Robotech
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You are currently reading a thread in /m/ - Mecha
You are currently reading a thread in /m/ - Mecha
So I understand that this show is actually an amalgamation three shows.
Is it correct to say that it's an adequate compilation of the shows or is it just riddled with continuity errors and contradictory story lines?
AND WE AT..oh wait, is this a legit question?
It starts to contradict itself when it starts trying to tie the three very different shows together
>that it's an adequate compilation of the shows
Absolutely not
It starts out as a not bad for its time adaptation of Macross but it really drops the ball and becomes a clusterfuck once it tries to tie in Southern Cross and Mospeada. Carl Macek was many things but a good sci-fi writer was not one of them. I'd only recommend it if you really, REALLY want to watch a dubbed version of Macross but don't want to hear Vic Mignogna yell senpai or Mari Iijima put on a thick accent.
If you want a version of the story with half decent writing, check out the novels. They were written by some of the better Star Wars book writers.
>>14304984
By and large Robotech works as its own thing well. Not as an adaptation, but perhaps as an AU. There are a few obvious weird shifts in geogeaphy and tech, but nothing possible to accept if you know what Robotech is. I still rather like it, but it can't be watched in place of Macross. The books were great though. Those kinks are largely ironed out, and the planned sequel went to completion over the course of 6 extra books.
Robotech could benefit from a Dreamworks Voltron like reboot honestly. The story could be more congruous and include elements from Sentinels, the books, anything they ever tried to do afterwards.
>>14304984
All three shows they used are available subbed and online. Macross comes out the least unscathed, but while it's not drastically different, Mospeada and Southern Cross are more adversely affected. My advice? Just watch the original shows.
>>14305569
>>14305193
My gentlemen of Nubian descent.
The novels are indeed the best way to experience Robotech. If you want proof, you'll notice that Tommy Yune threw them out of the canon because they were way better than the drek he shits out.
>>14305923
You robot each apologists are pathetic
>>14308968
>apologists
No, they're the telling the truth. Its not even apologizing.
The rushed storyline that was thought up in the process of making the three shows relevant to one another really sucks, and anyone with a key sense of science-fiction storytelling knew this. That's why everyone who made the books and the comics outright rewrote and redrew things around so that it fits better and made everything more entertaining and easy to follow. These people weren't even directly affiliated with Harmony Gold and the only reason that these guys got the company's blessing was so they could cash in on the money they made since they weren't doing anything else at the time and didn't give a shit about continuity (and they still don't). Frankly, Robotech's universe is only good on paper. The show Carl Macek and Harmony Gold made out of it is just useless and annoying.
Tommy Yune, now the current creative director of anything Robotech, has been spending the past fifteen years retconning all of this material in favor of his own asinine vision of how the universe should be (anything of or related to his crappy Shadow Chronicles stories), which now leaves everything, once again, making even less sense and further demonstrates why Robotech is a continuing enclave of clusterfuck that only the most die-hard of fans clammer to.
Nobody is saying that this the ultimate solution over Macross or that HG did nothing wrong. Far from it. Anything that was worthwhile with Robotech ended in the late 90s, and everything that followed is absolute shit and seriously needs to stop. Or at least be put into the hands of a more respectable organization that can do something with the franchise and possibly fix relations between Studio Nue.
>>14305193
The New Generation isn't really any more different from Mospeada than The Macross Saga is from SDF Macross. The Masters/Southen Cross, however, has to try to tie in to both what's before it and what's after it so that section is a disaster.
>>14304984
It's like this:
Back in 1985 you could not possibly get a television show on syndication with only 35 episodes. You had to have 60+ episodes and a toy line named after the show. Carl Maceck wanted to get Macross on the air, but in order to do that he had to make it longer, and he had to change the name of the show because the toys were already being sold by Revell as part of their "Robotech" toy line.
Also american television has this stigma about moments of silence, especially on children's shows. So the compromise was to add a narrator who would come in during the quiet moments and say things that foreshadowed the things that would happen in Southern Cross and New Generation/Mospeada. When they dubbed Southern Cross, they changed a couple of characters names to make them relatives of the Macross cast, and changed the settng from a recently colonized alien planet to a war-ravaged earth. When they dubbed Mospeada, they changed the Mars Fleet and Jupiter Fleet to "Admiral Hunter's Fleet". The "Flower Of Life" from Southern Cross is stated by the narrator to be the fuel source for the reactors in Macross, and also stated by the narrator to be the food source for the Invid/Inbits in Mospeada. And the one actual plot-altering change was done in Southern Cross, where the true identity of Zor/Seifreit was altered to tie the creators of the Zentradi in with the Inbits.
That's pretty much it for the changes HG voluntarily made. There were also some censorship issues necessary to get past the Bureau Of Standards And Practices to get the show on the air. All references to hangovers, infidelity, suicide, illegitimate children, and psychedelic cactus juice were removed.
Despite what detractors will say about the Protocultures being changed from the creators of the Zentradi to a plant, all references to the Protocultures (the race that genetically engineered the Zentradi) are still in Robotech, they just substituted the name "The Masters".
>>14309421
Stale copypasta is stale.
>>14309143
>anyone with a key sense of science-fiction storytelling knew this.
The fuck are you on about?
Robotech is fine as a show. It's a bit rocky here and there, but it's fine. You make it sound like some osrt of unmitigated disaster saved by Luceno and Daley. The books added some things, like the helmets being how fine motor control was handled (Which Macross later did too, so huh.) but it's not like the novels rewrote anything wholesale.
>>14309143
>>14309504
>Nobody is saying that this the ultimate solution over Macross or that HG did nothing wrong. Far from it. Anything that was worthwhile with Robotech ended in the late 90s, and everything that followed is absolute shit and seriously needs to stop. Or at least be put into the hands of a more respectable organization that can do something with the franchise and possibly fix relations between Studio Nue.
Although basically agreed here. I'll fully admit I've pondered just what a Robotech adaptation of later Macross shows could be like, but it's over and done. I'd rather Harmony Gold fucking implode in a ball of fire at this point than see their Shadow Chronicles stuff.
It's very weird, they're trying to reject the Sentinels material while keeping characters and ideas from it, while also telling side stories that ALMOST work with the Sentinels stuff. It's like they can't decide what they're doing. Respecting the old, or just retconning it. It's chiefly incompetence.
I remember being so excited when the reissued novels were moving on from the Macross Saga onto the Masters Saga. I thought they would do them all. Instead they just stopped at New Generation. For some reason. It's still annoying today. I had to buy the other novels used, and man they have a funk to them being so old. There's no reason not to reprint them, other than their normal Harmony Gold dickery. Somehow the few fans who would buy them would be confused if they conflicted with Shadow Chronicles material? The hell? Shadow Chronicles is dead anyway. Not a thing has been done with that in years.
>>14309151
>The New Generation isn't really any more different from Mospeada than The Macross Saga is from SDF Macross. The Masters/Southen Cross, however, has to try to tie in to both what's before it and what's after it so that section is a disaster.
The Masters portion of Robotech is a fucking disaster because the original Southern Cross takes place on an alien planet far away from earth. It was already bad going from Macross to Mospeada since after the Zentraedi blast the surface of the earth we never again have big cities. And yet in the opening sequence of Mospeada what do we see great cities being once again being leveled to the ground. For pete's sake there is even an episode taking place in New York city. Put Southern Cross in the middle and the whole thing makes even less sense.
Those that say that the only good Robotech are the old pre-Yune novels are correct. Those novels give a complete picture of Robotech with the Invid flower of Life as the mcguffin. And in the novels this makes much more sense than what is depicted in the anime.
Beyond the basic 12 novels spanning the Macross, Southern Cross and Mospeada parts of Robotech we also got
- malcontent uprisings that see the Max and Miria confront renegade Zentraedis in south america during the first years after the Zentraedi attack on earth.
- we also got 5 novels for the Sentinels (they're so so not great but passable)
and finally we got the fucking end to Robotech in the novel "The end of the circle". All the questions pertaining to admiral hunter, minmei and why the fold engines on the original SDF-1 dissapeared during the first fold are explained.
THE END.
No one, no one sane of mind should even contemplate watching Robotech the anime. It's a gigantic clusterfuck. The novels are the real deal. Read them. That is the only good thing to ever come out of the Robotech universe.
>>14309421
Is the Macross story pretty much intact then?
By that which I mean is it possible to get into the rest of the real Macross stuff? Basically using the early part of Robotech as a dub?
>>14309637
>Is the Macross story pretty much intact then?By that which I mean is it possible to get into the rest of the real Macross stuff? Basically using the early part of Robotech as a dub?
90% yes BUT :
- you lose all the quirks in the Japanese version that were edited out for the puritanical american audience.
- protoculture is not an energy source
- you lose the japanese songs (the bad and the good)
- the ending of the american version is different from the the japanese version
>>14309623
Southern Cross is mostly fine. It takes place about 15-320 years after a massive rebuilding. Macross has a rebuilding nearly this weird.
The show is not nearly the clusterfuck you're intent on making it out to be. You do highlight some problems, but it's not hard top rationalize as the Flower of Life accelerating plant growth, and the new cities being modeled on the old.
>>14309637
No, it's just a bit too different. You can't watch the newest Tenchi ova after watching Universe, right? You can't watching Bubblegum Crash after Tokyo 2040. You can't watch The Search for Spock after Into Darkness. Same deal.
>>14309637
If you want to watch the Macross sequels then just watch the original Macross. Why watch Robotech when you can watch Macross online?
>>14309637
Yes.
All you need to know is that the people that Robotech call "The Masters", Macross will call "The Protoculture" and that anything the narrator says is a lie.
As for the "different ending", there's a couple of lines in the final episode about the SDF-2 (which doesn't exist and those scenes were on the SDF-1) and a couple of lines about certain characters dying off-screen. That's pretty much it.
The music is somewhat divisive. The original Minmay songs are 80's j-pop. The Robotech Minmay songs sound more like broadway showtunes. Choose your poison. Personally I think Ulpio Minucci's score for the Robotech version is better than the original Macross score (except for that one song when Zentradi warships show up).
But there's another issue with watching Macross and then going on to the sequels: THE POWER OF MUSIC. In original Macross (and therefore Robotech), the power of music is purely psychological. It has a drastic effect on the Zentradi because they've never heard music before so a few million emotionally-stunted guys all get their first childhood crush on the same pop singer at the same time. Macross: Do You Remember Love is a condensed retelling of the middle arc of the series and is best watched after the series for minimal confusion. Macross: Flashback 2012 is a bunch of new animated scenes set to a Minmay concert, her final concert before leaving earth on the Megaroad. Macross II is a theatrical sequel to Do You Remember Love but wasn't made by the original creator. It keeps the "psychological warfare" aspect and cranks it up a little with subliminal hypnosis. Macross Plus has a computerized pop singer that can hypnotize a whole city of people and control them kind of unrealistically.
After that, music starts making rocks float, healing wounds, blowing the clothes off of ancient demons (i wish i was kidding about that), soothing space whales, and communicating with space bugs.
>>14310080
>and communicating with space bugs.
It wasn't music that was doing that. It was the fold crystals.
>But there's another issue with watching Macross and then going on to the sequels: THE POWER OF MUSIC
You forgot to add "which is totally radical and not an issue at all"
The Macross and Mospeada parts of the story have pretty minimal changes, content-wise. A few terms are changed (Protoculture is a power source instead of ancient ayy lmaos, some names are different, etc) but that's aboot it. They at least keep most of the deaths and stuff in there.
Robotech does have the most annoying and insufferable narrator. Any time there's in the original versions is replaced with "AND RICK HUNTER SILENTLY THINKS TO HIMSELF IN SILENCE ON WHETHER OR NOT HE SHOULD TALK TO MINMAY, OR FETCH A HAM SANDWICH. FIND OUT NEXT TIME, ON THE NEXT EXCITING INSTALLMENT IN THE ROBOTECH SAGA!!"
Fuck the narrator.
A guy I work with is a die hard Robotech fan. Hell, his gamertag on pretty much any system/network is usually some variation of Roy Fokker. But even he'll admit it's got some problems. Namely the drastic changes in aesthetics brought on by cramming three unrelated shows together, the narration, and how crappy Shadow Chronicles was.
Robotech's a neat little artifact, if you're looking at it in regards to older anime dubs and how things used to get changed in adaptations. But, in this day and age, you can get the original versions super easy. I'd say stick with Macross and Mospeada. Fuck Southern Cross though. It's boring no matter how you slice it.
>>14310215
*any time there's silence in the original version
Damned peppermint schnapps.
>>14304984
>riddled with continuity errors and contradictory story lines?
You've given it a good enough description right there than I feel no need to add anything.
>>14309521
>I'll fully admit I've pondered just what a Robotech adaptation of later Macross shows could be like
I still think Yune desperately wants to be able to say that Sharon Apple is a Haydonite.
>>14310080
Honestly, the whole "The Power of Music!!!" thing has put me off from watching Macross. I can dig it in the original after hearing this explanation, but the rest of the series sounds ridiculous. What's the point of the armies and the mecha when it always boils down to some jackass or two playing medicore music? Christ, the militaries in Marcross should just send armies of indie and garage bands playing at once whenever evil aliens appear if that's the case.
The music stuff is just too stupid for me, especially since the series seems to play it completely serious.
>>14311211
You shouldn't take a series about transformers fighting giant green spacemen that's also a romantic comedy seriously in the first place.
>>14311211
Only 7 really has the whole power of music shit.
Frontier at least explained it by alien bacteria emitting shit.
>>14311211
A space war was won because giant aliens could not handle pop music from a 15 year old girl. This fucking series has been stupid since day one. Just enjoy it.
You know you've hit rock bottom when your job is to tell people about your dead 80's franchise on facebook and make sure there's always a robotech troll thread or two in the /m/ catalog.
Hello hg employee!
>>14311454
> A space war was won because giant aliens could not handle pop music from a 15 year old girl
The massive amount of reaction warheads didn't hurt either.
>>14309504
It really isn't. Once the change was made of 'protoculture' going from an ancient civilization to a fuel source, it really gets pretty muddy; Dolza still loses his shit and flat out calls Lisa and Rick's kissing an effect of Protoculture....even though its later identified as an energy source which is what they were looking for in the first place: A "protoculture matrix" which is never fully explained. We also discover later that the Zentraedi learn they are a bi-product of the Robotech Masters and are made directly from protoculture (!!!) and it’s never explained either. In fact, it’s not very clear what protoculture even is and its often shot around from being a fuel source to goddamn magic out of nowhere (it caused Dana's Zentraedi cells to go haywire and have a kind of psychic vision of her unborn/born sister in space). They even stooped to calling the Zentraedi sizing chambers as "protoculture chambers" which leads you to believe that maybe these were somehow gadgets for making more protoculture, which would probably be why people are guarding them, but no they just mess around with the Zentraedi's height and that's a part of protoculture I guess.
And after the Macross Saga ends with the notion of the RDF venturing into space, we're catapulted 15 years into the future and suddenly all of the Zentraedi are gone without a trace, the technology looks WAY out of whack and downscaled from what was shown in the previous series, and the RDF has all but disappeared too and we're left with this Southern Cross organization governing the whole world: Who the fuck are they all of the sudden? What happened? Where is everything? And later in New Generation we suddenly get brand new ships, mechs, and armor that are way more reminiscent of the Veritechs used in Macross Saga, and apparently the Expedionary Force that's been stuck in space uses them and has been using them all this time since they left? Where was all the protoculture coming from?
>>14315737
And dude I can go on. The whole series is full of holes like this and it damn near drove me crazy trying to sit through it all. Afterwards I gave the comics and books a chance (expecting more of the same) and to my surprise they actually helped clear a lot of this junk up and even told the story better. The comics for instance explained that the Zentraedi had no idea they were biological constructs from the Masters; They were each individually grown, given fake reprogrammable memories and identities, built-in fighting urges and imperatives that governed their lives, were severely isolated, and regarded the Masters as supernatural/religious deities whom they took their bidding. This explains why the Zentraedi were so ignorant of protoculture, and it was pointed out that Dolza reacted because he honestly believed that humans were somehow harnessing protoculture (through kissing) as magic that the Masters themselves used and deemed them dangerous.
The comics also gave us prequel stories like when Zor first discovered the Flower of Life, and various other tales that dove deeper into what this flower was and where it really came from (and no, not just from Optera), plus stories that dove into the civil unrest shortly after the SDF-1 crashed on Earth and how the world wasn’t really united and started an “anti-unification” uprising (This was before Macross Zero, btw), which gave birth to the development of lesser mechs from the Veritechs like the Destroids, and small tactical groups with power-armor that later became the Southern Cross (showing that they didn’t just fart out of nowhere). The novels and comics built a shitload of politics and background behind everything which explained how things lead to the Southern Cross’ reign, about the reproduction of protoculture, what protoculture is capable of, and how/why the technology was so vastly different from one another. Hell, some stories even came with documentary snips.
>>14315744
So yes, the series is a mess and the novels and comics made it better. I’m not saying Macek is an all-out untalented person; He had pretty good ideas, but given the limits of what he was given and the short amount of time he had to slap the thing together, it is what it’s always been; A rush-job for syndicated television that’s only held up by nostalgia. The only time where Macek tried to pick up the pieces was when he tried to get The Sentinels animated series started, after the original Robotech broadcast was cancelled, which ended with it blowing up in his face due to a dollar/yen currency fuck-up. After that he pretty much washed himself of Robotech and ran off to start his own company where he made more adequate dubs of Castle of Cagliostro, Akira, My Neighbor Totoro, and Naruto. Since then, people have been picking up the pieces to his corpse of a project and building around it, far more extensively than he or Harmony Gold has ever done.
>>14311454
>A space war was won because giant aliens could not handle pop music from a 15 year old girl. This fucking series has been stupid since day one.
The point
------
Your head
>>14315750
>Naruto
wat
>>14315737
>Dolza still loses his shit and flat out calls Lisa and Rick's kissing an effect of Protoculture....even though its later identified as an energy source which is what they were looking for in the first place
It had become so legendary to them the Zentraedi had conflated the culture of givers of their energy, the Masters, with the energy itself.
Protoculture is a McGuffin much like Spice. It has way more properties than it logically should. Because fuck you it's science fiction. The books don't fix this. I'm not sure why you're acting like they do. In fact, these problems are only exasperated in the books which further mystify Protoculture.
The Southern Cross shift is somewhat easy to explain too. The space based branch of the military left with the RDF, leaving the ground forces who assumed overall command. They also had shit tech because Earth hadn't fully rebuilt their industrial base but still need whatever they could get out, and so shit hovertanks were the order of the day for that age.
And all of the Protoculture was aboard the SDF-1 itself, which is the only damn factory of the stuff in the universe. It's uh... it's why everybody wants it man.
The Expeditionary Force left loaded for bear to head off conflicts coming to Earth but got stuck dealing with half the Invid forces and I forget what else.
>were severely isolated, and regarded the Masters as supernatural/religious deities whom they took their bidding
How the shit did you NOT get this from the Macross Saga? I got this and I was like nine when I saw it.
>all of the Zentraedi are gone without a trace
I always just figured they were shrunk so they wouldn't be a drain on resources and were integrated after 15 years.
Honestly the biggest fuck up of the extended Robotech canon was having them pretty much killed off between works.
Again, you're overstating these problems by a large degree.
>>14311454
>pop music from a 15 year old girl.
Minmay was 16 when they weaponized pop music, dummy.
>>14315865
Who makes a 16yr old girl go into world?
>>14311454
Actually Space War One was won because omni-directional-barrier and LOLNUKES.
The j-pop was just psychological warfare that kept the Zentradi from being on their A-Game.
>>14315906
It was won because of nukes and j-pop. They couldn't have won without the other.
>>14315906
You know, I feel that people seem to disregard just how important the "j-pop" was to winning Space War One. I always hear it's like "it was 'just' psychological warfare" or "Minmay didn't do too much, singing just 'distracted' them. What really did the job was all the nukes".
I mean, here's the thing. The point is that both of them were necessary. It's not that one is less than the other, the important part was both. Sometimes I hear people talk as if they didn't really need Minmay, it would have just been harder but that's not the case, both the singing and the nukes were necessary to win the war. It's not a small thing, it's among the most important things, especially in DYRL when they're like "My god, culture is returning to us through this song". There's a reason why Minmay is the true legend and legacy that comes from the outcome of the war and Hikaru isn't even with DYRL.
I'd also add that in the end, the nukes were solely to take out Boldelaza, the big bad and bring the rest of the Zentraedi together in one big happy cultured family (future riots nonwithstanding)
It's like saying "Ranka and Sheryl weren't the real reason they ended the Galaxy/Vajra threat. It was all of the NUNS ships and Alto sniping Grace through the head". Yeah, that's what happened but that's not the whole story
Just watched the first fewepisodes. It's actually not bad for an old mecha anime when it gets going.
