Leon, also known as Heracles, is one of the members of the Mythos Cyborgs in Tsuguo Okazaki's Cyborg 009 BGOOParts Delete. He is, in a sense, a continuation of the Lion Man character from the manga with additional settings original to this incarnation.
Appearance[]
As in his original appearance, Leon is a man dressed in a chiton, cloak, and gladiator sandals but with the appearance of a lion from the shoulders up.
Later on in battle, Leon reveals that his lion face is in fact a mask, and he is a man with tribal paint markings on his actual human face as well as his chest.
Personality[]
Leon takes great pride in the chance to battle again, being willing to show off more of his power than he was able to before. He boasts of being one of the strongest Mythos Cyborgs besides Apollo, and that his true codename is actually Heracles, after the hero of myth.
His lion appearance, meanwhile, is something he proudly relates to being based off the Nemean Lion that Heracles fought.
Relationships[]
008/Pyunma[]
Leon first faces off against this cyborg, proving to be a tough challenge with his lightning-based powers. 008 manages to get the upper hand later, but then finds that Leon's true/upgraded form is even more difficult to defeat.
009/Joe Shimamura[]
Leon/Heracles is even more determined to finish off 009, gloating of his superior strength and desire. It is due to the teamwork of 009 and 004 that he suffers a humiliating defeat via both.
004/Albert Heinrich[]
It is thanks to 004's knee missile, grabbed and used by 009 to drive into the lion man's head, that this cyborg winds up not succeeding in his plan to kill 009.
Abilities[]
Leon has electric shock-based abilities, as with his original setting, which he utilizes well in his battle against 008. The fingernails on his hands are also as sharp as a lion's claws would be.
When he unveils his true codename and powers as "Heracles", he utilizes a pair of sonic clubs to attack with. He is also shown to have super-durable flesh that the Super Guns can barely affect; any holes that are breached in his chest seem to heal right away. However, his head is still very vulnerable and this weakness becomes exploited when 004's missile and its explosion blow it clean off.
History[]
Like many of the other Mythos Cyborgs, Leon was once an ordinary but marginalized man in Greece. It was at a chance moment that Dr. Gaia and Dr. Uranus approached him and the others with the offer to become a "God", which he gladly accepted. He would take on the codename of Leon, though his true role on the team would be that of Heracles.
Leon faced off against the 00 Cyborgs in their original encounter on Magma, only for the battle to be interrupted by a volcanic eruption and the destruction of the island. Little did the 00 team know, Leon and the rest had been teleported to safety, to rest in a secret laboratory of Dr. Gaia's until they could be brought out again some day.
50 years later, Gaia (using the body of Ricardo Brown) would get his chance when he activated his Zeus System and Hera summoned Helena to heal the rest of the cyborgs to their full power.
Leon would initially fight against 008, proving to be a strong foe in utilizing his Heracles powers, until he was momentarily killed by 009 and 004. Gaia would continuously revive Leon, who would not attempt to fight at his full power again and who would become weary of the battles. While Leon and the rest would destroy the pods of the Zeus System to prevent Gaia from toying with their lives further, he would get the last laugh when he unleashed his Athena and Ares robots on the team, killing several of them in one fell swoop.
Trivia[]
- Outside of the Mega-CD game from 1993, this would be another piece of 009 media that would attempt to give the "Lion Man" an actual name, both utilizing the Heracles name from before as well as this Leon option.
- This would also be the first realized adaptation to do something more with the Lion Man, as he was slated to appear in the Sunrise adaptation of the Mythos arc, but it never happened due to the series's cancellation. He would appear briefly in Naoyuki Konno's 2000 visual concept trailer for the Cyborg Soldier anime but unfortunately did not make the cut when it came to characters that Jun Kawagoe and Shinsuke Onishi wanted to utilize in the series.
- As Leon/Heracles is meant to be modeled after the Nemean Lion, it can be wondered if his fur in this incarnation would be meant to be golden though a lack of colored illustrations for the rest of the team leave it up to ambiguity. A 1970s Ishinomori illustration featuring the character does give him primarily golden fur, although other apparitions like the 2000 visual concept depict his fur as a pure white.