Craig's Cybersix Page

Episode 1 - Mysterious Shadow (A+)

This episode seems to be a combination of a "monster of the week" one and one that develops Cybersix's and Lucas' relationship. Credits: story by Koji Takeuchi, written by Catherine Donahue Girzyc, directed by Keiichiro Furuya.

The monster of the week is Terra, a monster made of mud that has the morphing and regrouping capabilities of the T-1000 from the Terminator 2 movie. Presumably, the monster is named "Terra" to refer to Earth or Mud, but it is also a play on the word "terror". "Terra" also seems more like a girl's name, though the monster is referred to as "he". It is supposed to receive a mind transfer from José, but José doesn't think his small stature makes the monster menacing enough, so he does a mind transfer of five Fixed Ideas, sucking them completely dry. One can only guess what the monster would have done with José's mind, but the Fixed Ideas' minds mostly make it big and dumb.

Back at school, Lucas invites Adrian out to a movie. Strangely, it's a romance movie and Lucas winks his eye when he says "It's a romance", so one can speculate about what kind of homoerotic ideas might be going through Lucas' mind, or speculate that he is subconsciously attracted to the Cybersix that peeks through Adrian's disguise. Probably he's just kidding with the wink, though it makes Adrian uncomfortable enough to decline.

Of course, Cybersix is saddened by declining. I think that I can understand some of the psychology. Cybersix is sad because she wants to have a relationship, but she believes that it's an utter impossibility. This would make anyone depressed. Lucas saying to Adrian, "Maybe next time, huh" just makes it even worse. I'm reminded of an interesting quotation, "Abstainer, n.: A weak person who [cannot resist] the temptation of denying himself a pleasure." (Ambrose Bierce).

Still, Cybersix tortures herself by wondering what it would be like to go out on a date with Lucas. "So, Lucas likes romance movies." I'm sure she realizes by now that Lucas is single and interested in her (though maybe she has trouble believing the second part).

Lucas goes to the movie theatre alone and stands outside in line to see "Love is True". Cybersix presumably follows him there, and sits sadly on a rooftop about a block away, with Data 7, staring down at a red dress in a shop window below. This could have been a really cool scene, but Cybersix's face doesn't seem to be drawn properly here or in the rest of the episode, and it doesn't look very attractive. Anyway, she sadly imagines a night of dancing with Lucas wearing the red dress, "How beautiful it could be." She looks pretty good in a dress. Just as she and Lucas are about to kiss in her imagination, we are thrown back into the conventional plot as the monster attacks a little girl and her mom in front of Lucas at the movie theatre.

However, this isn't a conventional VR monster, probably thanks to José's not following VR's instructions. Cybersix is a little embarrassed when she is pulled out of her day dreaming about Lucas. Terra, the monster, is more curious about things than it is nasty. Lucas frees the mother and child and gets grabbed by the monster himself when Cybersix shows up. She and Data 7 free Lucas. This is presumably the first time that Lucas has seen Cybersix since she leaped away at the end of the first episode, and he presumably still doesn't know her name.

Terra attacks her, though he probably sees her as a very curious play thing than an enemy. His main attack seems to be some kind of electrical mind-transferring mechanism. I don't know what VR was thinking by designing this kind of an attack against Cybersix. Her last thought before the mind transfer happens is of protecting Lucas and Data 7 from Terra, and Terra absorbs some of her love and compassion. "What... [is] love?" On a side note, I can't imagine this kind of plot direction doing much for the 10-year-old-boy demographic, though this show in intended to have a broad appeal, including young girls. I think that girls might see Cybersix as kind a Xena-like hero.

The monster is torn between its original programming and its new-found compassion. Cybersix wants to help him. She senses another kindred spirit. Terra runs away in confusion and Cybersix leaps away from Lucas again, who wants to help her. Lucas has probably learned her name by now, from overhearing José ordering Terra to kill Cybersix. She later leaves Data 7 at Lucas' apartment and orders Data 7 to prevent Lucas from leaving, out of continuing concern for his safety.

José is not impressed by Terra's performance and reprograms it to be a much nastier monster in a mini VR lab, using a polar bear and an octopus. José then lures Cybersix into a confrontation with Terra version 2.0.

Cybersix must be a little taken aback when she runs into a room during the battle that has a large pool of Sustenance in the middle of it, the substance upon which her life depends and for which she must struggle to get every drop of. There's enough Sustenance here to last her for a lifetime, though she has no way of collecting it. Actually, her dependence on Sustenance is downplayed in most of the episodes until the end of the series; I guess that drug dependency isn't considered to be a very suitable theme for children.

Cybersix then runs into a tower with barred windows and a tall spiral wooden staircase. She is almost strong enough to bend the thick steel bars, but she can't escape. José then sets the tower on fire while Terra and Cybersix battle inside. Lucas notices the blaze and takes Data 7 to help.

Terra then uses its main weapon again and absorbs some of Cybersix's compassion again. With swelling music, Terra extinguishes the flames with its body to save Cybersix and dies in the process. It seemed a little unnecessary for Terra to extinguish the whole fire, since Cybersix presumably should have been able to jump once Terra cleared her a way through an exit.

Cybersix is saddened by the Terra's loss, "Come back, my friend." "It was not an evil creature, although it was created to be evil." Lucas and Cybersix have a small exchange at the end, where he calls her by name and asks, "Will I ever understand what is going on?". Not today. Cybersix walks away from him again, into the sun set. Fade to black. Actually, the Fixed Ideas in this and other episodes seem to be a little like Terra in that they don't seem to be inherently evil; they are mostly big and dumb and curious and mostly just follow orders.

This is mostly a "caper of the week" episode, though this is the first time that Cybersix and Lucas are shown as being friends. Credits: written by Barry Whittaker & Judy Valyi, directed by Nobuo Tomizawa.

The episode opens with José in Yashimoto, Private Eye's office trying to hire him to find Cybersix. This episode was skipped when Cybersix was show on Fox Kids, apparently because of its portrayal of asians, though I don't think it's very offensive. Yashimoto is shown as quite intelligent, moral, and articulate, though he and his sister are drawn with closed slanted eyes and buck teeth. The producers could probably have avoided this problem by drawing them a little differently, as there is nothing else that could be construed as being offensive in the actual content of the episode. Actually, like Cybersix, Yashimoto and his daughter are shown to have skin-colored eyes when they are open.

When Yashimoto refuses José's case, José kidnaps Yashimoto's young sister and her new friend, Julian. The girl seems awfully young to be Yashimoto's sister, which makes me wonder why they didn't make her his daughter. Maybe that would have introduced an extraneous concerned mother into the story.

While pounding the pavement looking asking people about Cybersix, he comes across what must surely be Cybersix's clothier, which has an outfit very similar to hers on display.

Meanwhile, Cybersix figures that it is time to check in on Julian and Yashimoto has set up surveillance cameras to monitor the city and he catches Cybersix entering Lucas' apartment. The two of them briefly talk like friends about Julian while Yashimoto listens in with his spy gear. Unfortunately, Cybersix's face isn't drawn very attractively in this episode either. When she leaves Lucas' apartment, she tells him, "Thank you, Lucas ... Thank you for listening, for being my friend." Cybersix certainly thanks everyone enough for being kind to her. Either this scene is the first time that she has come to Lucas' apartment to confide in him as a friend, or it has happened before between this episode and the previous one. It's the first time that she has discussed Julian with Lucas, since Lucas doesn't seem to know anything about him.

Yashimoto follows her as she leaves, after jumping four stories himself onto his bicycle seat. I think that even a superhero would find that painful. He also jumps his bike about a hundred feet into the air on to a rooftop; Meridiana is quite a hilly city; I wonder if Buenos Aires is. He can't catch up with her.

This episode seems to be mostly a "caper of the week", with some development between Lucas and Adrian/Cybersix, though not necessarily positive development. The caper is that José has built a drilling machine to rob a bank. Credits: written by Jono Howard, directed by Keiichiro Furuya.

The episode opens with Data 7, who appears to live in an abandoned utility room off from the subway. I guess they've never shown us this before. Why wouldn't he just stay at Cybersix's place? I guess it's to protect her cover.

Then they show Lori in class daydreaming about Adrian. Adrian sends her to the principal's office for disturbing his class again. There is another student at the principal's office named Adam Smith, presumably named after the famous 18th-century economist. Anyway, while waiting to see the principal, Lori runs across Adrian's personnel file and discovers his home address. His phone number is consistent with the Yashimoto episode (333-5829). His record shows various pieces of other trivia. He previously taught at Fraser Valley High and Cariboo High (part-time). Fraser Valley is an actual place in British Columbia, Canada (FV High is a real school), and so is Cariboo High (though it seems like a strange misspelling of "caribou", the big deer on the Canadian quarter). He graduated from Okanagan University; there appears to be an actual "Okanagan University College" also in British Columbia. Maybe these are all places that the writers of the series graduated from.

Adrian has a B.A. from the Division of Humanities Literature and his thesis was titled "The Canterbury Tales and Dadaism in Modern English." And his home address is 11107 Gateway Ave., S., Apt. 4-A, Meridiana, SBC, B6V 8B1. The Fax and e-mail fields are left blank. It's not clear what SBC is supposed to mean, as it's presumably a fictional province/state/country, though it could be taken from "Southern British Columbia". The postal code given, "B6V 8B1", is in the form of a Canadian postal code, though the first letter of "B" would put it in Nova Scotia rather than British Columbia, where the show was co-produced. BC's postal codes start with "V". According to Canada Post, the postal code is not valid. The closest is B5A 4R6 for Yarmouth, NS, according to another source. NOA's postal code is V6A 1B2. Reversing the two parts of Adrian's postal code to V6B 1B8 does give a valid code in Vancouver, BC. Adrian's employee ID seems to be "AS002" (after his initials). They show the whole page in one shot, but it's very hard to read.

All of this information makes one speculate about Cybersix's past. The comic explains that Cybersix assumed the identity of Adrian Sidelman, a boy she found dead in a car accident that she came across. Adrian (Cybersix) seems to know enough about poetry, etc., so it seems likely that his background is legitimate and he really did get a B.A. (Cybersix is intelligent enough and I don't think it's really that hard anyway ;-) ). Going to university would tend to expose one to relationships, etc., though they're avoidable if you are determined to avoid them, and Adrian probably would have avoided people in order to maintain his secret identity, which makes one think that it would have been a lot simpler for Cybersix to assume the identity of a female.

Meanwhile, José is busy with a computer simulation of his drilling machine robbing the bank, complete with spiffy video-game sound effects. VR seems to be unaware of José's machine, so I guess that José has advanced degrees in engineering and has designed and built it himself.

Cybersix and Data 7 meet at her apartment for their nightly rounds but Lori shows up. (Cybersix is finally drawn properly again in this episode (i.e., attractively).) Lori overhears Cybersix talking to Data 7 inside of Adrian's apartment, "What is it, my dear, are you upset? Come on, I can tell something is wrong. You seem tense. Why don't you lie down on the bed and relax." Lori looks through the keyhole and sees Cybersix in her outfit and assumes she is talking to Adrian and storms off in a huff. The plot requires this, of course, but Cybersix seems to be using an *awfully* fond tone with Data 7. OTOH, Data 7 does lick Cybersix's face on occasion. ;-)

Cybersix and Data 7 run across José's drilling machine in the sewer. They leave, but it seems odd that they don't attack the machine right then and there, before it's complete.

At school the next day, Lori tells Lucas that Adrian is seeing "some kinky chick dressed up in a black cape and matching tights." Lucas recognizes the description as Cybersix and becomes jealous. He catches up with Adrian on a bridge and confronts him about seeing Cybersix. Adrian refuses to talk about it, leading Lucas to suspect the worst, and thus creating a rather bizarre situation (as someone else pointed out): a love triangle between only two actual people. This is the scene that they show in the top-right of the screen during the closing credits (of course, I find the bottom scene more interesting ;-) ).

Later, Lori runs into José (literally), and her music mini-discs get mixed up with José's control software for his drilling machine, so José kidnaps her (hence, the title). Data 7 sees her being taken into a construction site.

At the cafe, Adrian tells Lucas that Lori is missing, which is also on the news, which seems pretty strange considering that probably only a couple of hours have past. Lucas is still upset and is quite curt with Adrian. Maybe Cybersix should be pleased that Lucas is so attracted to her to be so jealous about her "seeing" Adrian, though the situation doesn't seem to make her very happy.

José then gets his machine going after recovering his disc from Lori and Data 7 takes Cybersix to the scene. Lori ridicules José every chance she gets. It's a wonder that José doesn't treat her a little more nastily. Cybersix rescues Lori and Lori recognizes her as the woman from Adrian's apartment, "So, you're Adrian's squeeze... cute outfit... bimbo!" Cybersix has a strange reaction to "cute outfit", first pleased, then upset. It's a cute moment.

Lori replaces José's software disk with one of her music discs and makes the machine malfunction. José gets it going again manually and we have the big battle scene between José and Cybersix, causing the required millions of dollars worth of collateral damage, taking out a water fountain, and later half of the ~14-story building that is under construction. The battle scene is well enough animated. At one point, Cybersix saves Lucas (who was walking by and came in to save Lori) and says, "Please believe me... and Adrian", with the "and Adrian" said as an afterthought. Lucas isn't very pleased, even though, of course, she has just saved him from being squished by a ~20-ton pillar. To Lucas, Cybersix bringing up the issue would be confirmation that she and Adrian are definitely connected in some way. At the very end, Lucas and Cybersix take a long look at each other and Lucas smiles a bit, so I guess that the situation is partially resolved. I don't think it comes up again in later episodes, which is actually a suspicious absence.

This episode was pretty lame. It's a "monster of the week" episode, where the "monster" is a swarm of blue birds. The premise was probably an homage to the 1960's Hitchcock movie The Birds (which I've never seen). In principal, the concept of millions of little monsters instead of one big one could work, but birds are just not very threatening. Credits: story by Koji Takeuchi, written by Terry Klassen, directed by Keiichiro Furuya.

The episode opens with Adrian waking up in the morning. It seems a little odd that Cybersix would sleep as Adrian, although it could be strategic in case she is ever surprised in the night, since Adrian is the one who is supposed to be living there. Cybersix uses her natural voice, so I'll refer to her as Cybersix. She has a pretty crappy apartment, with cracks in the walls and exposed lath board. Strangely, Cybersix puts on Adrian's glasses right after waking up. With no one around, I don't really see why, as presumably VR's perfect genetic creation would have at least 20/20 vision. I also wonder about her sleeping habits, as she usually goes out at on the prowl at night and then seems to get up at 7:00 am for school. It shows her sleeping in a couple other episodes and it shows her repeatedly up all night in another. Anyway, there's a blue bird on her window sill and they seem to be all over the city. Adrian meets Lucas in the Cafe, and the TV is showing nothing but static.

On to day two, and we see Cybersix waking up at 7am-ish again. This time there are birds everywhere and they storm Cybersix's window. They attack some other citizens too. There's even a scene of one guy in a phone booth being attacked by birds, where apparently there is also a famous phone-booth scene in the Hitchcock movie.

José is controlling the birds from the Meridiana Power Corp. building. It seems odd that a power station would have a large antenna on the roof with a bunch of satellite dishes. It would seem more likely that only a radio or television station would have that. The control signals for the birds interfere with TV signals. Also, the power station doesn't seem to have an obvious means of generating electricity, like a smoke stack, a dam, or a nuclear reactor.

Anyway, the birds are VR's big plan to conquer Meridiana and Cybersix, which seems pretty dumb. I mean, come on, birds can be pretty nasty if a bunch of them attack an unprotected individual, but it's not credible that they could take over a city. People just need to wear protective clothing or organize a plan to exterminate all of the birds. Which leads me to another point, that whenever VR's monsters attack and try to take over the city, no one other than Cybersix & Co. seem to do anything about it, not the mayor, not the police, not the army. Anyway...

Lucas is attacked by birds on his way home. José then broadcasts his message of conquest of the city while Cybersix makes her way over to Lucas' apartment, and the skys are free of the birds since José must turn off the control signal to make his broadcast. There is an interesting touch of European influence when Lucas turns on his TV to a soccer game after mentioning earlier that the "football" quarter finals are going to be on that night. (Soccer is called "football" outside of North America). Given the various Canadian hints elsewhere in the series, it's a wonder that they're not playing hockey! ;-) Lucas also implies that he has cable, which makes it seem strange that his TV signal is scrambled.

I think this is the first time that Cybersix actually turns to Lucas up front for help on a case. Heretofore, she has always not wanted Lucas to be involved in these things out of concern for his safety. They figure out that VR is controlling the birds and that they must find the control station. When Cybersix first tries to leave, she is attacked by the birds and almost falls, but Lucas saves her, earning an obligatory "Thank you, Lucas." She's always so polite! ;-) (Although, she has survived a fall from Lucas' apartment before.) Cybersix and Lucas seem to spend quite a lot of time together hatching their plan.

They leave through the sewer in the basement of Lucas' building. Lucas is unable to lift the manhole cover to the sewer, but Cybersix has no problem. Lucas then gets all worn out running while Cybersix has no problem (this also happened in Episode 2), and Cybersix effortlessly rips a locked door off of its hinges that Lucas couldn't open, though she's very gracious and almost apologetic about it. (I guess it's not considered all that ladylike to rip doors off of their hinges with your bare hands.) I'm not sure what these demonstrations that Cybersix is a lot physically stronger than Lucas are about, but I think that with a wry smile, Lucas gives up on the idea that he can help her with his manly strength. They then go on to execute their plan. "You know what to do?" "Yeah, but I'm a little worried about you." "Don't. But Lucas... I'm glad you care." Maybe this episode is about cementing their friendship and crime-fighting partnership.

Lucas makes a classroom at the school into a bird trap while Data 7 gets birds to chase him into the trap. The trap works, but they only get a hundred or so birds and there are many more around, which attack Lucas and Data 7. One would expect that there would need to be hundreds of thousands of birds to be considered nasty. Really, this whole bird-trap business is pretty lame. But anyway, Lucas and Data 7 allow Cybersix to seek out the control station without being attacked by birds.

Cybersix confronts José at his control station and disables the control machine, after tangling with some Fixed Ideas and some birds that chase Data 7 to the scene. The birds fly away, but José releases the big bird monster that was controlling the other birds. It attacks Cybersix, but Data 7 subdues it in flight. It's strange how Cybersix keeps letting José run away after José loses a confrontation. She should just kill him and be rid of him. She has no compunctions about killing Fixed Ideas. José vows to be back after he works the bugs out. This is something that always bugs me about comic villains. If they have a plan that almost works but then fails largely by chance (though this isn't exactly what happens here), why don't they try the same plan over again? Eventually, the superhero will run out of luck.

Anyway, the episode ends with Cybersix and Lucas releasing the birds from the makeshift bird trap the next morning. "Lucas, we have to quit meeting like this." I can only imagine how thickly covered in bird crap the classroom is after that.

This is a "caper of the week" episode. Credits: story by Koji Takeuchi, written by Michael Van Lane, directed by Mayumi Masaji.

The episode opens with José finishing his head-mounted mind-control devices. The Police Chief is a Techno that José controls. Then we go to a street market where Julian entertaining people playing "Cat's Cradle" with a string. He then tangles with a gang of thugs and is saved by Detective Enriques. Enriques is a friend of Julian. In the comic, apparently Enriques is in love with Cybersix, though this episode is the first time they meet. José gets six cops, including Enriques, to wear the brainwashing devices and hunt down Cybersix with special guns.

A storm moves in which makes Adrian think of checking in on Julian. "Oh, young Julian. On nights like this, I think what it is to be alone." Det. Enriques finds Cybersix on the street with Julian after the storm. He shoots at her but only grazes her arm. Strangely, he doesn't report spotting her to José or the other brainwashed officers and simply continues searching the street after Cybersix jumps to a roof top.

Other cops show up at the cafe and Lucas finds out that the police are looking for Cybersix. Then we get an interesting scene when Lucas goes home and finds Cybersix waiting in the dark for him. She explains that she didn't do anything wrong and Lucas says, "I know. But until things get back to normal, you'd better lie low." From context, Lucas is probably suggesting that she stay at his apartment for a while. Cybersix smiles, presumably because his offer means that he cares or he wants to be with her, but she walks toward the window to leave. Lucas grabs her arm and says, "Let me help." Cybersix smiles again, touches him on the shoulder and says, "I'll figure it out." We see their hands release each other and swish, she's gone. Lucas sighs. I'm not sure how much relationship development happened here, but the scene is musically scored as being romantic. I guess it provides more reassurance for Cybersix that Lucas really does care about her and wants to help her. The scene isn't critical to the plot.

Data 7 was left to look after Julian but Julian tricks Data 7 with his Cat's Cradle and runs away, to figure out what's going on. He finds Enriques and follows him back to José. Julian, of course, gets captured. Data 7 alerts Cybersix about Julian and José uses him as bait to capture Cybersix. She falls into a glass cylinder (or plexiglas or lexan) that José slowly fills with water while Cybersix pounds on the wall. "This is going to be so much fun! Get the popcorn." This kind of makes me think of the scene in Austin Powers where Scott Evil is ragging Dr. Evil out about his stupid, easily escapable killing devices. 'Why don't you just get a gun and kill them! *Bam!* We can kill them together!'

Julian is brought in and sees Cybersix struggling and gets an idea. He distracts the Fixed Idea guarding him with his Cat's Cradle string and removes the mind-control device from Enriques, who uses his gun break the cylinder and free Cybersix. This has the effect of flooding the whole room with water, which really doesn't stand to reason since there wasn't all that much water in the tank to begin with and it was filling slowly. Then lightning strikes the building and starts a fire and various electrical short circuits. Cybersix then yells "Out! Now!" to her friends, which is exactly what she said to Lucas the second time in his apartment in Episode 1. The good guys get away and all of the bad guys except for José are killed. I kind of thought that electricity propagated at a speed greater than one foot per second. José then reports his failure to VR.

We then have the happy ending with Cybersix and Data 7 watching Enriques and Julian having dinner in a (the?) cafe. "Julian's lucky to have such a good friend. Okay, so is Enriques. And Data 7, so am I." Pan to the permanently full moon and fade to black.

This episode was lame. It's a "monster(s) of the week" episode with the monsters being flying goblins with banshee-like powers to destroy things with their screams. (Dis)credits: written by Terry Klassen, directed by Keiko Oyamada.

The episode opens with Cybersix and Data 7 fighting Fixed Ideas on a roof top. Cybersix says, "Oh, great. Just when I thought we could call it a night." As I've said before, I wonder how late she normally stays on patrol at night. She handily defeats them but is then attacked by four of the goblins. They move in on her and are then turned back by the rising sun, which they cannot tolerate. Obviously, Cybersix has been on patrol all night. The goblins retreat underground into the subway tunnels. They attack a subway train which gets them on the news and causes Julian to want to investigate the subway. Enough Julian already! He finds them in a utility room and they trap him.

Data 7, who lives in the subway or the sewer, hears the commotion and finds Julian. The goblins attack Data 7 and drive him off to find Cybersix. The Goblins have also laid some eggs, which seem to hatch and produce fully grown goblins after one day. All of the goblins look undifferentiated and male to me, so it's not clear where the eggs came from.

The next night, there are eight goblins. Maybe they all use asexual (clone) reproduction, though I suppose that VR could engineer any method he wanted. José comments, "Father's plan is working to perfection. Meridiana will soon be overrun with goblins."

Data 7 fetches Cybersix and they run into the goblins. Data 7 rescues Julian while Cybersix battles the goblins. They manage to defeat her but once again, the sun rises and the goblins drop Cybersix and head back to the subway. Cybersix manages to catch on to a pole on the side of a building instead of falling to the ground. I have never seen one of these poles on the side of any actual building like they have here or in Spiderman, have you? Cybersix finally figures out that they cannot tolerate the sun. Maybe VR should have engineered some sun tolerance into them.

Julian meets up with Cybersix and tells her about the eggs. Cybersix then launches a plan to lure the goblins away while Data 7 collects the eggs, and then to trap them all on a subway train that she drives into the sunlight at dawn. Of course, Julian can't help but get in the way, and the actual trapping the goblins in the train car is a bit weak because the goblins could easily rip through the metal walls of the car with their screams and escape if they thought to do so. José shows up on the scene just in time for Cybersix to let him get away again.

This is partly a "monster of the week" episode and partly a relationship-development episode. The monster this time is a female werewolf. Credits: written by Barry Whittaker, directed by Keiko Oyamada.

The episode opens with a man running through the street after being attacked by a werewolf. He turns into a werewolf himself under Meridiana's perpetual full moon and the original female werewolf is pleased to find that she can infect others. The new werewolf then attacks Lucas, who appears to be walking home at night. It slashes Lucas' shoulder, which is how the second werewolf got infected, and Cybersix shows up to fight it off. After defeating it, it turns back into the mild-mannered man it was before and he runs off.

The next day at school, a new substitute teacher named Elaine shows up while Lucas and Adrian are eating breakfast outdoors. She and Lucas instantly hit it off and Lucas starts acting like a drooling lovesick fool. Adrian, who is watching this, first become a little irritated and then dismissive [what is the right word?] "Oh brother!"

After school, Adrian sees them walking out together and then sees the two of them eating together in the cafe and becomes saddened. I guess he normally eats dinner with Lucas at the cafe, but Adrain walks away. It seems a little odd how Lucas totally forgets about his deep feelings for Cybersix and falls totally for Elaine in a heartbeat. Maybe it's their common inner-wolf.

Later that night, Lucas starts growing all sorts of hair because of the moonlight shining into his apartment. He wakes up with a full beard, tons of body hair, and a big mop on his head. He shaves it off and wears a baseball cap to class, which falls off causing his students to laugh at his big mop of hair. Adrian also takes note of Lucas' new mop of hair at lunch. He quips "That's some kind of hair!" in a well-animated delivery (I think). Then Elaine shows up and asks Lucas out on a date, and this makes Adrian jealous.

Later that night, Cybersix goes to Lucas' apartment, partly out of concern for his strange behaviour and partly out of jealousy, and they get into a fight. "What, you mean that I can't visit a friend just to see how he's doing?" Lucas has Elaine coming over and he gives Cybersix the bum's rush to leave his apartment. "Look, I'm just worried about you. You just seem to be acting..." "You have nothing to worry about! I'm fine, okay! Now, do you mind!?" "Mind leaving?! Thanks ever so much, Lucas!" I think that Lucas could have been a little more tactful with the woman he truly loves, though Cybersix could have been a little more honest about her true motivations. Then Elaine knocks on the door and Cybersix leaves. Elaine can smell that someone was just there and she leaves when she finds out that it was Cybersix.

The next scene is a battle between Cybersix and the female werewolf. The female werewolf is, of course, Elaine. One piece of advice: if you are making a surprise attack on someone, don't make any noises that will alert them that you are coming. The cops show up and the two of them flee.

The next day after school, Adrian follows Lucas and Elaine as they leave. Elaine is questioning Lucas about Cybersix. "And how often does this Cybersix person visit you at your apartment?" "A lot I guess. I don't... Let's not talk about that." Lucas could be uncomfortable talking about Cybersix for a number of reasons; maybe one of them is that he feels a little guilty about betraying his feelings for her and might feel a little bad about their confrontation the previous night. Maybe it's not a good idea to talk to your new girlfriend about your other girlfriend. I guess that Lucas and Cybersix have seen a lot of each other by this time.

Next we see Cybersix changing into her outfit in her apartment. One strange thing about the establishing shot is that we see the angel monument in the background behind Cybersix's apartment, but normally, when Cybersix leaves her apartment, we see the monument when looking straight ahead out her window. She walks over to the mirror and starts questioning her feelings in one of her famous but far too infrequent soliloquies. "Is there really something wrong with Lucas or are my emotions clouding my judgement? Jealousy is a human emotion. Is what I feel 'jealousy'? Am I more human than creature?"

Meanwhile, Lucas turns fully into a werewolf and leaves his apartment just when Cybersix shows up. I guess she was going there either to check up on him or to talk to him and maybe try to smooth things over. Cybersix then follows him to try to prevent him from hurting anyone. He then catches a couple in a car and starts rocking it. "Oh Lucas, don't do that." She doesn't want to hurt him either.

Then Elaine the werewolf shows up and attacks Cybersix, once again ruining her surprise attack with a growl. She orders Lucas to help her to destroy Cybersix. "Don't do this, Lucas. We can't fight." Lucas attacks and Cybersix retreats, until eventually she is caught between them and Lucas advances. Very cleverly, Cybersix says, "Lucas, help me!" She has tried to make him remember who he is before this, but this phrase appeals to his deep-seated instinct to protect her (which we see in every single episode). She could also have brought out the heavy artillery with something like "I love you", but I guess it's not time for that business yet. Interestingly, "Lucas, help me" is exactly what Elaine said to bring Lucas into the fight in the first place. Lucas struggles in confusion between the beast and the man. We also see that Cybersix has either gray or gray-brown irises.

Cybersix figures out at this point that the female werewolf is Elaine and says in an angry tone, "You! I should have known!" Cybersix continues to try to make Lucas remember that they are friends and Elaine keeps ordering him to kill her. On the immediate level, Cybersix is trying to prevent Lucas and her from hurting each other, but on another level, because of the blocking of the sequence, one could argue that she is pleading to Lucas emotionally to choose her over Elaine. Lucas is reduced to confusion and Cybersix sort of hugs him, which I guess sort of means that she won the fight for Lucas' heart.

Elaine then attacks Cybersix herself. Really, I think that Elaine got a touch of Dr. Evil Villain Syndrome in this scene by trying asserting her control of Lucas over Cybersix, whereas if she had simply attacked Cybersix along with Lucas at the same time, Cybersix would have been dead meat. It's like the group of ninjas who always attack one at a time in that SNL skit.

Elaine easily overpowers Cybersix and is about to kill her when Cybersix whispers "Lucas!" (yes, she whispers with an exclamation point), which brings Lucas out of his confusion to defend Cybersix. He tackles Elaine but is thrown to hang off the edge of the building by his fingers. In another bout of Dr. Evil Villain Syndrome, Elaine walks over to stomp on Lucas' hands to make him fall of the building instead of finishing off Cybersix. Cybersix recovers and then seems to have a bout of a similar affliction when she runs over to use a crane to attack Elaine rather than simply running up to her from behind and pushing her off the building. Pushing her off directly would have taken about two seconds, whereas the crane plan takes a full 14 seconds to execute, and Lucas could easily have fallen off in the meantime.

Anyway, Elaine is knocked off the building and painfully falls to the ground. Cybersix and Lucas quickly jump down to join her, which kind of makes one think that Elaine perhaps ought not to have been mortally injured by the fall. I guess it's all in how you land. She turns back into human form and reveals that she was sent by Von Reichter to destroy Cybersix. That's probably to be expected. Then she disappears in a green flash as says, "I'm sorry, Lucas." Her involvement with Lucas may have been entirely coincidental, or VR could have told her to seek out Lucas as a starting point to find Cybersix, since VR may remember from the first episode that there is a connection between them.

Lucas then turns back into human form and the scratch on his shoulder disappears. I'm not sure of the exact physiological mechanics of the werewolf myth, but I would say that it would most logically be based on a virus, which wouldn't disappear when the werewolf that infected you is destroyed. But anyway, Lucas regains consciousness and is quite confused about what's happened. It's quite a common theme for Lucas to regain consciousness in Cybersix's presence. A wolf's howl is then heard in the background and Lucas says, "A wolf?". Cybersix responds, "Probably not. A full moon does that to people". Pan to the full moon and fade to black. Perhaps Cybersix was referring to the the way they've been fighting for the past few days and to her own jealousy. I guess they're better now.

This is a "monster of the week" episode with some more relationship development. The monster is a floating eyeball that can mesmerize people and steal their souls. It's quite an original monster. Credits: written by Jono Howard, directed by Atsuko Tanaka.

The episode opens with José playing a video game and receiving a package from VR. It contains an egg which hatches into a small floating eyeball with a hairy skin around it, called a "Chips Eyeball". (Apparently "Chips" are VR's latest line of creatures, cf "Cybers", "Fixed Ideas", "Technos", and "Types".) VR wants José to test it out. It then mesmerizes José and his techno. A Fixed Idea snaps José out of it and José realizes that he has a powerful weapon to use on people.

At school, Lucas is demonstrating liquid nitrogen. He freezes a tennis ball which shatters when he drops it. Actually, this seems more like a physics experiment than a biology one. Adrian sees this through the classroom window. This is obvious foreshadowing. Is Canada the only place where the temperature scale is called "Celsius" instead of "Centigrade"?

José takes The Eye around the city, mesmerizing the people he runs into, including Lori and her gang. Adrian runs into Lori after lunch and realizes that something is up. José then uses The Eye to take over city hall. The Eye grows in size with each soul that it captures and is now becoming fairly large. It also demonstrates that it has a laser/lightning kind of weapon that it can blow things up with. VR wants José to return The Eye but José disobeys.

Adrian wanders around the city and sees nothing but mesmerized people. He sees José and The Eye off in the distance heading for the school and races to stop him. Adrian arrives too late to save anyone but Lucas, who is just walking out of a classroom. He yells "Lucas!" and Lucas looks at him. Then, he yells "Don't look!", but in Cybersix's voice. Lucas looks at him kind of strangely and then looks into The Eye. Adrian then yells "Lucas!" in Cybersix's voice again and tackles him, but it's too late; Lucas has been mesmerized too. I'm not sure what using Cybersix's voice is all about here, but it is a natural thing to forget your cover or to use your native language when surprised. Of course, with a cartoon, every sound and every frame is very meticulously created, so there is little possibility that using Cybersix's voice was unintended by the producers. Although, there is no such slip in the French-language version.

Cybersix then changes into her outfit back at her apartment and sets out to stop The Eye. It seems like it may be kind of time consuming for her to go all the way back to her apartment to change into her outfit. She finds José robbing a bank. She dispatches the Fixed Ideas with him and then José has The Eye attack her. She knows that she must avoid looking into it, but Data 7 looks gets mesmerized by it. It then uses its laser to attack her, causing lots of damage. She then gets the idea to reflect its mesmerizing attack back to it by using a piece of broken glass as a mirror. It partially works, and The Eye goes out of control and starts attacking everyone, including José. It's a recurring theme that José loses control of the monsters. The Eye then flys off to a stadium to capture more souls. "Oh no!"

Cybersix beats it to the stadium and tries to tell people not to look into the eye with the giant display screen, but the people don't understand and look anyway. For freeze-frame trivia, the screen displays "DO NOT LOOK IN THE EYE!!" and they actually show her making the key strokes D-O-N-O-T-L-O-O-K, although she doesn't ever press the space bar. She is almost a touch-typist, although she doesn't use the correct fingers on her right hand, though in fairness she's standing while she's typing. It stands to reason that an English student turned teacher would learn how to touch type. I wonder if she makes these same keystrokes in versions of the show that are in other languages. [Answer: Yes.]

She then says "No! Don't look! Don't look!" over the loud speakers, but it's too late. Maybe she should have used the speakers in the first place rather than writing a confusing message on the display board. The Eye captures tens of thousands of souls and grows to gigantic proportions before moving away.

Meanwhile, VR orders José to regain control of The Eye. Late in the evening, The Eye is floating over the city and Cybersix is watching wondering what she can do. She sadly thinks about losing Lucas and then remembers the liquid nitrogen, which she returns to the school to get, taking a moment to talk to Lucas in his zombie state and touch him on the face.

José is also after the eye with a big net. The Eye starts to get sleepy as Cybersix tries to jump on to it. José captures it in his big howitzer-launched net, but The Eye starts dragging the anchors with it. The Eye then passes over the angel monument and Cybersix maneuvers one of the anchors to get it stuck in the feathers of the monument. She then jumps on top of The Eye and pours the liquid nitrogen all over it. Luckily, the one tank that she brought with her seems to contain about fifty tanks worth of liquid nitrogen. About this time, one of the Fixed Ideas gets the brilliant thought to fire a couple of rockets at Cybersix, who has managed to freeze her feet to The Eye. I'm not sure why her feet aren't frozen solid like The Eye, but she manages to free herself in the nick of time as the rockets make The Eye explode into a million pieces, releasing all of the souls back to the citizens of Meridiana in a great big fountain.

Cybersix returns to the school just as Lucas is waking up. As he does, he moves to give Cybersix a romantic kiss, but she pulls back. Then she kind of looks coyly downward and smiles. "I'm so glad you're okay... and thank you." Always so polite, and with the "thank you" obviously referring to the attempted kiss. Lucas says "What happened? I can't remember a thing", although when he has his right eye closed while he is saying "I can't remember a thing." He is also scratching the right side of his head, but the "wink" is quite possibly intentional for him and is definitely intended by the writers to be pondered by the audience. We widen out to them sitting very comfortably in each other's presence on the couch in the lounge. Meanwhile, José must explain another failure to VR.

This is a "monster(s) of the week" episode with some more relationship development. The monsters are mechanical circus animals designed to destroy Cybersix. Credits: written by Terry Klassen, directed by Keiko Oyamada.

The episode opens with a full moon, of course, and José working on the mechanical monsters. José then tests the big octopus monster, after VR telling him to wait, and the monster attacks José and we switch scenes. "Okay, maybe it has a few bugs to work out. Ugh!" There are two themes here, one of José disobeying VR about a monster (Terra, The Eye, and probably others), and of a monster turning on José (Data 7, Terra, The Eye). José then tracks Data 7 down in the sewers with Fixed-Idea dogs and captures him using some of the circus monsters.

The next day at school, everyone is looking at a poster for a circus, "The Greatest Show in Meridiana", which Adrian is displeased to read will feature a black panther and "Special Attraction C-6". Holding a circus to lure Cybersix seems like kind of an overly dumb and extravagant plan, but I guess that's how people suffering from Dr. Evil Villain Syndrome do things. Adrian repeatedly warns Lucas not to go, to protect him from danger, which is another recurring theme, which eventually starts to annoy Lucas. Kind of reminds me of the business about the vile in the from the first episode.

In the evening, under another full moon, Cybersix shows up for the circus at the requested time. Holy thunder thighs, Cybersix! The animators drew her with unusually large hips and thighs in many scenes in this episode, whereas she is normally quite slender. Also, why would she show up then and not a lot earlier when there are no citizens around to put into danger and when she can investigate what's going on without José being fully prepared for her?

Lucas shows up in the audience and the show starts. The robots perform various tricks while Cybersix looks around. She takes out a Fixed Idea with a single punch, and we see the green flash thing, which I don't think we have seen a Fixed Idea do since the first episode. It's not clear if she got any Sustenance from it. Cybersix finds Data 7 in a cage and José sees Cybersix and dispatches his robots on to her. If I was José, I would have killed Data 7 when I first captured him. *Bam*! ;-) The robotic spider than captures Cybersix in a sticky web. I would kill Cybersix immediately also, but José has a more elaborate death planned, by pitting her still bound in the spider silk against the mechanical octopus in front of the circus audience. José refers to her as a "robotic human", one of very few references to Cybersix's construction in the series. It's not clear if he says this because it is accurate or to prevent the audience from revolting against the gruesome death of an apparent human.

Lucas sees Cybersix in trouble and runs to help her. She says, in another common theme, "stay out of this", even though she is certain to die without help. Robots take Lucas away and then attack him. He manages to dodge the attacks, get Data 7 freed, and disable the main control for the robots. For freeze-frame trivia, the main console reads out:

Initialize_Toolbox();
Check_System();
Reserve_Window_Memory();
Initialize_Variables();
Set_Up_Menu_Bar();
Min_Pixel_Depth = Get_Min_pixel_Depth();
Open_InnerView_window();
Open_InnerView_Dialog();
UnloadSeg( Initialize_Toolbox );

While ( All_Doen == FALSE )
Handle_;
UnloadSeg ( _Check_Box );

which is confusing gobbledygook to Lucas, so he simply pulls the power plug instead. To me, it looks like part of the main routine of a GUI program written in C, though I'm not sure why it has some inconsistent capitalization, why a variable is called "All_Doen", why there is an explicit comparison to FALSE instead of "!All_Doen", why the "While" keyword is capitalized, why the body of the while loop isn't indented, and why the body is just "Handle_" without a noun in the function name and without the parentheses for a function invocation. "Handle_" could conceivably be a macro, which would explain how it can affect the "All_Doen" loop-control variable, unless it's an ugly global variable.

The octopus shuts down and Lucas comments, "Bingo! Only a genius thinks of the obvious." But José has a remote-control backup for the monsters and reactivates them, except that all of the robots start rampaging out of control, attacking everyone including José. The audience flees and Cybersix is freed by Data 7. At one interesting point, José is surrounded by mechanical monkeys and then runs and hides behind Cybersix's back, like Julian did in episode 2. "Okay, you take care of them, Cybersix!" For a moment, he is even holding her left hand from behind, although Cybersix isn't much interested in protecting him. The monkeys grab José and take him away.

Then Lucas, Cybersix, and Data 7 are attacked by various monsters. Lucas gets free of the robots attacking him by crossing their wires and rushes in to save the day, only to break Cybersix's fall after the giant octopus hurls her toward him, which brings us to the "money shot" of the episode. Lucas is momentarily knocked unconscious (as per usual) and he comes to looking at Cybersix's (concerned) face. While still in a daze, he says, "Oh, Cybersix, have I ever told you that I lo... ugh..." He stops mid-sentence after fully regaining consciousness, though obviously he was about to confess his love for her. Cybersix is pleased by this, smiles, and says, "You were saying...?" and kneels there looking surprised and pleased, oblivious to the fact that the giant octopus is approaching her from behind.

This is a "monster of the week" episode and unfortunately, there is no Cybersix/Lucas relationship development. The monster this time is a lizard-like woman who can turn invisible. The monster was probably inspired by the chameleon. Credits: written by Judy Valyi, directed by Hiroyuki Aoyama.

I couldn't stop myself from watching this episode over and over again. It is the big cliff-hanger ending of the series. It's technically a "monster of the week" episode, though it also features important developments between Cybersix and Lucas and, as the title suggests, the final confrontation between Cybersix and Von Reichter. Credits: written by Judy Valyi and Barry Whittaker, directed by Toshihiko Masuda.

The episode opens with a ship in the sea that runs into an island, though it's not really an island, it's a giant VR monster, which crushes the ship.

Meanwhile, VR is ragging out José for being defeated by Cybersix again (though the exact incident is unstated) and orders him to return to the VR fortress (lab/castle). Data 7 is spying on José and follows him to the VR fortress. I guess that Cybersix doesn't know where it is, although it is actually visible from Meridiana. It's on a peninsula that sticks out into the sea to the west of the Meridiana "horseshoe". In one view of Meridiana, we can see that it has at least three canals or rivers leading to the harbour.

Logically speaking, Cybersix has survived the explosion of the final episode. The producers intended (hoped?) to produce a second season, and they couldn't very well do that without her. The light in Cybersix's apartment could mean any number of things, but Deep in my heart, I know she will survive ;-).

In the comic, I don't think that Lucas ever finds out Cybersix's secret identity, and there are many more story possibilities for a second season if Lucas doesn't figure it out, and, in fact, I think that Cybersix's secret identity becomes mostly pointless to the story if Lucas does figure it out. His Lois Lane Syndrome would need to remain intact, although Lori can be allowed to figure it out.

As for the production a Season 2, I'm not very optimistic. The first season seems to have done fairly well in Canada, but it didn't seem to do very well with kids in the U.S., as it was cancelled from Fox Kids before the full run was complete. Apparently, it frequently won its time slot, but that wasn't good enough. Although Cybersix is critically successful and has won various awards, it very well may not be financially successful. For animation to be financially successful it needs a loyal U.S. carrier and merchandising, and the former only partially happened and the latter didn't happen at all.