No Love for Southern Cross?

[Seto Kaiba]

12 hours ago, Bolt said:

Ah..I miss the Golden age of anime..

lol, it had its drawbacks.

Just looking at the development history of Southern Cross is enough to tell you we're better off without that lawless attitude.

 

12 hours ago, Bolt said:

This is Sparta..?

... and all I can picture is Jeanne with Leonidas's beard screaming "THIS! IS! SPARTAS!" and having her tank punt Seifriet's red Bioroid into a pit.

 

12 hours ago, Bolt said:

Recently watch a trio of Warthogs coming in for landing in Tucson. So awesome..

I think he meant the other kind...

 

12 hours ago, Bolt said:

Interesting point. Still, i ponder the cultural considerations that spawned this hastily contrived work..

Some of them... well... don't ponder them too hard or Chris Hansen'll bust through your wall like the goddamn Kool-Aid Man.

Remember, the original pitch for Southern Cross came from a h-doujinshi artist who specialized in lolicon and diaper fetish material.  How and why Tatsunoko green-lit that I'll never understand.  You'd think the author's... specialized practice... would have been a huge red flag.

[pengbuzz]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Remember, the original pitch for Southern Cross came from a h-doujinshi artist who specialized in lolicon and diaper fetish material.  How and why Tatsunoko green-lit that I'll never understand.  You'd think the author's... specialized practice... would have been a huge red flag.

Heavy use of sake`?

Edited March 9, 2021 by pengbuzz

[CoryHolmes]

19 hours ago, Bolt said:

Recently watch a trio of Warthogs coming in for landing in Tucson. So awesome..

 

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

lI think he meant the other kind...

Yeah, Seto Kaiba is right.   My brother and I played  splitscreen co-op on the OG Xbox, jeez nearly 20 years ago now.  I was the wheelman, he was the gunner in the back.  To this day we're still giggling over how crazy he found my driving, even though we don't live in the same city any more.  "Blah blah blah, your warhog driving sucks blah blah blah."

As soon as the Tesla Cybertruck was revealed, my brother texted me with a "frakk NO!" caption, because it looks so much like the Warthog.  

[Seto Kaiba]

12 minutes ago, CoryHolmes said:

Yeah, Seto Kaiba is right.   My brother and I played  splitscreen co-op on the OG Xbox, jeez nearly 20 years ago now.  I was the wheelman, he was the gunner in the back.  To this day we're still giggling over how crazy he found my driving, even though we don't live in the same city any more.  "Blah blah blah, your warhog driving sucks blah blah blah."

Having played it myself on XBox and the old Games for Windows Live port, I'm pretty sure it wasn't your driving... the Warthog just handles like an inebriated cow with one short leg on an unlevel floor.  It always has, and apparently always will if the gameplay I've seen of the Master Chief Edition is any indication.

 

Just for shiggles, I'm gonna go back and do some translations from a few of the existing Southern Cross publications just to see if there's anything particularly interesting in there. 

Took a whack at the Southern Cross and Galvion pamphlet earlier.  It was interesting to note that this one describes Earth's circumstances in harsher terms.  It's not uninhabitable, the nuclear war at the end of the 21st century left it straight-up incapable of supporting life.  Also, the place the Zor took off to after ruining Glorie was a planet they discovered in the Phi Eridani system.

[Bolt]

46 minutes ago, CoryHolmes said:

Yeah, Seto Kaiba is right.   My brother and I played  splitscreen co-op on the OG Xbox, jeez nearly 20 years ago now.  I was the wheelman, he was the gunner in the back.  To this day we're still giggling over how crazy he found my driving, even though we don't live in the same city any more.  "Blah blah blah, your warhog driving sucks blah blah blah."

Ah so.!

 

5 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Took a whack at the Southern Cross and Galvion pamphlet earlier.  It was interesting to note that this one describes Earth's circumstances in harsher terms.  It's not uninhabitable, the nuclear war at the end of the 21st century left it straight-up incapable of supporting life.  Also, the place the Zor took off to after ruining Glorie was a planet they discovered in the Phi Eridani system.

Curious to see what other, scant bits you will find.

[CoryHolmes]

11 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Having played it myself on XBox and the old Games for Windows Live port, I'm pretty sure it wasn't your driving... the Warthog just handles like an inebriated cow with one short leg on an unlevel floor.  It always has, and apparently always will if the gameplay I've seen of the Master Chief Edition is any indication.

And yet I prefer the Warthog controls to any other driving game.  I hate GTAs driving controls, CP2077 is okayish... ish.  I guess I'm just not built for driving games.

[tekering]

21 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Also, the place the Zor took off to after ruining Glorie was a planet they discovered in the Phi Eridani system.

Yeah, that's consistent with the nonsensical exposition dump at the beginning of the second episode, "Make Up," which states that "the aliens who call themselves Zor" came from the Eridanus star system, according to "analysis of their communications..."  

...meaning the citizens of Glorie had the use of a universal translator sophisticated enough to parse proper nouns...? 

Or were the Zor considerate enough to call ahead and introduce themselves, before destroying Glorie's orbiting communications grid? 

The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. 

[CoryHolmes]

1 minute ago, tekering said:

The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. 

Yes, but if I can stretch my mind to accept giant transforming robots, I can deal with the little idiosyncrasies of the plot.  As long as its internally consistent, I'm fine.

[tekering]

19 minutes ago, CoryHolmes said:

I can deal with the little idiosyncrasies of the plot.  As long as its internally consistent, I'm fine.

Yeah, except it really isn't.  Rolf's initial reluctance to attack the Zor, and his early conflicts with Leon, are all based on a total lack of information.  They don't know what their purpose is, what their technology is capable of, or even who they are...

...except, inexplicably, what they call themselves, and precisely where they came from. 

And in episode 9, "Stardust," the Zor take considerable effort to communicate with Glorie, finding the "key codes" necessary to use their "hotline..."

...and it certainly seems to be their first attempt at communication.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, tekering said:

Yeah, that's consistent with the nonsensical exposition dump at the beginning of the second episode, "Make Up," which states that "the aliens who call themselves Zor" came from the Eridanus star system, according to "analysis of their communications..."  

All told, it's kind of a nonsensical/improper statement... Eridanus isn't a star system, it's a constellation.  There are 24 main stars in Eridanus that make up the constellation we can see and a total of 87 stars identified as "within" that constellation for astrographic purposes.  You could call Glorie itself "in Eridanus", since it orbits Epsilon Eridani.

 

3 minutes ago, tekering said:

...meaning the citizens of Glorie had the use of a universal translator sophisticated enough to parse proper nouns...? 

Or were the Zor considerate enough to call ahead and introduce themselves, before destroying Glorie's orbiting communications grid? 

The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. 

Interestingly, the Southern Cross Army never seems to actually need any kind of translation when speaking to the Zor... even in person.

Even if they assumed there was some kind of universal translator in play initially, it's weird that nobody comments on all the Aliens Speaking English going on when they start to talk to the Zor in person.

Weirder still if you think about it, the Zor that return to Glorie in 2120 are thousands of years removed from their early 22nd century Human ancestors thanks to accidental time travel... but the language they're speaking is apparently so little changed by all that time that it's still recognizable to 22nd century Humanity.

 

6 minutes ago, tekering said:

"LEND YOUR EAR TO OUR LACK OF INDOOR VOICES!"

 

[tekering]

30 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

You could call Glorie itself "in Eridanus", since it orbits Epsilon Eridani.

Since the story only concerns the constellation Eridanus, what is the significance of the "Southern Cross" in the title?  I'd always been (mis)led to believe Glorie was in the constellation of Crux.

Incidentally, Epsilon Eridani features heavily in Halo as well.  Could Glorie be the same barren world Halo calls "Reach?"

32 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Even if they assumed there was some kind of universal translator in play initially, it's weird that nobody comments on all the Aliens Speaking English going on when they start to talk to the Zor in person.

I wasn't going to bother commenting on that trope.  It's practically as old as science-fiction itself... and usually hand-waved away, if it's even acknowledged. 

[Seto Kaiba]

31 minutes ago, tekering said:

Since the story only concerns the constellation Eridanus, what is the significance of the "Southern Cross" in the title?  I'd always been (mis)led to believe Glorie was in the constellation of Crux.

Yeah, you'd think that'd be the obvious way to go about it.  

No such luck, though.  When Humanity abandoned Earth in the late 21st century and set out into deep space via bases at Mars and Jupiter.  From there, they discovered planet close enough to Earthlike for their needs in orbit of Proxima Centauri and then another orbiting Epsilon Eridani.  And, of course, the Zor had long since discovered a third inhabitable world in Phi Eridani's orbit.

This doesn't jive with either the show's final title or its working title once it switched to a pure sci-fi mecha anime.  It was original Super Dimension Cavalry Regulus for much of its time in development before having its name changed to Southern Cross.  Regulus the old name for Alpha Leonis, which is in Leo not Crux.  

That said, I don't know why they eventually settled on calling it "Southern Cross".  That'll be a detail to look for, I guess.

The only possibilities I can think of besides "because it sounded cool" are possibly that they're referencing Brazil's knightly order or that particular constellation's use in navigation.

 

31 minutes ago, tekering said:

Incidentally, Epsilon Eridani features heavily in Halo as well.  Could Glorie be the same barren world Halo calls "Reach?"

I wasn't going to bother commenting on that trope.  It's practically as old as science-fiction itself... and usually hand-waved away, if it's even acknowledged. 

Eridanus is a popular destination for sci-fi in general.

[vladykins]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Eridanus is a popular destination for sci-fi in general.

Yep. Epsilon Eridani was also the loication of Star Trek's Vulcan for a bit before it was moved to 40 Eridani. Bab 5 also is in Episilon Eridani, IIRC. I'll have to go grab my Bab 5 rpg stuff to check.

[derex3592]

Can a MOD please change the name of this thread to "So Apparently, There IS love for Southern Cross!"  

[Big s]

More like love of southern cross, despite it’s choices

[captain america]

It's really not such a bad series. I re-watched it to get as many screen references for the Zor mecha as possible, and despite its many truck-sized plot holes, they aren't much worse than what you'd find in other TV serials of the time, including MOSPEADA. As a toy/mecha-crazed kid I didn't care for it so much, but as an adult I find the lack of heavy mecha emphasis more appealing. It's no Dougram, but not nearly as dull as teenager-me remembered it.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Big s said:

More like love of southern cross, despite it’s choices

Half the time it's more like one of those unsolved murders specials on Netflix...

Join us next week for another installment of Who Killed Southern Cross?

 

3 hours ago, captain america said:

It's really not such a bad series. I re-watched it to get as many screen references for the Zor mecha as possible, and despite its many truck-sized plot holes, they aren't much worse than what you'd find in other TV serials of the time, including MOSPEADA. As a toy/mecha-crazed kid I didn't care for it so much, but as an adult I find the lack of heavy mecha emphasis more appealing. It's no Dougram, but not nearly as dull as teenager-me remembered it.

Eh... it's not completely awful, but it was still pretty bad even in its day.  That's why it got cancelled. 

Plot holes were never its problem, though.  Southern Cross was simply uninspired, unoriginal, unremarkable, and underdeveloped.  In a lot of ways, that's arguably worse than simply being bad.  A really bad story can still be memorable, or even cross the line into still being entertaining because of its badness.  But being boring and unremarkable?  That makes an audience apathetic and gets a show forgotten.

They could've done some interesting things with the setting and the concept, but they don't seem to have ever thought that far ahead. 

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Half the time it's more like one of those unsolved murders specials on Netflix...

Join us next week for another installment of Who Killed Southern Cross?

 

Eh... it's not completely awful, but it was still pretty bad even in its day.  That's why it got cancelled. 

Plot holes were never its problem, though.  Southern Cross was simply uninspired, unoriginal, unremarkable, and underdeveloped.  In a lot of ways, that's arguably worse than simply being bad.  A really bad story can still be memorable, or even cross the line into still being entertaining because of its badness.  But being boring and unremarkable?  That makes an audience apathetic and gets a show forgotten.

They could've done some interesting things with the setting and the concept, but they don't seem to have ever thought that far ahead. 

I wonder what the possibilities would be if Southern Cross were redeveloped? It could be that what we are seeing here is a half-baked product that could be something if the premise and characters were thought out and fleshed out a bit more judiciously.

[tekering]

37 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

I wonder what the possibilities would be if Southern Cross were redeveloped?

It was redeveloped, actually: first as a sequel to Macross, then a subplot shoehorned into Megazone 23, and finally as an RPG scenario involving... Russians? 

I'm not particularly clear on that last one, but I think we should probably leave well enough alone. 

[JB0]

10 hours ago, derex3592 said:

Can a MOD please change the name of this thread to "So Apparently, There IS love for Southern Cross!"  

"There is love for Southern Cross, but we aren't sure why."

[pengbuzz]

3 hours ago, tekering said:

It was redeveloped, actually: first as a sequel to Macross, then a subplot shoehorned into Megazone 23, and finally as an RPG scenario involving... Russians? 

I'm not particularly clear on that last one, but I think we should probably leave well enough alone. 

Maybe we should just call it "SIGH-fi"? lol

[vladykins]

6 hours ago, tekering said:

It was redeveloped, actually: first as a sequel to Macross, then a subplot shoehorned into Megazone 23, and finally as an RPG scenario involving... Russians? 

I'm not particularly clear on that last one, but I think we should probably leave well enough alone. 

I lolled IRL.

[Big s]

I would honestly say I enjoy Southern Cross. It’s fun and silly with a bit of fantasy and some really great if not impractical armor designs for both the humans and zor. It’s definitely more entertaining than most modern anime 

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I wonder what the possibilities would be if Southern Cross were redeveloped? It could be that what we are seeing here is a half-baked product that could be something if the premise and characters were thought out and fleshed out a bit more judiciously.

Really, the best thing to do would be go to back and make Science Fiction Sengoku Saga.

The design team had some actual passion there, and put a lot of love into the designs for the armor and equipment.  I suspect someone on staff was a history buff, since there were a lot of iconic historical touches like Shingen Takeda's famous Fuurinkazan banners and armor designs based on the very real armor of several of the Sengoku period's most famous or infamous warriors like Shingen Takeda, Tadakatsu Honda, Masamune Date, Ieyasu Tokugawa, etc.

 

 

9 hours ago, tekering said:

It was redeveloped, actually: first as a sequel to Macross, then a subplot shoehorned into Megazone 23, and finally as an RPG scenario involving... Russians? 

I'm not particularly clear on that last one, but I think we should probably leave well enough alone. 

I've read two different editions of that last one and I'm not clear on it either.

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Really, the best thing to do would be go to back and make Science Fiction Sengoku Saga.

The design team had some actual passion there, and put a lot of love into the designs for the armor and equipment.  I suspect someone on staff was a history buff, since there were a lot of iconic historical touches like Shingen Takeda's famous Fuurinkazan banners and armor designs based on the very real armor of several of the Sengoku period's most famous or infamous warriors like Shingen Takeda, Tadakatsu Honda, Masamune Date, Ieyasu Tokugawa, etc.

Now, that is something I would definitely want to see.

[Einherjar]

On 3/8/2021 at 9:02 PM, tekering said:

 

You know what I really don’t love about Southern Cross?  This fat a$$.

[JetJockey]

16 hours ago, JB0 said:

"There is love for Southern Cross, but we aren't sure why."

I'm sure I said it before. It's probably bad to say it again on a Macross forum. But as part of Robotech...I preferred Southern Cross and New Generation to Macross Saga.

It was the adventure aspects of Southern Cross and New Generation. And the hovercycle and cyclone. I really didn't like the mushy love story that much in Macross Saga. I have saved on my old VHS tapes a good amount of Southern Cross starting with the episode with Dana getting captured in the Master's ship. And New Generation starting with the episode when they consider separating.

[CoryHolmes]

6 hours ago, JetJockey said:

I'm sure I said it before. It's probably bad to say it again on a Macross forum. But as part of Robotech...I preferred Southern Cross and New Generation to Macross Saga.

It was the adventure aspects of Southern Cross and New Generation. And the hovercycle and cyclone. I really didn't like the mushy love story that much in Macross Saga. I have saved on my old VHS tapes a good amount of Southern Cross starting with the episode with Dana getting captured in the Master's ship. And New Generation starting with the episode when they consider separating.

QFT!!

 

Like I said above, much of my Robotech viewpoints are influenced by the RPG worlds, and specifically the way my friends and I played them, but I've really come around to preferring the Southern Cross setting of the three eras.  The mecha are neat without being missle-hogs, there's political intrigue and infighting, and those unique body armours are fun fun fun.

 

I will forever be sending modelling vibes to the good Cap'n.  Until more people get onboard, and then it'll happily be funds

[Podtastic]

23 minutes ago, CoryHolmes said:

QFT!!

 

Like I said above, much of my Robotech viewpoints are influenced by the RPG worlds, and specifically the way my friends and I played them, but I've really come around to preferring the Southern Cross setting of the three eras.  The mecha are neat without being missle-hogs, there's political intrigue and infighting, and those unique body armours are fun fun fun.

 

I will forever be sending modelling vibes to the good Cap'n.  Until more people get onboard, and then it'll happily be funds

Its no less a favourite of mine than Macross or Mospaeda.

The animation quality is actually not bad at all, and the action sequences with Bioroids and Hovertanks still rock for me. It also benefits from not having an irritating human idol singer.

As for toys I'd much rather have an armoured Nova Satori/ Lana Isavia or a Bioroid Pilot than a Min Mei/Basara/Sheryl (as much as that's not a good comparator due to those three being totally expendable in my book ).

[pengbuzz]

On 3/10/2021 at 3:51 PM, Einherjar said:

You know what I really don’t love about Southern Cross?  This fat a$$.

I'm pretty sure they could have defeated the Zor if they had polished his head to a mirror shine and used it to blind them in combat.

[eevli]

On 3/2/2021 at 5:19 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Not really.  There weren't any aliens in Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross.  The Zor were Human All Along. 

That was the big plot twist that the series never got around to due to being cancelled.

What little is available in the minimal official materials for Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross attributes the changing design of the Zor's Bioroids during the course of the war on Glorie to the Zor's efforts to improve their combat performance and overall survivability.

 

The Zor were the descendants of the original colonial pioneers whose ship had vanished en route to Glorie in a warp drive accident.  They settled Glorie in the distant past, lived there for generations, ruined the planet in a nuclear war the same way their pre-accidental time travel ancestors ruined Earth, and then decided that this "war" thing was a crock and totally rearchitected their entire society around a new concept of emotional control via division of responsibility for Information, Judgement, and Action to abolish it.  By the time Glorie was habitable again after terraforming by a new wave of settlers from Earth helped lift the final stages of the planet's nuclear winter, they'd lived in a harmonious society for so long that war had become a bit of a lost art to them.  The Southern Cross Army's saving grace was that the Zor's overwhelming technological superiority was being wielded by rank amateurs who were "learning by doing" when it came to waging war and weren't remotely interested in conquest or fighting.

Hey Seto,

I'm curious what your source for this information was? Pretty interesting details! 

Thanks!

[Seto Kaiba]

22 minutes ago, eevli said:

Hey Seto,

I'm curious what your source for this information was? Pretty interesting details! 

Mainly, a Southern Cross feature that was published in the June '84 issue of My Anime magazine... with a bit from a promotional pamphlet from the series and the Pioneer DVD liner notes.

Information about the series is quite sparse, and this is one of the few points that's actually discussed in any significant detail... though even that paltry amount of info is spread across at least three separate sources.

AFAIK, the time travel aspect of it is only directly referenced in the Pioneer DVD notes while the My Anime entry just alludes to it in an oblique way by describing the Zor as mutant Earthlings who'd settled Glorie and then abandoned it to wait out a nuclear winter and reengineered their society in the name of emotional control by dividing themselves into trios with each individual being responsible for either information, judgement, and action.

The promotional pamphlet for Southern Cross and Galvion mentions where they went and why they came back.  They went to Phi Eridani, and returned once the nuclear winter on Glorie started to lift because conditions on Phi were not optimal for the transplanted lifeforms from Glorie.  (It also talks about what a complete dump Glorie is, and how humanity ruined Earth so conclusively that the planet is incapable of supporting life.)

[eevli]

21 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Mainly, a Southern Cross feature that was published in the June '84 issue of My Anime magazine... with a bit from a promotional pamphlet from the series and the Pioneer DVD liner notes.

Information about the series is quite sparse, and this is one of the few points that's actually discussed in any significant detail... though even that paltry amount of info is spread across at least three separate sources.

AFAIK, the time travel aspect of it is only directly referenced in the Pioneer DVD notes while the My Anime entry just alludes to it in an oblique way by describing the Zor as mutant Earthlings who'd settled Glorie and then abandoned it to wait out a nuclear winter and reengineered their society in the name of emotional control by dividing themselves into trios with each individual being responsible for either information, judgement, and action.

The promotional pamphlet for Southern Cross and Galvion mentions where they went and why they came back.  They went to Phi Eridani, and returned once the nuclear winter on Glorie started to lift because conditions on Phi were not optimal for the transplanted lifeforms from Glorie.  (It also talks about what a complete dump Glorie is, and how humanity ruined Earth so conclusively that the planet is incapable of supporting life.)

Thanks for the sources as the information is indeed sparse!

Best regards. 

[tekering]

It took nearly 20 years for Southern Cross to get a DVD release, and nearly 20 years have passed since then...

Now, however, we have new video algorithms for upscaling anime to HD standards, and software to adjust color-timing and replace the old analog music with digital stereo recordings.

Dare to compare! 

 

[505thAirborne]

I know I've said this before but if an old Anime were to get a reboot, I'd like to see Southern Cross get it. This series had a lot of potential & still does. Would like to Kyoto Animation take on the challenge! 

@tekering The 2021 is the clearest of the three IMO.