should macross get a remake also

[big F]

Now since Macross more or less has the same number of episodes as Gundam, and it has its fair share of filler episodes doing a re-edit of the story and putting it on film is not an impossible task. I mean you can reduce Macross to 7 hours of tightly paced action and story without changeing the nature of the series. And no DYRL is not a solution. That film was a "what if" type of scenario. It is not a re-edit of Macross (notwithstanding what Kawamori has said, will say now, or in 20 years when he changes again his stance on the subject).

I agree I always thought of DYRL as a Macross universe version of a film account of an event that happened or a Docudrama type thing. That and the Animation was far better and kind of said to me here's what we could have done if we had extra cash and time. now they could re do it and chop out the filler maybe put in some other back story to fill it back out, and bang you have a whole boat load of new possibilities with new and old fans and all that follow on merchandising.

[s001]

You guys talk just like anime fans not like macross fans.

Edited March 16, 2012 by s001

[Cobra__]

You guys talk just like anime fans not like macross fans.

So what exactly IS a macross fan ?

A person of unquestioning obidience to the will of Kawamori ? Seriously even the great Kawamori has no idea how to structure coherently the Macross universe. You just take the various episodes/series/ova's/films as they come and hope that somehow "continuity" is not being jeopardised or retconned. And if it is, well forget about it. Its all subjective in the end.

What did Obi Wan used to say ? "...So what I told you was true... from a certain point of view"

Kawamori took that lesson to heart.

[Dynaman]

You guys talk just like anime fans not like macross fans.

Thank you sir. Since I like all kinds of Anime (and self professed that Yamato is my favorite...) I shall take that as a compiment.

[sketchley]

So what exactly IS a macross fan ?

Someone who is content with series that have been released, and are looking forward to the next series, as they know it's going to be a step in a new direction, not a rehash of the same-old, same-old?

[Reïvaj]

Someone who is content with series that have been released, and are looking forward to the next series, as they know it's going to be a step in a new direction, not a rehash of the same-old, same-old?

Simple and clear.

[EXO]

Sounds like a definition for a type of Macross fan.

[Uxi]

I like the idea of reusing the voice tracks and doing new animation. Replace the brown CF with a low viz style, but not substantially deviating from the line art. They could expand from the "main characters" with side stories, perhaps but keeping the rest "in universe" with the original voice acting.

[Zinjo]

Someone who is content with series that have been released, and are looking forward to the next series, as they know it's going to be a step in a new direction, not a rehash of the same-old, same-old?

Wow that sounds dangerously like a minion or toady to me...

Why don't we just call it Robotech and be done with it? Then the fan-culture would be the same...

Macross challenges many scif fi and social conventions, very well or poorly depending on your tastes. I appreciate Kawamori's "anti-canon nazi" stance on the universe. It can drive you batty from time to time, but he reserves the right to change placeholder ideas with mature well considered ones later on.

He admits that the major events of the universe occured but the minutia that the productions are made out of are subjective and open to interpretation. Both MF movies attest to his continuing assertion that the TV shows, OVAs and Movies are interpretations of actual in universe events. Hence the differences. IMHO, he copped out when he made DYRL a "movie" within the universe. It is what it is and shouldn't be expected to be more or less...

[coronadlux]

I would prefer a live action film instead of a remake. No matter how good the new animation would be, 20 years from, that too will look out dated.

I would watch the live action film just as long as it's not in that fake "power rangers" style.

[Reïvaj]

I would prefer a live action film instead of a remake. No matter how good the new animation would be, 20 years from, that too will look out dated.

I would watch the live action film just as long as it's not in that fake "power rangers" style.

Sure, as if live action films didn't age at all

[Kronnang Dunn]

Isn't that kind of what DYRL was anyway?

No. DYRL started in media res and its plot was remade specificaly to fit a film format. I really would have prefered a series of movies... or perhaps a continuation of DYRL, I don't know. As for the voice actors, well... several new voice actors have replaced the originals in many other anime remakes... why can't it be done just the same for Macross?

[JB0]

Now since Macross more or less has the same number of episodes as Gundam, and it has its fair share of filler episodes doing a re-edit of the story and putting it on film is not an impossible task. I mean you can reduce Macross to 7 hours of tightly paced action and story without changeing the nature of the series.

Oddly, I feel the opposite way. Some subplots in Macross are truncated due to LACK of time.

The only episodes I can call out as filler are Global Report and Phantasm. Make no mistake, I really LIKE Phantasm, I just don't see where it actually ADDS anything other than the Magic Bicycle of legend.

While I think the post-war arc could be handled better if there was a plan from the start to do it(by the Triforce, the reopening of that love triangle just makes me want to punch Hikaru), I think in many ways that epilogue is what MAKES Macross in my book. I'd be very worried about it being truncated or deleted entirely in an attempt to slash out the excess.

How about that one episode that consists almost entirely of Hikaru and Misa trapped in an alley talking to each other. Booooooooooring.

Hey, why even introduce Kakizaki? He's going to die without doing anything at all. Total waste of screen time, let's just have Hikaru broke up about the death of some faceless mook that never even showed up on-camera. At BEST we need to kill Kakizaki the same episode he's introduced*.

And man, why did it take so long for Hikaru to get over his pacificistic sissy ass, sack up, and start killin' bitches? Put him in a fighter plane from day one! Moral qunadries are for lame girlie crap with sparklie prettyboys!

Eventually, you excise all the chaff, the deadwood, the filler, the empty space, and you're left with... a soulless husk of a show that doesn't have time to convince you any of these people are worth caring about, or that they're anything more than cardboard cutouts of the standard cliche characters. At best, the characters all feel forced, because development is rushed to fit into an abbreviated run.

By the bullet points, it's just a leaner, sleeker Macross, but somewhere along the line, the soul was chipped away and thrown out too.

Just because it doesn't advance the primary narrative doesn't mean it's filler.

*That's a personal peeve of mine, shows introducing people, trying to convince the audience they MATTER, and killing them off all in the same half-hour episode.

[pfunk]

I would prefer a live action film instead of a remake. No matter how good the new animation would be, 20 years from, that too will look out dated.

I would watch the live action film just as long as it's not in that fake "power rangers" style.

Plus two, and if the latter "power rangers" style happens I think there would be a civil war in Japan

[Gubaba]

Oddly, I feel the opposite way. Some subplots in Macross are truncated due to LACK of time.

The only episodes I can call out as filler are Global Report and Phantasm. Make no mistake, I really LIKE Phantasm, I just don't see where it actually ADDS anything other than the Magic Bicycle of legend.

While I think the post-war arc could be handled better if there was a plan from the start to do it(by the Triforce, the reopening of that love triangle just makes me want to punch Hikaru), I think in many ways that epilogue is what MAKES Macross in my book. I'd be very worried about it being truncated or deleted entirely in an attempt to slash out the excess.

How about that one episode that consists almost entirely of Hikaru and Misa trapped in an alley talking to each other. Booooooooooring.

Hey, why even introduce Kakizaki? He's going to die without doing anything at all. Total waste of screen time, let's just have Hikaru broke up about the death of some faceless mook that never even showed up on-camera. At BEST we need to kill Kakizaki the same episode he's introduced*.

And man, why did it take so long for Hikaru to get over his pacificistic sissy ass, sack up, and start killin' bitches? Put him in a fighter plane from day one! Moral qunadries are for lame girlie crap with sparklie prettyboys!

Eventually, you excise all the chaff, the deadwood, the filler, the empty space, and you're left with... a soulless husk of a show that doesn't have time to convince you any of these people are worth caring about, or that they're anything more than cardboard cutouts of the standard cliche characters. At best, the characters all feel forced, because development is rushed to fit into an abbreviated run.

By the bullet points, it's just a leaner, sleeker Macross, but somewhere along the line, the soul was chipped away and thrown out too.

Just because it doesn't advance the primary narrative doesn't mean it's filler.

*That's a personal peeve of mine, shows introducing people, trying to convince the audience they MATTER, and killing them off all in the same half-hour episode.

I second this.

And hell, I'll even go further...SDF Macross (TV) is perfect.

It has flaws, of course, but that simply adds to the perfection.

(That said, if they wanted to do a "Gundam Evolve"-style series of shorts, I'd be ALL OVER that.)

[azrael]

(That said, if they wanted to do a "Gundam Evolve"-style series of shorts, I'd be ALL OVER that.)

Yes, those Yammies and Bandai kits don't sell themselves. (Honestly, if they did Gundam Evolve-type shorts for Macross toys, I'd be all over those.)

[Gubaba]

Yes, those Yammies and Bandai kits don't sell themselves. (Honestly, if they did Gundam Evolve-type shorts for Macross toys, I'd be all over those.)

Don't forget Hasegawa (cry the publishers of the Master File Series)!!

[SchizophrenicMC]

Graphics and sound update? Sure, sounds good. Bring that in line with modern animation. Keep the story as near to the same as possible, though, junk and all. (Except the recap episode. I don't suppose as we need that. Unless you can pass it off better as more than just a recap) Then again, I'm just a sucker for the level of detailed in a lot of these newer mecha anime. Gundam Unicorn has some fantastic battle scenes.

[Gubaba]

Graphics and sound update? Sure, sounds good. Bring that in line with modern animation. Keep the story as near to the same as possible, though, junk and all. (Except the recap episode. I don't suppose as we need that. Unless you can pass it off better as more than just a recap) Then again, I'm just a sucker for the level of detailed in a lot of these newer mecha anime. Gundam Unicorn has some fantastic battle scenes.

Which recap? There are two, after all...

[jvmacross]

And hell, I'll even go further...SDF Macross (TV) is perfect.

'nuff said.....

[JB0]

Graphics and sound update? Sure, sounds good. Bring that in line with modern animation. Keep the story as near to the same as possible, though, junk and all. (Except the recap episode. I don't suppose as we need that. Unless you can pass it off better as more than just a recap)

If a remake WAS happening, I think Global Report could be saved. Back off the titular report a bit, and give more of a view into the man himself. Show more of him writing the report, and thinking events over, talking to Misa about it.

He doesn't get a huge amount of character time(largely by virtue of not running in the same social circles as Hikaru), and it'd be a good opportunity to step back for a moment and show how a major secondary character is dealing with things.

[VF5SS]

dude are you cruising for a hatetrain on DYRL or something

macross isn't competing with itself ya know

[Kronnang Dunn]

I think the original Macross TV series were awesome and excelent, but that doesn't mean they can't be remade you know? 1980 Astroboy was awesome and it got a 2003 remake that, while not having the same dark stories had pretty great animation...

[JB0]

dude are you cruising for a hatetrain on DYRL or something

macross isn't competing with itself ya know

That wasn't in reply to me, was it? It directly follows my post, but I don't think I've spoken ill of DYRL anywhere in the thread.

[Pterobat]

I second this.

And hell, I'll even go further...SDF Macross (TV) is perfect.

It has flaws, of course, but that simply adds to the perfection.

(That said, if they wanted to do a "Gundam Evolve"-style series of shorts, I'd be ALL OVER that.)

Thirded.

Well, nothing *is* perfect, but there's nothing so wrong with SDFM that it "justifies" a remake on the grounds of some major flaw existing in the original that now needs to be excised.

Also, what JB0 said. Good stories often take time to stop and just "hang out" with the characters in between Major Events, so that the audience gets a handle on these characters and actually *cares* what is happening to them when the big stuff happens. The obvious example is that Kakizaki's death has more impact when he's been around for several episodes prior, but an overall strength of Macross is its compelling secondary cast. If one viewed the story only in terms of efficiency, in getting from point A to B the quickest, the secondary characters would be the first to go, but the series would overall be much the poorer for this.

By the way, I *love* Phantasm becuase it's a really creative and weird style of Clip Show, and I'd hate to see it "go", which probably proves that I don't have the ruthless heart to contemplate a remake. That, and it does show HIkaru's increasingly ambivalent psychology in an interesting way.

As to the post-ep 28 series, I'm eternally on the fence about these episodes. They have several good moments and ideas, demonstrating the importance of "hanging out" with the characters, but they also have several trainwrecks, and narrowing the focus to the re-opened love triangle and Kamjin's sudden rebellion rather than keeping the more balanced focus is also what brings the episodes down. I don't deny that having a set number of episodes to write to would have helped this pacing immensely, rather than the fluctuating episode numbers the original SDFM run got, but even so, the idea of a remake having such a structure isn't enough to make me interested in one.

[rotorhead]

No. DYRL started in media res and its plot was remade specificaly to fit a film format. I really would have prefered a series of movies... or perhaps a continuation of DYRL, I don't know. As for the voice actors, well... several new voice actors have replaced the originals in many other anime remakes... why can't it be done just the same for Macross?

well yes, I get your meaning, but if you really think about it, DYRL was a means to get the franchise more current without necessarily stepping on the toes of the original series. I'd thought that was what they were getting at earlier in the thread. Take SDF Macross, trim it down, put it in movie format (with awesome new animation), and you get.... DYRL. I'm not so much against a remake, but I prefer the fleshed out series by far. I'd much rather it be closer to the original than cut back into a movie format. There's too much going on to fit into 90 minutes. Edited March 21, 2012 by rotorhead

[Zinjo]

Sure, as if live action films didn't age at all

True enough. I've caught myself a few times wondering what my favorite movies would look like if they Lucased them with CG...

Then I shake my head and appreciate them for what they are...

[VF5SS]

Well, nothing *is* perfect, but there's nothing so wrong with SDFM that it "justifies" a remake on the grounds of some major flaw existing in the original that now needs to be excised.

[Zinjo]

Ironically I would have preferred to see SDFM with the 49 episode count than M7! There was more relevant story to be told in SDFM than at least half of 7 comparatively speaking.

I have to agree with the growing consensus that the show was too short for the amount of story they wanted to tell.

It would have been nice to see Kakizaki grow into a character we cared about when he died, for a better build up to Max and Millia's final declaration of love, more about the burden of leadership Global carried, a smoother resolution to the love triangle and a better incorporation of the stories of post war Earth leading up to the final reveal about the Megaroad project.

IMHO, the opportunity to re-make SDFM with modern anime techniques and a enhance the already compelling dramatic story is now. A hybrid between the original and the First manga would keep it fresh. However, to do the show justice, the need to get enough funding for a 49 - 50 episode series would be needed and that kind of cash is not something that could be found currently in the domestic Japanese market. They'd need a foreign investor like WB to help fund it and that would require a whole different set of circumstances...

[Pterobat]

[derp Milia]

Lots of shows produced in that era have bad animation.

Anyway, I've thought about things I'd like to have done if SDFM could be done over, too, but I'm still of the mindset that a remake have just less of what I enjoyed about the original instead of an extension and a fleshing out of what I did enjoy. And for all the stuff that could potentially be "fixed", there'll still be flaws: it's a pointless search for absolute perfection. That's a horrible nerd cliche to say so, but whatcha gonna do?

...

...okay, I'll play. What I would like to see from a remake is what everyone else has said: a less creepy version of Max and Milia (the rushing into marriage is fine, but the lead-in not so much), and not turning Hikaru into a big cad. Perhaps a story could continue with the characters *past* the love triangle resolution, with the resolution still coinciding with the climactic battle. After all, if the main characters maintain enough of a sense of closeness to go on the Megaroad together, more stories could be told with them after Hikaru chooses MIsa. There's still Minmay's rejection of Kaifun and her desire to sing "real songs".

What I'd like to see, personally, is a tiny bit better of a resolution for the allied Zentradi characters besides Milia. I've got no problem with Warera, Rori, and Konda fading into the background, but don't imply they'll fail at life even at their tiny blue-collar jobs, c'mon. Give Exsedol a bit more to do instead of just disappearing.

And while we're at it, explain why the heck Laplamiz does anything: develop her personality and motivations so that she isn't just doing random things that the plot needs her to. I'd like to see more of what the female Zentradi as a whole were doing the entire run of the series, how they knew of, or handled, what was happening to the male fleet (and not as cheesy "Show me this Earth thing called kissing" fanboy dreams, either).

(It goes without saying that I'm picturing this all as the TV series Zentradi, right down to no elf ears, no special name for female Zentradi, and no silly racial catchphrase ).

[VF5SS]

I think you have some deculture issues, Meltran :3

[coronadlux]

Of course live action films age as well. But if done right, it could, in a perfect world and budget, last as a classic. There is still some magic to the original Star Wars films. The key would be the CG.

Even "The Last Starfighter" has better old school CG than some of the recent stuff out there.

As far as continuity, The new Mangas "Macross the first" have already began changing some of the details from the original series cartoons. They don't stray too far away from the original plot, but Minmei's rabbit looking cat, or cat looking rabbit throws me off.

[Pterobat]

I think you have some deculture issues, Meltran :3

I am totally blameless.

Edited March 22, 2012 by Pterobat

[VF5SS]

I actually agree with most of your points on what didn't work for the TV show. Also thank you for articulating what I'd been thinking about the post war episodes.

[343sqn]

If a remake is to be done for the original Macross series, it'll need the following things:

1. A "hang the cost" attitude towards animation
   
2. A re-recording of the songs with current arrangements
   
3. Adaptation of everyday "commodity" technology to the standards we knew in 2009-2010
   
4. A few real air force technicians, pilots and command & control officers to provide input on procedures and what real combat radio chatter consists of - also, why was Hikaru so surprised when he was appointed two wingmen? Didn't he receive training as a formation leader beforehand?
   
5. Also, make some of the military personnel act with greater (and more convincing) professionalism; I know I'd chew Misa's head off for her Mars Base suicidal tendencies, as well as for her idea to go and fly in the Cat's Eye...
   

Edited March 26, 2012 by 343sqn