Choudenshi Bioman

File:Bioman 5448.jpg

The Bioman team and their friend Peebo.

One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Choudenshi! Bioman!

Chōdenshi Bioman (Super Electronic Bioman) is the eighth Super Sentai and aired from 1984 to 1985.

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.

The Biomen are:

• Shirō Gō /Red One: The pilot of Japan's first space shuttle before becoming the leader of Bioman. His Bio powers include being able to understand the speech of animals. Descended from a samurai.
• Shingo Takasugi/Green Two: A race car driver. The tough guy of the group. Descended from a hunter.
• Ryūta Nambara/Blue Three: A water sportsman and the youngest member of the team. Descended from a fisherman.
• Mika Koizumi/Yellow Four I: A photographer. Descended from a Kunoichi. She is killed by Mason and Psygorn in Episode 10.
• Jun Yabuki/Yellow Four II: An Olympic archer who replaces Mika in Episode 11. Presumably shares the same ancestor as Mika. Very much an Action Girl; her actress is an experienced stuntwoman, and she did lots of her own stunts in the show.
• Hikaru Katsuragi/Pink Five: The Chick and Team Mom. A flutist descended from a noblewoman.

The main units of Gear are:

• Doctor Man/ aka Hideo Kageyama: The Mad Scientist Big Bad.
• The Big Three: Gear's three generals
  • Mason: The leader of the three.
  • Monster: The Brute, very much a Dumb Muscle.
  • Farrah: The Dark Chick. She prefers cunning espionage in her schemes.
    • Farrahcat: Farrah's loyal bodyguard. The Non-Serial Movie gave her an Amazon Brigade.
• Beastnoids: The Quirky Miniboss Squad.
  • Beast King: Monster's loyal sidekick who, much like his master, is a Dumb Muscle.
  • Psygorn: A three-faced mentalist and frequent favorite of Mason.
  • Metzler: A Cyber Cyclops used for espionage, much like his frequent patron, Farrah.
  • Messerbeast: A Winged Humanoid and the first of the five to see combat, and one of the first to go.
  • Aquaiger: A fishman robot who bites it along with Messerbeast.
• Mechaclones: The Mecha-Mooks

• And on his own side:
  • Bio-Hunter Silva: A robot who helped cause the destruction of the Bio Star. Fights both the Bioman team (he's programmed to kill anything with Bio Particles) and Gear (who want to steal his missing Humongous Mecha, Bulgeon).

Tropes used in Choudenshi Bioman include:

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 Greyskull: "Bioman!"; or, their individual names.
• Calling Your Attacks
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: The codename pattern consists of using each member's color as the head word and a corresponding number as the tail.
• 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.
• Custom Uniform: Yellow Four and Pink Five wear panties molded into their suits. This also happened with the respective female duos from the next two Sentai teams.
• Eyecatch: 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.
• Five-Man Band: Available in two configurations.
  • (Episodes 1-10)
    • The Hero: Shirō
    • The Big Smart Guy: Shingo
    • Kid Appeal Character: Ryūta
    • The Lancer: Mika
    • The Chick: Hikaru
  • (Episodes 11-51)
    • The Hero: Shirō
    • The Smart Lancer: Shingo
    • Kid Appeal Character: Ryūta
    • The Big Guy: Jun
    • The Chick: Hikaru
  • Team Pet: Peebo, who is also The Mentor
  • 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.
• Home Base
• Humongous Mecha: The mecha components were reduced to just two this time and both were shared between different members of the team.
  • 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 having much of an identity, this approach has pretty much stayed unique to Bioman.
• 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 Movie: Takes place sometime after Episode 11 (after Jun Yabuki joins the team), but before Episode 31 (while all five Junoids are still alive).
• "On the Next Episode of..." Catchphrase:
• Regular Caller:
• Robot Buddy: Peebo, again.
• 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.
• Weapon of Choice
  • Swiss Army Weapon: The Bio Swords . Each Bioman has a unique blade mode as well.
  • Shingo: Green Bomerang
  • Jun: Yellow Arrow, which can enlarge into the Bio Big Arrow for a Finishing Move.

Tropes specific to Choudenshi Bioman

• Battle Cry: Gear personnel shout "For the Man!"
• Death by Falling Over: Farrah, after receiving heavy damage, made it back to base before falling down the stairs and exploding.
• 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.
• 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. Doolittle skills to ask the bird about the evil plan du jour.)
• Love Triangle: Mason, Farrah and Monster
• McLeaned: The death of Mika is a text-book example of this, due to the actress' sudden departure.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Gear switches to stronger robot monsters and upgrade the big three, so the Biomen receive an extra-boost in Bio Particles . The three remaining Beastnoids are also rebuilt into stronger forms.
• Name's the Same: Shingo Takasugi shares his full name with a character from Captain Tsubasa, who also happens to be a Big Guy.
• Punny Name: Blue Three's name is spelled the same way in Japanese as "Bruce Lee", the only real difference being the placement of the middle dot.
  • So where's Blue One and Two?
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Yuki Yajima, the actress who played the first Yellow Four left due to some shady circumstances that even today aren't quite clear. Some claim she had a falling out with J.A.C. the stuntworkers union that Sentai hired most of its early actors from, while fellow cast members believe she eloped with someone. Either way the actress hasn't been heard from since then.
• Replacement Goldfish: The Black Prince, a Mecha Clone replica of Doctor Man's son, Shuichi. Subversion: Shuichi is actually alive.
• 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.
• Synchronization: One Robot Monster had a counterpart Mechaclone, a MacGuffin Girl named Miki, whose existence allowed him to regenerate damage. She did a Heroic Sacrifice to stop that.
• Temporary Substitute: Episodes 15 and 16 were obviously written with Mika in mind.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Mika, then Jun, and Hikaru.
• Unfriendly Fire: Mason, using Metal Megas, blasts the Biomen and the five Beastnoids, which destroys Aquaiger and Messerbeast.
• Was Once a Man/ Meaningful Name: There's a reason why the villain's named Doctor Man.