(Mostly written during the wee hours of Feb. 12, 1998, with minor revisions during lunch breaks and the weekend after)

The episode begins with the narrator. I have nothing against narrators, but the whole tone of the Gatchaman narrator reminds me so much of the jidaigeki or Japanese "period plays" format...then again when you think about it the whole point of this entire series is that they are ninja, which is a totally jidaigeki thing, so perhaps the jidaigeki tone is appropriate after all.

Anyway, the narrator is saying something along the lines of "the city is lively by day but as night falls everyone goes home and it becomes quiet..but in Jun's snack, (they don't call it the "Snack J"!) the young people have gathered together for a...

Go-go party?

I hit pause, rewind the tape and listen to it again to make sure I heard correctly, but unfortunately I did hear it correctly. The narrator DID say go-go party.

Give me a moment to get past this, please.

I'm O.K., I think...

The narrator continues. "Jun and Jinpei have also left their troubles behind and are dancing with the other guests." Um...Jun? Jinpei? Who's manning the counter? Who's manning the bar? Who's cooking? Who's waiting tables? Who's manning the cash register?

The lights suddenly go out. The guests in the Snack are all saying things like "is it a power outage?" and "what is going on?" for at least several seconds, and THEN we hear a scream and there is a stampede out the door, and the long wait to scream seemed a bit unnatural to me.

Then we cut to traffic lights that have gone out, and since there are no traffic lights everyone is assuming that they can go and they won't be hit, so of course there is a multi-car pile-up that Joe manages to avoid because of his driving skills and he says "why's the power out all of a sudden?"

The airport, which has obviously rebuilt itself VERY quickly after being annihilated by the Monster Mummy Mech seven episodes ago, has no lights...this can make things very difficult, and it does..and the planes are doing the same thing that the cars were doing in the last scene. The control tower is saying the airport is temporarily closed and all planes are to await further instructions. Mark is saying the same thing that Joe did in the previous scene.

We see the ants go marching two by two (and the little one stops to tie his shoe).

Then the little wrist communicator on Ken's wrist goes off and it is Dr. Nambu telling Ken to rendez-vous with the rest of the team because it is a state of emergency, so I guess Ken isn't going to have to worry about running out of fuel waiting for the airport to re-open or finding another airstrip. Then we get Dr. N calling Joe and he goes driving off, and we get Dr. N calling Jun and Jinpei and Jun jumps on her motorcycle, and Jun yells at Jinpei to come on and Jinpei jumps on behind Jun.

Cut to team in the Godpheonix. Never mind that we didn't see Ryu called on his wrist communicator, he is here with the rest of his team. The poor sweet soul is ever patient and big-hearted, and they didn't even give him a tiny (no pun intended) scene where he is called in from his yacht harbor. (I would like to date Joe, have Jun as a best friend, hang out with Jinpei and stalk toy stores and anime shops with him, and have Ryu as a husband. I don't think I have much use for Ken.)

Dr. N is on the monitor of the GP and he is telling them that a giant army of ants is attacking the nuclear power plant. (Now, I would like to emphasize that Dr. N said "giant army of ants", and not "army of giant ants". This is not my typo or my mistranslation.) The power outage has the city in a state of confusion, and their mission was to stop the giant army of ants (NOT the army of giant ants). before they destroy the reactor and create a nuclear radiation leak. Team says "roger!"

Cut to the nuclear power plant, where an engineer is covered with...ants at least 4 inches in size...and he says with his last breath that the giant army of ants was getting into the nuclear reactor. There is a large explosion. Thermonuclear, I suppose. (I wonder if radiation can penetrate the walls of the GP?)

Ken is saying "Kuso, why is an army of ants attacking the nuclear power planet?", and I am beginning to wonder when Joe's language is going to start to become powerful, because in the eps I've watched Ken has far outdone Joe in the sheer volume and eloquence in the usage of what would be considered four letter words in the English speaking world.

Ryu says that the ants are too small to make targets for Bird Missiles. Joe points to a dyke ahead of the power plant, and says that if they blast it the water would wash the ants away. Ken requests for and receives permission to use the Bird Missiles. Joe is only too happy to press the red button.

The ants drown.

Cut to the team outside among the ruins of a...wait a minute. Does anyone know anything about the Birdstyles functioning as radiation suits? Because the Team is out there among the RUINS of a NUCLEAR POWER PLANT...like maybe Jun would like to have healthy babies if and when she finally gets to be with Ken (if he ever gets a clue)? Or maybe Joe is looking for a new form of birth control, like permanent sterility? Can you say hair loss? Can you say leukemia? Can you say Three Mile Island? Can you say Chernobyl? Can you say Hiroshima?

And when Ken tells them to be careful because there still may be ants around (this I can understand, but) and there is radiation leakage. (...Um, I've been taught about radiation safety as part of my work, and I think I remember something about staying as far away from it as you possibly can and wearing lead protectors, but none of them are doing either. So I am left to assume the Birdstyles function as lead protectors...

The Team begins to investigate the area. Jun screams and jumps into Joe's arms, and we see what she has seen, which is a smashed ant. (But I don't think that a girl like Jun, who can whip-kick and karate-chop Galactor backside the way she does and set charges and fly planes like the Godpheonix would scream at the sight of something like a smashed bug...though I might jump at the chance of being in Joe's arms! ^-^)

They take the smashed ant back to the ISO lab for analysis. The ant is, of course, a precision made mecha, which means, of course, that it is Galactor, says Dr. Nambu, and orders the Team to locate the Ant Robot Base. Ryu and Jinpei say that that's a bit hard because the ant robots are so small and that there are lots of real ants around.

Joe says that in shogi (which is a lot like chess but the pieces are flat pieces of wood with the name of the piece written in kanji) you sometimes use your opponent's pieces (which is true, in shogi if you capture your opponent's piece you can use it as your own). Dr. Nambu agrees with him, that making the enemy do your work for you is a good tactic.

Dr. Nambu repairs the Ant Robot, which is apparently controlled by a radio frequency, and the team sets it down on the ground. The Ant homes in on its controlling frequency and starts to march and the Team follows it over hill and dale and follows it and follows it and follows it and follows it. Jinpei gets tired and the others chide him for it, and while they are making fun of the poor little guy they lose the ant. Fortunately, right ahead is a bunch of bizarre looking towers, and Jinpei, the wildlife expert, says that they're anthills. Ken says they'll wait until it is dark to infiltrate the anthills.

Night falls, and the Team approaches the anthills. Ken is debating how to get in when they are all sucked into an ant lion's nest (which is called "ari-jigoku", or literally, "ant-hell" in Japanese, and it comes out as being kind of funny but the humor doesn't quite translate so well.) Ken yells at them to all go to Birdstyle. They land on their feet (Ken, Joe, Jun) or fall on their faces (Jinpei) in Birdstyle into a room, but are surrounded by Green Guys.

There is what appears to be the commander of the base dressed in an ant costume (...with a...ruffled collar...), and we know it is Berg Katze because of his voice (but I listened carefully though the entire episode and not once was the commander called "Berg Katze" or anything of the sort). Since the leader of an anthill is the ant queen, I am wondering whether or not the creators of this show were already conspiring about how Katze is a hemaphrodite mutant when this episode was made.

Berg Katze (that's what I'm going to call the Queen Ant because we all know that is who it is, even though it is never really acknowledged) congratulates the SNT for having found and infiltrated the base, and encloses them in an airtight capsule of reinforced glass. He (and I am going to use masculine pronouns because we haven't really had any clear indication that Katze is a hemaphrodite mutant yet) tells them that they will suffocate in there and that the Ants will rule the earth, and I have this terrible vision of BK as the Queen Ant making an inauguration speech?

The team is all short of breath. Jinpei takes apart his "American Clackers" and pours explosives into the hollows. Jun says it's too dangerous, but Jinpei assures them that their capes will protect them. He sets timers on the American Clackers, and joins the rest of the Team huddled underneath their capes at the far end of the glass capsule. The makeshift bomb goes off and makes a big gaping hole in the Glass. They escape.

In the city, the ants go marching one by one and…Red Impulse and his squadron (and yes, the Japanese Air Self Defense Forces' acro team is called Blue Impulse) is firing away with flame missiles at the ants, and he tells his team that they must not, on their honor, let a single ant in the City.

Katze is unhappy that RI's team is doing so well against him, and sends out the latest pinnacle of Galactor technology...the Giant Ant (no comment).

Ryu is worrying about Ken and the others. The Giant Ant flies by and he is startled (who wouldn't be startled by a flying ant the size of the GP?) He gets a call from Ken. He is so relieved that he shouts, "are you all right?" and Ken says "of course we are, how about you, you didn't let the Giant Ant get the GP did you?" (like he should talk, he and the others would have suffocated if it hadn't been for Jinpei's quick thinking). Ryu takes the GP to pick the rest of them up, and the Team is pulled up by a line to the GP.

Back in Dr. Nambu's office at the ISO building, Dr. Nambu is telling the Team that thanks to their investigation they know the location of the base, and that the Ant Mecha's weakness is that they are intolerant to external heat. Ken suggests that they could take the Giant Ant with flame missiles the way the Red Impulse Squadron did with the little Ant Mecha but Dr. Nambu says that they need a bigger heat source. They have to wait for the sun to come out.

RI has the Giant Ant, which has in true Galactor mech tradition been making a complete nuisance of itself, in a tight spot. Katze says that they will escape into the undersea tunnel for now.

Dr. Nambu orders the Team to wait at the exit of the tunnel for the Giant Ant to emerge.

The Giant Ant is making a nuisance of itself in the tunnel, causing a multi-car pile-up. (Hey, I'd freak if I saw an ant ten times as big as my car on the way to work, too.)

The Team is waiting, checking the weather forecast, which says sunny but with lots of clouds. Ken orders Operation Sun to begin, and I am wondering who named this operation.

The front of the GP opens, and a great big parabola opens and focuses sunlight on the Giant Ant. This does some damage, but not enough before clouds hide the sun. Ken shouts out a four-letter word (actually, it's a two letter word in Japanese but you get the point). Katze says that now is their chance, and this is pretty smart because a ship with a large parabola attached is not exactly what you would call aerodynamically efficient.

The Red Impulse Squadron comes to their rescue.

The sun comes out. Ryu re-focuses the parabola on the Giant Ant.

The Giant Ant melts. And I am sure the Queen Ant is BK because he says he'll be back and runs into an escape rocket.

Red Impulse says that he admires their fighting skills and farewell until they meet again.

Ken says, "I've never been so glad to see the sun in my life."

Jinpei says, "we were so close to getting it done all by ourselves!" Joe calls him a sore loser. Dr. Nambu says that it is a victory for the Science Ninja Team and the ISO. And Jun points out that the sun was part of the victory too.

(^-^)/))