Macross

After a mysterious spaceship crashes into Earth, humanity realizes that they are not alone. Fearing a potential threat from space, the world pushes aside their nationalism, conflicting interests, and cultural differences, unifying under the banner of the United Nations. The newly formed UN forces decide to repurpose the alien spacecraft, naming it SDF-1 Macross. Unfortunately, on the day of its maiden voyage, a fleet of spaceships belonging to a race of aliens known as the Zentradi descend upon Earth, and the SDF-1 Macross, acting of its own accord, shoots down the incoming squadron, sparking an intergalactic war.

In an attempt to escape, the Macross tries to launch itself into the Moon's orbit, but the ship—as well as the city it was in—is teleported to the far reaches of space. Caught up in this mess are Hikaru Ichijou, a free-spirited acrobatic pilot, and Minmay Lynn, an aspiring singer. These two, alongside Macross' crew, experience an epic journey rife with grief and drama, coming face-to-face with the cruelties of war along the way.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Hayase, Misa Main

Doi, Mika Japanese

Lynn, Minmay Main

Iijima, Mari Japanese

Ichijou, Hikaru Main

Hase, Arihiro Japanese

Focker, Roy Supporting

Kamiya, Akira Japanese

Jenius, Maximilian Supporting

Hayami, Show Japanese

Fallyna, Milia Supporting

Takeda, Eri Japanese

Global, Bruno J. Supporting

Hazama, Michio Japanese

La Salle, Claudia Supporting

Ohara, Noriko Japanese

Milliome, Shammy Supporting

Miyuki, Sanae Japanese

Kravshera, Quamzin Supporting

Meguro, Kousuke Japanese

Ishiguro, Noboru Director, Episode Director, Script, Storyboard

Honda, Yasunori Sound Director

Yamaga, Hiroyuki Episode Director, Storyboard, Assistant Director

Akiyama, Katsuhito Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Oct 10, 2009

Beatnik

Recommended

Aired just two years after the end of Mobile Suit Gundam, a show which defined the mecha/space genre in anime, Macross takes the 'humans attacked and on the run in a super ship' template and blazes forward a new path of its own.

Macross is the sexier version of Gundam, the carefree serenading romantic. There is an air of enthusiasm and happy-go-lucky charm to its characters that the Gundam franchise rarely ever allowed on its unlucky downtrodden crew. Whereas Gundam grinds Amuro and company through the emotional wringer from episode one, Macross lets Hikaru and gang regularly let off steam in the interior city ... residing within the Macross itself.

This small city is the show's unique selling point. Whereas most other shows, that might have civilian refugees crammed aboard a ship, will ignore them except when they riot, Macross instead gives them equal focus. They spend so long on the ship that they are forced to adapt and eventually get accustomed to living in an artificial city that incidentally ended up in the bowels of the ship in the most amazing way possible.

Macross is filled with amazing action sequences. Amazing simply for the year it was aired in, the effort and skill of the animators to bring us visually excellent setpieces, featuring awesome-but-underused-in-anime fighter jets, is admirable indeed. The major highlight is an early scene involving a falling jet racing to catch up with a falling human, the camera revolving around the pair seamlessly. The scene is indicative of the ambition of the show.

Gundam is about technology. Whoever has the superior technology wins. Macross is about love. The quintessential emotion that can bring peoples of all race, colour and creed together. Of course these anime are about other things too, but these aspects are at the core.

Macross focuses on other things that mecha fans will have missed in Gundam, such as the affect of media and celebrity in wartime, the clash of two different cultures, and as mentioned before, the society that exists within a ship on the run.

Macross is probably more famous now for its music than its war hijinks, and this first series shows that it was all part of the master plan from the beginning rather than something that evolved later on in other parts of the franchise. The character of Minmay will probably annoy most viewers with her witless selfish ways, but she is the epitome of a teen idol and acts like one. Her cousin Kaifun is the one most deserving of your unbridled hatred, one of the biggest scumbags in all of anime! But anyway, back to Minmay. The role she plays in the story is important despite her ditzy manner, and alongside Hikaru, a main character in a mecha show who is more average and easier to relate to than most others. Although he does for some reason, get increasingly dumber as the show progresses.

Amazingly enough Hikaru is not the best pilot in the story either, and neither is one of the manliest characters in the anime medium: Roy Focker. A man who lives up to his name, let’s just leave it at that. Genre stereotypes are subtlely subverted in Macross. For example there’s a staple bespectacled genius character, Max, but he's not a cliché, he’s not unapproachable and coldly analytical. He actually has a normal personality and is even a hit with the ladies. Macross characters are a genuine treat, much like everything else with this show, always keeping you on your toes. And a disclaimer: half the cast ARENT killed off in the last episode, how refreshing! Not only do characters unexpectedly die in this show, they unexpectedly live too!

What is great about Macross is that it doesn’t heap misery on its characters constantly, but when it does, the characters move on quickly. It never feels like a copout, they're still affected by the changes around them, whenever comrades die for example, but we're thankfully spared five episodes of them moping around like stroppy teens.

Instead we get a ship populated by a plucky group of women who belong more on a playground than the most important part of a warship. These women gossip away and yell out "yada!" when things don’t go their way. At one point the ship gets a new barrier system, called Pinpoint Barrier and it consists of a room somewhere in the ship operated by a couple women who have to roll balls around their table in order to move a mobile barrier around the ship's exterior to absorb enemy attacks. Yes, it really is as ridiculous as it sounds, you can only laugh at the image of cute girls rolling balls furiously in the middle of an attack, yelling "yada!"

Macross is entertainment through and through. It's not going for weighty philosophy, but at the same time, it decorates its carefree nature with worthy topics and doesn’t so much explore them as it acknowledges them. Midway through the show the ugliness of politics, discrimination and the sacrifices that must be made rears its head leading to dramatic, yet ultimately always uplifting stuff.

It's not perfect, the second arc towards the end of the show is a bit of an extended epilogue that may feel like it drags to some viewers, but I appreciate how it resolved dangling plot points and developed characters more than the entire first arc. The love triangle between Hikaru, Minmay and officer Hayase heats up and leads to an excellent climax, and it’s all the more beautiful because the anime doesn’t manipulate you into rooting for one person by making the other a complete bitch, you can see why Hikaru would want to be with either of them.

The art is the show's biggest flaw, it's not pretty. Character designs are fine, but sometimes their eyes go wonky and you wonder if the animators were high on something at the time. The animation itself though as mentioned earlier, constantly surprises you in random episodes with how seamless the 'camera' revolves around setpieces. Though in the second arc the animation suffers and sometimes resorts to US 80's cartoon level quality, but thankfully the attention to characterisation makes up for it.

The music is obviously awesome, and I'm not even talking about Minmay's pop ditties, but the actual score soundtrack is very memorable and funky.

I really loved the characters of Macross and their voice acting, it's a very different approach to the Gundam template when it could have been a simple rip-off. I want to give it 10 out of 10, but will show restraint as the antagonist race weren’t developed well, even if their origin was very interesting. Macross’s strength revolves around just a handful of characters who get ample characterisation and attention, and both a perfect ending to the series and perfect beginning to the franchise.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Oct 3, 2019

LaLeLuLiLo

Mixed Feelings

There’s more interesting things to say of Macross as a show than about Macross and it’s story. From it’s conceptual beginnings as a parody of Gundam before getting scrapped. Being the only show in the Super Dimension series that lifted off into a franchise. It’s use of pop culture as a tool which lead to the iconic duo of pop idols and mechs the the franchise is now known for. And also being two of the three super dimension series that became part of the Robotech tv show. The last one being something I watched a bit as a kid and now as I ... am older, am seeing where some of it came from. Of course it’s not like the show has nothing to offer as it focuses on being entertaining, and does a good job at it.

Despite the shows plot being about a war between the United Earth and the extraterrestrial Zentradi, it mostly takes a back seat to the human drama and romance of the show. Macross isn’t concerned about the technicalities and logistics of war most notably being the city inside the titular named spaceship that seems like a pain to reconstruct every time the Macross changes forms. Instead is more focused with the emotions and feelings and how it affects them during the war and how the war sometimes affect them as beings. Them being the main two characters Hikaru and Minmay, two people who meet by chance and early in the show get trapped inside the giant spaceship, Macross. Both of them forming a unique relationship during that time a la suspension bridge effect and maybe could have been more until they are rescued. Both of them then going their separate paths with Hikaru being a pilot to defend the Macross from the Zentradi and Minmay becoming an idol. Neither of them ever having the time to be with the other as they meet each other less and less as time goes by.

As time goes by, so does the plot as well as it mainly is still about the macross fighting the Zentradi. Everything else about the plot is rather subdued lacking the impact and iconography that one would expect for a show/franchise to last so long. From the fighting, to the counter attack, interesting side characters/antagonists, ‘inter-species’ relationship, and even planetary devastation lack the sort of punch in the gut the show seems to attempt to deliver. Even the use of pop-idol songs as a tool of war only comes in ⅔ of the way into the show and even then it’s rather flat. The only thing worse than being non-impactful is how contrived this show is, especially when it came with the addition of Misa and Kaifun as part of the love triangle. With the way they end up playing out being dumb but understandable at first, then to out right ridiculous by the last 6-ish episodes due to how socially unaware they all are.

The art and animation of the show usually corresponds to how much action the show has. With the beginning of the show having so much action, the character designs and background art were ok; while the animation was decent. While the show later on having more appealing character designs due to the show focusing on human drama as the show was coming to a close. The most consistent thing were the Valkyries unique detail especially on it’s airplane mode. The way the voice acting and sfx may sound are a bit dated, but are still ok. The soundtrack is rather decent but feels par for the course for it’s time and the idol-songs being ok, but over uses one song a bit to many.

Nonetheless, the show still manages to somehow be an entertaining watch. It still has enjoyable and bouncy characters, incredibly cheesy but fun moments in it’s story, and some themes that it showcases although never really explores. Despite being old and a bit dated, it’s still worth giving a chance.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jul 12, 2010

Rampant

Not Recommended

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!

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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