Some time ago, circa 2012 I decided I wanted to watch the original Japaneses Macross series, as all I had watched before was the heavily edited Robotech, some friends advised me that Macross was a good watch, so I decided to give it a try, what I found out was a masterful crafted tale of romance, drama, comedy and self discovery that I have seen just a couple of times before with shows like code geass, eureka seven and full metal alchemist, Macross blew me away with excitement so, of course a wanted to see what the franchise had to offer, I was super exited to dive in on this amazing universe and experience new adventures after the final credits rolled for SDF Macross, so I watched the next one, Macross plus and OH BOY was it good !!!! at that point my excitement for the series was beyond comprehension, first series was GREAT and its follow up Macross Plus was UBER GREAT , what can possible go wrong with the series ?? Macross 7 that is ...
Ok so Macross 7 takes place decades after the original series as mankind is expanding to next horizons in space in order to preserve the human race in case another attack like the one that happened on the first series exterminates humanity. We are aboard a giant ship crossing the universe looking for a suitable new home in command of captain Maximilian Jenius (yes, the awesome pilot from the first series who looks inexplicable young after all the decades between the first series and Macross 7 )
Then we have the music band that is a staple on the Macross franchise, which, is composed of a rude black guy, an almost non existing drums guy...or girl I don't know, with little to no personality, a beautiful girl a la Mimmei, who is also captain Jenius's daughter ( but not the one Jenius and Milla had on the original series, that one is not even in the show ) and then we have .... Basara... our main protagonist who is an spoiled brad who thinks he is super special and that he can solve every problem by singing his pop/rock songs ... IN THE MIDDLE OF A BATTLE!!! ... clearly inspired by Lin Mimmey from the first series, however, while Mimmey warmed the hearts of humans and zentradi unknowingly, Basara is constantly trying to make people listen to his songs and to like them by force, he goes in the middle of an space battle with his guitar controlled mech ( yes it is as stupid as it sounds ) only to get frustrated at people not listening to his songs. it takes little time before you start hating on this guy, however, I'll have to admit some of his songs are actually catchy.
Then we have the animation... oh boy oh boy.. while the first Macross was very inconsistent with the animation ( some times it looked great for the time, some other times it looked horrible complete with badly draw faces ) it has the excused of being an 1982 anime and for the time, it accomplishes some very impressing animation sometimes. then we have Macross plus, while obviously a high budget OVA series with fantastic animation it came out on 1994 with animation that was very ahead for its time ( even for a high budget ova series standard ) then we have Macross 7, of course it didn't had a great budget and it was proposed as a long series with more than 40 chapters but its unexcusable at how bad the animation can get . Let me tell you something that happened to me by chapter 5 or 6 of the series. On the second battle against the aliens on space the anime started to used the same exact animations they used during the first battle, whole scenes were literally re used from that first battle to the point I didn't know if I was watching a flash back or new events, that was lazy and very mediocre and it wasn't only that time, reused scenes were used during almost all the chapters I endure while watching this abomination.
Overall this series killed the franchise for me as I did some research Macross 7's story is very important to the Macross universe expanding over movies, manga and Ovas, so if I wanted to continue watching the next series on the Macross franchise I needed to finish this garbage and that is something I can't see myself doing unfortunately ( although some have told me the newer series are not all that great )
It is a real shame I really wanted to like this show but that was nearly impossible and my love for the series will remain split between the original, Macross plus and Macross 0 ( prequel to the original )
