The Bioman team and their friend Peebo.
One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Choudenshi! Bioman!
Chōdenshi Bioman (Super Electron Bioman) is the eighth Super Sentai and aired from 1984 to 1985. The Title Theme Tune was performed by Takayuki Miyauchi.
500 years ago the Bio Robo traveled to Earth from the Bio Star and showered five people it discovered with Bio Particles. In the present day, Doctor Man tries to take over Earth with his mechanized followers, Neo Empire Gear. Now the robot Peebo must gather the people whose ancestors were infused with the Bio Particles to become Bioman and save the world.
Recurring Super Sentai tropes:
- All Your Powers Combined: A few of the team attacks involve this.
- Boss Subtitles: Introduced this trope to Super Sentai.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: "Bioman!"; or, their individual names.
- Calling Your Attacks
- Color Character: The codename pattern consists of using each member's color as the head word and a corresponding number as the tail. This is the number in which the team, in their original composition, first transformed.
- Color-Coded Characters: The Biomen of course.
- Cool Airship: The Bio Dragon.
- Cool Bike: Red One's Bio Mach I and Yellow Four's Bio Mach II.
- Cool Car: The Bio Turbo driven by Green Two.
- Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Hikaru is playing the Bioman opening theme on the flute while walking towards the enemies in episode 15, and again in 39.
- Eye Catch: The eyecatch features a normal version of Red One and small versions of (Clockwise from bottom left) Blue Three that seems to be sliding from Red One's right shoulder, Pink Five that seems to be performing a superkick, Green Two who seems to be levitating from Red One's left shoulder and Yellow Four. The title card is also seen in the bottom right of the screen. After the break, Bio Robo is shown who seems to be running and holding the bio sword. The Title Card can be seen on the bottom left of the screen.
- Finishing Move: The Biomen and BioRobo have a plethora of them. BioRobo actually had the largest number of individual sword finishers of any Sentai mecha.
- Gendered Outfit: Overlapped with Non-Standard Character Design, Yellow Four and Pink Five's suits have color pattern designed to resemble a leotard, instead of having a skirt or Mini Dress Of Power like the vast majority of female rangers. This also happened with the respective female duos from the next two Sentai teams.
- Home Base
- Humongous Mecha: The mecha components were reduced to just two this time.
- Combining Mecha: Bio Jet 1 (Red and Pink) + Bio Jet 2 (the rest) = Bio Robo
- In the Name of the Moon: The individual names, followed by "One! Two! Three! Four! Five! ChouDenshi Bioman!.
- Law of Chromatic Superiority: Shirō can understand animals, but nobody else is shown to have unmorphed powers.
- Make My Monster Grow: Absent. Gear has five human-sized monsters called the Junoids, which they use over and over and a different giant mecha in each episode. As this prevented the giant monsters from getting much screentime (and thus Toei from getting much of a return on investment), this approach was largely unique to Bioman until future seasons that avert it as well, such as Dekaranger and Go-Busters.
- Mid-Season Upgrade: Gear switches to stronger piloted mechs and upgrade the Big Three, so the Biomen receive an extra-boost in Bio Particlesnote . The three remaining Beastnoids are also rebuilt into stronger forms.
- Mooks: Mechaclones.
- Monster of the Week: Giant robots known as "Mecha Gigants". From Episode 31 and onward, they're replaced by a series of newer models known as "Neo Mecha Gigants". The newer robots are also unique in that they're piloted by a member of Big Three, while the previous generation of robots (usually) were autonomous (save for one piloted by the Black Prince).
- The Movie: Takes place some time after Episode 11 (after Jun Yabuki joins the team), but before Episode 31 (while all five Junoids are still alive).
- Robot Buddy: Peebo, again.
- Sixth Ranger: Subverted; One-Shot Character Shōta Yamamori doesn't stick around despite debuting in an episode titled "The Sixth Man", and even pretending to join in the group henshin.note
- Supervillain Lair: The Neograd fortress at the South Pole.
- Theme Music Power-Up:
- Transformation Trinket: Techno Braces
- Two Girls to a Team: Introduced this trope to Super Sentai with the inclusion of Yellow Four and Pink Five. This helped codify yellow as a gender-neutral color that can be worm by both male and female rangers, and established Yellow and Pink as the standard colors for a female duo.
- Villains Act, Heroes React: As is the norm for Super Sentai, we generally have Gear sending out a Junoid with an Evil Plan and Mecha Gigant Once an Episode, with our heroes then arriving on the scene to stop them.
- Weapon-Based Characterization:
- Swiss-Army Weapon: The Bio Swords.note Each Bioman has a unique blade mode as well.note
- Shingo: Green Bomerang
- Jun: Yellow Arrow, which can also enlarge into the Bio Big Arrow for a Finishing Move.
Tropes specific to Choudenshi Bioman
- Bare-Handed Blade Block: Happens three times in episode 30 alone.
- Battle Cry: Gear personnel shout "For The Man!"
- Darker and Edgier: Compared to Dynaman. The overall tone is grittier, the Mechaclones' ability to imitate anybody is taken to horrific lengths, the focus on children is gone, Gear (especially Doctor Man) proves to be viler villains than Jashinka, and one of the heroes is killed in only the tenth episode.
- Death by Falling Over: Farrah, after receiving heavy damage, made it back to base before falling down the stairs and exploding.
- Pretty much every main villain dies by falling over and exploding in the last three episodes.
- Easy Amnesia: Happens to Peebo in episode 34 after a explosion.
- Elemental Powers: The Biomen's swords are powered by this.
- Playing with Fire: Shirō's Fire Sword.
- Blow You Away: Shingo's Hurricane Sword.
- Shock and Awe: Ryūta's Elec Sword and Mika/Jun's Thunder Sword.
- Holy Hand Grenade: Hikaru's Laser Sword.
- Evil Will Fail: Defied. Doctor Man sees the Big Three's coup coming, survives, and removes their independence, making Gear one of the more stable villain groups in the franchise.
- That said, Gear's repeated attempts to get Silva to work together with them and/or acquire Balzion for their own purposes always ends in failure (since Silva doesn't care about anything but killing the Biomen, and sees Gear as simply getting in the way of his goal), and it's Silva who ends up killing the Big Three.
- Fake Shemp: For Mika's last episode, her voice was dubbed over by an uncredited Mayumi Tanaka as Yuki Yajima had only completed ADR for the first nine episodes.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: Mika is never mentioned after her death (save for one time in Episode 37, and even then they only mention her by her codename) and it seems as if Jun has always been Yellow Four instead. Although this is understandable, considering Yuki Yajima's abrupt departure from the series.
- Four Is Death: The first Yellow Four, who was killed off after her actress left the set.
- Hero Killer: Silva, which leads to...
- Heroic BSoD: Peebo is terrified of Silva when he first appears, running away and getting as close to a fetal position as he can. (He recovers enough by the end of the episode to assists the team. From a distance.)
- Identical Grandson: The ancestors of the team who were showered with the Bio-Particles are played by the same actors as their descendants. This became a bit problematic for the show's creators once Mika was replaced with Jun, which is probably why the ancestors were never shown again and the repeated showings of the first flashback were often edited to leave out Mika's ancestor.
- Infinite Supplies: How the Biomen can live without jobs.
- Jumped at the Call: A little subversion. At first, Shirou, Shingo, Ryuuta, Mika and Hikaru didn't quite buy Peebo's story, until Gear attacks and forces them to morph and eventually accept their duty...except Mika who went away, only to eventually rejoin next episode.
- Kick the Dog: Did you have to go and blow up Red One's bird? (However, it was less For the Evulz and because of the chance of Red One using his Dr. Dolittle skills to ask the bird about the evil plan du jour.)
- Load-Bearing Boss: Completely averted at the end. After Dr. Man is killed and the Biomen leave Neo Grad, the empty fortress ends up being quietly buried by a snowstorm, essentially becoming an icy symbolic grave.
- Love Triangle: Mason, Farrah and Monster.
- Nature vs. Technology: Would seem to be the main theme of the show, since despite their activities being enabled by a pair of robots, the Biomen are living people, while their enemies are all robots or cyborgs who've abandoned their humanity in exchange for power.
- Never Trust a Title: Episode 28 is named "The Assassination of Doctor Man". The Big Three tried to kill him because they learned he started as a human instead of a Mecha-Human. But they only killed a body double. Doctor Man expected this attempt, and the Big Three get their memories of Doctor Man being human erased.
- Non-Indicative Name: No, this series does not have a Bio Punk theme, it's focused on robots.
- Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: The third Sentai season that doesn't use the word "Sentai" in its title, following J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai and Battle Fever J.
- Oh, Crap!: Happens when the villains realize their plan to assassinate Doctor Man didn't work.
- Punny Name: Blue Three's namenote is spelled the same way in Japanese as "Bruce Lee"note , the only real difference being the placement of the middle dot.
- The Remnant: Silva is this, as he was programmed by the Anti-Bio Union to destroy anything with Bio Particles. Even despite the planet's destruction long ago, he's still fighting the Bioman because of their Bio Particles; Peebo attempted to explain he didn't have to do this anymore, but Silva kept at it.
- Replacement Goldfish: The Black Prince, a Mecha Clone replica of Doctor Man's son, Shuichi. Subversion since he is actually alive.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Anti-Bio Union was formed because they feared the potential of Bio Particles, which they believed could lead to the destruction of Bio. Their crusade to wipe out Bio Particles lead to a war that resulted in the destruction of the very planet they wanted to protect.
- Sleeves Are for Wimps: Shingo and especially Nambara spend a lot of episodes wearing sleeveless shirts.
- Soul Jar: One Robot Monster had a counterpart Mechaclone, a girl named Miki, whose existence allowed him to regenerate damage. She did a Heroic Sacrifice to stop that.
- The Starscream: Mason attempted a coup... only to learn Doctor Man was ready for it.
- Suicide Attack: One episode had Gear use the Mechaclones as walking bombs.
- Temporary Substitute: Episodes 15 and 16 were obviously written with Mika in mind.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Mika, then Jun, and Hikaru.
- Undying Loyalty: Mecha-Clone Ichigō to Doctor Man. After their reprogramming, the Big 3.
- Unfriendly Fire: Mason, using Metal Megas, blasts the Biomen and the five Beastnoids, which destroys Aquaiger and Messerbeast.
- Was Once a Man: There's a reason why the villain's named Doctor Man.
