The Robotech 2-Movie Collection is a nice addition to any Robotech fan. It comes with two films (duh), which are Love Live Alive and the 2006 major feature film release called The Shadow Chronicles. Here’s a breakdown on what to expect from each:
Love Live Alive: Basically, you get a feature film that is pretty much solely focused on pieces from the New Generation story. Lancer is being interviewed by a reporter about his wartime involvement. If you can imagine an epilogue for The New Generation series, then this would be it. He basically recaps the entire New Generation story in a nice montage, then performs some music towards the end. There’s nothing to it, other than a nicely edited summary of the last Robotech act. Is it a new Robotech traditional movie? Not at all, but it does set up the next film quite well. Literally, you leave from the end of Love Live Alive and head straight to a perfectly bridged Shadow Chronicles.
Again, it’s nothing really new as the clips are spliced together to create a feature film, but it does work well with the next film. And that’s definitely okay.
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The Shadow Chronicles: The 2006 movie that tugged at my heartstrings for the possibility of more Robotech movies/shows picks up right where The New Generation leaves off. The final battle against the Invid at Reflex Point erupts at the beginning of the film. Armed with new weapons from a distant alien race known as the Haydenites, the Robotech forces look to drive out the Invid forces once and for all. Sadly, the Invid recognize the weapons and leave on their own accord, as the Haydenites look to take planet Earth for themselves in a vicious betrayal.
The Shadow Chronicles will get you in the mood for more Robotech episodes, as you get an emotionally charged storyline that follows along perfectly with the cartoon, as well as the books you might have read by ghost writer, Jack McKinney. It was one of the best independent films to come out of the Robotech camp since the first movie called Super Dimensional Fortress Macross in the early 80s. After you watch the featurettes with this one, you’ll understand why it connects so well and hits so close to home with Robotech fans. This is the reason why you want the Robotech 2-Disc set.
Did I mention the animation in the film? While the vehicle animation is very 2006, the hand drawn animation is absolutely breathtaking. Probably the best animation to grace the series since the very first film in Japan.
As a whole, the Robotech 2-Movie Collection DVD release isn’t a bad release. You get a really great film with The Shadow Chronicles, while at the same time getting a nice recap of what many consider the best out of the original three acts of the show in Love Live Alive. I think that eventually A&E and Lionsgate should get together and release the ultimate edition of the Robotech saga featuring all the episodes and all the movies (including the Japanese movie from the early 80s). If they did that instead of separate releases then they might make enough money to move forward with a movie/television series (live-action) or reboot the cartoon possibly (one can dream, right?).
If you don’t already own The Shadow Chronicles and you want to complete your collection with Love Live Alive, then this is definitely a set you want to acquire.
Shifting gears a bit, let’s talk briefly about the features you get with this one. Here’s what you’re looking at:
Love Live Alive Disc
– Pre-Production Gallery
– Teaser
The Shadow Chronicles
– Featurettes
– Deleted Scenes
– Outtakes
– Animatics
– Trailers
– Photo Galleries
The features in this set are good and will make Robotech collector’s extremely happy. Even though some of it is rehash, it’s still neat to see in action. What’s NOT neat to see is the abomination called Robotech 3000. I had never seen the test footage for that prior to this release and let me just say — EWW! If they had released that then it would have been a very big low point for the series. How big of a low point would it have been? Well, when you start the test footage you actually get a nice little message at the beginning which says that they’re pretty much happy it never got developed. That’s a bit of a sign.
Anyway, you get a great set of features to go along with two good films.