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Blog version here. The 1980’s and 90’s rocked so hard. Having grown up in the 90’s I may be a little biased but think about it just for a second. Ever since 2001, the world has kinda sucked. The point I’m trying to get at is that we had a lot of good stuff that came out in that 20 year period. Just to name a few things: The Empire Strikes Back, MacGyver, Transformers, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, new Gundam shows, Home Improvement, Family Matters, Sonic the Hedgehog, Return of the Jedi, Van Halen, Top Gun, and let’s not forget Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. I say all this because I just finished watching what I believe to be one of the gems of the 1980’s, an anime series from Japan called Super Dimension Fortress Macross, better known here in the States as the first third of the 1985 Saturday morning series Robotech. Macross was released in 1982 and is usually considered a franchise second only to Gundam in terms of popularity and impact on the pop culture of Japan. It expanded the terms of the real-robot sub-genre of anime that Gundam had pioneered and made it even more ‘realistic’ in that the pilots all fly the same damn mech and the only deciding factor is who’s plot-armor is thickest. If you had to boil down Macross to something that most other people could understand then I would unequivocally say that Macross is Top Gun meets Batttlestar: Galactica meets Transformers with a dash of Star Wars thrown in for flavoring. I don’t want to write out the whole story of Macross so I’ll just go with the basics. It’s a long series after all. Macross’ story was a little convoluted by the time it got to TV. Most full-length anime series are around 50 episodes or so (unless they’re based on an ongoing manga then who knows how long it could take them. Bleach is up to 310 episodes and counting). Macross was originally scheduled to be 39 episodes but was then cut down to 26. At the eleventh hour it was lengthened to a final 36 episodes. The basic story begins in the year 1999 (remember that it was 1982 when the series premiered) with a massive 1200 meter alien spaceship crash-landing on South Ataria Island in the Pacific Ocean. This ignites a chain of events that leads to the formation of a world government and a massive project to rebuild and restore the alien ship. One of the first things that is noticed about this mysterious ship is that it is built for war. Naturally, the military immediately begins to reverse engineer the technology and is able to produce Macross’ signature transformable fighter planes, the VF-1 Valkyries. These fighters are not only deadly warbirds but they can transform into a humanoid combat form called Battroid Mode and an in-between form called GERWALK Mode. The reason for this is shown later in the series. Fast forward to 2009. A large city has been built up around the newly christened SDF-1 Macross and the people are celebrating its imminent launch. Here we are introduced to many of the principal cast including stunt pilot Hikaru Ichijyo, Major Roy Focker, Captain Bruno Global, Lts. Misa Hayase and Claudia LaSalle and bridge operators Vanessa, Kim and Shammy. Also we are introduced to civilian girl Lyn Minmay, who will become very important later on. One thing to remember here is that many of the Japanese names were changed to American sounding ones for Robotech (for example Misa Hayase became Lisa Hayes; my family name rocks so hard). Anyway, the launch of the Macross is rudely interrupted when the systems detect alien warships de-folding near the moon. The Macross’ massive main gun opens fire. Now this is one frakkin’ A gun! It shoots across the earth’s surface and then hits the warships which are still thousands of miles from Earth, unintentionally igniting humanity’s first interstellar war. The Macross launches and after some false starts manage to get into the air. But with a massive alien fleet coming to say hi, Captain Global orders that the ship initiate a space fold (Macross’ version of FTL travel). The consequences of using this still misunderstood technology are immediately made apparent. The Macross does lead the aliens away from Earth, but instead of arriving near the moon, they arrive in the orbit of Pluto… along with every bit of South Ataria island and a huge chunk of the ocean surrounding it. Luckily for the civilians they were in shelters when that happened. The civilians are brought on board, all 56,000 of them (it’s a big ship remember) and they reconstruct Macross City inside the ship. The Macross then sets out on its long journey home. Along the way, Hikaru and Minmay are accidentally trapped in the bowels of the ship for 12 days after he saves her, igniting the start of the other thing that Macross is famous for… love triangles. But more on that later. Now you might expect that a good chunk of the show would be spent with the Macross travelling back to Earth the slow way, but it’s not. There’s some nice exposition here and you have to remember that a lot of events in the series got compressed. You begin to learn about the aliens, which are called the Zentradi. They actually look very human with one not-so-small exception: The average Zentradi is TEN METERS TALL. That’s why the fighters have to transform into humanoid Battroid Mode. The Zentradi are portrayed from the start as a warrior race but only later do we really learn the extent of that. Several Zentradi characters that we are introduced to include one-eyed fleet commander Vriltwhai (pronounced bree-tye), his Archivist Exsedol and the blood-thirsty warrior Quamzin. At one point Hikaru, Misa and one of Hikaru’s pilots, Kakizaki are captured by the Zentradi and taken to their main fleet, which we learn is roughly 5,000,000 ships strong. Further surprises are in store as we begin to learn more about the Zentradi. The Zentradi are all about war. It’s all they do, day in and day out. They have no concepts of ANYTHING else. They can’t even fix their own ships properly because there are no engineers. They have no entertainment, no luxuries, no games and no romance. The very concept is foreign to them as male and female Zentradi are strictly separated and it is a crime punishable by execution for a member of one sex to communicate with a member of the opposite sex without authorization. This leads to a highly amusing scene where one Zentradi demands that the humans demonstrate the concept of romance and then completely freak out when Hikaru and Misa kiss. The Zentradi commander calls the act ‘proto-culture’ which will become important later on. Later, thanks to one of Hikaru’s other pilots Max Jenius, they are able to escape the Zentradi and return to the Macross. The Macross eventually makes it back to earth but the reception isn’t so warm. The admirals and politicians have thrown them to the wolves so that they can buy time to organize a counter-offensive and be able to fire their Grand Cannon, an energy weapon similar to the Macross’ main gun but on a planetary scale. They completely ignore the reports of Misa and Captain Global and proceed with their plans, which of course don’t work out and just make trouble for everyone else. The Macross tries to find shelter for the civilians on Earth but after an unfortunate incident with their prototype barriers system, they are forced to leave Earth. By now though, Zentradi spies have brought examples of human culture back to the fleet and culture shock slowly permeates its way through the Zentradi soldiers. The effect is comparable to a blind man suddenly being able to see as the Zentradi realize that there is more to life than fighting and dying. It gets to the point where many of them don’t even want to attack the Macross and some even defect to the ship. Unfortunately this just makes the Zentradi main command move humanity to the number one slot on their ZOINKS list and bring in the whole five million ship fleet. Here’s where things get interesting. The Zentradi fleet commander Vrlitwhai realizes that his fleet is in danger of being destroyed as well because it has been infected with the ‘proto-culture’ and he is starting to become a little enamored with culture himself. In a surprise move, he joins up with the Macross, providing information that can help the beleaguered earth forces fight the Zentradi. Still it’s a five million strong fleet and even the UN Space Forces’ Grand Cannon only reduces that by 1/5. But, against the odds, the Macross manages to break through to the command ship, causing the rest of the Zentradi fleet to scatter. The day is won, but at a terrible price. Before the Macross and Vrlitwhai’s forces were able to engage the main fleet, they were able to fire on Earth, wiping most of the surface and humanity. No exact figure is given, but fro the damage shown in later shows, it seems that somewhere between 90%-95% of the human population was wiped out. This was supposed to be the end of the series but thanks to extension, the last nine episodes go into a post-war reconstruction arc. We rarely get this sort of thing in American TV or anime. Not even Gundam showed the immediate aftermath of the One Year War (0083 doesn’t count as it’s a separate series). The story picks up two years later and many of the refugee Zentradi who have been helping their Terran brethren rebuild earth have started to slip back into their old ways. This is good for Quamzin, one of the Zentradi commanders I mentioned earlier who seems to be almost immune to culture, gathers these rebels to fight against the terrans. Meanwhile many of the main characters are resolving their personal issues, including the love triangle between Hikaru, Misa and Minmay (more on that later) and now-Admiral Global realizes that the only way to ensure that humanity never faces extinction again is to spread themselves out among the stars. Quamzin eventually organizes the rebel Zentradi and they fix up a busted Zentradi warship, ironically using the techniques the humans taught them. They attempt to attack the Macross and the ship launches one last time along with Hikaru and the Valkyrie squadrons. Quamzin is defeated along with the bulk of the rebels, the humans initiate their plan to colonize the stars and a lot of personal plots are resolved… mostly. This is mostly the story of Macross in a nutshell. I’m going to go into a few other things as I talk about the production of the series and the Characters I liked and hated but this is it. If I left anything out, don’t complain, go watch the show or read about on MAHQ.net. As I mentioned before, it’s easy to get into this show because it has such a great story. There are characters you like, some you hate, the bad guys are classically bad (until they get culture) the good guys don’t spend a lot of time moralizing and oh-woe-is-me-ing and of course there’s dogfights galore and ACTUAL CHARCTER DEVELOPMENT. You don’t get a lot of this in animes today and not even in many American TV shows. On American TV, character development will sometimes get spread out over the whole damn show and can be subject to, how do I say, illogic. This is one of the advantages of the way many animes do things. You only have, say 50 episodes for a character to mature, so if he or she is supposed to do that, they better damn well get their rears in gear! There weren’t many things I actually didn’t like about the show and most of those things are a result of the way the series was compressed and uncompressed which no one has any control over. I would say that there weren’t very many opportunities to hate the villains of the story. Most of the named Zentradi characters end up on the good guys’ side and the ones who don’t aren’t really hate fodder. The ‘Final Boss’ Lord Bodole Zer, isn’t in the series much at all so you don’t care much about him although the fact that he orders the execution of humanity doesn’t exactly endear him to you. Quamzin is charismatic, making him a villain you LIKE to hate, not just outright hate. Then you also learn that the Zentradi were basically engineered to be what they are/were and it throws a sympathetic light onto them. No the one character I truly despise is a human and we’ll get to him in a minute. The characters of Macross are what really make the series. I’m going to discuss for a moment characters that I really liked and characters I didn’t like. Actually I only really didn’t like one character… well you get my point. First off we have three of the main stars involved in Macross’ famous love triangle: Hikaru Ichijyo, Misa Hayase and Lynn Minmay. Hikaru (called Rick Hunter in Robotech) is introduced as a civilian stunt pilot invited to the launch of the Macross by his friend and senpai (mentor) Major Roy Focker. He gets caught up in the events of the launch of the Macross and the Zentradi attack and ends up flying one of the Valkyrie variable fighters and rescues Minmay. The two of them end up trapped in the bowels of the ship for almost twelve days (it’s a BIG ship). This is where their relationship begins to take shape. Hell, you go get trapped in what is basically a dungeon with someone and see if you don’t develop a connection. Hikaru comes off during this as basically your average joe with a gift for piloting trying to do his best in a strange situation. Minmay is your average teenage girl who isn’t used to extreme situations. This is made apparent when she goes a little nutty and asks Hikaru to have a mock wedding with her because she would regret it if she died without getting married. She then tells him they should throw themselves out into space and die together. I guess I can’t really blame her, dying of hunger and thirst isn’t a fun way to go. Then again, what Minmay doesn’t know is that death by the vacuum of space isn’t really pleasant either. Fortunately for the budding love birds, the civilians of Macross City break through the ceiling and rescue them. These events then set up the romance between Hikaru and Minmay. On the other hand, Hikaru’s first run-in with Misa is hardly romantic. She first encounters him when he had become an accidental Valkyrie pilot and he refers to her as a ‘nagging old lady.’ Bad move. It initially seems like there is no way Misa and Hikaru would ever be compatible. She is the exact opposite of the sweet, girlish Minmay. Misa is a career military officer whose father is an Admiral with the UN Spacy (combination of the words space and navy). She takes a no-nonsense approach to operations and doesn’t appreciate it when Hikaru tries to ‘show off.’ If Misa had her way, Hikaru would never have become more than a grunt pilot. Things change when two separate incidents occur. First is the Miss Macross contest in which Minmay becomes the first winner, garnering fame and a chance to become the singer she’s always dreamed of. Yeah it might be a little weird to hold a beauty pageant in a warship but when you have 56,000 civilians onboard and an eight month trip back to Earth ahead of you, exceptions have to be made. The other incident is when Hikaru, Misa and Kakizaki are captured aboard a Zentradi battleship and interrogated by the Zentradi leaders. Forced to demonstrate the concept of romance, the two share a surprisingly passionate kiss. This then kicks the love triangle into high gear as Hikaru grows increasingly distant from Minmay as she becomes more and more famous and he learns to rely on Misa’s direction from the bridge during his many missions, especially after Roy dies. Oops, did I say that out loud? Oh well, more on that in a moment. I liked Hikaru as a protagonist because he sort of comes off as the Luke Skywalker type of the series. He’s a seemingly ordinary guy at first who has a gift for piloting and then is swept up in events beyond his control. At first he’s a little immature and the many arguments he has with Misa over the TACnet is proof enough of that. But being a soldier starts to remove him from his childhood and forces him to start growing up, especially after he gets promoted to Lieutenant and is given two rookie pilots to deal with (these being Max Jenius and Kakizaki). After Roy’s death, Hikaru has to inherit Roy’s position as leader of Skull Squadron, the best Valkyrie unit on the ship. He also eventually is forced to come to terms with the fact that he and Minmay are from separate walks of life and can likely never be together. Minmay for her part serves as a voice of inspiration and hope during the dark times of the war. It was said that series creator Shoji Kawamori based her concept and the concept of her songs and their effects on the crew of the Macross and the Zentradi, on the song Lili Marlene, from World War II. Soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict apparently cherished this particular song. However, Minmay is also naïve and doesn’t really understand what Hikaru and the other soldiers aboard the ship go through as her celebrity life insulates her from the horrors of war. Basically she understands what’s going on but isn’t affected by it directly too much. She also demonstrates the double-edged sword that is fame. Initially she revels in becoming a famous pop star but as time goes on, and especially after her cousin Kaifun (sound of teeth grinding) get involved in her life, it wears her down to the point where she actually collapses and gets sent to the hospital. Later, during the Reconstruction arc, she finds all the fulfillment her singing gave her has vanished, especially since her status as ‘the girl who ended a war with song’ has been completely usurped by Kaifun at this point. She tries to run away from that life and find happiness with Hikaru but belatedly comes to the realization that Hikaru discovered long ago: they just weren’t meant to be. In the end she decides that she will discover the meaning of her songs by herself now that she’s freed of all the emotional baggage that the love triangle and Kaifun dropped on her and remains friends with Hikaru and Misa. Misa, as I stated earlier is a consummate professional, but that mask hides an inner pain. Once she was carefree and in love but then her boyfriend Riber had to go off to Mars and get his stupid self killed. This causes Misa to close up emotionally and it’s only when Hikaru shows up that she begins to lose some of that shell… with a TON of poking and prodding from the other bridge officers, Claudia, Vanessa, Kim and Shammy. As a side-note, that’s another TV trope that’s not native to just anime but other sci-fi shows as well, the concept of the ‘bridge bunnies.’ Anyway, Misa begins to have more interaction with Hikaru as Minmay grows distant from him. They can understand each other as soldiers. I think where she truly began to care for Hikaru as more than just a friend was when she nearly killed him. No, seriously she actually did almost kill him. During a battle she is distracted by thoughts of her dead boyfriend and launches a missile strike at the wrong moment. The missiles end up hitting Hikaru’s Valkyrie which plunges into the ocean with Hikaru barely ejecting in time. Later she goes to the hospital and apologies profusely for accidentally shooting him down. As Doc Brown once said, “That’s the Florence Nightingale effect. It happens in hospitals when nurses fall in love with their patients.” I may be wrong but whatever. She’s also one damn strong-willed woman as she has to put up with so much garbage from Hikaru during the last arc of the series as he waffles back and forth between his hope that he and Minmay will work out and his newly-discovered love for Misa. I was actually kind of hoping that she would slap him when Hikaru blows off their first date to go talk to Minmay. Hey fellas, here’s a little relationship hint. When you just ditched a date with your current girlfriend to check up on the ex, don’t bring a scarf that the ex gave you when you try to make up with your girlfriend because it will be she who discovers yours and your ex’s initials surrounded by a heart on the inside lining. Yeah… Hikaru was a bit of a blockheaded idiot in those last few episodes. Misa does eventually forgive him and they realize that they love each other and happily ever after and blah blah blah. Oh and because Misa is so undeniably awesome, Admiral Global gives her command of the new colony ship Megaroad-01. I feel at this point, having talked so much about romance, I need to mention Maximillian Jenius and Millia Fallyna (pronounced mill-ee-ah f-eye-yah-na) and the shortest romance in the history of television (possibly). As a bit of background, you should remember that Max was one of the new pilots that was assigned to Hikaru after he got promoted. The interesting thing about Max is that, while he’s actually a secondary character, he’s actually a better pilot than anyone else on the ship, including Hikaru. In fact, he’s so good that he draws a little unwanted attention. As previously mentioned, Zentradi males and females live separately but at one point commander Vrlitwhai calls in the Laplamiz Fleet, which consists of an entire force of these alien amazons (you think normal women can be scary? Try women that are twenty-five feet taller than you and know 101 ways to kill you with a knife.), particularly an ace pilot feared by all Zentradi, Millia Fallyna. To make a long story short, she ends up getting beat by an unknowing Max twice in combat, turns herself into a miclone (term for human-sized Zentradi), sneaks aboard the ship and then meets Max at an arcade. This leads to a rather hilarious scene in which, while she is totally focused on beating him at the flight simulator game they’re playing, Max is busy being entranced by her exotic green hair and mentally estimating her measurements. Ah fighter jocks, what are you gonna do? After getting beat by Max a third time, she agrees to a date with him (having no concept of what a ‘date’ is) but is really plotting revenge. Cut to Max in the park at night waiting for his romantic rendezvous. Out comes Millia from the bushes, tosses him a knife, declares her identity as a Zentradi pilot and then charges him. This then leads to the most badly animated knife fight ever. Despite Millia’s superior strength, Max manages to disarm her, effectively beating her a third time. Having been thus defeated, Millia breaks down in tears and begs for Max to kill her so that she can retain some measure of honor. Instead, Max, being a hopeless romantic, sweeps her up into his arms and kisses her passionately. Literally five minutes later, show time, they are being married by Captain Global. No I’m not kidding, after the kiss, there’s one scene where Max introduces Millia to Hikaru, a scene where they’re getting permission from Captain Global and then, boom, we’re at the wedding. Now I like this purely because if this was, say, an American series, the whole damn thing would have been spread out over one, two, possibly even three seasons of will-they-or-won’t-they? I have to admit that it is kind of abrupt that Millia goes from passionate hatred of Max to passionately in love with him in the space of a night, but it is unfortunately the result of Macross’ story getting compressed and uncompressed during production. Some aspects of the story, like Hikaru, Misa and Minmay’s love triangle, were more fully explored while Max and Millia had to be churned out in one episode. We do find out during one of the sequel series, Macross 7, that Max and Millia aren’t doing so well and one of their seven daughters, Mylene Flare Jenius, tries to get them back together. I can’t finish this section without mentioning the quintessential pilot of Macross, Roy Fokker. He’s exactly what you’d expect from a career fighter pilot: Loud, crude, rude and socially unacceptable… sort of. But tat’s what makes you like him because he’s just basically a fun guy. He also is one of the most unexpected deaths in the series. Normally, you’d expect an important character like Roy to not die, but if you’ve ever seen Star Wars, you should know that mentor characters either die or just really have it rough. Initially, it is implied that Roy and Hikaru grew up somewhat together and that Roy and Hikaru’s father taught the kid all he knows about flying. Roy is a little more absent as the war against the Zentradi heats up, but he’s always there to offer advice… especially on women. Roy himself has a relationship with one of the ship’s bridge officers, Claudia LaSalle, although it’s only mentioned briefly in episode 1 and doesn’t come up again until episode 18. Speaking of episode 18, Roy is also one of the progenitors’ of the anime trope “pineapple salad” after the episode of the same name. To whit, don’t promise a character their favorite meal right before a battle, as it will inevitably lead to said character’s death. It’s actually very well done, if I do say so my self. The setting is that Hikaru is in the hospital after Misa’s accidental missile attack injured him. Roy has to watch over Hikaru’s pilots, Max and Kakizaki, in addition to his own as he goes into battle once more against the Zentradi. Previous to flying out, he’d had a conversation with Claudia about having a quiet dinner with her and she had promised him to make her famous family recipe pineapple salad as an extra incentive. At first it doesn’t seem that anything has gone wrong, although Roy’s plane gets shot up a lot during the battle. Cut to Roy and Claudia in her apartment, Claudia preparing the meal and Roy relaxing on a couch playing an acoustic guitar. The camera goes into a close up of Claudia with Roy out of the frame. She’s talking to him and all of a sudden we noticed that he’s stopped playing. Confused, she turns around, salad in hand, only to find Roy sprawled on the floor, back soaked in blood (remember that in the 80’s, blood would have been a big no-no in the States). Cue scream of horror and dishes crashing dramatically to the ground. Now, they string us out a little more by cutting to Hikaru’s hospital room, where’s he resting up and playing with a small model of a Fokker bi-plane that Roy had given him. Nothing seems to be especially wrong until Misa comes in. Something’s wrong, she has tears in her eyes. Hikaru asks her what’s wrong and she somberly tells him that Roy was heavily injured in battle but didn’t tell anyone and has died. Cut to a room where Roy lies in a bed, eyes closed, medics surrounding him and Claudia crying over him. Hikaru gets a deer-in-the-headlights look and the model plane falls out of his hand and breaks on the floor, symbolizing the last parts of Hikaru’s youth being shattered. This also illustrates another theme in many animes that when a character has been in the background for a long while and is suddenly thrust in the spotlight, odds are very good that said character is about to die. Remember, this takes place exactly halfway through the series and you wouldn’t expect that a major supporting character like Roy would die so soon, but as I said, there is always a point where the mentor must step aside so that the apprentice can flourish. Roy doesn’t disappear entirely from the series. Hikaru becomes Skull leader and uses Roy’s old Valkyrie. In the last arc of the series, Claudia, in flashback, tells Hikaru the story of how she and Roy first met, trying to get him straight where Misa is concerned. And, of course, Roy will always live on to us Macross fans as Roy “I-can-still-fight-when-I’m-drunk” Fokker. J Oh and he gets to appear in the OVA Macross Zero. The other characters of Macross are also interesting enough to warrant mention. Captain Global is one of the quintessential sci-fi anime captains. He’s sort of a combination of Lord Nelson and Jean-luc Picard. He’s a proud, skilled military officer but he also lives by a strict code of honor that he expects people, even his superiors, to obey. He also has to put up with all the things that go wrong throughout the series, such as the Macross’ computers starting a war and the UN government abandoning the Macross and the civilians aboard her. Even the bridge bunnies Kim, Shammy and Vanessa provide a lot of character interactions. The one I always found funny was when Shammy is constantly reminding Captain Global that he can’t smoke his pipe on the bridge. Lastly, the one character I truly despise in the entirety of the series is Minmay’s cousin Lynn Kaifun. Why? He’s a bloody peacenik, that’s why. You know, I could write a whole other article about why this guy torques me off but that would be A) Weird and B) Non-productive. Let’s just say that he gets between Hikaru and Minmay, he dresses like he just walked out of Saturday Night Fever, his views against the military are out of place in the human/Zentradi war and, from a Western viewpoint, he’s a bit of a freak since he falls for his cousin Minmay. Oh and he totally disses Misa. Grrrr. Fortunately he turns out to be something of a lush and a hypocrite. In one episode, he inflames a crowd of mostly miclone Zentradi against Hikaru and his pilots, who are trying to safeguard a miclone chamber. Due to Kaifun’s speech, Hikaru and the others are forced to leave the chamber where it is and Quamzin’s rebels promptly steal it. Kaifun doesn’t seem to care much about that, making me think that he really didn’t care a damn about the chamber; he just wanted to get one up on Hikaru and the military. You can also tell that he’s using Minmay’s career as a way to advance his anti-military agenda. Unfortunately a little bit of that Asian misogyny creeps in and Minmay rarely stands up to him. Fortunately, he eventually gets fed up with Minmay (not her fault at all) and leaves. Me, I would have preferred that he’d had a battle pod or a Valkyrie fall on top of him and that the last episode he was in didn’t try to paint him in a positive light. Whew. 5,512 words and counting. This review has officially reached rigmarole status. Fortunately I just have a few more things to comment on, namely the animation and the Valkyries. The animation in Macross is usually pretty good. Unfortunately, they farmed some of the work out to secondary companies every so often and it resulted in some horrible, horrible work. Case in point, Max and Millia’s famous knife fight. Now a lot of the time though, the series seemed to shine especially in the battle sequences. There was nothing more awesome than Hikaru’s FAST pack-equipped Valkyrie unleashing a hailstorm of missiles at the Zentradi hordes. All in all, its aged pretty good for something that was created all the way back in 1982. That brings us to the last aspect of the show upon which I would like to comment, the VF-1 Valkyries. The Valkyries bring me back to my childhood and one of the best things that I loved about the original Star Wars trilogy. The starfighter dogfights. Yes, I’m one of those misanthropes who grew up during the 90s and all we had were VHS tapes and only a few good novels and no bloody Clone Wars cartoons. What I mean is, I have a saying and that saying is, if you can’t be a Jedi, be a frakkin’ X-Wing pilot! I bet these days you’d be hard-pressed to find a kid under fifteen that actually knows what an X-Wing or a TIE Fighter EVEN IS. Anyway, I bring this up because Macross follows a similar vein with its Valkyrie variable fighters fighting space dogfights and even engagements on other planets. Valkyries get a 1-Up on X-Wings though because they can transform into robots. There’s even a perfectly good reason why they can do that too. The average Zentradi soldier is 10 meters (33 feet) tall so they needed some kind of humanoid mechanized infantry to deal with them in hand to hand combat. It also looks pretty cool too. The particularly endearing part to the Valkyries is that they’re all the same machine. The main character does not become automatically awesome when he climbs into his VF-1J and the rest of the pilots are flying VF-1As. Forgetting about plot armor, he has just as much chance of getting blown to smithereens as the rest of the grunts. And, as has been mentioned before, Hikaru is actually not the best pilot, despite being one of the main characters. To sum up: F-22 Raptor? Screw that, give me a VF-25 Messiah! Macross left as much a mark on the anime industry as Gundam has. Macross took the real-robot sub-genre to new levels and also had a major hand in the transformation craze of the 80s (read: Transformers). But its true enduring legacy is the story. Even in the midst of terrible conflict there can be hope. That said conflict could be solved through means other than warfare. Oh and a good, old-fashioned space dogfights will NEVER go out of style. Deculture!