Macross 7

Macross 7:  C

Man, Macross as a franchise just keeps making me do this: it's classic and did a lot for the industry but the truth is that the majority of its constituent series have been kinda meh.  I want to like Macross 7 for a number of reasons, and it's OKAY, it's just not GOOD.

Macross 7 is a mid-90s sequel to the early-80s original series that maintains a number of aspects of the original series: a definite sense of space opera rather than science fiction, transforming mecha, a love (sort of) triangle among the central characters, music being used as a weapon in self-defense and the singers doubting the purity of the military's intentions.  Macross 7 changes the formula in a number of places, though, our love triangle has a girl as the central point, and she ultimately comes across as our main character, the story very much revolves around her growth and growing up (She begins the series at 14, which you need to constantly remind yourself of, since she's not in school, drives a sports car, plays in a popular rock band and her two romantic options are both clearly in their late teens or early twenties).  Also, the series turns up the 'magic' quotient considerably, with the villains draining human life force and weaponized music being able to turn into energy beams.

Very underaged heroine and ridiculous laser rock music are forgivable, though, but what I couldn't stand was the male protagonist, the front man of the rock band our heroine plays in.  Here, I have to admit that my prized reviewer neutrality breaks down, because he slides into Mary Sue territory for me: people almost universally like him and those that don't tolerate him despite him being moody, self-centered and self-righteous.  He never suffers any serious setbacks, is never given cause to doubt himself or his choices, and is essentially an invincible, unstoppable ace pilot rock star in a super-mecha who is so awesome he doesn't even need to fight to win.  As the series progresses he becomes slightly more tolerable, but not due to changes in him, mostly due to his superpowers becoming recognized and useful, therefore justifying his attitude better.  Through 49 episodes and 8 bonus episodes, Basara receives absolutely no character development.

I like most of the rest of the cast, and while the story (humans fight demonic life-force eating god-aliens with giant robots and the power of rock) isn't as interesting as the original series' (humans fight giant battlesuit-wearing aliens with giant robots, love and pretty girls), it holds together well enough and maintains a 90s JRock-ish charm.  I can't honestly call it BAD, but when one of (if not THE) main character consistently aggravates you, it's difficult to recommend a series.

If you're curious about Macross and like early 90s JPop and transforming robots and have an extreme amount of patience for lack of character development, Macross will give you quite a few scenes to make you smile and plenty of characters to love.  If you're looking for anime that gets to its point quickly, has an intelligent, deeper meaning, or if you just want a series that comes close to comparing to Macross Plus, Macross 7 will leave you frustrated, bored and possibly hating the whole franchise.

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.

Macross II: Lovers Again

Macross II: Lovers Again:  D

So, most of a year ago I reviewed the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross, which wasn't terrible, but hadn't held up well over the intervening 30 years (as well as having 10 episodes more than it needed).  Due to running across a couple images from it on my favorite image board, I decided to download the rest of the Macross saga and watch as many of them as I could stand, starting with Macross II, the first true sequel ("Do You Remember Love?" is a movie retelling of the original series minus the extra 10 episodes).

I have a bit of a historical attachment to Macross II: when I was in my early teens and a budding role-playing game enthusiast, I found a copy of the Macross II role-playing game by Kevin Siembieda in a used bookstore and fell in love with the mecha designs and the scantily clad alien chicks.  Surely nobody would make an RPG out of a bad series, right?  Apparently Kevin Siembieda would.  12-year-old me managed to find the two things about Macross II that are actually worthwhile.

Macross II suffers from a lot of early-90s OVA problems: wildly variable animation quality and style, disjointed plot and characterization and a conclusion which not only stands dramatically at odds with what's actually being said by the characters, but also feels pointless and hollow.  It clearly is attempting to pay homage to the original Macross with its awkward love triangle, transforming mecha, weaponized pop idols, and cultural warfare, but it all winds up seeming hollow and constructed, and so many things go undemonstrated and must be assumed from context.  Also, the animation sucks, even by early 90s standards.

Given that Macross II has been officially removed from the Macross canon, I would say that it's more than safe to skip it unless you're a die-hard fan who absolutely must see everything Macross ever.

Super Dimension Fortress Macross

Super Dimension Fortress Macross:  C

It always feels so mean to give truly classic and formative anime poor ratings, because usually it's not that they're bad, just that they haven't aged particularly well.

Super Dimension Fortress Macross is an early 80's mecha anime about a war with aliens.  It was intended (according to some reasearch I did) as a modest parody of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, but it quickly became its own serious series.  For me personally, the oddest thing was seeing that the series was responsible for a number of mecha designs which were used in BattleTech, a game I thought was totally awesome when I was 12.  This is because the rights for Macross' use and distribution in the United States caused it to be combined with two other series to make Robotech.

The series itself breaks a number of traditional conventions over its knee, and I do appreciate that.  The main character, Ichijo Hikaru, is not a super-ace unstoppable superman, and feels very real and believable (at least until late in the series, but I'll get to that in a bit).  Lynn Minmay also feels like a relatively normal girl thrown into extraordinary circumstances, and shows believable confusion at her sudden popularity and such things.

The alien invaders (The Zentradi) are an interesting take on a supremely militaristic society, having an... unusual reaction to human culture, which creates a much different dynamic surrounding the conflict than most series present.

Now I'm praising it an awful lot, so why did I give it only a C?  Well, the animation has aged very poorly and the romance plot, which is very important to the development of the series as a whole, drags on, with the main characters becoming incredibly self-absorbed and thoughtless by the end to justify failing to resolve it.  Sound familiar?  It should, because it's a very modern harem series conceit, appearing about 20 years early.

Finally, episode 27 wraps the series up nicely and provides a superb finishing point for the series... which is why it's a shame that the series is 36 episodes long.  The final 9 episodes kind of jog around, feeling epoxyed on at the last minute to keep cashing in on a popular series.  That's not the sort of thing that happens in modern anime, and it's something I personally really like about it as an art form, and Macross' actual ending episode feels kind of out of nowhere, failing to wrap up a lot of supporting characters' stories and generally leaving us hanging with regards to conclusion.

It IS a classic, don't get me wrong, and not unreasonably so, it has some genuinely moving sections and a very thoughtful interpretation of culture and culture shock, but considered as a whole the experience falls short of a lot of more complex modern stories.