Fan CastingScience Ninja Team Gatchaman II (1978)

Two years after the defeat of Galactor and the apparent death of Condor Joe, a cruise ship is attacked by Leader X, killing nearly everyone on board. One of the survivors, a young child known as Sammy, whose gender is ambiguous, but is implied to be a hermaphrodite, is captured by X and rapidly aged into the bizarre, masculine-voiced, and androgynous villain known as Gel Sadra. Though they have the appearance of an adult, Gel Sadra is not immune to throwing childish tantrums and behaving immaturely. In the midst of the revival of Galactor, the Science Ninja Team is called back into action, with a shady man known as Hawk Getz acting as the replacement for Joe. Getz is quickly revealed to be a Galactor agent in disguise (and had killed the actual Getz who was to join), and winds up killed by a mysterious feather shuriken. After hints spread in the first three episodes, Joe reappears in the fourth episode, having somehow survived his fatal injuries at the end of the first series, and rejoins the team. It is later revealed that he was rescued by an ex-Galactor scientist at the brink of his death, and was the subject of various cybernetic augmentations.