Robotech: The Macross Saga
The opening act of the Robotech saga begins with a ship that crashes onto earth. The ship, which is called the Super Dimensional Fortress One (SDF-1), is alien and is quickly researched and rebuilt. Once rebuilt, the previous owners (the Zentradi — as well as a powerful group called The Masters) of the ship show up to recover it by any means necessary, which includes war. Not wanting to give it back, and not appreciating the holy hell being brought down on them, the SDF-1 crew and pilots take the ship to space in order to defer the war from reaching earth. While in space, a young tag along named Rick Hunter starts getting a respectable name for himself as a pilot, fights alongside in the war with his brother (not really, but go with it) Roy Fokker, and ends up a part of a love triangle with an officer named Lisa Hayes and a budding singer named Lynn Minmei. Trying to survive a constant onslaught, and discover why the SDF-1 is so important to the Zentradi invaders, Rick and his small band of pilots do their best to survive and rebuild from the destruction.
For the opening act of a three part opus this is certainly a way to do things. You have a lot of confusion, tragedy and uncertainty throughout this entire first series. Sure the world has seen war in cartoons before, but that war generally had a definitive start and ending from episode to episode. Unlike other cartoons of that time (Transformers, G.I. Joe, He-Man), it didn’t seem like each episode was its own story. It was very much an opera in space, to coin George Lucas’ phrase. It was one giant ongoing struggle that viewers would tune into to see how the war was progressing. The only comparison you can make with Robotech is the four-day episodic stories that G.I. Joe use to produce for syndication in the early days. To have a cartoon take that concept and stretch it into 35 episodes was simply unheard of at that time, but Robotech did it, and did it well.
Macek and his group started this journey with establishing a purpose for war through the SDF-1. Once that was set then there was a reason for the antagonists to invade. Once that was set, Macek shifted his creativity in making sure his characters weren’t just one-dimensional fighters. He featured fear, love, hate and other human elements that normal cartoon characters simply wouldn’t go through. One of the strongest elements he used, especially in the The Macross Saga was tragedy.
What’s remarkable is that Macek’s group was able to put the ‘real’ factor into this story. You never knew when a main character would be killed off, but the possibility of that happening was very real, as well as new to the 80s cartoon world. Outside of evil people getting knocked off in Disney movies, what other cartoon dealt with death? Robotech did this and it really established how series the story could get and how well thought out the series truly was. It took the element of death and made its characters deeper. For example, Rick Hunter has to deal with the death of his friend Roy Fokker halfway through the first series. You can see that the boy changes to a man when he discovers his ‘big brother’ has been killed in battle. What’s even worse is that to keep you from thinking this is a one-time event, another person close to Rick gets knocked off a few episodes later. Again, tragedy and uncertainty make this cartoon seem far more real than it actually should be. That’s what made this particularly series brilliant and that’s what made Robotech a lot more believable than other cartoons at that time.
The best episode is the last. If you don’t shed a tear then you have no heart beating in your chest.
Robotech: The Masters Saga
Not to ruin it for you, but Robotech: The Masters Saga starts out after the earth has been annihilated (which happens at the end of the The Macross Saga). The focus of the story is around Dana Sterling (the daughter of Max and Miriya Sterling) and her crew of fighters. They are trying to help rebuild the earth when they meet up with a powerful clone named Zor. Zor is neither friend nor foe, but is important enough to scare the crud out of the invading Robotech Masters, who are in the search of a lost technology.
The second act of the Robotech universe is a bit of a stumble. While I certainly agree that it’s important to find a solid connection with The Macross Saga, the connection turns out to be frayed here and there. First, the emergence of Zor into the story is intriguing. Later on we find out that Zor was a scientist who help create and build the SDF-1 and had a heavy hand in protoculture technology. The strange part of Zor is that this stuff had been built already, so his existence at this point and time equals out to ‘he is a clone’. With that said, he’s still an important character in the overall story.
Having said that, this series whines way too much. Zor is on and off again with Dana. Dana’s best friend, Bowie, is a very weak character who whines a lot in this series. On top of this, the series has other people who are constantly getting into fights with each other within Dana’s group. I have no problem with drama within a group of strongly built characters, it’s just that the story seems to be of little use to the entire affair. The story seems to drag and the characters within it seem to hog up all the time. Of course, it still fits in comfortably as the second act, but it really concentrates way too much on the characters’ issues rather than the war at hand.
It’s a bit disappointing, but it still fits well in the overall scheme of things.
Robotech: The New Generation
The war is pretty much lost. The United Earth Forces (UEF) have been exhausted by the Robotech Masters and a powerful enemy known as the Invid. The earth is taken over and only band of ragtag rebels led by a former pilot of a fallen space squad is left to pick up the pieces. Led by Lieutenant Commander Scott Benard, the small force systematically works there way through several cities on earth trying to find their way to the Invid hive. There they can hopefully put an end to the conflict by eliminating the queen bee of that hive known as the Regis.
The great thing about this story is that it goes back to the old roots of The Macross Saga. It puts a small band of fighters together to slowly fight a war that clearly isn’t in their favor. It also brings back that episode-to-episode feeling of a war, where the viewer tunes in to see pivotal points of the entire struggle.
Most consider The New Generation to be the cream of the crop when it comes to the overall story of the entire series; I tend to agree with that. There’s nothing like a good underdog story and this one truly meets the criteria. In addition, you have tragedy at the beginning, love at the end and a cliffhanger that will possibly make you pissed off (though you can read about the rest of the story in the Jack McKinney novels).
Regardless of how you feel by the end of The New Generation, you will be guaranteed to want more (which will be a tragedy).
As for the extras you get with this release, you’re in for a huge treat. You get a five-part documentary on the creation of the series, which includes interviews with cast and crew. You get original pilots, supplementals from Robotech: The Movie, promotional reels, Robotech II: The Sentinels, and pretty much everything you could possibly want to know about Robotech. A&E Home Entertainment did a spectacular job with putting in nearly 10 hours of solid and true bonus material onto this release. The Complete Series packs quite a punch well after the three series are over. The bonus set spans four DVDs and it completely worth your time and money. I can’t recall if ADV did the same thing with their release, but I would imagine not.
This is what Robotech fans wanted and A&E Home Entertainment delivered.