Cyborg 009

Nine people — a Japanese street kid, a French ballet dancer, an American test pilot, a German soldier, and more from completely different corners of the world — are taken by a shadowy weapons organization called Black Ghost and wake up as cyborgs. Each one has been rebuilt with a unique ability, and none of them asked for any of it. The story kicks off with Joe Shimamura, Cyborg 009, regaining consciousness in a lab with no idea what's been done to him. He escapes, finds the others, and slowly they start piecing together what Black Ghost actually wants: to flood the world with weapons and ignite another global war. The scientist who built them decides he wants no part of that, so he defects and helps them fight back. What keeps this from being a straightforward action show is how much time it spends on the characters wrestling with what they are now. They're not quite human, not quite machine, and the world they're trying to protect doesn't really have a place for them. The 50-episode TV series has the slow-burn introspection of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex mixed with the classic team-vs-organization structure of something like Appleseed. If you enjoy Casshern Sins but want more of an ensemble cast and less abstract storytelling, this scratches a similar itch. The character designs are dated in the best way, and the international lineup of cyborgs gives it a scope you don't see often.