In the alternate future Earth of 009-1, the Cold War that started in the late 1940s never ended and the world is still split between two superpowers vying for supremacy known as the Western and Eastern Blocs. Like James Bond of old, each faction's spies duel with each other under a fragile peace to keep each other from getting an advantage in technology which could be used militarily ecomonically. On both sides, there are some higher-ups in the goverment who WANT an open war instead of sneaking around in the dark. Mylene is cyborg agent for the Western bloc and she comes equipped not only with a shapely body and a beautiful face, but with a expertise in weapons, superhuman abilities, AND guns implanted in her breasts! She's not above using any and all of those assets to fulfill her mission. Mylene is an expert at improvisation and initiative as her assignments generally encompass a wide variety of missions. On Volume 1, she must avert open war between the West and East and go up against a hitman named "The Egg" who was nicknamed thus because he's so "hardboiled". She must also supervise a mutant extermination squad and rescue an important scientist from a haunted castle! It's all in a day's work for Mylene.
The first thing that catches your eye about this show is it's retro look that mirrors the late 1960's origin of the original Shotaro Ishinomori manga, which was seen as a more mature spin-off of the kids manga Cyborg 009. Ishinomori wanted to add a little more sex and violence to his work than he had previously. He was ahead of his time by making his main character a woman in male dominated Japan. Mylene bears a striking resemblance and is probably the prototype of the Major in Ghost in the Shell and a zillion other cyborg gungirls. While some might find the look of the show a bit hard on the eyes, I liked it. If you've read any of Osamu Tezuka's manga or seen the anime Metropolis or Cyborg 009, it will be nothing new. The style of that era was just more cartoony and wasn't as interested in photo realism. The animation itself is awesome and really flows, probably because the director of the show was a big fan of the original manga and did a lot of the work on the anime by himself. The cool thing about Mylene is that she reverses the usual male stereotyped James Bond spy. She uses men, she uses sex, she's ruthless, but tries to protect the weak when she can. She seems fully rounded. Ok, a couple of moments in the first four episodes were pretty cheezy, such as when Mylene and Egg chase each other for days, trying to kill each other on an island resort. And some of the other characters are overwrought and melodramatic, but all in all, this first installment was cool, sexy, and exciting.
