My charging heart of love
Well, it’s that time. Fair and balanced: we report, you decide. Let’s not get into that. I sort of feel like I’m too ignorant of Gundam (despite a few tries with some supposedly accessible series) to take a side in the OG Mecha War, but if you asked me, I’d tell you: MA-KUUU-ROSSS. So after being immolated for questioning (some of) Macross’s many faults, it’s only right for me to turn the coin around so that if anyone out there is on the fence, they might hop on my variable fighter and take a ride through the greatest things about my greatest anime love.
The Valkyrie
This one’s pretty obvious, right? For many of us, Robotech’s Valkyrie is the original mecha, and the one that was grounded in reality just enough that we could imagine it achingly clearly.
Hikaru wrecked a couple city blocks while learning to pilot one, but Guld and Alto gained ultimate freedom by flying in variable fighters once they became aces. While the Mobile Suit may have provided inspiration, Gundam put the focus on the robot. The VF allows the pilot to shine, since really it’s just an awesome plane at heart. Without aces like Max and Shin, there is no Macross.
Getting with the times
This could easily apply to the venerable Gundam as well, I’m guessing, but I’m just not schooled in Gundam ways. Macross is an old franchise, but with the weird retro-rock exception of M7, it manages to look like a product of its own time. And yet conversely, it also seems to be able to get newer viewers into the previous installments.
And as much as Frontier remains my least favorite Macross, it does seem to have accomplished that well. From character design to its school life arcs, Frontier manages to be part of Macross without sacrificing currency.
Computer Pioneering
Macross Plus was (rightfully) lauded at the time of its release for the computer graphic work. To this day, it still looks awesome even if it’s starting to seem dated. Satelight took it to the next level with Zero and Frontier, whose computer-driven Variable Fighter animation is unprecedented in how well it meshes with the more traditional character work. Massive animation fail might be an inescapable part of Macross (especially on TV), but success comes just as naturally — which is probably what makes the failures seem that much worse.
Bridge Bunnies
In the future, a girl in her late teens will be faced with lots of career choices. At least, unless it’s a Matsumoto future, where a girl will be faced with the choices “second fiddle,” “mysterious background figure,” or, I’m guessing, “barefoot housewife.” But a girl living on a Macross station need not train for years to find her way into the exciting world of space battle. Because apparently you can work the bridge of a Battle class Macross ship by the time you’re 19, as long as you’re cute enough.
If you were Global or Max, would you do any differently? Even if you were a woman, it’d only make your bridge look that much better. Eye candy is key to anime, and a good balance of transforming mecha and bridge-bound beauties can’t hurt. My faves? Sally Ford and Miho Miho of Macross 7, but SDF’s Shammy and Frontier’s Ram Hoa probably could out-cute most of the galaxy. Check out the bridge bunny trading cards and pick your own favorite, that’s what bridge bunnies are there for.
Kawamori is a big hippie
I know, I used that as a mark against Macross already, but this is my blog and besides, what would a Kawamori tribute be without some retcon? It was probably seeing Dynamite 7 after a recent fit of Manly Matsumoto that I realized: anime concerns itself with dark futures, high-strung romances between angsty teenagers, dramatic battles to save one world or another, and sometimes even vagina-shaped monsters. When do the gun-toting, love-confessing characters take time to smell the flowers, literally or figuratively? Rarely. But Shoji Kawamori’s realms of Mayan or Zola are places where characters can go to feel a “comfortable wind” against their faces. And that translates to us.
Even if the “save the whales” thing is a little silly, tell me you didn’t desperately clench your teeth when Mayan Island came under attack by missile-spamming Valkyries. Sometimes it’s best to show a message, not tell it, and though it might still get preachy, the impact of the no-nukes/pacifist message is stronger for being visually presented.
Basara
Oh, Basara. So easy to hate, especially at first. So easy to gloat at when his boneheaded rock assault doesn’t work. And for a guy who can write a 12-bar blues jam about whales pretty easily, he seems to love repeating “Planet Dance” ad nauseam — while wearing the same clothes constantly. But is there another anime hero like him? The combination of confidence, casual bad-assery, and that rarely-seen attribute, intense pacifism, makes him a truly unique character ideal for the unique franchise. You can easily hate him at first, and probably hate him more by the halfway point, but his Charging Love Heart will charm you by the end.
The idols
Iconic Minmay. Robotic Sharon. Cute but strong Mylene. Self-made Sheryl. And the mostly useless but expressively-haired Ranka. These girls are the heart of Macross’s character population. What would it be without them, and where would the universe be without their efforts? The idol characters exist in usually-uncharted territory somewhere between strong lead, damsel in distress, love interest, and unattainable goal. Without the singing beauties of Macross, we’d also be left without so many other great things: the classic Love Triangle, the Minmay defense, or uh… “My Boyfriend is a Pilot.”
It’s about the music, man
Music. I don’t just mean the musical content itself. That’s part of it — a big part of it. I don’t really own any anime soundtracks (although I downloaded that YOU WA SHOCK song from Fist of the North Star), with one exception: I have all the Macross soundtracks. You can blame Yoko Kanno for a couple of them, but if you’re gonna call the fact that a series about music has lots of good music a coincidence, then you’re crazy. And if you don’t get a chill from “Arkan” on the Zero soundtrack, check your fucking pulse. Macross needs amazing music, it’s what makes Kawamori’s flagship scenes work, and it’s the one thread that ties everything together.
That’s great, because music happens to be a great way to tie us all together as well, and Kawamori knows it. Above all, Macross is about one all-consuming thing: the power of music. Sometimes, as in Zero, it’s a mystic power. Sometimes, as with Plus, it’s a dangerous power. And sometimes it’s a Power to the dream, a radical fire! But it unites us and makes us feel. There’s the dividing line. Other mecha shows, even the more light-hearted ones, tend to feature intellectual fanservice, interlocking robotic parts, and ethical angst. Things of the head.
Macross is about the heart.
To me, that’s gotta be the main reason why we can not only see through its faults, but why the franchise has managed to “remember love” for as long as it has.
I remembered love.
The first love triangle I’ve ever seen in my life was the Misa x Hikaru x Minmei one, and it’s somehow endured for me as the most gripping one. I still think sometimes that Hikaru could have gone either way.
The Ace Pilot culture, sure Char Azanble may be larger than life but he’s beyond being a pilot. Domon Kashhiu is a super robot fighter. Amuro Ray I never really cared for. This makes the Macross Aces supreme in my eyes. Max, Miriya, Isamu, Guld, Fokker, Hikaru, Ozma, Alto, and Gamlin… they’re such awesome pilots. They make their VFs do really spectacular things – especially the characters from the earlier series.
Basara, such a godly character. I personally find him irresistable. How can one not love this guy? Charging into someone else’s fight singing “My Charging Heart of Love,” wonderfully paid tribute to by Ranka’s impromptu concert on Gallia IV when she debuted “Interstellar Flight,” these are moments that just take my breath away.
The Ace Pilot culture is thoroughly enmeshed with the music, as the flagship scenes of the franchise are for all intents and purposes music videos of dogfights and musical performances. It works, by golly it works. Isamu’s breaking through the Earth’s orbital defenses while Sharon’s ‘Information High’ is playing, Alto’s practical exams against Klan Klan while Ranka covers “My Boyfriend is a Pilot,” The Macross Quarter and the Konig Monster making their grand entrances against the Vajra while Sheryl blasts ‘Infinity’ (with Ranka too!), the wonderfully obese final battle of Macross Frontier while Ranka and Sheryl hit the “Nyan Nyan Service Medley,” and of course the iconic battle against the Bodolle Zer fleet powered by Minmei singing “Do You Remember Love?” these are obviously some of my favorite moments in anime.
Music makes a big difference, as they can make some scenes go beyond the impossible: TTGL’s final battle with “Sora Iro Days,” End of Evangelion’s Tang sequence with “Kom Susser Tod,” and when LOGH unleashes Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Piano Concerto are all fine examples. But Macross integrates the performance itself in whatever’s happening in the narrative, as it happens, and it’s quite special when it does.
So yes, more please. I don’t think I’ll get enough of Macross.
@ghostlightning: I remember watching SDF and wanting to punch Hikaru through the screen for going with Misa. In that light, Mylene sticking with Basara over Gamlin (even though, by the end, I loved Gamlin) was much happier, and Alto keeping his harem of Sheryl and Ranka to the very end was great (and also possibly a subversion of Macross’s own “who gets with whom?” denouement, as it implicity asserts that Alto probably wouldn’t have done anything in that series if it weren’t for Ranka and Sheryl).
@otou-san: See, you should have put the posts together into one big fangasm; I think I was more upset at Things Happening Beyond Your Control or Knowledge than anything else, so sorry for lots of navel-gazing. And I was more curious about the mindset behind it than actually trying to immolate you, so…
I don’t come to Macross expecting–or even hoping for–Legend of the Galactic Heroes with VF-line fighters. I come to Macross expecting ridiculous writing, Basara being completely befuddled as to why people aren’t listening to his song, whole stretches of episodes of nothing happening in particular (but happening awesomely), Ranka being “useless” (yes, Sheryl was better, but she wasn’t “useless” >:( ), Sheryl wearing the Chocolat outfit and chasing after panties (I don’t care if the tone and manner is different, SDF Macross was as much about fanservice as Macross Frontier was), bridge bunnies, awesome music of varying genres, Valkyries with breasts that turn into speakers, CHIBA SONG UNITS, and, yes, maybe a scene or two that makes me mist up in spite of everything–either because of THIS ITANO CIRCUS IS AWESOME or because Neko Nikki was well-placed as an ending theme.
I come expecting all these things, and I revel in them–the bad writing as much as the awesome music, the continuous use of the Protoculture as a giant plot device (I suspect they transcended the physical universe and became Minovsky particles) as much as a barrage of missiles used as a very different kind of plot device. Perhaps this is why–for me–watching Macross 7 twice (and probably, in a year or so, a third time–yes I am crazy, why do you ask?) isn’t as much of a chore, because while others might go “sigh, I have to survive these early episodes of Basara being as dumb as a brick to get to the GOOD STUFF”, I revel instead in the inherent ridiculousness and repetitiveness of those early episodes (and the inherent ridiculousness and repetitiveness of the later episodes where Basara is firing off BEAMS OF SONG ENERGY at Protodevlin). I might not give them my full attention the third time through, I might get sick of hearing Planet Dance (as awesome as that song is) again and again, but I wouldn’t feel put off–like watching Airplane! yet again (or any comedy movie that I’ve seen several dozen times), where I laugh and enjoy the same jokes, the same ridiculous setups, and Leslie Nielson imploring people to not call him Shirley, so, too, do I watch Macross (or anything else, really; fiction in general is a slave to established tropes, it’s just a matter of playing your hand well) expecting more of the same, and I’m as delighted to get the same done masterfully right (Macross Frontier) as I am to get the same done masterfully right to the point that you can hardly recognize it as “the same” unless you really think hard.
And to make all those words worth reading: full-size version of “second-best picture ever” (which, actually, I think is better drawn than “best picture ever” by your reckoning, if only because the art style in the second-best is better to my aesthetics than the one in the best) now.
“aesthetics”
“Macross is about the heart.”
I’ll no doubt come back later and comment further but that one statement explains why Macross is great. And yeah, Kawamori is a big hippie…which reminds me, I need to watch Earth Girl Arjuna!
[...] For a good summary of what kind of nostalgia service Macross Frontier gave me, check out otou-san’s post on what makes the Macross Franchise so lovable. [...]
[...] second entry reveals otou-san’s ‘charging heart of love’ for the franchise. See here, enumerated in the following [...]
ghostlightning:
Ace pilots really are key, something I only touched on here but even better, the Macross universe rewards you for being an ace. Look at Max and Milia, rocking their respective positions thanks largely to the fact that they were awesome variable fighter pilots.
The music video aspect is certainly one of the easier parts to like — I even liked that part of Frontier, probably because it had some of the best music.
OGT:
I really should get around to installing a comment editing plugin.
I think when the time comes for me to watch a second time, I will be able to revel more effectively. But really, it’s not that much of a problem. Hating a character from the beginning and then realizing that you’ve been won over is a great feeling and proves that for all his dunderheadedness there’s something effective about Basara after all.
Let’s be fair about Airplane!, though — I’ve seen it a few dozen times, yes, but it’s an hour and a half. I think that makes a difference too.
As much as I like Ranka (she’s super cute, a great singer, and super cute), it’s more fun to accuse her of being useless. After all, her great contribution to Frontier’s plot was becoming a pawn for Grace’s fiendish plan, and she seized up like the main character in a harem at the smallest sign of trouble. I don’t play into the idea that Kawamori was trying to make a comment on “moe,” she was far too sincere a character for that. Suffice to say, she’s no Minmay, but she’ll do just fine.
As far as Best Picture and Second Best Picture go, they are really only called that for content. The omission of Ranka makes Second Best Picture incomplete.
Martin:
I need to watch Earth Girl Arjuna too — it’s on my list, somewhere.
@otou-san:
I never actually really hated Basara, I suppose is the main difference–I rarely, if ever, harbor genuine hate for a character; or, rather, there’s intra-series hate, and extra-series hate, and I rarely feel the latter. Intra-series, I might have screamed at Basara for being a, uh, “dunderhead”, but extra-series I thought he was quite awesome. I think I draw a finer line there than most people do, though–it’s also why I would scream at Sheryl for steppin’ on Ranka’s toes–and yet also liked her more as a character than Ranka. That said: RANKA ÜBER ALLES.
And, yes, Airplane! is an hour and a half, but it’s the same feeling, just shorter, for me.
And, technically, they’re still not the BEST PICTURE EVER because they lack a certain genetically defective Zentradi, but this works too–which was my MAL profile picture for the run of Macross F, iirc, but HWATEVER.
There is just so much about Macross that is total win sauce.
A big part of it for me is the mecha, the VF’s are just about the sweetest transforming mecha there is.
One thing I totally think MF got right was the music and I think that helped bring a lot of new fans into it too.
Macross is about the heart and at the heart of Macross is great music and great characters