Shameful Otaku Secret!

The Super Dimension Fortress Macross

Macross Frontier is freaking awesome so far. Macross Plus was great too. But there was a time…

A time when even in the Gundam universe, traps weren’t allowed behind the wheels of transforming robot fighters. A time when men were men (with names like Roy Focker and Bruno J. Global) and women were flighty Chinese bitches with great singing voices and a taste for incest. A time when people talked about Protoculture instead of Deculture, whatever the crap that is.

A time when there was absolutely no smoking on the bridge.

Oddly enough, that time was the early 21st century.

The dangers of reverse engineering

Reverse engineering alien technology will get you into space as early as 1999, but it might just be a trap, in the original sense. It might just get you attacked by giant-ass aliens, stranded somewhere around Pluto, and eventually left with a scorched planet. But through it all, remember that pop music was designed to make you forget the horrors of the universe.

Where the hell am I going with this?

Here’s where I date myself and you learn that I am NOT in fact, 80 years old like this post sounds.

What cartoons did you watch as a kid? Voltron? Speed Racer? Transformers? What started your love affair with Japan? For me, all of those, and also Robotech. I barely remember anything about it, aside from the bitchin’ Valkyrie VF robots that transformed three ways into fighter jets. You bet your ass I had the toy. From there it was copyright violation city with Steve Jackson’s Battletech tabletop game, and through it all, I never really thought about the fact that it was a hacked up version of 3 separate shows, all called Macross.

When I finally saw SDF Macross for real, I was old enough to appreciate that, despite how dated and silly it was, it’s still amazing. It’s a landmark, a watershed, a series that not only brought the Space Opera to the animated medium, it helped elevate anime storytelling to the level that we expect today in such modern marvels as Kanokon. Don’t shun it just because the space battles are choppy and repetitive, or the character names are all ridiculously retarded, or because there isn’t a single panty-shot in 36 episodes. This is what music writers would called “seminal,” if it were music, because they like that word.

And if the idea of world destruction intercut with sad pop ballads is one that appeals to you, I’m pretty sure they made it for you. Fans of the new Frontier will recognize the tune (this is from the movie version, which is better animated but is not incredibly awesome otherwise).

So who’s seen Macross? Do you agree with me that it stands up well against today’s bigger-budget, high-tech robot porn? Personally, I think this: yes, it’s simple, but it’s a love story, and those don’t need to be too complicated, they just need to make you feel. And Macross does a good job of that, while satisfying your desire for Epic as well.