Customer Reviews

Genesis Climber Mospeada (Japanese dialogue with English Subtitles)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I grew up with the Robotech Trilogy version of the Mospeada television series and didn't think I needed the unaltered, Japanese original. But, I must say it's like watching a completely new story. Not that there are many differences between the Robotech and the original show. It's all about a difference between what American audiences and Japanese audiences wanted from their television shows. The music and dialogue is different. The whole mood of the two series' are polar opposites in some respects. It's surprising how different the same show can atually be.

A few words about the revisionist history I see in the Amazon review above. In recent years, the story has been propagated that the three series that made up Robotech were all failures in their Japanese incarnations. While it's true that Southern Cross tanked, Macross was the most successful animated series in Japan EVER at the time, and Mospeada, while not a huge hit, wasn't a bomb, either. It had a loyal fan base, it spawned an impressive toy line, and even a retrospective special set one year later entitled "Love Live Alive," featuring videos set to new songs by the Yellow Belmont character, along with some new scenes of life after the Inbit invasion. This ongoing smear campaign seems to have surfaced right around the time of the rerelease of Robotech on DVD, as its creators still, nearly 20 years later, try to excuse and/or justify their re-write job, hoping young fans won't know the facts.

Like many, I grew up watching Robotech. This series was a favorite of mine-when I was sixteen. It now seems a rather run-of-the-mill alien invasion story with some really nice mech designs. The differences from the Robotech version are not terribly huge most of the time, though some episodes were rewritten quite a bit. My fave episode from the Robotech version, about a half-cyborg killer named Dusty Ayers (Rainy Boy in the original) turns out to have been re-written extensively, and was never a revenge story at all. Robotech's writers apparently thought they should whitewash the moral ambiguity of the story. Typical. And the hero is no longer a borderline psycho; he doesn't name the amnesia victim they find after his dead girlfriend at all. On the other hand, I have to say that the American version of the Annie/Mint character actually was better; in Robotech, she occasionally spoke a sentence that WASN'T about getting married. And having a real female actress for Yellow's singing voice isn't even a tiny bit believable. It's an average series; not great, nothing bad. The bikes are still awesome. It just doesn't affect me like it once did.

The main complaint I have is with the subtitles themselves. I don't know where ADV gets this aggrandized rep, but the subs are often incorrect, or so clumsily worded as to be unintelligible. There's also no excuse for having so many subtitles onscreen at once that they fill half the screen. Six lines of text at once is sloppy and absurd. You should at least have the option to turn off the phonetic "karaoke" subs for the songs, which I've no interest in singing along with. A few names are spelled in a rather iffy way, too. "Stig" is supposed to be "Stick," and "Houquet" is a desperate attempt to get a remotely feminine-sounding name out of "Fuke." Plus Mint's last name is either "Rouble" or "Rubble," depending on what episode you're watching. Amateurish. One would hope for better quality out of such a supposedly respected outfit.

Genesis Climber Mospeada has to be one of the best anime T.V. series ever created. The storyline is strong, the mecha is cool and the animation is great (for it's time). I marked out big time when I was a kid whenever this came on. I saw it in it's dubbed and edited version known as Robotech: The Next Generation. I liked that show but Mospeada is the better version. The adult themes and voice acting is very strong. I liked the original storyline as well. It's not as hokey and juvenille as Robotech.

If you enjoyed Robotech:The Next Generation growing up then'll you definetely want to grab of copy of Mospeada and see what you've been missing,

Highly recommended.

This series like Macross, Gundam and Transformers, was repsonsible for shaping the mech genre to what it is today (and is directly responsible for the creation of the famous Megazone 23). True alot of it does seem to be cliched now, but that's almost to be expected from these early series that have been copied by almost everything that came after. The animation is fine with good mech and character designs, a decent plot and quality music. If you can spare the cash and want a history lesson in the evolution of the mech genre then I reccomend it. My only real complaint is that some of the original errors that happened in the original film have not been corrected (they're few and quick: a part of Ray's head is missing for a few seconds on disc 3 right after him and Mint finish skiing, on disc 5 there's 2 instances where part of the picture overlaps itself for a second before being corrected). But these aren't anything too huge (we all remember the firt generation of Neon Genesis: Evangelion DVDs, that was beyond any excuse). Overall I reccomend it all us old anime foogeys for a trip down memory lane or to any of the new school anime kids who's first anime was Evangelion or Gundam Wing to see where many of the influences came from.

I remember this series back when I was a child and I loved it very much. The most appealing equipments were the motorbike that change to equip the warriors and also the air fighter that has three forms. It's a rare collection and one of the best from robotech series such as macross. The story was good and it contains action, romance, comedy and twists. So you would enjoy this series. Though the graphics were of the style back in the 80s. But I still love it. Cheers

The Inbit invaded the Earth, to grow and spread, to evolution. But the planet, and most of the solar system, already had an intelligent race called Earthlings. While taking the Earth the Inbit found that the local race was hard to totally defeat. The humans kept coming back again and again. This saga is a story about six Earthlings. Stig the member of the Second Liberation force links up with two other soldiers, Jim Austin and Yellow. Mint, Ray and Houquet are civilians who end up joining the military survivors in the adventure to get to Reflex Point. There the future of mankind and the Earth will be decided when the Third Liberation group attacks the center of the Inbit's power.
This was turned into the last saga of the Robotech series and fit in very nicely with the over all flow and plot. Also it is one of the first anime (or non-anime) shows I ever saw that had a female impersonator as a main character. In the Japanese version Yellow has two voices, one male and one female.
All 25 episodes, uncut, still in Japanese, with all the original songs and some extras. Yet not all the extras promised on the case were on the discs. There are no staff interviews or articles on any of them. And sometimes the subtitles from the background songs and the subtitles showing what people are saying cover half the screen. And there is no way to turn the song subtitles off.

Being a fan of Robotech, I was itching to see this series since I was never able to as a kid. After watching the entire series, I can safely say that this show is dissapointing for me. Perhaps its because I'm viewing it now as an adult rather than a kid. Or perhaps its because I became a fan of Robotech through the books and the pen and paper RPG rather than through watching the actual shows. In any case, the show has passable animation throughout, it never really dips into horrible, but it never really gets good either except for a few scenes here and there throughout the whole show. I think the most dissapointing part of the show is the repetition of the storylines. How many times can we see the heros walk into a new town only to be betrayed by the locals? The show loses much of its focus in the middle, and there are several bizarre episodes like fighting dinosaurs and finding a pristine city buried under tons of ice up in the mountains. Overall, I can't recomend this show unless you're a diehard Robotech fan and want to see the original source material or a big fan of 80's style anime.