Science Ninja Team Gatchaman

A huge turtle-shapes mecha, the "Turtleking" attacks a uranium storage facility. The ISO and the delegates of various countries are very concerned. Nambu, the only person who previously knew of Galactor, now officially anounces the existence of both the criminal organization "Galactor", as well as the Science Ninja Team that has been formed to resist them. The Science Ninja Team receives Nambu's orders, unites in the God Phoenix, and flies off right away to a missile launching base where the mecha was sighted. Ken stops Joe, who's eager to get into his first real fight. Ken takes Jun along and they sneak inside the mecha. With Ken's help the God Phoenix then enters the mecha and Joe, Jinpei and Ryu join the battle against the Galactor members. Elsewhere, the commander of the mecha tells Berg Katse of the Science Ninja Team's existence. Katse then relays the message to Governor X. In accordance with X's instructions, Katse orders the Science Ninja Team to be destroyed. The order is to have the mecha make a suicidal plunge, taking the God Phoenix with it, thus burying the Science Ninja Team. But at the very last moment, the God Phoenix escapes the mecha by using the Firebird Effect.

A spaceship disappears, along with a device that can report and record the location of the Earth's resources. The Science Ninja Team receives Nambu's instructions and heads towards the bottom of the sea, in the vicinity of the spot where contact with the spaceship was lost. There, prawn-shaped bulldozers leave a huge aircraft carrier located on the sea bottom to build a uranium factory. Ken stops Ryu who wants to fire a Bird Missile, and sneaks into the aircraft carrier alone. Ken discovers the spaceship's capsule inside the aircraft carrier, but the astronauts have been taken hostage. Ken is caught then too. In reality however, the pilots have already been murdered. Showing them as if they were still alive has been a trap. Jinpei has sneaked into the aircraft carrier following Ken on Joe's orders. He is able to rescue Ken as he is being led underground. The two of them collect the device and escape, destroying the computer in the aircraft carrier. The commander of the carrier gets blamed by Katse, and he gets into the head of the Turtleking to hurl himself at the God Phoenix. But due to Ken's quick thinking, the God Phoenix becomes the Firebird and the flames consume everything.

Deadly crashes involving passenger planes keep happening. Ken, who's investigating these occurrences, encounters a boy named Makoto. The boy is awaiting the return of his father who was reported missing in one of the accidents. Makoto's father is the younger brother of the inventor of Uranless, Dr. Takahara. The string of plane crashes has been caused by Galactor. They are intent on getting the Uranless, since it is capable of neutralizing the means of propulsion of their giant mummy. Ken has encountered the mummy in his Cessna before, and because of that incident, he has data concerning the propulsion system of the mummy. He contacts Dr. Takahara in order to get the Uranless. He meets Makoto's father, who miraculously survived the crash. But it's Katse in disguise. Katse battles with Ken and escapes. Makoto blames Ken for torturing his father and Ken promises him to bring back his father whereupon he gets the pin hiding the Uranless. The giant mummy appears at the airport and Ken is able to defeat it by firing the Uranless into it. But Makoto watches Katse, still in the guise of his father, flee in an escape rocket. He accuses Ken of breaking his promise to bring his father back. Ken accepts Makoto's hate silently since he lost his father ten years before in a similar way and has had the same thoughts - namely that his father would return some day.

During the investigation of an incident, Ken visits the Institute for Earthquake Research. Because of an earthquake caused by a mecha, he falls along with the director of the institute, into a crevice in the earth. Ken transmutes and is saved, but he cannot rescue the director. Ken stands before the director's grave and is attacked by the director's daughter Naomi, who firmly believes he's Galactor. Ken understands her anger at not being able to avenge her father and decides to let her know about his true identity as member of the Science Ninja Team. Consequently, he lets her join the team on the mission. In an investigation it has been calculated which resources the mecha will most likely attack next, and the God Phoenix encounters the mecha there. Inside, Ken wants to let Naomi avenge her father and asks Nambu for permission to fire the bird missiles. Nambu doesn't give permission, but Ken ignores him and tells Naomi to fire the bird missiles anyway. Naomi hesitates to press the firing button, and Ken takes Naomi's hand and makes her fire the missiles. At the director's grave, Ken hands his bracelet to Nambu. He says he wants to take the responsibility for making Naomi press the firing button without permission and resign from the team. However, Nambu says that Ken is needed for world peace and Naomi promises not to reveal his true identity.

Oceangoing ships from the ISO keep disappearing. It always happens in the vicinity of a place called "Cemetery of the Sea". Director Anderson and Nambu ask the Science Ninja Team to go to a base on the ocean floor which is most likely to be struck next. The Science Ninja Team gets Nambu's message and takes the God Phoenix towards the base at the bottom of the sea. Then they encounter a mysterious submarine, which leads them to the Cemetery of the Sea, where they see countless sunken ships. But when Joe says that all the ships are actually battleships, Ken gets suspicious and has the God Phoenix surface. There's fog everywhere on the surface. From the middle of the fog, a ghost fleet attacks them, but the Science Ninja Team guess correctly that the fog is man-made. They destroy the device creating the fog, but from the ghost fleet appear countless disks which attack them using light rays. The Science Ninja Team has to fight a hard battle. Just when all the missiles are used up and they don't know what to do, three red planes appear and shoot down the enemy machines using superior flying techniques. The commander of the fighter plane unit introduces himself to the baffled Science Ninja Team as "Red Impulse". He then flies away, leaving the words "We'll meet again" behind.

Gold bars are stolen from the vault of the World Bank. It is the deed of Galactor's Mini Robots. The Science Ninja Team get their instructions and start a search on the islands in the vicinity of the place where the gold bars seem to have been taken. Joe makes sure that Ken, Jun and Jinpei, in civilian wear, attract the enemy's attention and get taken off to the base. He proposes that if this is the headquarters, it should be destroyed right away. However, Nambu stops him by saying it's not the Science Ninja Team's duty to attack. Joe leaves a bored Ryu behind in the God Phoenix on the bottom of the sea and sneaks into the base in order to prepare for retaking of the gold bars. While Ken and the other create a lot of confusion in the interior of the base, Joe goes looking for the gold bars. He learns that a missile is about to be fired at the God Phoenix when it is detected by the surveillance cameras. He contacts Ryu in the God Phoenix, right away. Ryu, who is always merely on stand-by, is taking a nap, though manages to evade the missile by a hair's breadth. With Joe's guidance they store the stolen gold bars in the God Phoenix's interior. Ken and the others are contacted and escape from the base. The Galactor base and all its inhabitants are blown up because they didn't manage to prevent the gold bars being stolen back.

There's a new kind of plane that does not pollute the environment. In the middle of Ken's test flight of this ISO-developed plane, he is attacked by a biplane, piloted by a man who introduces himself as "Katzen Berig". Katzen Berig lashes with his whip at the ISO plane, causing it to crash, but Ken saves himself just in time by deploying a parachute. Nambu suspects from the name that Galactor is involved and orders the God Phoenix to attack immediately, but the God Phoenix's tailfin gets damaged by the whip. Analysis of the material stuck in the hull of the God Phoenix reveals that this kind of metal, called "super metal whisker", is something that has been researched by the ISO, but not manufactured. Nambu is taken aback at the scientific power of Galactor, but when the production factory is discovered, he gives the Science Ninja Team the order to destroy it. While the Science Ninja Team conducts a search with the God Phoenix in a mining area, they detect a huge mine. When they discover that this is where Galactor's secret factory is located, they sneak into it. By the end of the battle, they have succeeded in destroying the computer and the nuclear reactor. They try to make their getaway in the God Phoenix, but are caught by the strong magnetic attraction of the mine. They switch to jet propulsion and escape by a hair's breadth, leaving the exploding factory behind them.

A secret base. In order to resist their terrible enemy, Nambu thinks about a base for the Science Ninja Team. But fearing enemy intervention, he gives the Ninja Team orders to fly a patrol at Point G in the southern Pacific Ocean. Following orders not to intervene there, the God Phoenix leaves a smoke screen and flees when it encounters a sea anemone mecha. That night, Jinpei is with the other four team members, but he is not tired at all. He takes the G-4 and dives to the bottom of the sea. Children in the park had told him that G-4's popularity is the lowest of all the team members, and he intends on gaining their favour by being the best. Despite the worries of the other team members, he wanders around the sea bottom searching for the mecha. He never notices that he is being tailed by the mecha he seeks. Jinpei finds what seems to be a base under construction, but is caught by the mecha. He contacts Ken, but the base is blown up before his eyes. The mecha is destroyed by the God Phoenix and Katse gets away again. Jinpei wails that the base has been blown up because of his own egoistic actions, but Nambu tells him that the destroyed base was only a decoy. The Science Ninja Team had been the bait to attract the enemy's attention. The God Phoenix is flying high in the sky. Deep below stretches a crescent shaped coral reef. Below the reef hides the base which is capable of changing its location.

In the deep black sky the blue-white moon is shining. Suddenly, a meteorite falls down to Earth. According to analysis, the meteorite has the same composition as the moon. So Ken proposes approaching the moon in the God Phoenix to investigate. Approaching the moon, the God Phoenix encounters a swarm of meteorites heading for Earth. Ken discovers a wrapped up body in the middle of the swarm and, because this is not a meteorite he attacks. But the Bird Missiles have no effect. The body falls to the Earth, becomes a Scorpion Mecha and attacks an oil refinery. Following Nambu's instructions from Earth to find the source of the radio waves steering the mecha and the meteorites, Ken asks Jun to trace the signal they detected while the mecha was on its way to Earth. The Science Ninja Team find the carrier sending out the control signal and leave Ryu behind in the God Phoenix while they sneak into it. They question the commander, but he doesn't reveal anything. Joe loses his patience and fires carelessly into the control panels with a machine gun. Shortly after the Science Ninja Team escapes, the meteorites hit the carrier because the computer has been destroyed. Meanwhile on Earth, the Red Impulse squad reports that the now unguided scorpion mecha has been destroyed.

Suddenly, a whole city has lost power. Ken, in his Cessna, is thinking about an anomaly in the power plant when he gets a message from Nambu that the nuclear power plant has been attacked by a large group of ants. The Science Ninja Team goes to the site in question, but since the missiles would have hardly any effect on the tiny groups, they wash them away by breaking a nearby dam and using the force of the water. Upon analysing an ant they brought back, they learn that it's a finely and precisely manufactured robot. The robot ant gets repaired and, following its control signal, returns to its base. It is followed by Ryu in the God Phoenix in the sky and by the other four on the ground. They soon discover huge ant-hills, and end up in a huge ant cave when they try to sneak in. Katse is waiting for them where they fall and captures them in a dome made of reinforced glas. The air is about to run out and they don't know what to do, but in the end barely escape by using a bomb. In the meantime, swarms of ants have attacked the streets, but the Red Impulse squad exterminates them with flamethrowers. At this time, Katse lets a huge ant mecha take off. Red Impulse and the God Phoenix drive the ant mecha into an underwater tunnel. Collecting the sunlight with a mirror built into its nose, the God Phoenix burns everything with a strong heat ray. But Katse gets away again.