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Robotech, an 85-episode
science-fiction
television series about three successive invasions of Earth from
space, was one of the first
Anime released in the
United States to preserve the complexity and drama of its original
Japanese source material. Dubbed into English and released by the
Harmony Gold corporation, Robotech fused the story lines of three
different
mecha anime series (with some modifications):
Super Dimension Fortress Macross,
Super Dimension Century Southern Cross, and
Genesis Climber Mospeada. The reasoning for combining these unrelated
series was that the American TV stations had a minimum number of episodes
for weekday syndication, and none of the three series met that requirement
alone. Moreover, there was pressure from the American toy manufacturer who
had licensed these three series to present them all as a single packaged
product.
This combination resulted in a storyline that spanned three
generations: The characters in the Macross saga, their children
in the Southern Cross saga, and their descendants in the New
Generation saga. The result is a surprisingly coherent story that
resolves plot threads left unresolved in the earlier series. In
particular, Southern Cross was originally intended to be a
massive, be-all-end-all space opera, but ran out of money before it could
be completed. Its inclusion in Robotech actually increased fan
respect for Southern Cross.
There was also a novelization series, written by "Jack McKinney", a
pseudonym for
Brian Daley and
James Luceno, which included extensive quotes from fictitious books
and fleshed out the chronology in more detail.
Harmony Gold attempted to produce an original sequel series called
Robotech II: The Sentinels, but only three episodes were made. The
project fell through due to problems with the toy licensing and changes in
the Japanese yen-US Dollar exchange rate, among other reasons.
Two different versions of the Sentinels saga were chronicled in the
McKinney novels and a comic book series.
Comic books
A little known Robotech:Defenders limited comic book series was
published in 1984 based on the Revell line of plastic models. This series
of models actually combines mecha designs from Macross, Orguss and Dougram.
It bears no relation to the Harmony Gold series and actually predates the
animated series by about a year. The series was published by DC Comics.
Five other companies have published Robotech related comics
Comico (1985-1989)
- Macross Saga
- Masters
- New Generation
- Graphic Novel
Eternity (1989-1993)
- Robotech II: The Sentinels (drawn by John and Jason Waltrip)
- Legend of Zor
- Malcontent Uprisings
- Cyberpirates
- Invid War
Academy (1993-1995)
- Robotech II: The Sentinels (continued)
- Return to Macross
- Invid War: Aftermath
- Robtech: Clone
- Robotech: Mordecai
Antarctic Press (1995-1998)
These stories consisted chiefly of stand alone side stories and
spinoffs featuring mostly the original Macross saga characters. Most of
the stories were strongly revisionist in nature and sometimes involved
established characters acting slightly out of character, even occasionaly
to the point of camp.
Wildstorm (DC) (2003-present)
The first arc of stories cover the years leading up to the episode
Boobytrap,the first Robotech episode. This was followed by a series of
story arcs offering background information on the existing characters to
supplement the episodes.
Failed sequels
A theatrical film, Robotech the Movie was created between the
premiere of the original series and the aborted production of "Sentinels".
It used footage from the movie
Mega Zone 23 spliced with Southern Cross, and had only a tenuous
link to the television series. It disappeared after a brief test run in
several
Texas theaters.
Despite the failure of Sentinels, producer
Carl Macek later revealed ideas for a third series, Robotech III:
The Odyssey, which would pad the number of episodes for all three
series out to 240. The idea was that the last episode of Odyssey
would lead into the first of the original Robotech, and since
there are 240 weekdays in a year, a viewer who started watching the show
would end up right back where they started, one year later. Odyssey
never went into production, though some of its ideas were worked into the
McKinney book The End of the Circle.
Another sequel attempt was made with the development of Robotech
3000. Again, it was a failed attempt and the idea was dumped though a
trailer exists on the official Robotech website.
Episode List
The Macross Saga
- Boobytrap
- Countdown
- Spacefold
- The Long Wait
- Transformation
- Blitzkrieg
- Bye-Bye Mars
- Sweet Sixteen
- Miss Macross
- Blind Date
- First Contact
- The Big Escape
- Blue Wind
- Gloval's Report
- Homecoming
- Battle Cry
- Phantasm
- Farewell, Big Brother
- Bursting Point
- Paradise Lost
- A New Dawn
- Battle Hymn
- Reckless
- Show Down
- Wedding Bells
- The Messenger
- Force Of Arms
- Reconstruction Blues
- Robotech Masters
- Viva Miriya
- Khyron's Revenge
- Broken Heart
- A Rainy Night
- Private Time
- Season's Greetings
- To The Stars
The Robotech Masters
- Dana's Story
- False Start
- Southern Cross
- Volunteers
- Half Moon
- Danger Zone
- Prelude To Battle
- The Trap
- Metal Fire
- Stardust
- Outsiders
- Deja Vu
- A New Recruit
- Triumvirate
- Clone Chamber
- Love Song
- The Hunters
- Mind Game
- Dana In Wonderland
- Crisis Point
- Day Dreamer
- Final Nightmare
- The Invid Connection
- Catastrophe
The New Generation
- The Invid Invasion
- The Lost City
- Lonely Soldier Boy
- Survival
- Curtain Call
- Hard Times
- Paper Hero
- Eulogy
- The Genesis Pit
- Enter Marlene
- The Secret Route
- The Fortress
- Sandstorms
- Annie's Wedding
- Separate Ways
- Metamorphosis
- The Midnight Sun
- Ghost Town
- Frostbite
- Birthday Blues
- Hired Gun
- The Big Apple
- Reflex Point
- Dark Finale
- Symphony Of Light
Novel List (publishing order)
- Genesis
- Battle Cry
- Homecoming
- Battle Hymn
- Forces of Arms
- Doomsday
- Southern Cross
- Metal Fire
- The Final Nightmare
- Invid Invasion
- Metamorphosis
- Symphony of Light
- The Devil's Hand
- Dark Powers
- Death Dance
- World Killers
- Rubicon
- End of the Circle
- Zentraedi Rebellion
- The Masters Gambit
- Before the Invid Storm
Releases
Robotech was originally released in
1985 in first-run syndication, meaning it was sold directly to local
television stations without having been run on a network first. This was
part of a trend in animation in the
1980s -- previously, local stations would run reruns of theatrical
cartoons like
Looney Tunes or shows that had previously been on network TV on
Saturday mornings. This changed after a series called
He-Man introduced a new economic model: shows sold directly for
first-run to stations, driving and funded by sales of related toys.
Cashing in on this fad may have been ill-advised for Robotech, as the show
was written for teenagers, not the children targeted by the toy line. The
failure of the toy line is a primary reason funding for Robotech II
collapsed.
After its run in syndication, it appeared occasionally on cable
television in the early
1990s, on both the Sci-Fi Network, and on
Cartoon Network, which made the curious decision to run only episodes
1 through 60, bailing out five episodes before the end of the "Robotech
Masters" story-line. KTEH, a public television station in
San_Jose,_California also ran the series.
Spurred by fan interest, several abortive attempts to release the
series on
home video came and went in the 80's and 90's. Family Home
Entertainment (FHE) attempted to release one episode per
VHS tape, but only got through a handful of early episodes before
abandoning this approach. The company then edited the 36-episode "Macross
Saga" portion into six movie-length tapes, cutting out episode
introductions and slower scenes, and ignoring the "Masters" and "New
Generation" segments entirely.
Palladium Books, which published a Robotech
Role-playing_game also released a set of VHS videos of the series via
mail-order. It's not clear if they released the entire series.
Streamline Pictures, founded by Macek after the end of Robotech,
released a series of "Perfect Collection" VHS videos, which included two
episodes of Robotech along with their corresponding episodes of Macross,
Southern Cross, or Mospaeda, completely uncut and subtitled, allowing
viewers to see exactly what changes were made.
FHE released the entire series on VHS in the mid 1990s, with two
episodes per tape.
In 2001, anime specialty company
ADV Films began releasing the entire series on
DVD, typically with six episodes per disc. Box sets of the series
included extras like Macek's pre-Robotech dub of the first three "Macross"
episodes, shown in Los Angeles in
1984.
In 2002, anime specialty company
AnimEigo released the original "Macross" series on DVD, subtitled and
unedited and completely washed of its relationship to Robotech. Several
Macross sequels are also available on DVD from various manufacturers. The
original Southern Cross and Genesis Climber Mospeada
series were both released on DVD in
2003 by ADV Films.
The footage cobbled together from the failed "Sentinels" project was
released as Robotech II: The Sentinels on VHS in 1994 by Orion
Home Video.
Robotech the Movie has never been released on any home video
format.
Impact
While anime shows were brought to the US as early as the
1960s, such as
Astro Boy,
Speed Racer, and
Kimba the White Lion, most were heavily
bowdlerized for American audiences, with violence, deaths of major
characters, sexual references, etc., completely edited out for what was
assumed to be an audience of young children. Robotech broke with this
tradition by leaving in some of those elements, and is thought by some to
be the show that kicked off American interest in Japanese animation,
leading to a boom in North American consumption of anime that is still
growing as of this writing.
That said, Robotech is also extremely polarizing. By westernizing
character names, making some censor-appeasing edits and, most obviously,
changing the stories of three wholly unrelated series to pass them off as
a cohesive whole, some critics consider the show to be an abomination that
runs rough-shod over its original sources. Defenders counter that such
changes were necessary to get the show onto American television at all,
given the cultural and economic realities of 1985.
In 2003, with the publication of the Wildstorm (DC) comics, Harmony
Gold officially decided to "reboot" the Robotech Universe. As a result,
the only offically canon stories other than the original 85 animated
episodes are now the Wildstorm comics and the recent Robotech: Battlecry
videogame. The following Robotech material is now effectively retired:
- The Sentinels in all its incarnations
- Robotech: The Movie (which, in the strictest sense, never was
canon)
- All comic book stories published by Comico, Eternity, Academy, and
Antarctic Press.
- The Palladium Press RPGs
- The Jack McKinney Novels
This is believed to be in preparation for a new Robotech animated
series in the works to start airing in Fall 2004. According to reports,
this series will simply pick up where the final episode of the original
left off. There is much speculation as to what this series will be about
as the original series left many unanswered questions.
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