Anime / Science Ninja Team Gatchaman

BAHDO GOOOO!

Science Ninja Team Gatchaman was one of the earliest anime to which American audiences were exposed in the late '70s (but not the first anime that American audiences were ever exposed to — that honor most likely goes to Astro Boy in the early '60s). The original series appeared on Japanese television in 1972, produced by Tatsunoko Production; 105 episodes were originally produced, but the English translations used only 85 of those episodes.

The show revolves around five heroic teenagers in bird suits who use ninja type weapons. Each hero drives a special vehicle which combines with the God Phoenix mothership, which is then able to fire missiles and convert to the Kagaku Ninpo Hinotori ("Science Ninja Art: Firebird", or "Fiery Phoenix" in Battle of the Planets). Gatchaman was, in fact, the very first place the concepts of Five-Man Band (hero, cool guy, token female, precocious kid, big guy with a hick accent), and Combining Mecha intersected. The heroes mostly waged battles against the Monster of the Week built by the evil Galactor crime syndicate / terrorist army, which was ultimately led by Sosai ("Leader") X, an alien supervillain who wanted to rule the Earth, and Berg Katse, a mutant who could shift genders at will.^note Although, in the second dub, G-Force: Guardians of Space, Berg Katse ("Galactor", after the organization) is portrayed as the leader, with Leader X ("Computor") portrayed as being merely a consultant.

Gatchaman first appeared on American television in 1978, syndicated as Battle of the Planets, which has its own page.

In the mid-80s, after the popularity of BOTP waned and Sandy Frank was trying to find a new way to market the series, Turner Broadcasting Services became interested and acquired the rights to produce a new adaptation. In 1986, Turner hired Fred Ladd to reissue Science Ninja Team Gatchaman as G-Force: Guardians of Space, and it briefly aired in the summer of the following year. Although the stories were much truer to the original, the budget was much lower than that of Battle of the Planets, while the voice acting, dub names, and horribly, horribly repetitive background music were considered by a lot of fans to be very inferior. After its initial run and a brief revival on the Cartoon Network in 1995, G-Force fell back into obscurity.

The second and third series were then localized by Saban Entertainment in 1996 as Eagle Riders. As bad as Gatchaman was edited for consumption, the later two series were downright butchered into one series, with some episodes even merged with others and a plot twist manufactured to tie both series together. Only 13 episodes of Eagle Riders saw the light of day in America, as the rest of the series would be aired only overseas.

For years, the first series was not available in the US uncut, with the last twenty episodes (including the series finale) ^note in the case of G-Force, episodes 81, 86, and 88-105 were missing. While Battle of the Planets had a different 20 episodes unadapted: numbers 13, 19, 20, 28, 29, 34, 38, 50, 56, 64, 66, 78, 81, 82, 85, 94, and 102 through 105. unseen until 2005, when ADV Films announced the ambitious project to dub ALL 105 episodes into English for release on DVD. Which they did, finishing up the series in five box sets. However, the rights for all of the English-language adaptations expired after Sandy Frank's license lapsed in 2007, which included this version as ADV had sub-licensed the title, leaving fans to Keep Circulating the Tapes for it and the older dubs.

A lot of older American anime fans saw it as kids from one or another syndicator, and have a nostalgic soft spot for it. Many critics do consider it to be a historically important anime. Considering its competition in its time in the realm of Super Hero animated television series was Superfriends, then the superior animation and writing of Gatchaman easily made this series the best in the genre until the DC Animated Universe began in the 1990s.

The series was revived in 1994 as a 3-episode OVA with character designs by Yasuomi "Mezzo Forte, Kite" Umetsu and a soundtrack by Maurice White of the band Earth, Wind & Fire. A CGI Revival film animated by Imagi Animation Studios (who rose to fame with TMNT) was scheduled for release in 2010, but the project entered Development Hell and never came out. More recently, Ken, Joe, and Jun have appeared as playable characters in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom alongside some of Tatsunoko's other greatest hits. A Continuity Reboot anime series titled Gatchaman Crowds premiered in July 2013, though it's largely In Name Only. A live-action movie adaptation was released in August of 2013 and features Tori Matsuzaka (Takeru Shiba/Shinken Red) as Ken. Ken appears alongside other Tatsunoko heroes in the Crisis Crossover Infini-T Force released in 2018, with Joe showing up for The Movie.

At Anime Boston, ADV Films' successor Sentai Filmworks announced that they had acquired the license for Gatchaman, and they later released both the entire 1972 anime series and the 1994 OVA on both DVD and Blu-Ray.

Check the Character Sheet for character-specific tropes.

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Gatchaman provides examples of:

• The Abridged Series: Two of them. Neither one lasted more than one episode, though.
• Ace Pilot:
  • Ken is an expert pilot.
  • Red Impulse is the army's greatest ace pilot.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • The God Phoenix has a rather poorly thought out weakness in that all the team's sub-vehicles have to be docked for the God Phoenix's weapons systems to work. While that kind of weakness would make sense to create the plane's Fiery Phoenix effect since it's an exotic weapon system, to have it affect the regular weapons seems too much. Even worse, Galactor learns about this weakness and the visual clues for it and wastes no time taking advantage of it.
  • Another Achilles Heel turned out to be their uniforms. Each piece of their clothes - shirt, pants, and shoes - turn into their uniforms. Lose any part of it and you can't transform, as Jun finds out. This proves to be an Achilles Heel for the entire team, since it left them short-handed. As if this weren't bad enough, Galactor was able to reverse engineer Gatachaman's transformation technology from the shoe that Jun left behind.
• Achilles in His Tent: Ken made a positive habit of quitting in a snit or going AWOL for his own reasons at the worst possible times.
• Acrofatic: Ryu is large and bulky, and an excellent, athletic fighter.
• Actor Allusion: In the OVA, Berg Katse is voiced by Kaneto Shiozawa, and Katse is just one of the many long haired, lipstick wearing bishounen characters Shiozawa has voiced.
  • In the live action film, the final fight with Berg Katse involves Ken taking a sword in the shoulder in order to get close enough to land the kill blow.
• Adaptational Modesty: Jun wears pants like her male teammates instead of a skirt in the live-action movie.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • In the original, Jun had hair that shifted from being a deep green to a more blackish or brownish color at times, to where some fans assumed that it was simply meant to be so black that it only SEEMED green. In the sequels and later official artwork, it was brightened to an emerald shade. The OVA version made in the '90s opted to give her mousy brown hair, while in the animated NTT ads, it was practically chartreuse.
  • The concept art for the OVA version also shows that they initially considered giving her blue hair before settling on the brown, along with blue eyes.
  • Joe's hair has varied between being a dark, dirty blond/light brown shade, medium brown, auburn, and a very deep brown through the series and related materials.
  • Ryu had dark brown hair in the original anime series, but the '90s OVA gave him two-toned dyed hair, with it being purple on top and blond on the sides.
  • In the 2013 live-action film by Nikkatsu, Jun's hair is short and brown, while Ken and Joe have the dark hair natural to their actors. Ryu meanwhile, displays dyed red hair.
  • Berg Katse/Berg Katze had dark blond hair in the original series, but somewhat lighter blond hair in the OVA. But his counterpart in Gatchaman Crowds has dark PINK hair.
• Adaptation Name Change: Joe's backstory has him born as George (or "Johji") Asakura. His parents were Galactor operatives who were killed trying to escape the organization; Dr. Nanbu rescued the young boy, renamed him Joe to hide him from Galactor, and raised him as his own. Through all the animated series, he is referred to and addressed as Joe, but in the 2013 live-action adaptation, he is again George/Johji Asakura.
• Age Lift: Ryu is 17 in the original series, but becomes 25 (and the oldest member) in the OVA.
• All There in the Manual: Some of the mecha and design changes to Gatchaman II were given an in-story reasoning, but only in an obscure 16-episode radio drama series that aired in 1978, as a way to lead into the sequel.
  • While applying to the dub, ADV's scripts gave the name of the female Galactor commander as "Madam X". In the original, she was simply known by terms such as "Female Commander" (onna-taicho).
  • Berg Katse's profile from Tatsunoko's planning sheets describes him as being 29 years old, and liking to tame ferocious animals. The latter detail did not quite make it into the series, and his age was slightly raised to 30 in the compilation film.
  • The magazine Fantastic Graphics TV Anime had an article staged as an interview with the characters, where various bits of origin info were revealed ^note Such as Ryu being the last member to join the team after saving Nambu in a boating accident, as well as Jun losing her parents as a child and then her aunt dying. However, as the original planning sheets made no note of these facts, their canon status is questionable.
• Alternate History: The first series takes place in 2001, an indeterminate amount of time after a war between two neighboring countries^note Mistranslations of early supplemental material had fans believing it was a third world war, although it is never said that that's the case. Many countries shown in the series have names suspiciously similar to real ones or are hybrids of a few different countries, save for some like Japan. There at least THREE different countries based off of America in the series, all meant as separate entities yet with similar naming scheme (Ameria, Ameris, and Amerishima).
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Episode 60 involves Ken saving an amnesiac pilot who ends up becoming an unofficial sixth member of the team. When he recovers his memories during a mission and remembers that he was a member of Galactor, he must decide between his loyalty to Galactor or his new-found friends at the Gatchaman team.
• Anchored Ship: Ken and Jun. Jun clearly has feelings for Ken, and he often appears to have some for her despite his utter cluelessness when it comes to romance in general, but because of their duties and the importance of the Science Ninja Team's unity above all else the status of their relationship remains undecided until the end of the third series. Battle of the Planets averted this entirely with Mark and Princess, though.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: While their names don't imply this trope, their costumes and ship do.
• As Lethal as It Needs to Be: The weapons here qualify. Sometimes depicted as lethal, sometimes not. The only two that had definite lethal variations were Jun's yo-yos, which could be turned into bombs; and Jinpei's bolos, which could be loaded with timed explosives.
• Atom Punk: The series has a 70s setting with a lot of futuristic elements thrown in.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Joe's only strategy is attacking the enemy until they all are dead. Let's say that the God Phoenix has a button to activate the missile launcher and Joe has practically worn it down all by himself since he is always pressing it (and if the missile attack fails? He presses the button again until they have run out of missiles). Even in scouting or infiltrating missions where they must be stealth instead of not engaging the enemy, he is always asking why they are NOT blowing them up.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Constantly. Most of times it was Ken and Joe or Ken and Jun who did the back-to-back fight, but it any member of the team could -and did- find in a situation that demanded fighting back-to-back with a teammate.
• Badass Normal: The entire team sort of since none of them have any latent superhuman abilities and can kick ass even as civilians.
• Big Red Button: The firing button for the God Phoenix's bird missiles. Joe is the team's gunner, and that is obviously his favorite button.
• Bittersweet Ending: The first series hits this hard. Galactor is stopped from destroying the Earth and the organization is dismantled for now but Joe is gone, believed to be dead and it’s clear that the team will be mourning for a good long while. Katse is dead but Sosai X has escaped and will almost certainly return.
• Blue Is Heroic:
  • Ken, the team leader, wears sky-blue gloves, boots and belt.
  • Joe, his second-in-command, wears a dark-blue cloak and blue gloves and boots.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": Gatchaman team members wear a large, red "G" on their belts.
• By the Power of Grayskull!:
  "Bird Go!"
• Calling Your Attacks: "Kagaku Ninpou (Science Ninja Technique)! Tatsumaki (Tornado) Fighter!" This show premiered a few months before Mazinger Z, which is considered to be either the Trope Maker or Trope Codifier of this trope. This show may even be the Ur-Example.
• Cast from Hit Points: Gatchaman Fighter has the Hyper Shoot. Every time Ken uses his finisher, he suffers radiation exposure that Dr. Nambu tries to recover him after every battle until near the end of the series that Ken is almost dying from using the attack more.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: The aforementioned Science Ninja Technique Tornado Fighter.
• Chekhov's Gun: The feather shuriken Joe throws at Katse that gets absorbed into the Black Hole Machine’s innards ends up an episode later breaking off an important gear in the machine and prevents a nuke from reaching the Earth’s core before exploding, saving Earth from total annihilation.
• Chest Insignia: They each have a very stylized bird in the middle of their chests, in a complementary or matching color to their uniform. The angle of the goons' shots often show they're trying to use the insignia as targets; the birds are ducking well before the goons finish pulling the trigger.
• Clothes Make the Superman - The costumes, called "Bird Styles" enable the team to use a few special techniques (usually involving spinning really fast) and enhance their speed/agility/mobility some by granting them the ability to glide and maneuver in air (by jumping really high, etc.). They are also bulletproof against small arms fire (but they still have to dodge bullets since the impact will hurt them regardless).
• Color-Coded Characters: The Gatchaman team:
  • Ken: White
  • Joe: Red
  • Jun: Pink
  • Jinpei: Yellow
  • Ryu: Brown
• Combination Attack
• Combining Mecha: The Gatchaspartan in the third series plays the trope straight (being a fusion of the team's individual ships). Downplayed with its predecessors, the God Phoenix and New God Phoenix, which were large ships that the team's smaller individual vehicles could dock into, but were capable of flying and operating on their own without the smaller vehicles docked into them, albeit with limited functionality.
• Compilation Movie: One was released in Japan in 1978, which compiled key moments from the series^note the first episode, the "Red Impulse" arc, and the finale into a 2-hour theatrical feature meant to reacquaint viewers with the original series before the premiere of the Gatchaman II series a few months later. New footage was also added to the beginning, with Leader X narrating about his purpose and a brief animated sequence showing two fetuses being merged, with an image of Katse superimposed over them
• Cool Plane: The God Phoenix, again.
• Crescent Moon Island: The secret base of the Gatchaman team is literally on an island called "Secret Moon Reef" that is actually an artificial island built on top of the team's underseas base
• Darker and Edgier: Gatchaman Fighter is much darker in tone than its predecessors with much death and destruction, Ken nearly dying from the radiation exposure from the Hypershoot, and the possible deaths of the team.
• Disney Death: Joe, but only after the fact.
• Distress Ball: Everyone picks it up every now and then due to stubbornness or overconfidence.
  • Jinpei in episode 8. Bothered by his alter ego The Swallow's lack of popularity, he decides to go off on his own to save their new underwater base from Galactor and to show everyone just how heroic The Swallow really is. Naturally, he gets nabbed by Katse and has to call the rest of the team for help.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The OP and ED of Gatchaman II and the OP of Gatchaman F were sung by Isao Sasaki, the voice of Joe.
• Dub Name Change: Only the ADV Films dub kept everyone's original names.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The fate the Earth would have faced, hadn't Joe used his feather in the earthquake machine in the first season finale.
• Everyone Knows Morse: The drummer of a rock band captured by Galactor manages to smuggle out a distress signal this way.
  • The episode where Joe is put in a spinning cylinder.
• Evil Plan: Berg Katse wanted to conquer Earth. However his leader Sosai-X intended to kill everyone. When the latter found out about the former's real intentions, he was appalled and committed suicide.
• Fauxtastic Voyage: Used to foil a mass prison breakout launched by Galactor.
• Forgotten Superweapon: Justified in the series concerning the God Phoenix's Fiery Phoenix function as it is very dangerous to use, uses a lot of fuel, is hard on the crew regardless and thus is strictly a last resort measure.
• Fur Bikini: A feather one seen during a carnival style celebration◊ in one episode.
• Gainax Ending: In the case of Gatchaman Fighter (the second sequel) and the '90s remake OVA, which both end in a rather bizarre fashion. At the end of Fighter, Leader Z's planetoid explodes with the Science Ninja Team apparently still trapped inside it — but not before the spirit of Dr. Nambu appears to an apparently dying Ken and urges him to "LIVE ON", and his mysterious pendant glows and causes the team's mechas to merge together. In the end it's insisted that the Gatchaman can never die, for they are the immortal Phoenix, as a large flaming phoenix shoots through space to make its way back to Earth. In the OVA, there's a similar case with the team seeing a mysterious spirit in a Gatchaman-esque uniform that tells them to "spread their wings wide". The glowing figure makes its way back to Earth to greet Nambu, and the Phoenix ship flies by once more, before transforming into a similar white Phoenix spirit and flying off to parts unknown.
  • One simple interpretation for the ending of Gatchaman Fighter: Dr. Nambu had posthumously modified the Gatchaspartan to have a Firebird mode (like the God Phoenix and New God Phoenix before it had), but in this case, it was to be unlocked by the pendant Ken was carrying. This enabled the Gatchaspartan's transformation into Firebird mode, and thus, the team's survival at the last moment, and their return to Earth after the explosion of Leader Z (i.e. the large fiery phoenix figure making its way back to Earth is the Gatchaspartan in Firebird mode), matching the immortality theme of the Phoenix — the collective team's motif.
• Giant Equals Invincible: Subverted Trope. Yes, Galactor's Robeast were Humongous Mecha that easily withstood any attack the army threw at them, and destroying them in return, but a Five-Man Band of teenagers with a Cool Airship was all what was needed to take on them. Played straight at least once, though, when their opponent was a gigantic bat-like machine beast that could create hurricane winds and fire mountain-slicing beams from the fronts of its wings, and which curbstomped the team for the entire episode until Ken managed to board it and trigger its self-destruct mechanism.
• Gratuitous English: The live-action film used a lot of American and European extras and background characters in order to invoke an international feel. Of note is one scene where a (very) white security guard at a gala event instructs guests ("Put your hand there. Thank you, next." (motions towards scanner) "Please, all right. Put your hand there. All right, next..." etc') on the use of an ID scanner. A negative result causes Ken to reply back to him in equally flawless English.
  Ken: Strange, it might be broken.
• Hair Color Dissonance: Some fans believe that Jun's hair is a case of this, insisting that it's so black that it only seems to be green. Later artwork, merchandise, and the sequel series have her hair lightened/brightened to be more obviously green. This confusion is averted in the '90s OVA, where her hair color is a mousy brown.
• Henshin Hero
• Heroic Sacrifice: Joe...who is then brought back as a cyborg in the second series...4 years later.
• Hoist Hero Overhead: Not by a Bad Guy either.
• Hot-Blooded: Joe was the most hot-blooded by far: a hot-tempered, emotional, impulsive, impatient, arrogant Blood Knight and trigger-happy The Gunslinger whom his own teammates had to hold back from attacking the enemy. His hastiness and impatience caused conflicts in the team and often got them in troubles. And after the first series, when he got turned into a cyborg, he became even more reckless and more violent, since he knew that his cybernetic body could withstand insane amounts of punishment, hence he could get away with even more dangerous stunts.
• Hot Wings: The God Phoenix's "Firebird" mode.
• Humongous Mecha: Well, the main ships used by the Science Ninja Team are just large, cool planes, but the Galactor mechs are actually giant, animal-shaped mechs.
• In the Name of the Moon:
  "Sometimes one, sometimes five; the white shadow that moves unseen..."
• Insane Troll Logic: In the episode "The Gluttonous Monster Ibukuron": The Humongous Mecha of the title was stealing all the sugar it could grab. ^note Sugar is an important resource, fairly easy to get to when the relevant plants are growing, and Katse wants to rule the world. Dr. Nambu's reasoning was, "They're trying to make the children suffer by nabbing the world's sugar." (Subverted in that his secondary theory is "to throw the world into confusion.")
  • The episode became G-Force: Guardians of Space, "The Locustoid", and takes the screwy logic up a further notch. Dr. Brighthead (yes, really) says that Gallactor is trying to win the loyalty of children because, "If your parents couldn't give you sweets, wouldn't you go to someone who could?"
• It's Personal: Unlike his teammates, Joe has a very personal reason to fight Galactor, since they took his parents' lives and almost took his.
• Last Note Nightmare: Warera Gatchaman, the opening theme of the first sequel, Gatchaman II. You're listening to a rousing song about how awesome the Gatchaman team is, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, the song ends with a nasty Scare Chord.
• Lighthouse Point: A moving one appeared in one episode.
• Lighter and Softer: Both Gatchaman Crowds and the "Live-Action Adaptation" are this, especially the former.
• Limited Animation: In some episodes, it's painfully obvious that columns of identical-looking people are running out of buildings or whatever.
• Limited Wardrobe: Although this was sort of explained as their civilian clothes are not simply swapped out for their superhero outfits and actually become them. This was a major plot point when Jun lost one of her shoes and Galactor realized that the Gatchaman team had secret identities when it accidentally transformed into the boot of her costume.
• Literal Change of Heart: Condor's heart is replaced.
• Live-Action Adaptation
• Local Hangout: The Snack J., a bar/dance club owned by Jun, and operated by her and Jinpei. They also live there as well.
• Mecha-Mooks: Flesh-and-blood Mooks in the originals became "robot soldiers" in the US edits.
• The Mockbuster: A South Korean film called "Iron Man 007" was produced in 1976, heavily lifting from the original Gatchaman (as well as Gaiking). Later, after Gatchaman received an actual dub in Korea in 1979 (Dokksori O Hyungjae, "Eagle Five Brothers"), a two-part recap movie that recounted Gatchaman II was produced in the following year - but with new South Korean animation that was traced over and recolored from the original Tatsunoko footage, sometimes with some unusual alterations. ^note In particular, Dr. Pandora goes from wearing a blue jumpsuit to wearing a rather low-cut pink dress in the Korean footage. Her blonde daughter is also changed into a brunet son. Gel Sadra and Pandora's deaths are also altered, with Pandora dying due to X firing a laser beam through her body, while Gel Sadra dies in a mecha explosion. Tatsunoko Productions didn't get wind of the unauthorized copy until sometime in the 2000s.
• Monogender Monsters: All featured Mooks of Galactor were male.
• Monster of the Week: Every episode usually featured a new Mechanical Monster for the team vanquishing.
• Mooks: The standard Galactor goon squads.
  • Mascot Mook: Turtle King was the first opponent the team faced. In all adaptations and remakes have been done since, Turtle King always shows up, and usually he is the first Mechanical Monster than The Dragon sends.
• Mythology Gag: In the live action movie:
  • The abovementioned Mascot Mook gets a nod in the turtle-shaped Galactor base.
  • They nearly leave Condor Joe to hold the line.
  • The God Phoenix only goes into burning form from fleeing the exploding Galactor base.
• Nice Guy: Ryu is by the nicest and most considerate member of the group.
• Ninja: How do you make more awesome a Five-Man Band of highly-trained spandex-suited teenagers, equipped with Badass Capes, Cool Helmets all kind of weapons, a Cool Ship and combat vehicles? You make them ninjas, of course!
  • Highly-Visible Ninja: They're wearing Technicolor bird suits...
  • Technicolor Ninjas: ...but one could argue that because the enemy bases are really bright in colors, the lighter colors of Ken and Jun should provide stealth. Also, the enemy bases/mecha tend to have varying colors as well.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In early development of the series, Tatsunoko used photos of different actors for the character designers to base the designs off of. Berg Katse was modeled off of the actress Kim Novak, Ken was modeled off of Sonny Chiba, and Joe was based from Steve McQueen.
• No Ending: The finale was never seen in the US until 2007, when the ADV Films finally released them.
• Official Couple: Ken/Jun, although it was not until the end of the series when she chose him over Joe.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter
• Ominous Fog: In an early episode, clouds of Ominous Fog cover an oceanic area where ships are vanishing. At the beginning of the episode a character tells he does not like that eerie fog and it is creeping him out, and another character scoffs that are silly superstitions and there is nothing to be frightened of... right before they disappear.
• Once per Episode: Once every episode one or all team members would scream: "Bird, Go!" (or, if you watch the Spanish dubbing, "Mutación", that is not an accurate translation -mutación=mutation- but sounds even cooler)" to change their civilian clothes into their super-hero costumes.^note In "Battle of the Planets", the transformation phrase was changed to "Transmute!", while "G-Force: Guardians of Space" changed it to "Transform!" or "G-Force, Transform!"
• The Phoenix: Obviously, the motif of the team's ship (God Phoenix & New God Phoenix) in the first and second series. Averted with the Gatchaspartan in Gatchaman Fighter but brought back in the last episode finale, where it's implied that Dr. Nambu had the Gatchaspartan modified to enable a Firebird mode on it just like its predecessor ships, and conveniently unlocked by the pendant Ken was carrying at the time. While the team's individual Bird styles are fashioned after different birds, the combined team's true motif is that of the Phoenix itself; this is implied by the team's main ship motif in the first and second series, and driven home in the third series' finale.
• Post-Script Season: The second series came 4 years after the original ended, although the third (Gatchaman F) came right after that one.
• Psycho Rangers: The OVA introduces the "Jupiter Death Squad" (dub name) that. unlike the usual example, just has four guys (Jinpei wasn't important enough to mimic?)
• Pyrrhic Victory: Gatchaman is able to defeat Galactor once and for all,but not without Joe's Heroic Sacrifice.
• Pre-Explosion Glow
• Race Lift: Joe is Sicilian in the original series and OVA, but Japanese in the live-action film.
• Radial Ass Kicking: It nearly happened on a daily basis, with the Galactor commanders sending a legion of Mooks to try to overwhelming the team with sheer numbers. Needless to say, it was not a very effective strategy.
• Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: With the exception of Jinpei, all Gatchaman team's members are teenagers. In a scene of the 2002 comic-book series, Ken says that everybody expects that they act like immature teenagers but he won't give them the satisfaction of proving them right.
• Relationship Upgrade: It happened at the end of the third series (Gatchaman Fighter) when Jun finally chose Ken over Joe and they got together.
• Retcon: Considering that the second series came four years after the original, and considering the original show's ending, Joe being resurrected as a cyborg can't be anything else.
• Riding into the Sunset: Flying, anyway.
• Running Gag: A non-comedic example (except when it is comedic): Joe always wanting to use the bird missile. Ken/the rest of the team tries to dissuade him from using it. With various results.
• Safely Secluded Science Center: The secret base built under a fake island is also a research lab that maintains and upgrades the team's improbable cool cars and improbable cool starship; in addition to that they also provide research for the International Science Organization's Project Mantle.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: All Galactor bases, mecha, and monsters are equipped with self-destruct systems to prevent their capture by enemies, regardless of whether or not their crews have evacuated. Only the current supreme commander of Galactor, such as Berg Katze or Gel Sadora, is allowed to escape before the self-destruct is activated.
• Sentai: A Spiritual Ancestor and Ur-Example of the trope.
• Ship Tease: Ken and Jun. Jinpei makes fun of this.
• Shout-Out:
  • Trailers for the Live-Action Adaptation make good use of a rotating pan of our heroes a la The Avengers.
• Spectacular Spinning: Ninja Art: Tornado Fighter!
• Spin Attack: Ninja technique Tornado Fighter, performed by the whole team. They would stand on each other's shoulders◊ (or depending on the iteration, form a ring) and would spin quickly, spawning a tornado around them that would wipe the entire opposition.
• Stock Footage: The "Bird, Go!" transformation sequence is the most notable usage of stock footage in the series. So much so that the production notes for the series even specified for the animators to reuse Ken's transformation footage for scenes where the group would transform, to avoid the cost of having to animate five individual sequences.
• Stock Shout-Out: Tons of anime have had shout-outs and references to this show, especially the first episode. Heck, even several western cartoons have referenced this or one of its dub versions.
• Storming the Castle: In each series' Grand Finale.
• Submersible Spaceship: Although mostly flying through the earth's atmosphere, the team’s Cool Starship, "The God Phoenix", is technically a spaceship, and has ventured out into space, even to the vicinity of the moon at least once. The God Phoenix is also able to travel under water, and after the introduction of the secret base at ‘crescent moon reef’ it is actually launched from an underwater hangar that gets flooded before opening to the sea. After which the God Phoenix sails out, switches on its rocket engines, and breaks through the water surface, missile style.
• Super Hero: The producers were big fans of American superhero comics and were eager to try their take on the genre.
• Superheroes in Space: The main characters are a team of superheroes in bird-themed suits of Power Armor and ships, fighting evil across the spaceways
• "Super Sentai" Stance: Lots and lots of posters of this.
• Tell Me How You Fight: Although they appear to fight the same at a glance, each member of the Science Ninja Team has subtlety different fighting styles. Ken, being The Hero, will often incorporate flashy, elaborate, show-off techniques into his moves, while Joe is usually much more direct and prefers No Holds Barred Beatdowns, incapacitating strikes and killing blows. Jun is a typical She-Fu practitioner and mainly uses highly acrobatic maneuvers combined with kick-based attacks and open-palmed strikes. Jinpei takes advantage of his smaller size to be as speedy and agile as possible, and will often sabotage his opponent's attacks before they have a chance to hit him. Ryu uses sumo-style techniques that take full advantage of his bulk and raw strength.
• Three-Point Landing: Lots and lots of these by all hands.
• Title Confusion:
  • Many viewers referred to Battle of the Planets as "G-Force", even before the version that was actually called G-Force came out (and causing further confusion).
  • In Japan, there was some debate over if "Gatchaman" was the name of the Science Ninja Team, the individual members (rendered as "Gactchamen"), or one character specifically. Turns out Tatsunoko intended it to be a Protagonist Title, with Ken's alternate title being Gatchaman.
• Totally Radical: A very unique example as the ADV dub makes no attempt to modernize the show at all and actually makes liberal use of '70s slang such as "groovy" and "solid."
• Transformation Trinket: Their bracelet / communicators also triggers change into bird style when they say: "Bird go!" Most importantly, the bracelets have to stay on while transformed or they change back to civilian form if the bracelets are broken or knocked loose.
• Trauma Conga Line: Ken lost his father when he was a little child. Later he finds out that his father is alive only to see how he was Killed Off for Real shortly after. At the ending of the series, Joe commits a Heroic Sacrifice to save them. At the next series his mentor and surrogate father gets killed. All of that trauma slowly wore his sanity off, and although at the beginning he was the prototypical Hero and The Leader with Nerves of Steel, for the final series he had become so violent, uncontrollable and impulsive like The Lancer.
• True Companions: Very much so.
• Unwilling Roboticisation:
  • Episode 27 ("Galactor's Witch Racer") has Joe teaming up with Lucy, a Galactor defector who's offered to share the location of the Galactor headquarters in exchange for $10 billion, to win the road rally where they made contact. At the last minute, it's revealed that Lucy, who Joe had apparently known before, had been turned into a cyborg as bait for a trap, and was sent a self-destruct command as a last resort. (Lucy manages to throw herself out a window before exploding, after failing to spit out the info she promised.)
  • "A Romance Destroyed By Evil" (Episode 43) has a pair of Star-Crossed Lovers who finally brought peace to their warring homelands kidnapped by Galactor under the watch of the Science Ninja Team. Berg Katze and Leader X plan to transform them into cyborgs under their control, in order to restart the war and exploit the conflict for the sake of Galactor. Despite the Science Ninja Team's best efforts, all Gatchaman can do is bear witness as the lovers choose to die as themselves as the Galactor base explodes.
  • Notoriously, this is how Joe the Condor was resurrected for Gatchaman II. His body was found by a scientist, who rebuilt him as a cyborg.
• The War Room: It showed up as soon as the first episode. It was a large circular room with a big round central table surrounded by chairs, and huge world maps on the table and on monitors attached to the walls.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The God Phoenix has rather nonsensical design flaws, the most egregious is how the plane's weapons systems are nonfunctional unless all the sub vehicles are docked inside.
• Younger Than They Look: Dr. Pandora in Gatchaman II is listed in the notes to be approximately 21-23 years old, although she looks like she could reasonably be in her thirties.

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