The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird

Brave of the Sun: Fighbird (太陽の勇者ファイバード Taiyō no Yūsha Faibādo, officially translated The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird) was the second Brave Series, which aired from 1991 to 1992 in Japan. The series centered around the adventures of Yuutaro Katori, an android built by the Earthian scientist Dr. Hiroshi Amano and possesed by an energy-based lifeform from space (the titular Fighbird), and his fellow Space Police officers (Ace Baron, Guard Fire, Guard Rescue, Guard Star and Guard Wing) in their fight against the evil being known as Draias, who plans to use Earth as the starting point for his conquer of the universe.

Unlike the previous Brave series, Brave Exkaiser, which featured the hero as an energy being which inhabited a car, Fighbird focused more on self-parodying humor by having the robot leader take possession of a humanoid-simulating android instead (which interfaces with a Cool Plane named Fire Jet to form the robot Fighbird). This forces Katori/Fighbird to coexist with humanity on their terms, causing a great deal of trouble as he attempts to adapt to human life while having absolutely zero idea of what he's actually doing. The concept of the "Space Police Force" remains intact (though not connected to the earlier series), though a key difference being that the mecha that Fighbird and one of the combiner teams (the Baron Team, led by Ace Baron) use was developed previously by a human scientist, the aforementioned Dr. Amano, whose grandson Kenta accompanies the Space Police in their battles.

---

These are the tropes used in Fighbird:

• Adjective Noun Fred: The series' name.
• Badass : Katori, who kicks ass either as a fighting android or a stores-tall mecha.
• BFS : The Flame Sword, Fighbird's main Weapon of Choice.
• Bittersweet Ending: It seems the series will end up this way, after Draias's Near Villain Victory and the Space Police's return to their home planet... But the last scene subverts the trope, since it has Fighbird re-taking his Katori identity and returning alone to Earth so he can rejoin the Rescue Forces.
• Co-Dragons: Shura and Zol
• Cool Car: Road Baron, Guard Star, Guard Rescue, Guard Fire. A Justified Trope as they actually ARE cars of one or another kind, now inhabited by the spirits of Space Police members.
• Cool Plane: Fighbird, Sky Baron, Guard Wing, Fire Jet, and Draias Jet. Again, near all of them are in one way or another "possessed" by Energy Beings.
• Combining Mecha: Duh.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Fighbird is held like this when he's captured in episode 40. As soon as he can fight back, he breaks free.
  • This also happens to the Baron and Guard Team members in the Grand Finale, when they're captured by Draias and have their Life Energy drained.
• Drill Tank: Drill Baron.
• Energy Beings: What Fighbird, the Space Police, Draias, Shura, and Zol technically are. Which is why all of them sans Draias end up possessing androids or vehicles as their "vessels".
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: Draias tries to build one as his main goal in the series, literally named Devil's Tower. And he actually succeeds on building it, which brings the heroes lots of difficulties during the Grand Finale.
• Fiery Redhead: Momoko is a cute Intrepid Reporter with dark red hair and a very impulsive personality.
• Friend on the Force: Inspector Satsuda, although he is also a bit of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. He actually begins as a Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist to Dr. Amano, but evolves into this when he has to collaborate with him, Yoshiko and Katori.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar : 
  • In episode 22, Momoko shows up wearing an off-the-shoulders top. One would think that she's wearing a strapless bra underneath, but a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sequence shows that she's not.
  • Episode 33 shows Satsuda's bedroom, and considering one of the magazines that he keeps near his futon, it looks like he has a Porn Stash somewhere.
• Hospital Hottie: Yoshiko Kunieda is a cute-looking lady who works as a doctor and is referred to as 'beautiful' by Satsuda and Katori at different points in the story.
• Hostage Situation: Many episodes, especially in the first season, are about the enemies holding people hostage for one or another reason, principally to use them as slaves or as "bargaining chips" to get different things said enemies need.
  • One of the very few effective ways to actually stop a super Bad Ass All-Loving Hero like Katori/Fighbird is to hold someone captive and threaten the victim's livelihood. Especially if this involves people in Katori's direct Protectorate, like his Kid Sidekick Kenta or Kenta's cousin Haruka.
• Hot-Blooded: Katori is mostly calm and adorkable, but when it's time to fight he embodies this trope.
  • Momoko, Satsuda and Kenta also count as such.
• Hypno Trinket:
  • Episode 38 features Dr. Jango forcing a gigantic gorilla into attacking the Space Police via slapping one of these on him and turning the poor thing, a Gentle Giant who only wants to return to the jungle, into an Ax Crazy attack machine. Fighbird is afraid of hurting the gorilla needlessly, and Champ also begs him to help his "big brother"... Fighbird has to directly destroy the trinket away to release his new friend.
  • They're used again in episode 40, when Dr. Jango abducts a very popular motivational speaking lady who totally isn't a rip-off of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and has the women going to her conferences put on these, brainwashing them into capturing Fighbird who, logically, cannot fight back so he won't harm them. (And one of these women is Kenta's mother, even.)
• Large Ham: Several cast members are very loud, with Dr. Jango and Momoko as the biggest examples.
• Love Triangle: Downplayed: there could be a potential one between Katori, Yoshiko and Momoko, but in practice there's few general focus on the three's prospect romantic interactions, aside of the Ship Tease between Katori and Yoshiko. Momoko and Yoshiko only get to talk about their feelings for Katori at the very end... but any Cat Fights over him are averted, though; Momoko looked like she wanted one, but she was joking.
• Mad Scientist: Dr. Jango.
• Made of Evil: Draias, Zol, and Shura are composed of minus energy. The last arc features Draias harvesting this from space in an attempt to restructure the universe.
• Magic Music: According to Yoshiko, Katori's ocarina song can calm down "man and beast alike". She confirms it via exposing Draias and his group to a recording of said song, which near causes them to collapse.
• Men Can't Keep House: Dr. Amano's rather large house is decently mantained, but that's only because Haruka takes care of it. When the doctor is left alone to his own devices, his surroundings get quite messy.
  • When Katori attempts to help Akiko with housework, it's clear that he barely has any idea of how to do chores and ends up almost blowing up her home. While it's more understandable than other cases since he's an alien in an android body, one would think he would've picked up some more housework skills from hanging out with Haruka...
  • Satsuda's apartment is briefly seen in an episode, and while it's not a massive mess it still has some trash and... "reading materials" on the floor. On the other hand, Momoko's bedroom is also featured in the same sequence and seems to be near spotless.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Fire Shuttle and Granbird.
• Mind Rape: The "Psychic Assault" version is used twice:
  • Episode 27 has it as a side-effect of Dr. Jango spreading the evil energy of the Demon Stone through the world so he can weaken Katori/Fighbird and the Space Police. In addition to feeling weakened and sluggish, they begin having weird flashbacks of their past battles that lead to them trying to get out and fight even when there are no deployed enemies. Dr. Amano has to work hard through the episode to create a chip that blocks the Devil Stone's effects.
  • In Episode 33, lots of people start having Bad Dreams about their loved ones or their ancestors asking them to surrender themselves to Draias and help him locate and kill Fighbird... Whne Dr. Amano has one of these dreams too, he realizes that it's not JUST a dream since the person featured in them is his late wife Yuri... who inspired him to search for World Peace. He soon finds out that Jango is again behind this, now using his latest invention to meddle with people's brainwaves and trick them into believing that they're seeing the spirits of the people important to them. So the last part of the episode is half dedicated to Fighbird and his companions fighting the Monster of the Week, half to Kenta and Dr. amano facing Jango and destroying his device.
• Mooks: The Teshitas, 'nuff said.
• Monster of the Week: The Mecha Beasts, not to be confused with mechanical beasts or mecha-boosts.
• Off-Model: At least once, Katori has been drawn without his red jacket underneath his lab coat while in his human identity.
  • Also, the characters' necks sometimes get wider or more narrow depending on the scenes.
  • In a scene of episode 44, Yoshiko's head looks ridiculously and hilariously small compared to her body. The same happens to Katori in episode 46, which ruins a rather serious scene.
• Open Secret: Zigzagged. Technically speaking, Fighbird and the Space Police should NOT let their existences be known to humans (as Guard Rescue points out to Guard Fire when he runs off to talk to a kid that belittled the duties of fire trucks). However, thanks to Dr. Jango and his... theatrics, their enemy Draias soon becomes a conversation topic among some authorities, culminating in Draias and Co. very publicly invading and taking over none other than the freaking U.S.A right around the end of the first season; and when Figbird and the Guard and Baron teams manage to foil this plan, they're acknowledged in public and by the freaking President of the U.S.A as the ones who saved the day. So the series advances, people are less and less surprised to see some BIG Transforming Mechas coming to their aid when it's needed...
• Our Vampires Are Different: Episode 36 has the Teshitas disguise themselves as vampires in Germany. And anyone "bitten" by them ends up Brainwashed.
• Pastel-Chalked Freeze-Frame: The series rarely if ever uses these, but it does give Katori/Fighbird one in the second-to-last episode when he goes off to fight the Big Bad, clearly knowing that he's not likely to survive.
• Prayer Pose:
  • Parodied at the end of an episode, where Momoko is seen on it against the sunset as she daydreams about Fighbird... and soon her cameraman 'breaks' the illusion.
  • Subverted in the openings, when Dr. Yoshiko is on what seems to be this pose in the background. The second one shows that she's not: she's actually holding Katori's ocarina close to her chest.
• Pretty Butterflies : ... They're not pigeons, by the way.
• The Professor: Hiroshi Amano, an eccentric yet efficient (sort of) man of science who wants to use his inventions for World Peace.
• Rescue Romance: Momoko fell for Katori/Fighbird when he saved her in the second episode, and really wants him to play the trope straight with her. No such luck, though.
  • While Yoshiko fell in love with Katori mostly because of his kindness to everyone, there's an element of this too. The first time she actually considered him as more than a weird but kind young man that she crossed paths with sometimes came after he saved her from being crushed under a huge shelf in episode 16.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: Katori, again. He passes perfectly as a man in his early 20's, as long as his Fish Out of Water personality traits don't go to the surface.
• Secretly Wealthy: Professor Hiroshi Amano, so much so that Inspector Satsuda hounds him because he believes the doc was involved in a 3 billion yen robbery that happened years ago. It doesn't help that Hiroshi refuses to say where he gets his money from, despite having few actual income.
• Ship Tease: Katori has this with Yoshiko (who can be seen as his Implied Love Interest) and a bit with Momoko.
• Space Police: Similar to Exkaiser.
• Spoiler Opening: Dr. Yoshiko Kunieda is the only human aside of the Amano family and Dr. Jango that shows up in both OP's. Unsurprisingly, she becomes rather important later. She's also shown in what seems to be a Prayer Pose... but she's holding on Katori's ocarina. Which is vital regarding some Magic Music-related deals that she finds out about towards the very end.
  • While the Dark Tower had appeared already before the second OP rolled in, the sequence in itself spoils that Draias and Co. would eventually one-up the heroes by actually building a second one and using it to harvest the Minus energy of the universe.
• Something They Would Never Say: In episode 33 Hiroshi realizes that there's something behind his dreams of his late wife Yuri... because the dream!Yuri is begging him to surrender to Draias. The real one, who encouraged him to work for World Peace, would never ask him to betray his biggest dream.
  • In episode 40, Jango has kidnapped a motivational spokeswoman named Mother Maria... and when Fighbird confronts him about this, he shows him three Mother Marias strapped to his monsters. Katori realizes who the real one is because she selflessly urges him to attack Jango and his monsters, instead of asking him for help or worrying about her own safety.
• Tank Goodness: Ace Baron and the Baron Team.
• Thou Shall Not Kill: The Space Police would rather not kill anyone unless it's absolutely necessary, especially in regards to Earthians since they're specifically tasked with Earth's protection. This is used in a rather cruel Sadistic Choice in episode 38, when Dr. Jango slaps a brainwashing device on a Gentle Giant gorilla that he had forcibly mutated into a stores-tall beast, then sics him on the heroes with full knowledge of Fighbird's reluctance to harm anyone from Earth; the Guard Team remind him that they cannot fully deal with the gorilla without harming the poor thing, but Fighbird still hesitates. Destroying the brainwashing device with a VERY precise slash of Fighbird's Flame Sword is what works.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Momoko and Yoshiko can be seen as a grown-up version of the trope. Momoko is a Hot-Blooded Tomboy with her heart on her sleeve, whereas Yoshiko is a kind and selfless Yamato Nadeshiko.
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Played with. Tokyo itself is featured in some episodes, and Satsuda specifically says he works for the Tokyo Police but Dr. Amano seems to live in the prefecture of Tokyo or one of the suburban areas rather than the metropolis itself (otherwise he'd never be able to afford a huge house near the sea, located in an otherwise rather middle-class-looking environment). Also, some episodes happen outside of Tokyo in general, featuring places like: the fictional island of Yatsugashima (apparently inspired by the Izu Islands), the Peruvian Amazonia, the USA, Germany, etc. The Grand Finale Guyana Highland.
• Tokyo Tower: Used rather epically in episode 33, when Jango installs his Mind Rape device on top of it and then both Kenta and Dr. Amano struggle to destroy it..
• Transforming Mecha: Of course! This is the Brave series, after all.
• Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey: Draias is an Energy Being who's LITERALLY Made of Evil. Dr. Jango is the incarnation of Laughably Evil (most of the time).
• Would Hurt a Child: Some of the enemies' preferred targets were young children.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Dr. Amano's late wife Yuri was this through and through, according to the flashbacks.
  • Dr. Yoshiko also strongly resembles the archetype, especially due to her nurturing behavior and Proper Lady looks.
  • Episode 33 has Momoko dreaming of her Famous Ancestor Sei Shonagon, who logically is portrayed as a YN. She's even seen wearing the Heian-times kimono garments for court ladies, the juunihitoe!