Ranked #416

Robotech Macross

Ok time to review Robotech, the Macross Saga.

Its frikken awesome!
Done.

Ok you demand more than that, i get it. Lets break it down into details.

Story.
The story is solid, with a few flaws that age itself is accounted for.
First of, the serie starts year 1999 when a huge alien spacecraft crashes down on earth... last time i checked it didnt happen. but concidered that Robotech was launced 1985, the year 1999 was far into the future.
the story is concentrated around three parts. The first part is the obvious invasion of aliens trying to retake the crashed spacefortress (Known as the SDF-1 or the Super Dimensional Fortress 1). The second part the story is concentrated around is the love triangle of Rick Hunter, Lisa hayes and Lynn Minmei. And the third part the story is concentrated around is the alien invaders and what they experience.
The first of the second points of the concentration, the invasion and the love triangle is actually quite normal, nothing special about them. We have seen aliens outgunning earth but eventually falls before, same goes with love dramas. No the series realy strong point is when you get to see things out of the aliens perspective. The way they tries to understand the most basic things that we humans are doing is simply amazingly wellwriten. The aliens are a warrior-race only bred for combat. They also live male and female separated. So when they see a commercial poster of a halfnaked woman in her underwear they simply cannot understand what they are looking at. The same goes when it comes to everyday things suck as kung-fu movies or music.
Music is also an importand part of the story since it is that that realy touches the aliens. This maybe sound alittle... goofy and silly, but it actually works realy well. While playing such a large portion of the story one could say that the music is the forth part the story is concentrated around, but i would say it had to be a musical for that.

Art:
The series is old, over 20 years old. Of course that means that the art is and looks old too. But that dosnt mean it is bad.
First we have the character artwork, with all the important character having a unique look without looking to Anime, meaning no spiky hair with ponytails and giant balls of color and bling sticking out of their head. The serie is very down to earth and realistic, as is the character design.
Second is the mecha design, wich is legendary. Macross Saga is made from the japanese anime Super Dimentional Fortress Macross, who always have had a great design on their mechas and ships.
The main mechas are the Veritecs, planes that can transform into humanoids. What i love about them is that even in the Mecha form you can still see that they originate from fighterplanes, and they have a very realistic and military style. If we in reality would make planes that can transform into mechas, they would pretty much look something like a veritec.
The animations on the other hand are shifting to say the least. In some episodes, especially the first two you are amazed of how welldrawn it is and it actually make you feel like you are there, watching it at first hand (Exept some funny details like a painting of a head or something on a building that suddenly turns sad when a mecha crashes into it). Yet in some episodes it is simply ugly, lack of colors, reused sceens and such. Though you quickly learn to forgive Robotech for that.

Sound:
The music in the series is awesome, got alot of soul, got alot of feeling and is simply very well done. Exept for the songs that Minmei sings, but that can also be blamed on her. But to be quite frankly she has to few songs (remember when she yells "Now im gonna sing a brand new song for all my froiends fighting out there." and sings something you already have heard ten times or so.)
Weaponsounds are realistic most of the time exept the far-of missile blasts that sounds like firecrackers, and most voice acring have a high quality. The one exeption is Minmei (Again) but that can be because her lousy charactrer overall. Speaking of that....

Character:
Most of the characters are very well written. They are deep, they are unique and they are exiting. But whats realy striking is the way the characters grow.
Example: Rick Hunter is at the start of the show a young, quite laid back anti-military amature pilot. At the end of the serie he has become a fighting veteran, a much more serious person, much more grownup and carries the weight of responsibility and guilt yet being principal and strong.
The most fun characters to watch however is the two aliens Breetai and Exedore since they are the foremost growing characters in the serie. They go from warmongeling biological weapons that thinks of nothing other than war, to peace-seeking defenders.
And here it comes again, the biggest flaw in the Robotech universe: Lynn Minmei.
Miss Minmei is an annoying, nerve-gnawing, spoiled black dot on a otherwise clean paper. It took me around 5 episodes before i hated her, and yet she is with you all the way. Nowadays when i watch Robotech i skip foreward untill she isnt in screen anymore. But she has an important part to play and i must regrettably say that she fills that part.

Enjoyment:
Robotech is an actionpacked, realistic serie with tons of wonderfull and beautifull moments and memories, it was, and still is groundbreaking, well made and has alot of thoughts behind it. Some people call it a bad remake of SDF Macross, but it isnt. The story, the settion, the idea, the whole essence is totaly different. You can argue about if Harmony Gold had the right to take an existing serie and use it to make their own however much you like, but that wint change the fact that it is a good serie.

Overall:
To fully understand the greatness of Robotech you need to do more than watch Robotech Macross Saga. After that follows the Robotech Masters and Robotech the New Generation. If you still wants more you can see the Shadow Chronicles, Untold Story and The Sentinels movie. But Robotech is in fact the best in its bookform, written by Jack McKinney.

From me Robotech gets a straight and welldeserved 10, and forever a place in my heart.

//Silver read more

Robotech: The Macross Saga is a phenomenal series centered around the Super Dimensional Fortress-One, or SDF-1. Originally, it had been an alien space craft that had crash landed on the tiny Pacific island of Macross. It took the world 10 years to rebuild it, and now the aliens are back to take back right is theirs. The story is told from the perspective of Rick Hunter, a circus pilot before now. Rick ends up getting caught up in the war and becomes a fighter pilot to battle the new threat. All the while Rick has to deal with an increasingly difficult love triangle and the pyscological qualms that war can deliver onto a young man. I proudly give the first of the three Robotech seasons a 10 out of 10. read more