Appearances
Featured Characters:
- Iron Man (Tony Stark) (First appearance)
Supporting Characters:
- Pepper Potts (First appearance) (As hologram)
- Dr. Chika Tanaka (First appearance)
- Nanami Ota (First appearance)
- Ichiro Masuda (First appearance)
Antagonists:
Other Characters:
- Minister of Defense Kuroda (First appearance)
- Tokyo's Journal (First appearance)
- Editor Nomura (First appearance)
Races and Species:
Locations:
- Earth-101001 (First appearance)
Items:
- Iron Man Armor (First appearance)
- Iron Man Dio Armor (First appearance)
- Ramon Zero (First appearance)
Vehicles:
- Stark Industries Private Jet (First appearance)
- Tony's Sports Car (First appearance)
- Nanami's Car (First appearance)
Synopsis
Tony Stark travels to Japan to supervise the construction of an Arc Station with Dr. Chika Tanaka (the supervisor of Lab 23 of Stark Industries' Japanese branch) and meets with Minister of Defense Kuroda who asks about Tony retiring as Iron Man and that the Iron Man Dio armor will be mass-produced for the possible recruits. The next day, reporter Nanami Ōta and photographer Ichiru Masuda are told by Editor Homura to get a scoop on Tony Stark before the Tokyo Journal's competition does. Tony and Kuroda meet the three test pilots hoping to pilot the prototype Iron Man Dio armor which will replace Tony when he retires from being Iron Man. In a battle test, the armor withstands the tank attacks. Tony later holds a public event to show off the new model with him testing the Iron Man Dio armor. During the flight test, something goes wrong with the Iron Man Dio armor and it crashes near Nanami's car. Tony gets a ride home from Nanami who interviews him while Chika and her men recover the prototype Iron Man Dio armor. Tony tries to figure out what went wrong with the Iron Man Dio armor as he tells Chika to run a diagnosis on the prototype Iron Man Dio armor. When one of the pilots tests it later, he gets brainwashed and attacks the other two pilots. Upon figuring out that the prototype Iron Man Dio armor is hacked by an outside source and escapes from the facility, Tony equips his classic Iron Man armor and manages to defeat it. However, he is attacked by a strange mechanical warrior named Scorpio who comes from an order called the Zodiac. Tony defeats him, but the prototype Iron Man Dio armor goes missing having been removed from the test pilot.