旋風小飛俠 AKA Science Ninja Team Gatchaman AKA 科学忍者隊 AKA Battle of the Planets AKA Eagle Riders AKA G-Force

A walk down memory lane, why, yes. With my earlier entry, I posed the question, Gatchaman anyone? Problem connecting that name? How about Battle of the Planets? Indeed. How about Battle of the Planets, of which under this title, the series was recently remolded and relaunched as a comic book series released by Top Cow, which with the help of Alex Ross rekindled many forgotten collective memories. Interestingly enough, I remembered them all too well enough (despite being close to five or six years old back then) but under a different name, 旋風小飛俠 (a Taiwan representation). One definite contributing factor for my uncharacteristically great memory would be the fact that the number two guy 大明 AKA Joe Asakura AKA Jason AKA Dirk Daring AKA Joe Thax AKA Joe the Condor (too many version, too many AKAs) was revealed to be a Robot (or Cyborg or Android or something along that line) in the episode right before the finale and sacrifice himself to save the team in the grand finale. This might sound inconsequential but it is indeed my first encounter with Death for a major character. Probably the Powers That Be in the company shared my sentiments to this second fiddle character which is why during the advert they made in 2000 to promote Japan's Telcom Giant, NTT, they got the Japan top sensation boyband, SMAP, to portray the five team members respectively (yeah, even the girl) and with the most famous Takuya Kimura as 大明. Check out the ad by the way, courtesy of good ol' youtube.