Ever since I watched Robotech and Captain Harlock on UK cable TV in the early 1990s, I’ve loved 80s anime space opera. I also caught showings of Gall Force, Lensman and Locke the Superman when I was far too young to understand them, but this early exposure solidified a lifelong fascination for anime in younger me. I already loved shows like Battle of the Planets, Ulysses 31 and Mysterious Cities of Gold that broadcast on mainstream terrestrial TV, but I had no idea at the time that they were Japanese. Robotech was really cool though, with its transforming fighter planes and massive space battles. Watching it doomed me to a lifetime of weebdom.
It wasn’t until many years later I discovered that the first (and best) third of Robotech was actually comprised of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, a 36-episode 1982–83 anime that was shoehorned into Robotech along with two unrelated shows, in order to meet syndication episode number minimums. Legendary screenwriter and producer Carl Macek was the brains behind Robotech, and to be fair he did a good job with massaging three completely seperate storylines together into one. Robotech — The Macross Saga wasn’t exactly the same as SDF Macross — some characters names and fates were changed, as was some of the backstory, but overall it’s still mostly the same plot.
The mid-90s brought Macross Plus to the West courtesy of Manga Video who released each of the four episodes on its own VHS tape, before eventually bundling them all together, along with the movie cut, onto DVD much later. Until recently that was the only other Macross show I watched because of some horrendously complicated rights issues between US Robotech owner Harmony Gold USA and the Japanese Macross owners. That prolonged disagreement meant none of the subsequent Macross sequels — whether TV shows, movies, or OVAs were made available in English. This was a crime, because Macross as a franchise is awesome.
Bizarrely, it’s now Disney who has the rights to almost every single Macross property, apart from the original series SDF Macross, and its associated movie Do You Remember Love. ADV did release a non-Robotech version of SDF Macross on US region 1 DVD about 20 years ago, but that’s long since disappeared. You can stream it on the internet archive though. Do You Remember Love exists in English as a terrible Hong Kong dub — you can also find it on the internet archive, though I don’t recommend it. The film itself is superb, the dub is… excruciating.
Anyway, Disney now streams Macross Plus, Macross Zero, Macross 7, Macross Frontier, Macross Delta, and all of their associated movies and OVAs. They even stream non-canon sequel Macross II, which isn’t very highly regarded by fans or anyone involved with the original Macross, as they had nothing to do with it!
I’ve reviewed Macross Frontier for Anime News Network, and you can read my review at the link below:
I intend to review most of the other Macross shows either for ANN, or here on Medium (some of them already have reviews up on ANN), so keep an eye out for them over the coming weeks and months!
Kevin Cormack is a Scottish medical doctor, husband, father, and lifelong anime obsessive. He writes as Doctorkev at https://medium.com/anitay-official and appears regularly on The Official AniTAY podcast. You can also find him on Twitter @Herrdoktorkev. His accent is real.
