Science Ninja Team Gatchaman Part 2 (rejected pitch)

Science Ninja Team Gatchaman Part 2 (科学忍者隊ガッチャマンPART 2), also known as "Space Gatchaman" (宇宙ガッチャマン), was the earliest known possible sequel or extension proposal of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, drafted at some point in 1974 by Jinzo Toriumi and Satoshi Suyama as a pitch to Fuji TV in anticipation of continuing the series due to its popularity.

It is unknown if any formal documentation of the project was made beyond discussions, or if it survives anywhere within Tatsunoko or with those associated with Tori Pro (Toriumi and Suyama's later company). Its existence has been alluded to in scattered staff interviews and vaguely recalled by fans, leading to different rumors that may be false or fact unless they were taken from other anecdotes. Had it been greenlit, the series would have been envisioned as an additional year of broadcasting for Gatchaman, taking it forward to 1975 and a total of at least 157 episodes, if the 52 in this concept were to be counted along with the existing 105.

The project's existence has otherwise been buried over the decades, with Tatsunoko considering 1978 to be when any actual sequel plans for Gatchaman had started, eventually resulting in the production of Gatchaman II.

Allegations of the "Space Gatchaman" work

Talk of a "Space Gatchaman" series would often come up from time to time on different SNS websites such as 2ch and Twitter through the 2000s and on, but never seem to be officially mentioned by Tatsunoko's brand accounts as any sort of trivia like they would for their other works.

One repeated claim would often be that it was to pick up on the disappearance of Joe's body in the series finale as well as the setting shifting to outer space. Some of these rumors would vary though, on whether or not Joe was meant to be the protagonist or meant to be replaced by a character like Andro Umeda of the eventual Tekkaman the Space Knight.

"It was supposed to feature Joe the Condor, who disappeared at the end of the previous work, as the main character in space."

"The original project for Tekkaman was Space Ninja Team Gatchaman, right? With Andro instead of Joe."

"After Science Ninja Team Gatchaman ended, "Space Gatchaman" was planned but scrapped, resulting in Tekkaman the Space Knight."

Still, one problem with these claims would be that there would be no sourcing for what interview or staff members had talked of such a project, and different "Gatchaman" fan clubs would not seem to acknowledge its existence either.

Staff and Cast quotes that unveil truths

Mentions of this discarded project seem to have first appeared around mid-late 1977, when Gatchaman was first receiving nostalgic coverage in magazines such as Fantoche as well as Tatsunoko's own promotional pamphlets.

From what it would seem, the disappearance of Joe's body and the uncertain state of his life or death was indeed by design, in case Fuji TV would approve a sequel idea; Suyama felt that even with the staff's plans to kill Joe, he would still be expected as part of the team and knowing that fans would protest an outright death.

Jinzo Toriumi (Planning, Screenwriter)

"What was that story about? I've forgotten a bit, but it is true that concepts were incorporated into Tekkaman. A character like Andro Umeda appeared, and I think the setting changed from Earth to outer space."

"The Big Tori" would indeed wind up planning out Tekkaman with his usual writing partner Suyama, while the second half of the series would be directed by Hisayuki Toriumi (aka "The Little Tori").

If the scant memories he had were right, there was indeed an Andro character although his details remained mum (potentially that very rumored "Andro" replacement on the Science Ninja Team for the missing Joe).

Although Hisayuki Toriumi was evidently included in discussions with "The Big Tori", Suyama, and anyone else in the planning department for this pitch, it is unknown if he would have continued in his director role; by the time of the eventual Gatchaman II's development, he declined the idea of directing it and preferred to close out his time with Gatchaman with the SF Roman Science Ninja Team Gatchaman light novel.

Satoshi Suyama (Planning, Screenwriter)

"There was a time when Tatsunoko was planning a Gatchaman Part 2. To be honest, it was a flop. Well, even if we could have made it to the scenario stage, we still would have had to sort out the finer details."

(...)

"At the time, we had a little talk of killing him (Joe) off at the end. So, I thought, what should we do to achieve that? I didn't think of it at the time, but I later created the idea of Joe having a bullet or shrapnel in his head, so I thought it was about time to include that but I didn't really intend to incorporate it until he died. As the number of episodes increased and it was getting closer to the final episode, I realized the fans would say "You can't kill him!". So after thinking about it, I thought it would be better to show him as not yet dead or still alive, and that's how I wound up depicting him. Also, since the show had such high approval ratings, I knew that the talk of a "Gatchaman Part 2" would come up and I thought I had no choice but to include Joe too, so I left him in that state."

The fact that Suyama was a collaborator on the Tekkaman pitch outside of his Gatchaman planning credits would already be an anomaly at Tatsunoko (with Suyama usually only just writing screenplays for other shows), but makes a lot more sense in that he and Toriumi decided to take whatever ideas they felt were strong enough from their original "Part 2" concept and repurpose them for another project.

Katsuji Mori (Voice of Ken the Eagle, and Tekkaman's Joji Minami)

"Tekkaman was created just after Gatchaman ended, and it was the same studio's work, so between Joji and Ken, they were a bit similar. And, as you know, Tekkaman was originally supposed to be Gatchaman Part 2. So it was natural that they were similar, and the dad dies in the first episode. So when I was recording, I just thought of Red Impulse."

Legacy

Since Gatchaman Part 2 was rejected by Fuji TV fairly early into planning, it is likely that if any document existed or still exists that it would have had to have been one of the more provisional, completely handwritten pamphlets that Tatsunoko writers would produce when first drafting out a pitch (so no formal planning establishment cover or other fancy details). This would also mean that Tatsuo Yoshida, Ippei Kuri, and others like Yoshitaka Amano most likely would not have produced any concept artwork and sketches for whatever new characters there were to be like the "Andro Umeda-like" individual. If there were ever any such drawings, it's probable they were lost a long time ago.

Ultimately, this project was instead indeed revamped to be Tekkaman the Space Knight, which in itself would be called a sort of "Gatchaman in space". The network the new proposal was pitched to would be NET, and it would air from July 2nd to December 24th, 1975. Some discarded elements from the early stages of Neo-Human Casshan were also grafted onto the series, mainly the protagonist's name and his spaceship "The Blue Earth". Takao Koyama would confirm the name connection to Casshan in late October 2021:

"The name of Casshan was "Joji Minami" (Southern Cross) in the planning stage. Inevitably, his father's name was Dr. Minami. At that point, the advertising agency complained. Dr. Nambu from Gatchaman had come out first, so they said "Is the South the only thing Tatsunoko knows?" and so they changed the surname to Azuma (East). Since he's an Android, they chose the name Tetsuya. So then, the name of Tekkaman became "Joji Minami"."

While having been planned for a full year order of 52 episodes, Tekkaman unfortunately would not last long due to a slip in ratings and fatigue related to space-centric shows at the time; the ending of the final episode "Tekkaman Victorious" is infamous for the cliffhanger and many questions that were left unresolved as to the characters' fates and what would happen from there on.

Meanwhile, the angle of Joe the Condor's body vanishing, to question whether he was really dead or alive and to lead into a possible sequel, would be resumed in an early 1978 Gatchaman 2 pitch, retaining some of a "space" idea with the Space Joker and his abduction by X, before that would be discarded in the ensuing New Gatchaman/Gatchaman II planning.

Basically, the trail of a Gatchaman sequel project can be marked in at least three known separate pitch phases:

Science Ninja Team Gatchaman Part 2 (1974, rejected) -> Science Ninja Team Gatchaman 2 (1976 or 1978?, rejected) -> New Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (1978, approved and re-titled as Gatchaman II)

Possible Character Connections and Parallels

Warning: While this wiki is about facts and trying to debunk or explain rumors that have plagued the series for years, some of what falls below can go into personal speculation when trying to compare characters between "Gatchaman" and "Tekkaman". Unless any formal proposal or other details are uncovered of "Gatchaman Part 2", please don't jump to quick conclusions and absolutes either.

• As Katsuji Mori had pointed out, Joji Minami and Ken Washio do have similarities in being protagonists with dead/missing fathers. Joji would likely take up the protagonist role that was intended to be Ken's continued development, although his characterization and some themes may have been altered in the process; Joji's more impulsive and anger-driven personality may have come just with the Tekkaman retooling, or it could have already potentially stemmed from Ken having to handle the loss of his father, the loss of Joe, and Leader X escaping Earth unpunished and having nearly destroyed it. The trauma Ken would have over his dead father was at least inevitably transferred over to Joji, but with different events and context.
• Hiromi Amachi may have evolved from Jun as the resident heroine and potential love interest figure, but unfortunately given a much less active role in the process of carrying the space themes to a new character in her place.
• Dr. Amachi may have been a re-use for what role Dr. Nambu would have played in the plot of Part 2, as the mentor figure but now being the father of the heroine (although some have wondered whether or not Nambu had formally adopted Jun and Jinpei).
• Mutan may have been a potential replacement for Jinpei, much as the Choroichi character in the Tanmar Great Melee proposal was changed out for Chorobo by the time it became Time Bokan. In that instance, the heroine's younger brother was deemed out of fashion and steadily replaced with a cute robot mascot associated with the heroes, and similar logic could have followed for swapping Jinpei out with another cute mascot that would be closely linked with Hiromi. Otherwise, the later added character of Masaru Hokuto in the Tekkaman series could also have been a call-back to those like Jinpei.
• Whatever role Ryu Nakanishi had as part of the continued Science Ninja Team, likely still the pilot of the God Phoenix and less involved in battle, appears to have not survived the transition to the Space Knights. Much like how Mutan is figured to be a substitute for the child team member, there is some thought that the robot Pegas was subbed in the place of a character like Ryu as the Space Knights' "big guy" and steed, and who would be useful in being part of Joji's transformation to Tekkaman.
• By "The Big Tori"'s talk, an Andro character did already exist but his name and details are unknown, so it can't be said how much exactly survived or was changed in the conversion of Part 2 elements to Tekkaman ones. If he was to be part of the new Science Ninja Team headed for outer space, or an ally to them, he may have been Ken's new foil.
• The Space Lord Dobrai was evidently inspired by Leader X, and X may have originally served in a similar role in the Part 2 planning. X would likely be looking for a new planet to conquer after his attempted destruction of Earth, and Rambos may have been carried over from whoever his new alien sub-leader would have been.
• While Joe's disappearance would have been meant to be followed up on in this pitch, it can also be questioned whether or not Tatsuo Yoshida's wish for Red Impulse to be revealed alive would have hung over the staff's heads and been something they could have potentially incorporated; Hisayuki Toriumi had hated the character and that's why he was killed off in the first place, but evidently Yoshida and some others had grown fond of the character and had been shocked with that development. It is then a question if the intended plotline of Kousei Minami being revealed to be Waldastar's Tekkaman may have even stemmed from this early on as an idea to bring back Red Impulse, or if it was only figured out after the discarding of Part 2 and the creation of the Tekkaman proposal.
• If Kentaro Washio wasn't yet envisioned in the pitch as secretly surviving, focus goes back to those strange, pesky rumors of Joe being the "Space Gatchaman" and potentially the masked warrior figure that Ken would have to contend with in the series. This in itself could be the earliest prototype, in either case, to the Waldastar Tekkaman and ensuing Space Joker to Bryman pipeline for the later rejected Gatchaman 2 and Tori Pro's short-lived Space Genie Daikengo.
• The Waldastar soldiers and their interchangeable looks would seem to have evolved from the standard green Galactor troopers, who may have been already re-imagined as aliens with the move in settings to outer space.
• The Space Ninjas, with their winged and also identical appearances, may be comparable to the Blackbirds and may have also evolved from a similar concept of space-themed villains.