Machineman and his Throttle Gun.
Seiun Kamen Machineman (Nebula Mask Machineman) was a Japanese tokusatsu series exhibited in Japan during January 13 until September 28, 1984, telling the adventures of Nick, a.k.a Ken Takase, a college student from the Ivy planet (located at the Pleiades) to study the behavior of the Earthlings.
He later gets involved with foiling terrorist attacks by an organization called Tentacle, which made its mission to kill all children throughout Japan.
The show can be watched at the Toei Tokusatsu Youtube page
with English subs as of 2020.
This toku series includes the following tropes:
- All There in the Manual: Ken Takase and Ball Boy answer weekly fan letters from viewers after each episode, going over their backstory (mostly) before and after coming to Earth.
- Brought to You by the Letter "S": M for Machineman.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: DOLPHIN!!!
- Child Hater: The whole reason of Dr. K's existence. He's literally Allergic to Love and constroy robots to make kids (and sometimes adults) unhappy, so it won't cause him to sneeze constantly. It carries to his daughter, who get a red nose everytime some kid is happy.
- Cool Car/Cool Plane: The Machine Dolphin, which can change to the Dolphin Jet.
- Clark Kenting: Like Superman, Nick comes from a different planet, goes under the name of Ken Takase as a civilian, and as Machine Man. He doesn't fly, though, but, he's able to "jump buildings in a single leap".
- Clothes Make the Superman: Without his hero transformation, Ken is just slightly stronger and durable than a normal human. Better exemplified when he have to fight the butler of the Big Bad's daughter without his Machine Man persona.
- Expy: He's basically a mix of space Zorro and Space Sheriff Gavan.
- Finishing Move: Machine Thunder. (See Zorro Mark below)
- Foreign Exchange Student: An Human Alien that's disguised as an earthling to study our culture, but doubles as a masked hero to help people.
- Henshin Hero
- Improbable Weapon User: Machineman uses his sidekick, Ball Boy as an actual baseball to stun enemies.
- Karma Houdini: Both Dr.K and his daughter never pay for their actions and just teleport away before Machine Man have a chance to bring them to Justice.
- Merchandise-Driven: The DX Machine Dolphin is still a highly sought collectors' item.
- Monster of the Week: With eventual human ''Enemies of the Week" with assorted themes like mummy, samurai, clown, magician, mime, ninja, a Cat Woman expy etc.
- The Power of Love: Ken can be very reserved, but he'll do almost everything for Gunko, even fight an enemy without his powers and win for her.
- Robot Buddy: Ball Boy for Nick/Ken.
- Thou Shall Not Kill: Machineman only subdues the Battle Butler and use his power to make them Heel–Face Turn.
- Will They or Won't They?: Ken and Gunko. There's a lot of Ship Tease and they definetly love each other. Sadly, Nick have to go back to his planet after complete his reasearch, so, they ultimately didn't.
- Would Hurt a Child: Tentacle's plan do involve injuring kids. Professor K does want to kill them outright though.
- Zorro Mark: His finishing move.
