Sean Akizuki's Fantasy Critic

Gatchaman is one of those early 70s Tatsunoko cartoon which I believed left an impact to the 80s and 90s.  Now for possible Gatchaman inspirations after Gatchaman: The five piece super hero robot shows.  Combattler V, Voltes V and Golion basically have the leader, rebel, fat guy, woman and boy lineup.  Gatchaman had no robot but these guys had their combining robots.  The Super Robot shows came from Toei and so did Super Sentai. Super Sentai does owe its inspiration from Gatchaman.  Goranger was the first one with the five agents riding a battle mecha, battling a Gallactor similar organization. In Jetman, both Ryu Tendo and Gai Yuki were both frenemies like Ken Washio and Joe Asakura in Gatchaman.

If there was any villain worth mentioning in Gatchaman it would not be the rather comedic (and gender ambiguous) Berg Katse or the redeemed villain Gel Sadora but rather... his excellency Count Egobossler... or should I say his despicably evilness. So why is he kind of unique? Compared to Berg Katse and Gel Sadora, he was no product of Sosai X but rather a dictator who has little or no mercy in every area he occupies and a person who evolves into a complete monster. His hatred unquenchable, he chose to show no mercy to anyone. What also made him unique is that he would NEVER allow anybody to come above him, not even Sosai Z (created from Sosai X's remains) who he had a partnership with. He feigned his loyalty from the very start hogging the glory only for himself. He was so cruel that even in the first episode, he launches an even bigger attack than most of his predecessors have. He in fact made Gatchaman Fighter very special to me. However things weren't exactly in his favo...

Ah Gatchaman! Though this is not sentai, I feel like this series deserves to be placed in my blog. This was an animated series that featured four teenagers and one kid (the same formula that would inspire Combattler V, Voltes V and Golion) against the evil Gallactor Empire and its mysterious leader Sosai X. The series lasted for three seasons which was a very long lasting series since shows in the 1970s were undoubtedly VERY LONG. Honestly I really can only remember Ken as the leader, Joe the second-in-command, Jun the woman, Jinpei the kid and Ryu the fat guy. Actually the name Ryu wasn't always given to a leader figure at first. This was their first flying fortress known as God Phoenix. When it got destroyed, it was rebuilt into... New God Phoenix which is even more powerful than the last one for Gatchaman II.  It has a real bird motif in it, perhaps the inspiration for the Ikarus Haken. Eventually the odd-looking Gatchaspartan was a result of combining ...