Customer Reviews

Macross: Complete Collection

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

 

 

Not again! I get this, watch this and come onto Amazon to review it and... it's out of print?! And this went on sale in October of last year - it was on sale for a total of five months! What, did ADV lose the licence? Argh... well, you know what? I watched it, I'm a gonna review it! And this is going to be a positive review because I really, really enjoyed this show.

The story? *Minor Spoilers Ahead*

In 2009 (the presen- I mean the FUTURE...) Repairs and rehab have been completed on an alien battleship that crash landed on Earth in 1999 (this didn't make the news though as everyone was more concerned with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Millennium Bug). This ship, dubbed Macross by the UN (which now runs a unified Earth government - quake in fear, Black Helicopter Conspiracy Nuts!) is ready for its maiden flight when a fleet of alien ships enters the solar system looking for it. Of course, things go bad and the Zentradi aliens and the UN military end up in an accidental war, a war that will be decided not by pure military firepower but by civilian culture.

*Okay, you can open your eyes now*

This is an Anime Classic. The story is gripping and full of intelligent drama - this is equal parts science fiction, space opera and love story. The pacing is good, with very little filler. The animation is for the most part good for its time (more on this later). The music is good (though the opening and ending themes are kinda cheesy). The giant mecha and spaceships are both cool and realistic looking. The requisite space battles are kinetic and exciting. But it is the characters that stand out the most as this series' greatest asset. The characters of Macross are three dimensional, flawed and human, likable and unlikable. Even the "villains" are well rounded, and are not completely unsympathetic. Character development is subtle and realistic. The hero Hikaru Ichijo, who gets caught up in the war between the Humans and Zentradi matures into a capable and humble pilot and commander (he can even admit when someone is better than him - no fighter jock ego here) and yet still has attitude problems he needs to work out. Hikaru's superior Misa Hayase is a model officer and a superb tactician but has emotional and personal issues to deal with. Minmay, a girl Hikaru saves during an attack in the beginning is cute, fun and friendly but also very selfish and immature. And she sings. A lot. If you don't like J-Pop, especially the eighties variety, turn back now or have your fast-forward button finger on standby. Even if you are indifferent to or like J-Pop, you will hear so much of it in this show that you will find your patience taxed. I have not counted the number of times that Minmay sings her first big hit, "My Boyfriend is a Pilot," but I think it is in the triple digits. But I digress.

If there is any real criticism that can be leveled at this show, it is the result of the constraints of the time period and the way it was made. Let me explain. This is a Japanese animated television show from the early 1980s. As such, the animation is not going to be on par with a modern anime TV program. Personally, I like seventies/eighties animation and all of its retro stylings, but Macross while having some good period animation also has some of the worst. This is because of a very tight budget - some of the animation duties were farmed out to cheap overseas studios, and it is very easy to spot which scenes were done by these companies. The drawings are crude, the cels are not synched correctly and the frame rate drops to the low single digits. Again, this did not detract from MY enjoyment of this show, but be aware. Also the show was originally set to run at 26 episodes but cut short by the studio, so one or two plot points were shortened drastically. Amazingly, after the show started to be popular the studio *extended* its run, bringing the episode count up to 36, then giving the producers room to *lengthen* some of the story arcs.

Well, enough analysis. If you're reading this you're probably a fan of the show already. So, to the burning question on your mind: do I want to get this (now out of print like all the others) DVD box set? Answer: yes. This set is extraordinary. All 8 discs fit in a handy-dandy set of four thin-packs that take up little space on your shelf. The video is great - the image is clear and has great colors. The audio is pretty good - the Japanese track is the original from the eighties and while not having been cleaned up like the video is perfectly adequate. The English track is a good Dolby 5.1 with more bottom and aural oomph than the Japanese. The English dub itself is a typical ADV dub, meaning it ranges in quality from decent to pretty awful. Some of the voices are pretty good (Misa, Claudia, Minmay) while some are not (Hikaru sounds like he is about 12 years old). Also, like many English dubs some liberties are taken with the translation, which range from understandable to unforgivable (gratuitous swearing). Extras-wise this set is loaded down with goodies on each disc, mainly consisting of production notes (copied from Animeigo's DVD set from a few years back) and English cast interviews with a few commentaries, clean OP and ED videos and previews of other ADV titles.

In conclusion, get this if you can. This is a timeless television sci-fi anime classic with few flaws and a lot to enjoy. All that I have written here does not even begin to scratch the surface of expressing the joy that I experienced while watching it.

Summation:

Pluses - Great story, good action, cool mecha, well-rounded characters, thoughtful social commentary, intriguing human (and alien) relationships.

Minuses - Some bad animation, minor plot compression, if I have to listen to "My Boyfriend is a Pilot" one more time....

MACROSS!!!
This is by far,my absolute favorite anime series of all time.The original 36 episode "Super Dimension Fortress Macross" was created in 1982 in Japan originally.The United States first got to see it in 1984,as somthing different.It was called: "Robotech".
The story was changed,character's names were changed,or altered as well.Then they merged two other "unrelated" anime series into the story,creating: Robotech.
The original Macross story is much better,in my own opinion.Very great dramatic story.Nicely remastered also.

I hope that the U.S. would now aire this series on a regular basis,now that they finally have english translated voices.
But I always prefer the original Japanese voices,and use the subtitles.
Later,the movie version of this series was released in theaters in Japan,and now out there on DVD as well.It's called: "Super Dimension Fortress Macross the movie.Or,"Macross the movie,"Do You Remember love?".
It's a little different than the original series,but based on the same story.

This is the original source series from which Robotech was created. Although this particular collection is no longer available here, it has been re-issued in new packaging, which is slimmer and takes up less space. It can be found at the Lake Anime dot com web site for a very reasonable cost.

The video is very crisp and clean with very good color saturation. Sound quality is also excellent although the opening and ending themes aren't all that great because of the guy they chose to sing them. They should have let Mari Iijima sing them instead. The other weak point in music with this series was that they played "My Boyfriend Is A Pilot" to death. A pity too since there were some other great songs in the series with the classic masterpiece being "Ai, Oboete imasu ka?" (Do you remember love?) the 500,000 year old love song Lynn Minmay sings at the height of the final battle.

The action and characters are excellent and fairly well developed. They are all too human in their frailty and yet most have a great inner strength that helps them overcome their weaknesses when it really counts.

Overall this is a terrific series that you'll want to watch again and again.

I've been a fan of this series in one incarnation or another for a long time. Probably since I was seven or eight years old. This complete collection is a wonderful thing to see. At long last, I got to see how the original series ends with all of the plot line as a contiguous piece as opposed to the Robotech: Macross Saga or the slimmed Macross movie. Not to be mistaken, Robotech is a fine series for youth's initial exposure and the movie is a true work of art but, since learning Robotech's origins I had always been curious as to how the original show played out. Now I know. The only reason I've rated this as a four start review is because of the product itself. The extras are kind of laughable. It's nice that ADV decided to include extra material but, I have to wonder if they couldn't have found things like: original art, archived interviews with Shoji Kawamori, (one of the writers, creator of the valkyrie and other mechanical designs, and progenitor of Macross) or anything of the sort. They do have a small section on the last disc called the Secrets of Macross which is interesting but, since it's only one section and all in text, it's something you could easily learn via fan websites.

Bottom line: If you're a real fan, you won't be disappointed.

I agree with the reviewer above, and had a similar experience. I got into the show by watching Robotech. And the plot points with the Robotech Masters became confusing and the animation was weird for their scenes. Then I found out there were about three other anime's combined into this to make multiple seasons.

This does the show justice, and this is how it SHOULD have been released in America. A much more emotional story and I would recommend that after you watch this to pick up the movie "Macross: Do You Remember Love?".

I was a big fan of the Robotech series when I was growing up. There were always plot points that I found confusing that didn't quite fit in. That was because as I found out later the Robotech series were patched together from 3 seperate TV shows. I enjoyed watching this show as it was originally intended. The extras are amazing with a lot of cast interviews and concert footage and factoids. The only reason I am not giving this collection 5 stars is that I prefer the music from the Robotech series. I tried but I am just not a fan of Japanese pop music.

I would recommend this collection to anyone who was a fan of the Robotech TV series.

Ah, Macross. The show that started it all. For someone who grew up watching Robotech, I always wondered what the original was like. Thanks to ADV's release we can enjoy the original show. A great story about a love triangle set against epic space battles. Whereas Robotech turned Macross into a battle over non-renewable energy supplies, the original Japanese version was really just a story about the power of "culture", art, music, and love.

Technically speaking the video quality is superb. They did a really nice job restoring the video.

Comparing this to Robotech, I must say that I probably like the Japanese version better - better script, a lot of humorous and bawdy stuff that sadly got cut from Robotech, the voice acting is excellent, and Minmay's songs are uniformly superior. The Japanese Macross was a lot more subtler than Robotech, which somehow felt the need to insert voiceovers for every scene. Every scene in Robotech is wall to wall score, but in the Japanese version, they dare to leave many dramatic scenes unscored. Robotech did for the most part have a good dub, and one only needs to listen to ADV's new English dub to appreciate how good Robotech really was. The new English dub is godawful. Everything is shouted in the most histrionic manner possible. It's like all the voice actors went to the B-movie school of acting. Even Mari Iijima is sadly miscast for the English version, her thick "Engrish" accent is really distracting.

If there's any complaint I have against Macross as a series, it's two things: the uneven quality of the animation and the original score. You could clearly tell when they outsourced their animation to other lesser studios. The wedding episode is an obvious example of the horrible quality of Macross animation, while the epic space battle in episode 27 is still superb. I didn't really care much for the classically styled score, nor did I like the horribly dated and cheesy OP and ED songs. In this respect, and the only reason I would still watch Robotech after this, I did prefer Robotech's more action oriented, John Williams / Jerry Goldsmith styled, sci-fi / rock score.

Could you imagine how good Macross would be if all the episodes looked as good as the battle in episode 27, and with a top notch composer like Yoko Kanno? We can only dream. Macross DYRL may have tried to answer that, but it is in my opinion a rather terrible movie. Macross Frontier did pay homage to the original Macross, especially in episode 2, but even that series does not come close to the original. None of the spinoffs since Macross have matched the genious of the wonderful, but flawed, original.

After all the animes I've seen, this is truly the best ever made. Big, deep and well crafted. It's worth buying!