skills.
• Frozen in Time: For the anime.
• Go-Karting with Bowser
• The Great Politics Mess-Up: Pretty much the whole thing.
• Grey and Gray Morality: Although in all honesty it skirts the fine line between being Black and Black morality and would most likely be so if it weren't for the fact that the series explicitly states that even though all the characters the viewer sees are amoral, there ARE good people working in both their governments. Mylene herself doesn't seem to have much morality as she'll unquestionably take pretty much all assignments without batting an eye including murdering children.
• Hammer and Sickle Removed For Your Protection: In the anime, it's just the "Eastern" and "Western" blocs.
• Hannibal Lecture/"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Mylene delivers one to Egg the sniper about his "killing style" just before she kills him.

'Mylene: Killing isn't a style. It's just killing.

• Honey Trap: One would think that Mylene was specifically designed for doing things like this. It's entirely possible that she was.
• Hotter and Sexier
• Last-Episode New Character: The prologue to the last episode has a montage of Mylene's fellow agents from the manga who never managed to get an episode in the series (although viewers might recognize some of them from the silhouettes in the Team Shot from the opening credits.)
• Long-Lost Relative: Loki is Mylene's younger brother, who was believed to have died with the rest of Mylene's family when they tried to defect to the Western Bloc.
• Modesty Bedsheet: Which gets damaged more than once, thanks to her Machine gun boobs.
• Monochromatic Eyes: Some character's eyes have no whites or pupils, and are just a solid mass of some eye color. Somewhat justified in that this is Ishinomori's style.
• Morphic Resonance: The shapeshifter of the group is usually identified by her earrings, even when she's impersonating a man.
• Ms. Fanservice
• Never Found the Body: Loki in the last episode of the anime.
• Orphanage of Fear: Mylene was placed in a teenage girls' version of this, after her family died trying to escape the "Eastern Bloc".
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Reverse Explosion system is powered by the Psychic Link between every mutant in the world.
• Pure Is Not Good: At some point, 9-1 meets a young woman who she can only describe as "pure." Later, the woman tries to kill her when 9-1 tries to stop her from meeting up with enemy agents. It turns out that the girl is actually an android made mostly out of very pure gold that the enemy agents were trying to smuggle out of the country.
• Retro Universe: The series takes place 130 years after the start of the Cold War, but everything, even the sci-fi elements, still have a decidedly 60's feel to them. Justified, of course, in that the source material was written in the late 60's/early 70's.
• Robot Girl
• Rogue Agent: One episode involves Mylene tracking down her former mentor, who disappeared with information on a top secret Eastern Bloc weapon after having a change of heart about his mission. Mylene herself goes rogue by the final episode to try and save the mutant children involved in experiments related to said weapon.
• Shout-Out: The last episode of the anime features ersatz versions of the Eagle and the SHADO Mobile during Mylene's trip to the Moon.
• Spy Fiction: "Dirty Martini" -- Technicolor Ninja cyborg spy girls with miniskirts and machinegun breasts, traveling the world and looking great doing it... while taking part in stories about betrayal, tragedy, and moral ambiguity, with no happy endings to be found.
• Status Quo Is God: The world political situation at the end of the anime is just about where it was at the beginning.
• Technical Pacifist: Egg the sniper is a partial example. If he's contracted to kill someone, he'll do it, but for everybody else he goes the Vash the Stampede route. However, this isn't due to any kind of pacifist beliefs, instead just being one of his many arrogant quirks.
• Too Dumb to Live: Once again, Egg the sniper. Despite his traditional one-shot killing method proving inneffectual against Mylene, he continues to play-act as if he's James Bond around her, despite the whole 'gentleman assassin' thing not even being a part of his obsessive-compulsive shtick. He procedes to give away all his killing secrets, give Mylene all the openings she could want to kill him effortlessly (she only doesn't to fully prove her "The Reason You Suck" Speech as detailed elsewhere), and even agrees to a battle tailored to give up his advantages and let her win. He never once considers that someone who's explicitly told him she doesn't give a crap about anything other than results and who thinks he's an idiot would lie to him about her own secrets.
• Torpedo Tits: One of the parts of the show viewers are likely to know through Popcultural Osmosis. Mylene's modifications include breasts that fire "bio-bullets", which she frequently uses as a secret weapon when a seduction suddenly goes bad. (See Modesty Bedsheet, above.)
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Dr. Green and Loki, trying to save the psychic mutant children that the Eastern Bloc experiments on and the Western Bloc exterminates, but at the same time using them as an unwitting psychic weapon to try and turn the Cold War into an actual war, wiping out both blocs so the mutants can take their place.
• Why Am I Ticking?
• Your Head Asplode