Macross Plus

Macross Plus:  B

So I'll admit that my grade on Macross Plus is pretty strongly influenced by having watched Macross II only an hour or so earlier, and that Plus blows II out of the water in terms of animation and originality of story, as well as overall being a much more mature piece.  Macross original was a fairly complex and mature story for its time, but Macross Plus really tries to explore some interesting themes.

Macross Plus' story discusses AI, memory, rivalry which turns sour, repentance and, of course, love in all its obsessive, unhealthy emotional force.  The characters have a significant background together that they don't bother explaining to us (and several of them don't remember it) and they manage to make that work out as a storytelling element.

While a couple of faces look particularly weird (especially noses), the animation is overall stunning, decades ahead of its time, and the occasional CG moments are amazingly not particularly invasive; the series was a pioneer of CG animation in anime and one of the first successful uses, far more successful than many later series.

Macross Plus isn't perfect.  Like the others of the franchise, the plot is a little impenetrable in places, and a couple important plot points aren't well explained, but overall Macross Plus is a good and interesting short mecha series that reminds me of both "The Right Stuff" and, "Perfect Blue".  If you're looking for a series with some badass mecha but plenty else besides that, you could spend 3 hours a lot worse than watching Macross Plus.