9 -Terror of the extinction ray gun

An adolescent girl is skiing urgently down the side of a mountain range. She reaches a base (military? medical? research? can't tell, but it is marked with a white cross on a grey background) and collapses from exhaustion.

Nambu informs the team that a disgraced scientist has been taken by Egobossler - the girl's father. He had been working on some kind of ray that would travel through the Earth. With nobody else prepared to take an interest, or pay him money for it, he had begun drinking too much and the girl (Carrie, I think) had left despairingly left him passed out drunk on his console. Straight after, Ego, Kempler and Mechandor had walked in and taken him away. The scientist (I do wish I'd caught his name but he was referred to most of the time as Hakase) didn't look particularly enthusiastic at first about working for Galactor but it seems that his desire to prove his work was stronger than any moral objection he may have had to destroying stuff and killing people. So he sets about building his doom ray.

Carrie goes with the team in the Gatchaspartan, which evidently has at least 1 extra seat in its ever changing interior, to find her father.

Her father, having built his doom ray, tests it out for Egobossler. The device glows white hot, illuminating the inside of the base and generally being quite dazzling. It generates a ray of bright green nastiness which zaps straight down until it gets under the Earth's mantle, then zips along under the mantle until it gets under its target, and then shoots straight back out of the mantle and destroys a power station with an explosion of such magnitude that it makes all those really foomy atom bomb effects in Gatchaman 1 look like somebody starting a barbeque. The team and Carrie watch this and Carrie is understandably upset. However, the path of the ray was traced and now they can find the base.

Egobossler is pleased with the test. The scientist is pleased that someone likes his work, and has a jolly old laugh about it, until his daughter walks right into the base to have a word with him. Mechandor gets very menacing with his sword, but Ken knocks that out of his hand by throwing his own sword at it. Carrie rushes up to the platform where her father has the controls for the device, while Ego calls out his troops. The team do some jolly good fighting with their new weapons which really haven't been out all that much since the start of the series. Meanwhile Carrie presses buttons and pulls levers and sets the thing to self destruct. As it overloads itself, and sparks fly and things begin to explode, she hangs determinedly onto the levers to ensure that nothing interrupts the process. Her father is blown off the platform by one of the explosions and watches in horror as his daughter shouts her last words to him (probably something along the lines of "I'm doing this for you and your work so don't do any evil stuff ever again") before being most definitely killed.

Ego summons his mech, a blue giant creature with tusks. He, Kempler and Mechandor get lifted up into it and the team rush back outside to the Gatchaspartan. The mech fires sheets of flame at the Gatchaspartan, while the Gatchaspartan slices at its body with its wings. After a couple of passes Ken goes hypershoot, hacks his way through the middle of the mech and drops, in a sheet of flame of his own, into the control room where Ego and his mates are sitting. Ego shoots a missile from the arm of his mecha-throne into the wall behind Ken, which distracts Ken for long enough for them to fly away on their rocket powered dais. The mech then starts to self destruct with Ken still inside it, trapped by jets of flame. The rest of the team, watching from the Gatchaspartan with the scientist, are horrified as they watch the mech fall down a hill and wreck itself, but Ken gets out and flies back to them.

After they land, the scientist is overcome with horror at the death of his daughter and tries to throw himself into a deep hole in the ground, but Joe holds him back. Carrie had given her life to save her father, and now he should honour her memory by living a good life. Probably.

8/10 - slow start and it took a while for Carrie to get interesting, but this was a good story

10 - Gatchaman base in danger

Egobossler orders an elderly man to be released from prison - he's a mad scientist terrorist with an impressive history of blowing up planes, trains and large buildings, and is so obviously evil in appearance he even has evil hair! I have no idea what his name is so I'm going to call him SciTer. He gets taken to Ego's castle where the two of them come to some arrangement about the guy doing some evil science terror work for Galactor. To prove his credentials he then doesn't permit the guard to remove his handcuffs, but takes them off himself showing that he could have escaped at any time.

Meanwhile, the team (more badly drawn than usual in this series) are doing some target practice in their civvies. Ken, Joe and Ryu are using standard revolvers to shoot the hearts out of figure shaped targets while Jun keeps track of the score. They do quite a lot of shooting and none of them hit a single target, not even Joe. Jinpei throws his spinning top thing at one of the targets and hits it right in the middle, then he thows it again and his bracelet falls off and he misses the target as well. When he picks his bracelet up, the front has fallen open but nobody seems particularly concerned that it might be broken. Instead it looks as if Jinpei is asking all the others if he can have a go with their guns, and then asking Jun if she can get him a gun because she is his best big sister in the world. This episode looks as if it has more humour in it than most and I'm rather sad that I don't know enough of the language to follow it.

Kempler and a couple of guards have taken SciTer fairly close to an ISO building surrounded by countryside. From there, he sets out by himself to do his sinister stuff. Kempler sends one of the guards to follow him, but SciTer is too alert for that and catches and garrottes the guard with a chain. He then sets up some kind of listening device (I think) and a rifle with a telescopic sight. He puts a cartridge with an unusually needle-like tip into the gun, while Nambu stands outside the building waiting for his helicopter to be ready - he's going to visit Gatchaman's secret base. SciTer fires and we see a red flash over Nambu's face, and Nambu clutches at his eyes in sudden pain, but then recovers and gets into the helicopter.

When Nambu reaches the base, he has a nicely wrapped present for Jinpei. Jinpei is sure that Nambu has bought him a revolver of his very own, and is rather disappointed when it turns out to be a pair of boxing gloves. Later that night, Nambu is sleeping in his room when a red light starts flashing on his face. As the view pans across the room, we can see that the glow is coming from his armless glasses. He sits up in bed - he's been asleep in his trousers, waistcoat and shirt and tie - and puts his glasses on, and the camera zooms in and we can see that there is a sinister, red flashing metal device embedded in the bridge of his glasses. Gasp!

He strolls around the corridor where the team's sleeping quarters are for a while - Jinpei is sitting awake in bed fiddling with his bracelet and a screwdriver and Nambu listens as the door for a while before moving away to the more businesslike parts of the base. He picks up some explosive devices with timers from one room, and places them around the base. The explosions wake up the team who go to birdstyle and rush through the base, which now has its sprinklers going all over the place, to find the problem.

Meanwhile, SciTer demonstrates his technology to Kempler. He has two chipmunks in a cage. He sticks a needle-like device into one's head. It rolls around on the floor squeaking for a while, then jumps on the other squirrel and starts to eat it before finally braining itself by running so hard at the side of its tank that it cracks the glass. Kempler looks squeamish, and things definitely don't look good for Nambu.

Kamo is also trying to find what's up. He looks in the hangar where the team's vehicles are stored, but Evil!Nambu is standing in the shadows and hits him over the head with a spanner. When the rest of the team turn up, Nambu shoots at them and they drag Kamo to cover. Evil!Nambu is using a standard revolver and when he runs out of ammunition for the second time the team jump out of cover and go after him. As in the NambuGoesApe episode in Gatch 1, Ken tries to talk Nambu out of whatever he's doing. Nambu promptly shoots him in the shoulder - Ken's birdstyle doesn't look quite as bulletproof as usual in this episode. Nambu also jumps about 30 feet into the air to get onto a girder out of the team's way. Joe pulls out his freeze gun but can't bear to shoot Nambu and so has a quick bout of swearing about Galactor instead. Ken lies on the floor looking terribly shocked by the whole thing and bleeding a bit. Nambu's glasses are now so red and his eyes so mad that he looks about ready to kill all of them - he's doing a really evil laugh as well. But Jinpei notices that when Nambu's glasses are flashing, that a component in his bracelet also flashes and so works out that some kind of signal is making Nambu act so out of character. Jinpei pulls out his own freeze gun and shoots at Nambu repeatedly until Nambu's glasses fall off. Nambu collapses from being shot at so much, and the rest of the team rush over to him. Kamo pulls the device out of Nambu's glasses, and Nambu wakes up, obviously saying something along the lines of "What happened? Where am I?" but, presumably, otherwise unhurt.

When Kempler sees that the plan has failed, he goes to kill SciTer. SciTer asks for a last cigarette before dying, and as he puts it into his mouth he gives his evil grin and there is the clicking sound of a weapon being cocked. Kempler hears it and quickly shoots him in the heart, and then finds that the cigarette had shot another of the needle devices at him - it had lodged in the peak of his helmet. He pulls it out. I assume that if he hadn't he would then have gone mad and gone back to the castle, blown things up and then done his damndest to kill Egobossler.

The episode ends with the team looking resolute and a voice over which I would bet good money is saying something about having to be vigilant all the time.

6/10 - should have been a better episode, Evil!Nambu has real potential. I do wish I'd been able to follow the humour though, it's rare in this series. Why do all the team shoot so badly though?

11 - The Satan limited express Z press

Sosai Z materialises behind Egobossler's castle, dwarfing it. He and Ego have a discussion, I suspect Z has an idea and wants Ego to provide a distraction. Ego appears to have an idea...

Nambu warns the team that something's going on with a train, and they set out to investigate. When they fly over the train (which is surprisingly normal looking) they see that Galactor troops are holding people hostage in open carriages, so Ken and Jun fly down to rescue them. They dispose of the guards in that carriage, but then a woman in green overalls with an unusually deep and strident voice comes through the door. She makes a long speech, most of which is lost on me, and then produces a small purple grenade from her pocket. She looks quite willing to use it to destroy Gatchaman, but then more Galactors turn up. She tells them about the grenade and they run away screaming, so evidently it's something nasty. In the confusion, one of the hostages grabs a machine gun from one of the fallen goons and fires it at the woman. The grenade sails through the air and Jun manages to throw herself to the floor and catch it. But the timer on it is ticking. Everybody gets very tense, but Jun disarms it. The woman has been hit by several of the bullets and looks rather less aggressive now.

Ken leads the male hostages towards the back of the train, while Jun supports the woman. They come under fire from front and back, but evidently both have sharpened up their shooting skills since last time. It looks like the woman takes another bullet though. Ken carries her piggy-back style while Jun runs in front and shoots Galactors. Eventually the last Galactors get chased out of the back of the train, and the team and hostages are left in the last carriage with an open door and a big gun. Ken goes back to the previous carriage to cut it loose with his freeze gun, and he's almost done when another engine appears behind them. This looks like a supply train but also has a more aggressive military appearance to it. Because it's chasing them, they can't cut their carriage loose. During a moment of confusion, the woman manages to grab Ken's gun, and points it at him, but then changes her aim and shoots a Galactor hiding in one of the seats further up the carriage. Now that she looks a bit more trustworthy, they let her work the big gun to shoot the engine following them. She carefully shoots the flashing orange light off the top, which has the strange effect of stopping that engine. Now Ken takes his sword and finishes separating their carriage from the rest of the train.

The team's plan is to destroy the train on a high bridge over a canyon. Joe and Jinpei take up position, there are a lot of Galactors around so they start some distance from the bridge. Joe decides to just make a run for it to get closer, Jinpei follows him a bit more carefully. They see 4 uniformed men (something to do with the railway) running away from the Galactors, but they all get shot. Joe and Jinpei reach the last one in time to hear him gasp out some last words. Then they run for the bridge. While Jinpei gives cover, Joe puts a plastic cover over one of his rocket shuriken and throws it into the side of the bridge. Jinpei keeps on shooting and dodging while Joe waits in position for the train to reach the centre of the bridge. When it does, he fires, hitting the plastic cover, and the shuriken goes up in an amazingly huge explosion. The back half of the bridge collapses, taking most of the train with it, but the engine and front carriages are still left on the surviving half of the bridge. The Galactors send jets to defend the rest of the train, but Ken lances the jets with his sword, and two of them crash into the bridge, bringing the rest of it down and destroying the train.

At the end of the episode, Kempler reports the train's defeat to Ego, but Ego looks quite cheerful about the whole thing. So I do wonder if they're setting something up for the next episode...

7/10 - this is another one that makes me wish I understood more Japanese

12 - Order to destroy the mantle base

Nambu is addressing the UN - some lovely caricatures characters make up the crowd of delegates - and showing some really bizarre maps of Europe. Back at Kamo's base, the computer system is working its way through some encoded data, with flashing screen displays quite reminiscent of Zark's. Eventually the computer manages to work out what it all means. Galactor is on its way south through Spain and into north Africa, on its way to the Mantle Base.

This is an episode with a lot of talking, and I'm not entirely sure what the mantle base actually does. I think I caught "mantle energy" being mentioned, and it looks as if they're mining for something which is probably metallic. There's some kind of processing plant. It may be a Gatcha-science hitherto undiscovered element which does everything, for all I know.

Anyway, they can't let Galactor have the base, so away the team go to stop them. Galactor tanks roll towards the processing plant and start to destroy it. Long conveyors roll into the mine entrances and extract piles of this mantle rock crystal coal looking stuff. Then Sosai Z materialises above the ruined processing plant and begins to levitate the rocks into himself. Inside, the rocks are melted and Z is full of floating trails of red hot metal, and he begins to create mechs from it.

The team unite the Gatchaspartan and Ken slices a big hole in one of Z's sides with the Gatchafencer, aided with a trailing sharp edge of the Gatchaspartan's wing. As they fly away to make another attack, they watch in horror as Z heals the damage. Ken decides that they should go into Z and so the team, after Ryu has checked with Kamo that the Gatchaspartan will be ok and Kamo's team turn out to be able to fly it remotely, glide down to one of the conveyors, and get levitated up into Z. Once inside they are amazed by the floating metal and somewhat shocked by all the mechs. Z wakes the mechs and at least 5 of them go after the team. The team fight them, Ken with the Gatchafencer, Joe with his shuriken and Jun with her freeze gun. Z is able to construct more on the fly though and the team are hopelessly outnumbered though and have to run. Suddenly they find a glowing green structure which appears to be the furnace melting all the rocks. Ken slices through its entire height with his Gatchafencer and then they all hold onto each other to do their tornado formation before the mechs catch up with them. The mechs are thrown about, before the team rise up in their tornado and fly through the molten metal/rock and out of the side of Z. The furnace collapses and the molten metal squirts up like a geyser. Z loses control over the floating trails of molten metal and it falls over the mechs, melting them. Then it runs out of Z, onto the army and tanks below, destroying everything. Finally there is an explosion inside Z and he screams and flies away.

The team are left surveying a valley full of molten metal. They stopped Z from getting hold of the mantle energy or special element or whatever it was. Egobossler is told the news by Mechandor while he's playing cards with Kempler - he throws his cards, 4 aces, in such rage that their pointed corners penetrate the table's surface. He is extremely upset that Z was beaten.

6/10 - didn't particularly like this episode

13 - Violence - the decisive battle of Agrika

14 - Egobossler's palace in flames

15 - Burning ambition of Hell

16 - A deadly butterly dances in the dark