Tokkei Winspector

Tokkei Winspector was the ninth entry in the Metal Heroes franchise, airing from 1990-1991. It was the first of its Rescue Heroes Trilogy.

It concerns the Winspector unit, an anti-terrorism/rescue taskforce made up of one human and his two robot assistants. Whenever danger is afoot, Ryoma Kagawa, Biker and Walter set forth to take out the trouble.

The heroes are:

 * Ryoma Kagawa/Fire: The Hero; lone human on the team.
 * Biker: The Plucky Comic Relief quite skilled with swords.
 * Walter: A Friend to All Children who acts as his own transport.

Other non Metal Heroes on the team:

 * Junko Fujino: The Chick, The Gunslinger.
 * Shunsuke Masaki: Da Chief.

This show features examples of:

 * Big Bad: Averted, for there is no main villain organization to speak of; Winspector fights "ordinary" high-tech crime and saves lives.
 * BFG: The Gigastreamer, introduced to provide a More Dakka solution to an unusually tough robot. It fires 60 plasma rounds per second and can blow away an M1 Abrams in 5 seconds at full power, with an absurd amount of recoil in exchange.
 * Bifurcated Weapon: The Gigastreamer is designed to combine with Fire's Max Caliber for Maxim Mode. (This was probably intended as a safety and a means to absorb some of its recoil.)
 * Blind Idiot Translation: May have happened with a certain function on Winspector's standard sidearm, which has an extinguisher setting. Problem is, this mode is called the "Digestive Beam", with the likely cause being that the words for "Digestion" and "Extinguish" are homonyms in Japanese - "Shouka".
 * By the Power of Greyskull: "Jack Up!" ("Chakka", "Equip")
 * Cool Bike: Biker has a wheel in his chest and can use it to scoot around on the ground, but the obvious problems inherent in this (he can't turn) leads to him getting his own bike, the Winchaser.
 * Cool Car: Fire's Win Squad, later upgraded to be able to reform itself into the armored Fire Squad.
 * Cop Show: With the occasional Burning Building Rescue.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Masaki is played by Hiroshi Miyauchi.
 * The Idiot From Nagoya: Biker speaks with a Nagoya accent. At least one robot was unable to understand him as a result.
 * Turns out that this is because his programmer speaks that dialect. (When said programmer shows up, he's played by the voice actor.)
 * Laser Blade: Fire's Max Caliber functions as this. In a bit of a subversion, it's a gauntlet and more of an emergency rescue tool than a finishing weapon.
 * Law of Inverse Recoil: Averted and exaggerated a bit with the Gigastreamer Maxim Mode. The recoil is considerably more than average and it has a steep learning curve. Also, the vibrations may accidentally kill the user a little bit if fired without wearing protective armor. (And remember, it's actually an energy weapon.)
 * In general, the show played this straight with small arms and averted it with recoiless weapons.
 * Powered Armor: The Crashtector armor is this, capable of strength up to 30 times that of a normal human while also being able to shrug off missiles. It's self-sealed and can protect its wearer from gas and oxygen deprivation - but this means that the wearer's always sweating when they take it off.
 * Prop Recycling: The Gigastreamer is Fire's most powerful weapon here by a long shot... and is a well-built prop. It shows up again in Tokkyuu Shirei Solbrain as itself, skips a series, then shows up in Tokusou Robo Janperson as the Janstreamer (Janperson can fire it one-handed).
 * Rescue: Part of Winspector's mission statement, and a major change of focus as a Metal Heroes show. As such, they're lacking in heavy offensive weaponry until Fire gets the Gigastreamer, but are perfectly capable of taking a hit.
 * Transformation Sequence: Ryoma's Crashtector armor is located in his car, which he has to enter and give the command to equip ("Chakka!"), at which point it appears around him instantaneously - he enters the car as Ryoma and gets out as Fire.
 * This becomes a plot point necessitating the Win Squad's upgrade, as a crime syndicate wises up and targets the car.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Set in the year 1999.
 * Weaksauce Weakness: Of the Hour of Power sort - because of how much stress the Crashtector puts on the wearer's body, it has a five minute time limit. This can be exceeded, but only at the risk of injury. It's also designed for Ryoma's body only, meaning that no one can easily take his place if he's, say, in the hospital.