Super Dimension Fortress Macross

Story: The main story is split up into two main arcs (from 1-27, and 28-36). While the second arc might not seem very necessary to the story itself, it closes up the loose ends left behind from certain character relationships. The story is very fluid, pretty deep, and all around well-planned. It's unique, and I never found myself wondering, "Now why are they doing this again?" like in other animes. The anime has a starting point and an ending point, with very little fluff in the middle. Every episode has its purpose, and it's basically very well thought out. Art: Now, it's an old(ish) anime, soobviously the art won't be as good as some of the newer shows. However, all that aside, there is very few sequences that are reused (one being a Zentraedi ship being destroyed), and honestly, it's aged very well. The character designs are very nice, and the environments look very beautiful. But we all know that the main point here is the Mecha design. Both the VTs (good guys' mechas) and the enemy mechas look great. They're every guy's dream, and are more realistic, closer to what Earth's mechas might look like in the distant future; unlike other animes in the genre. Sound: Once, again, we're listening to an older anime, but this show pulls no hits in this department. Very crisp humming accompany the fighters, the classic rumble of the vulcan gun, and an excellent voice-over give this anime a great sound score. But, if you know anything about Macross, you'll know that the three main points are the Mecha, the love triangles and the singing. This time around, we have Lynn Minmey to give us the occasional concert. Minmay is one of my favorite Macross singers, and every once in a while I find myself humming "My Boyfriend is a Pilot" (while substituting Boy for Girl...) I really like the songs, and they're a pivotal part in the show. Character: I love the characters, and like I said above one of the main points of the storyline is the love triangles. It's a pretty good idea, but sometimes it gets really frustrating, and sometime you'll say, "Just make up your mind already!" the character relationships are necessary to the story, and make up a large part of the emotional element. My favorite characters are Roy, Hikaru, Gloval and Misa, and my only regret was I wanted more of Roy and Gloval and less of Max (but he's also necessary to the metplot). Overall: I really loved this series, and it ranks up there with First Gundam. All the above elements make one of my favorites of all time.

The characters themselves are what really drive the show. Hikaru may be an ace, but deep down inside he’s still a kid that’s growing. He’s also discovering love as he is trying to be a man. Roy, his big brother figure, is well confident in his abilities and never second guesses anything. Hikaru will also develop as a pilot or soldier and he eventually has subordinates assigned to him. Max, one of his men is a very popular character amongst fans all over the world for his gentle personality and nerdy looks but yet death defying piloting skills in the stars. Minmei is slowly embracingher fame as the ship’s idol and is torn apart that it keeps her from spending time with Hikaru who eventually develops a relationship with Misa. Though Gundam was the first to utilize mechs as a military weapon, Macross uses the same concept but with a completely different approach. Rather than just huge robots, transforming fighter jets known as the Valkyries are introduced. In comparison to Gundam, I thought of the story driving the characters, but with Macross, it’s the characters that drive the story. I’m not saying either one is good or bad, but they each successfully approach this in their own respective rights. I’ll use an easy example. There is romance in both series. The romance is the Gundam series’ tends to be very secondary as well as the characters and the action tends to be more primary, while with Macross it’s the opposite. It’s more about the emotional situations and the action comes across as more secondary. I’d like to explain more but it’ll take time. Like I said, I’m not saying either one is good or bad. But I think it’s overall a good thing so it helps the series stay distinct able from each other. The art and animation is pretty cool thanks to the creator Shojo Kawamori. This guy is just the man and a well respectable name in the world of robot anime. I wouldn’t say the animation was years ahead of its time, but it still stood out. The design of the Macross is very deep and complex and captivating. It had a great sense of size and the way they showed camera angles of it made you wonder how big it was and it was amazing that it was supposed to be the size of a city. When it turns into a mech, it looks really menacing and find it really interesting that something that is supposed to house civilians!!! The Valkryie’s are pretty sweet themselves. I already explained that they transform. They can be fighter jets and they can transform into robots for hand to hand combat. Thanks to special customization, they are also used in space. The engineering of the transformation doesn’t look complex and I figure it makes an easy toy to transform. The battles are also pretty intense and fun. In comparison to Gundam where it has lazers and beam saber fights, the fights in Macross are also more “realistic.” The series limits itself to using more reality based weapons such as bullets and missles and out maneuvering your opponent with agility. The bad guys, the Zentradi, have an interesting gimmick to them being giants. They tend to have really menacing and intimidating looks with the leaders having bald heads. Just makes them look like evil nazi guards or something. The characters are good and have distinctiveness to their design. Minmei of course is stuck with the unrealistic purple color hair, but yet she is so cute. Misa has a more mature look to her that reflects on her plain personality. The captain Global looks like an old war house. Ichijo has a wild youth look to him but still has an innocent face. Max doesn’t really look intimidating and he looks nerdy but he can still kick ass and get the girl. So even though it’s an oldie, you still got a goodie. The Japanese version is pretty well casted. It has veteran seiyuu Akira Kamiya playing Roy Fokker. His dark voice gives a mature sounding to it since he is a role model to not only Hikaru, but to his men, but yet still has some lightness to it to reflect his laid back personality. Hikaru’s seiyuu Hase Arihiro, gave a very teenage sound to it and he captivated qualities where he’s trying to grow up and understand the world around him, and yet he has to fight in a war. Sho Hayami who plays Max brings unique traits to the character by being serious and yet having a mellow personality at the same time, while in comparison to his other roles like Burn from Dunbine and Zarbon from DBZ tend to be more serious. Mari Iijima who plays Minmei in both the Japanese and the newer dub is just excellent. This anime helped jump-started her music career as well. She brought a high pitch sound to the voice that not only brings out a teenage girl, but brings a Chinese authenticity to her voice the same way Shampoo’s voice in the Japanese version also had where it was high pitched to indicate some sort of accent. Plus, her singing is just excellent and addicting with such songs like Xiao Bai Lo which was her biggest hit on the show. But outside of Min Mei’s songs which I will also talk about when I get around to reviewing the movie, Do You Remember Love, the opening and ending themes of Macross are excellent pieces of music themselves. Like the opening theme simply also titled Macross is amazing in its own right. The singer sounds pretty old school with the tone of his voice and the opening trumpets sound something you’d hear in a military march and goes with to the aerial imagery when transitioned to all the fighting with faster paced music and singing. And the song Runner has a pretty mellow feel to it. And the background music in general tends to use a lot of trumpets in general and gives a military feel to it overall whenever in the midst of battle. In comparison to Gundam, this anime brings a different kind of twist to the military centered mech genre. Like in Gundam, the series tended to be more about humans fighting each other, while in Macross it is more about aliens but there is more elaboration to that in relation to the origin of the Zentradi which would be a spoiler if I got around to that. The series is more light hearted and more drama based with the love triangles but a different kind of coming of age story in its own right. Not just for Hikaru, but for Minmei as well. The main cast all have their roles in the story and develop in their respective rights. Despite some changes when it became Robotech as an early gateway anime over 20 years ago, Golden Harmony still managed to keep its main themes in faith, but this overall great anime with a wonderful story with interesting art and excellent action with terrific acting and music.

A simple summary of this series is that it is a really inferior imitation of both Gundam and Space Pirate Captain Harlock/Galaxy Express 999. The style of the anime sits firmly on the laurels of a Mobile Suit Gundam, but it forsakes this with the actual character styles, opting to imitate the Harlock/Galaxy Express style instead. Instead of airs to grandeur, the characters instead all are fairly subdued and slow to react to everything. This results in every character looking like Harlock, talking like Gundam, but not really having a personality at all in the end. It is just a bunch of gazing at each other,talking about Minami, or elementary school level bickering or gossiping. The story of aliens for whom culture (mostly just pop idol singing and sex, unfortunately) is either a drug or alternately a poison, is fairly humorous. Everything else is pretty bad though. The pop idol storyline is all bad, especially because the songs are so lifeless. Minami is all anyone will talk about for pretty much the whole series, and it becomes incredibly obnoxious as the series goes on. The fights are decent, but the reasons given for the enemies not just destroying them from the getgo are pretty implausible (especially given what they finally do later, although that is too big of a spoiler for me to include here). The art is simply atrocious. The lines are bold and chunky, or maybe a better way to put it is that especially all of the characters look smeared all of the time. When a zoom out happens the character art becomes even better. At least it resulted in some hilarious moments, like when (probably due to a guest director or producer) all the eyes start bugging out in episode 25. The voice acting is average in Japanese, and actually listenable in English with the exception of Minami whose voice is an insulting psuedo-Asian broken English trainwreck (no other character sounds like this, the rest all speak perfectly decent English, including her entire family). The music has some really good ideas...and is unfortunately incredibly limited. Like if you tried to listen to a song and replayed it in 15 second format on amazon.com, the music here repeats incredibly short stretches over and over. No matter how good the classical style booming drums sound, banging them the exact same way every episode is exasperating. Overall, I guess go ahead and watch this if you are absolutely obsessed with space works or gigantic robot works, but just know you are getting something that is a derivative and inferior work. There is much better you can spend your time on, like the aforementioned works from which Macross is derived, or perhaps a nice cup of Legend of the Galactic Heroes!

*SPOILERS FOR MACROSS. I WILL ALSO BE COMPARING THE ORIGINAL VERSION TO THE AMERICANIZED VERSION CALLED ROBOTECH SEASON 1, AS WELL AS SHOW BOTH VERSIONS OF CHARACTERS` NAMES, EXCEPT FOR ROY SINCE HIS NAME DOESN`T CHANGE WITH EITHER VERSION. HAVE A PROBLEM WITH IT, THEN TAKE IT UP WITH THE SDF-1. THIS IS ALSO GOING TO BE LONG AS HELL, BUT BEAR WITH ME. THIS SHOW IS WORTH IT* Well, this is easily the oldest anime I`ve ever seen, and this was also my first. Nostalgic memories flow within me as this, Southern Cross, MOSPEADA, and Star Wars movies 3-6 introduced me to not only mechs,but sci-fi as well, and I am forever grateful to all of them for it. Now, for the present. This show has existed for 34 years. If you wanted anything even remotely popular from the 80's, (aside from DBZ because that came out in the tail end of the decade and ended in 1996) then you only have 3 options: Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, and this. They even have good MAL scores, with 8.31, 8.02, and 8.08 respectively. Now, why did THIS show, an impressive mech military show combining mechs, love triangles, and the spread of musical culture, become such a big hit back in the day? Well, I think I just answered my own question, but whatever. Pretend we don`t know, and with that, let's find out, shall we? STORY: 9/10 In 2010, these war-mongering humanoid aliens know as Zentradi come in to engage in war against Earth, so now, the people of Earth must put their differences aside, and team up against this alien threat. However, when the SDF-1 or Super Dimension Fortress 1, tries to engage in space fold, it ends up taking the nearby city of Macross with it, and now all the inhabitants end up living in this giant fortress large enough to fit the city. Meet Hikaru/Rick Hunter. He is a newbie to this military that uses Veritechs, and of course, rises through the ranks with eventual friends Max Jenius/Max Sterling, and Hayao Kakizaki/Ben Dixon, and along with Admiral Global/Gloval, Roy Focker, Misa Hayase/Lisa Hayes to combat this threat. Of course, there is the civilian side to the story as well, with Minmei`s rise to stardom, and the eventual consequences of her fame. This show is split into two major arcs. Episodes 1-27 make up the Macross War arc, and 28-36 make up the post-war ark. The first ark perfectly blends all of the characters' military, and personal lives together to make things feel more real, and, for the most part, show how much musical culture can affect both sides of a war as well as show off how the characters of both sides live their lives, brilliantly. The final arc, focuses on the tensions between the humans, and not only the Zentradi, but the particular Zentradi forces who can`t stand society. It also shows how badly Minmei has it now, and how badly everyone has it now, except for Max and his new wife named Milia Fallyna/Myria Sterling. Tensions get hotter than ever, the love triangle between Hikaru, Misa, and Minmei, while overall not heated, lands members of the 3 members into dramatic, and heated situations that make them desperate, and volatile, especially during the rebelling Zentradi threat. It all ends with the start of a journey... a journey TO THE STARS!!! CHARACTERS: 9/10 Hikaru is an interesting guy. He is a hesitant hero, who`s mainly in it for the flying rather than the fighting, and has a dry wit to him, especially with Misa. His ties to this love triangle, unfortunately hamstring him at times, causing him to be hesitant, which he has gotten unwarranted flak for. Misa is an experienced officer of the fleet, and is equally snarky with Hikaru, but a particular bit about her past in episode 7, and how volatile she becomes in the final arc, really make us feel sorry for her, and make us want to scream: "Hurry up Hikaru and pick Misa GODDAMMIT!" Now for Minmei, easily the most hated character of the series, whoses infamy among the show's fans not only rival that of Nena Trinity from 00 and Flay Alister from SEED, but even Suzaku Kururugi from Code Geass, and while I can agree that she is a total ditz, and she's definitely more ignorant to other people's feelings than she should, not to mention the it's her fault Hikaru is so hamstrung and hesitant, I can't agree that she is the most unlikable character of the show, mainly due to that despite all of this, she's pretty nice at heart (unlike the examples from other shows mentioned above), she makes some nice performances, she gets the worst outcomes in the last arc which practically beats her physically as well as emotionally, but what she does in the second half of the finale, is downright admirable, as we don't really see many love triangle rivals do what she did at the end. Now the most unlikable character here is Kaifun/Kyle. He is such a dickbag to both Minmei and Hikaru, you want to see him choke on his own alcohol instead of throwing it in Minmei`s face, and even the ground. Now for the military guys. Roy Focker is a total badass pilot, and a cool guy to boot. Max is nice, a total dork, and easily the most badass pilot in the show, which his why she gets the girl. Speaking of which, Milia, at first, starts off as an arrogant Zentradi before Max shows up. After a few confrontations, they hook up, and even have a kid, after being the first Human/Zentradi couple to get married. As for Hayao, he's pretty funny, goofy, and laid back. It makes it painful to see some of them die, something Hikaru can attest to. Admiral Global is a pretty good admiral, and Claudia is a pretty funny and refreshing character, especially in her interactions with Roy and the backstory she has with him. The 3 zentradi spies are lovable goofs and no one can deny that. Quazmin/Kyrhon is such a fun villain of pure assholishness that I can't help but love the guy, and these kinds of villains are not always that easy to pull off, so props to a classic title for being able to do this. I realize I many not have covered everyone, but hey, what can you do? Either way, this was an extremely lovable cast of characters present in this series. ART: 8/10 This show came out in 1982, and with few exceptions, looks better than most TV anime until BEBOP! Mobile Suit Gundam, pfft, trash tier visuals when compared to this! Southern Cross, mediocrity! The sheer cohesion and level of fluidity in the action scenes is not only great, but movie quality level at the time, only really comparable to Dragon ball and DBZ, and most good quality movies of the time. The action scenes are adrenaline pumping as well, especially for the time. Even Minmei's performances look decent. There are definitely a few problems though. The last arc in particular has a few moments in which the quality dips to that of an 80's western cartoon. That, and there's the very occasional coloring error and awkward moment here and there. Looking at you, knife fight and Drunk Kaifun/Kyle. SOUND: 9/10 For the original OP, I can't stand it, and many of you will kill me for saying that so, I won't elaborate on that any further. The ED, while better, isn't anything special either. It`s so hard to find the original OST, but from the few songs I've heard from clips, it's still good. Minmei's performances in the original are fun little ditties, if I do say so myself. Now, for ROBOTECH. Many flame wars have started arguing whether this, or the original is better. Personally, I prefer the ROBOTECH version myself, and nostalgia does NOT play a big role in it, but a role none the less. The ROBOTECH OST is honestly amazing, really bringing more flare to the action, and really sweetening the calmer scenes. I also really enjoyed Minmei`s more outgoing performances in the original, which again, has more spice and flare than the original. Albeit, while the ROBOTECH OP, is nice and memorable, it has no right being the ending as well, and it shows. Now for the dubbing part of ROBOTECH. Man, oh man. The amount of crap it got past, is enough to impress Hetalia, and considering it originally aired in Cartoon Network, that sais something. There are plenty of really juicy double entendres and sayings that make you want to pull your inner Quagmire from Family Guy and say "giggity". Hell, there was so much, that eventually the radar managed to censor a few, which the DVDs obviously rectify. You can play a drinking game with the amount of explicit sayings you find. The actual performances are rather good, ESPECIALLY for an 80's dub. Like with Berserk, a lot of names here you won't recognize with a few exceptions, but from what I`ve heard, the Berserk English dub is great too. Hikaru/Rick Hunter was voiced by Tony Oliver, who went on to play as Lancer from Fate/Stay Night, and UBW. Aside from that, these people aren`t that well known in the anime community. Even Rebecca Forstadt, voice of Minmei, who went on to voice Nunnally from Code Geass, isn't that popular, but despite that, a few forced moments aside, the dub was pretty good. ENJOYMENT: 9/10 The action was pretty awesome, and the OST only made it sweeter. The characters were cool, and the drama of the last few episodes was seeping. Even the villains were good. Quazmin/Khyrron is gloriously douche, and the other Zentradis are good villains and negotiatirs too. Hell, there's three Zentradi dorks who are directly responsible for Minmei`s singing reaching the Zentradi in the first place, while they're suppoded to be spying There are only two episodes I don't like. 14, and 16. 14 was just recap, and 16 was some weird, messed up dream/recap with all the dialogue changed. Aside from those two, every episode was great. The finale, was really impressive as well, especially the epicly dire and nigh apocalyptic fight and the choice Minmei makes near the end, gracefully cutting herself off of the love triangle to let Hikaru and Misa get together, despite all the trauma she just went to. To do something like that, takes a level of maturity and understanding you just wish you'd see more often in anime. OVERALL 9/10 RAW SCORE: 91/100 If you like mecha anime and have somehow not seen this one, you should. Don't give me or any Macross fan that "it's old so I won't watch it and it looks ugly because it's old" crap because, you'll gate yourself from SO much good anime. Yes, I did paraphrase GR Arkada from his Berserk review; no, I don't care, since you need to watch this show, especially if you want to know what a sci-fi pioneer is like in the anime world. It's the quintessential love triangle anime for a reason, and one of the best space operas as well, up there with Gundam and Star Wars.