History is not just a simple sequence of happenings, but a constant alternation between love and hate, happiness and pain. Its protagonists are just common people, whose lives last for just a split second when compared to eternity. This is why Time Patrol controls it afar from space.
Time Patrol Tai Otasukeman is the fourth installment of the Time Bokan anime series by Tatsunoko Production, that aired on Fuji TV from 1980 to 1981.
The show is set in 2980, on a spaceship that hovers around the Earth. This spaceship is the command center of Time Patrol, a special force whose main objective is to ensure that nobody uses time travel to change the past. The Ojamaman are a villainous group that is actively doing that, in order to take all the bizarre claims that their boss Tomomot wrote in his error-filled history book and make them the truth.
When the Ojamaman are given a new mission, the Time Patrol robot Hinebot goes haywire and manages to inform everyone of their next target, so two rescue teams are sent to stop them. What the Time Patrol doesn't know is that the members of one of the rescue teams are actually the Ojamaman themselves, while the other team transforms into the Otasukeman, masked heroes who fight the Ojamaman to stop their plans.
The series ran for 53 episodes, plus a longer special episode aired a few months after the series ended.
This show contains examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming:
- Early episodes have Atasha accidentally calling Sekovich with the name of one of his counterparts from the earlier series.
- The second half of the series introduces Professor Onuki, that keeps being called "Professor Tanuki" (or similar names) by other characters.
- Animal Mecha: Multiple throughout the series.
- The Time Patrol spaceships are all patterned after birds: the good guys's Sunday Go is designed to look like a Delivery Stork, while the bad guys's Andromedama Go looks like a vulture and can also transform into an owl-shaped hovercraft. Tonnan, the Time Patrol director, owns a pelican-shaped spaceship, and in an episode a rooster-shaped emergency ship appears.
- Out of the six main mechas used by the Otasukemen, five are based on animals: a frog, a rhinoceros, a seal, a tanuki and an orangutan.
- After some brief stints with mechs based on the faces of various characters (either real or fictional), the Ojamamen mechas also start to be animal based, at first with Mix-and-Match Critters and then with regular animals.
- Animorphism: Episode 47 features Gekigasuki's father coming to the Time Patrol to make a comic about them visiting Colonial America and meeting Buffalo Bill. As he decides to depict all the characters as Funny Animals, the episode also starts depicting them as such: Hikaru and Nana become a dog and a bunny, Atasha, Sekovitch, Dowalski and Gekigasuki become respectively a fox, a weasel, a boar and a horse (they then transform into a pig, a wolf, a gorilla and a giraffe while in their Ojamaman suits, and the final scene also depicts them as a butterfly, a mantis, a cockroach and a grasshopper), Tonnan and Onuki become respectively a lion and a tanuki, Tomomot becomes a Kappa, Gekigasuki's father is a donkey and Buffalo Bill a jaguar.
- Artificial Intelligence: Tomomot, surprisingly. He is a computer-generated figure created by Gekigasuki, programmed to be able to answer to any question they make about his plans so that his appearances can look like a live broadcast.
- Bears Are Bad News: One of the mechs used by the Otasukemen is based on the mythological Japanese hero Kintaro. As the original Kintaro was known for sumo wrestling with bears, the Otasuke Kinta uses a living bear on a leash as a weapon.
- Big Bad: Tomomot.
- Creator Cameo: Franchise creator Hiroshi Sasagawa appears multiple times as the Time Patrol officer Dr. Sasayabu.
- Custom Uniform of Sexy: Downplayed, but Atasha's Time Patrol uniform features a skirt instead of shorts and lacks the knee-high socks other female officers wear, allowing for Panty Shots and showing more bare leg than usual.
- Dark Is Evil: The Ojamamen costumes are all black to contrast the white of the Time Patrol outfits.
- Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: Once per episode, the villains sabotage the good guys's spaceship to ensure they will arrive on destination first.
- Different in Every Episode: The Ojamamen's final attack in early episodes is preannounced by an orchestra of small robots popping out from the mech's cockpit. The director has a different face each time, usually being some kind of Shout-Out (for example, in one episode the director is actually Joe the Condor and comments that he's in the wrong show)
- Dressing as the Enemy: Episode 45 has the Ojamamen committing robbery in Beverly Hills disguised as the Otasukemen in order to frame them as criminals... this absolutely backfires, because their failures end up making people believe they're comedians doing some weird promotion of their next film.
- Dub Species Change: The Italian dub changes the species of three of the Otasukeman mechas: the frog is turned into a toad, the seal into a sea lion and the tanuki into a groundhog. One of the Ojamaman mechas from a later episode is also changed from a pangolin to an armadillo.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first few episodes, Atasha's Ojamaman costume doesn't feature a mask. She gets a purple one in episode 4 after a fan letter suggested that she should wear one.
- Edutainment Show: Alongside the explanations of historical events, later episodes feature brief presentations of whatever animal the Ojamamen's mech is based on, especially when it's based on some kind of more obscure species.
- Expy: As per tradition in the Time Bokan series, the villains share the same basic design as the Terrible Trios from the older series. Lampshaded multiple times with Sekovich: when he appears for the first time the narrator can't help but notice how familiar looking he is, while Atasha calls him with the names of his lookalikes from the older iterations of the franchise in a few early episodes, claiming that she can't remember "what's his name this time".
- The Faceless: Atasha's mysterious "special someone" she keeps a photo of in her necklace. Multiple times her teammates try to peek at it to check if it's one of them or someone else, but they never manage to see it. Subverted in the finale, when we finally see the photo: it's Atasha herself.
- Fanservice Extra: Few episodes, usually with other Time Patrol girls.
- Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: Some episodes have, after the end, an extra scene where the main characters answer to fan mail or comment their ideas for new mini-mechs.
- Medium-Shift Gag: In episodes 26 and 27, photos of fans Cosplaying as the main characters are shown.
- Fun with Palindromes: Tomomot has a palindrome name and often remarks it as his most distinctive trait.
- Generation Xerox: Episode 46 features the future descendants of both the heroes and villains from the year 4000, and they're all dead ringers of their ancestors.
- Ghost Leg Lottery: The heroes have multiple mechs. Which one they use in each episode is chosen via a Ghost Leg game on their ship's main computer.
- Hack Your Enemy: In the final episode, it turns out that Tomomot's appearances were transmitted by a circuit Gekigasuki planted inside Hinebot, Hikaru and Nana's robot companion. This is also the reason Hinebot begins to spin around doing the so called "Kai Kai Dance" every time Tomomot sends a message to the Ojamaman: it's a glitch caused by the circuit.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Dowalski. Since his mother wanted to turn him into a modern day Hercules, when he was a baby she fed him with liquor instead of milk and forced him to wear a training harness every day. Then, when he grew up, she began to throw him down a cliff he had to climb up to come back home every single day. It's not surprising that he got huge childhood traumas and fears his mother.
- Insane Troll Logic: Tomomot's plan. The history book he just wrote is completely wrong? Just hire some guys to go back in time and change the past so that it matches the book!
- In-Universe Factoid Failure: Tomomot's history book is filled with lies and inaccuracies, attributing multiple events to his ancestors and claiming that multiple famous figures from the past were either the opposite of what is known (Al Capone was never arrested and forced the FBI to disband, the Gettysburg Address promoted corruption and encouraged bribing, Lawrence of Arabia was a weakling) or something completely different (Benjamin Frankin invented takoyaki, Hans Christian Andersen worked in a Barnum-like circus showing off a "real" mermaid, the Shinsengumi moved to Africa and helped in the construction of the Suez Channel). The Ojamaman's job is to change the past so that these claims become the truth.
- Living with the Villain: In an odd twist for this series, both the heroes and the villains work in the same police Space Station as Time Police.
- The Man Behind the Man: Gekigaski. He's the one who created Tomomot in the first place, and all the tasks he gave to the Ojamaman were just tests to prove that history can be changed so that he can then do it by himself to save the Earth from being destroyed by its own inhabitants.
- May the Farce Be with You: Episode 46 has the main characters travel to the future to help their descendants. The Ojamamen descendants are Stormtrooper-like soldiers led by Ojamavader (a Darth Vader Expy and Tomomot's descendant), fighting against rebel soldiers (led by Hikaru and Nana's descendants who are also expies of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia) and stationing on a Death Star-esque base.
- Mascot: While the Odate Buta keeps appearing as the franchise's main mascot, this series introduces a bunch of new ones that appear regularly from the Ojamaman mechas. The ones that had more success and managed to reappear in later iterations of the franchise are the zipper-mouthed dolls that come out to sing mock cheerleader songs and a loach that mocks Sekovich when he claims that victory is close.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: From episode 21 to 33, the villain mechs are all designed as fusions between animals, such as an elephant with a mouse head, a chameleon with vulture wings and a crocodile with grasshopper legs.
- Non-Uniform Uniform: Alongside Atasha's Custom Uniform of Sexy, Gekigasuki is the only male Time Patrol officer whose uniform has long pants and knee-high boots instead of shorts and ankle-length boots.
- The Olympics: Episode 37, aired as a tie-in for the 1980 Summer Olympic Games, features Hikaru and Atasha leading the two teams of a sport event for Time Patrol members. The Ojamamen cheat by bringing multiple historical figures in their team (mainly because they plan to sell the trophy to recover their lost funds), but at the end the competition is cancelled and the trophy is split in two so that each team gets half of it... and it turns out to be tiny, much to Atasha's disdain.
- Police Are Useless: Because the Otasukemen are so good at stopping the Terrible Trio and setting things back in their proper place, the rest of the Time Patrol never really get their own chance to shine.
- Redemption Equals Death: Subverted. At the end of the series, the four villains perform a Heroic Sacrifice by blowing themselves up to stop a comet that's about to hit Earth. However, before the meteorite explodes, one can make out 4 rescue ships leaving the spaceship.
- Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Atasha. Beyond the classic amount of Clothing Damage, a Running Gag has her caught in the middle of the dress up sequence when the trio changes from their Time Patrol uniforms to the Ojamamen costume.
- Robot Buddy: Hinebot, Hikaru and Nana's companion who is also able to hijack Tomomot's transmissions, enabling the Time Patrol to know about the Ojamaman's missions.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The Otatsukemen's stock and trade. It's part of their job as Time Patrol officers to maintain temporal order, after all.
- Inverted with Ojamaman, who usually do the exact opposite. In fact, most of the temporal paradoxes in the series are caused by them under Tomomot's orders.
- Shout-Out: Hikaru and Nana's Robot Buddy Hinebot is clearly designed after Robby the Robot.
- Sickeningly Sweethearts: Hikaru and Nana, multiple times. The "training sessions" they're given at the end of each episode are less actual training and more an excuse to allow them to be a cute couple with nobody around looking at them.
- Sixth Ranger: Gekigasuki, introduced early on as an apprentice joining Atasha's team but not as an active part of the Ojamaman team, becomes their fourth member starting from episode 13.
- Terrible Trio: As Time Bokan is the Trope Codifier, the Ojamaman (barring late addition Gekigasuki) follow the model to a T.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: In episode 32, Tonnan decides to explain what the two training routes for the day are to the two teams rather than having them take a blind pick. This allows Atasha's team to pick the relaxing session and leave the hard one to Hikaru and Nana (and even then that time neither of the two picks were that hard to begin with, as they were "cross a river on a rowing boat" and "cross a river on a motorboat")
- Time Police: Both the two main characters and the villainous Terrible Trio work for the Time Patrol, whose job is to prevent alterations of history. Both the antagonist trio (which later becomes a quartet) and the good guys have secret identities; the former group as Ojamaman, who try to alter history following the whims of Big Bad, and the latter group as the titular Otasukeman, who always manage to put everything back in place.
- Training from Hell: At the end of each episode, the Time Patrol director forces everyone to do a training session because they apparently did nothing while the Ojamaman and Otasukeman were fighting. He allows them to choose randomly between two types of training: a hard and dangerous session, and an easy, enjoyable session that often barely qualifies as an actual training. The bad guys always wind up with the former (with a single exception in episode 32). In certain episodes they don't have time for the training, but whatever they have to do intead (cleaning the base's windows, taking their medical checkups or even having dinner) still features the two options.
- Transforming Vehicle:
- The Ojamaman's Andromedama Go spaceship can transform into a hovercraft.
- The Otasukeman's Sunday Go initially has only a land-based mode that replaces the landing gear with tank threads, but in the second half of the series it gets upgraded with the ability of transforming further into the Sunday Star, a tank-like vehicle equipped with two pincers on the front.
- Weather Report: The Ojamaman computer gives the bad guys sights of their future in form of weather reports. Usually very negative.
