| Helena | |
|---|---|
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Full Name |
Helena |
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Kanji/Kana |
ヘレナ |
Helena (ヘレナ) is the older sister of Apollo, and one of the members of the Mythos cyborg team. She appears in the manga and various media prior to the 2001 series, where the Artemis character fills the equivalent role. She is modeled after the mythological figure of Helen of Troy.
Appearance[]
Helena has short, spiked-up blonde hair with a golden-beaded tiara worn in the center. She wears a white cloak and Grecian-style gown, gold arm and wristbands, in addition to a jeweled ring and gold earrings.
Her hairstyle and overall appearance start out a bit sharper and harsher in Ishinomori's style, with her hair being more pointed and akin to horns, while her ears are initially not made visible. Her eyes are also initially drawn much like other female characters', but her eyes quickly evolved to be drawn in the black, sparkly "mysterious" style seen on specific Ishinomori women and some child characters.
Over the course of the arc, the hairstyle softens, to the point where in the newly-drawn pages for the tankobon, there is little left to distinguish her from the subsequent arc's character of Helen (as well as Helen's sisters).
Personality[]
Helena is at first strictly loyal to the Black Ghost and the Mythos team, believing it is her to duty to punish those who rebelled against the Black Ghost organization, though she sides with Dr. Uranus' more civil approach and does not believe in ambushing the 00 team and catching them off guard.
She is shown to hold an interest in Joe/009, and at first seems to feel shame at losing to a 00 cyborg. After witnessing his injuries at the hands of her younger brother, she vows to go save him.
Abilities[]
Helena rides in a giant Trojan horse as her transport, and which she can attack from. The Trojan horse can collapse itself into a ball, which it then extends into its true form.
She can use the Trojan horse's eye lasers to attack with, and their targeting vision can track an Accelerator. The horse can also extend spikes from its body, along with being able to form into halves of a ball, which are used to trap targets within. It is equipped with a jet propulsion system that allows its collapsed form to fly.
Unlike the rest of her team, Helena would seem to have no special internalized abilities granted to her by her creators other than what we see with her Trojan horse.
History[]
Helena, along with the rest of the Mythos team, were ordered to take out the 00 cyborgs, though they were soon exposed to the feud between their creators, Dr. Gaia and Dr. Uranus. While Dr. Gaia believed in sending out Centaur D to attack and bring the 00 team back to them, Dr. Uranus insisted on a fair fight.
Helena first met 009 on a beach after he had finished dispatching of one of the centaurs, and unveiled her Trojan horse mecha. 009 managed to foil her mecha by destroying its head, and evaded her other attacks. After destroying the computer system in the horse, he took Helena to safety as it exploded.
She would later witness 009's painful defeat at the hands of her brother, and would follow his body into the ocean, managing to rescue him. She had been touched by him showing her mercy and refusing to kill her, and vowed to do what she could to get him back to the team.
In a clash against Atlas, Helena lied to him and claimed that the 00 cyborgs equipped her with a self-destruct bomb, as a way to make him stop. Atlas let the cyborgs go, on condition that they would return to Magma in an hour and return Helena.
While initially against the 00 cyborgs and having vowed to punish them for being "traitors" to the Black Ghost, she was soon convinced by 004 that the Black Ghost was the true enemy and that it would be in her interest to cooperate with the team. As Dr. Gilmore set to work on repairing 009, Atlas returned, angered by Helena having not been returned to him, and attacked the submarine. Due to 001 swiftly teleporting the submarine away, Atlas' head was the sole part of his body left behind, as the others had collided and destroyed each other.
A while later, after 007 and Dr. Uranus had joined the team on the submarine, Helena was alerted to the presence of the Woman Esper, who was using her abilities to attack them. She left with 001 to go back to Magma Island, while the rest of the team also departed to retrieve 003, who was being held hostage by Dr. Gaia.
Towards the end of the arc, she jumped in the way of 009 and Apollo's rematch in an attempt to stop her brother from killing 009. This resulted in her winding up immolated, as she tackled her brother and the two plunged to their deaths from the volcanic cliff. The two were subsequently consumed by the magma that they fell into.
Gallery[]
Notes[]
- While Helena was never referenced again in any manga arcs after "Mythos", Ishinomori did introduce the "Helen" character that looked similar to her as an in-joke to their similar names, as well as wanting to re-use the character design and concept. Helena would also later appear in some 1970s colored artwork that referenced the Mythos arc, with Joe and Francoise depicted as mourning her death in one piece. She was also influential enough to be adapted into the Cyborg 009: SF Roman light novel, along with Cyborg 009 Monster Wars (which had gone into production during the Yomi arc).
- Helena also made an appearance in a 1981 Cyborg 009 The Movie: Legend of the Super Galaxy guidebook, in an illustration recreating the scene from "Mythos" where she rescues Joe. Unusually, her hair was depicted blue instead of blonde.
- Further backing up the idea that Ishinomori considered Helena and Helen to be the same type of character and easily merged would be the artwork seen on the Asahi Sonorama comic for "Monster Wars", where that incarnation of Helena appears with Helen's design in her civilian guise (before switching to the gown later on).
Tentative design for Helena by Naoyuki Konno, 2000.
- A redesign of Helena had appeared in the early visual development trailer for the "Cyborg Soldier" series. Her hair style would have been tweaked for her to have two short, blonde ponytails (similar to the style seen on Lori from GR Number 5), and a pink beaded tiara. This was presumably so she'd look less like Helen. This design was abandoned at some point in production for the actual anime, and the creative team opted to use Ishinomori's scrapped "Artemis" redesign that was drafted for the 1979 series.