Customer Reviews

Robotech - New Generation - Complete Collection

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Being a relatively new Robotech fan, I was blown away by how good this series was when I first started watching. Especially considered how I've been spoiled by more rescent anime such as Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop. The New Generation story is as simple as it gets. Big bad aliens attack and take over the Earth and humans are trying to take it back. But oh it's so much more than that. The action is still amazing even after fifteen years. It's fast, exciting and it still sets the bar for giant robot action. And I mean come on, it's got a motorcyle that turns into power armor! If any shred of childhood remains in you, you have to admit that's pretty dang awesome. Yes, I'll admit the dialoge is clunky and melodramatic, but heck, that's half the fun! In the end, Robotech is really a hyped up cross between Top Gun, Saved by the Bell, and Star Wars. Best of the Eighties all the way!

Robotech has always been one of my favorite tv shows of the 80's. The action was non-stop, the weapons were great, and the storylines for each episode, had you on edge. It takes it's place in the top 5 animated tv shows by far.
I wasn't that into the 2nd saga, the Hover Tanks, driven by Dana Sterling. Not to say that it wasn't good, but it didn't grab me like the 1st and 3rd. Season 1, Rick, his big brother Roy, Lisa, and Lin Minmay, kept you coming back for more each week. The love triangle between Rick, Lisa, and Minmay, was some true soap opera stuff. Also, who could resist that tingle in your body when the jets went from plane,to guardian, to robot modes? C'mon , you couldn't!
Season 3, awesome! Scott Bernard, Rand, Rook, and Yellow Dancer aka Lancer. Rook was indeed, the best on the team. That red bike she rides, had some off the hotest weapons. But I will not take away from the rest of the pack. Lancer pushed that blue bike to the limits. I loved how his wheel caps turned into hand blasters.
This takes me back to 11:00am Sat. mornings 1987. That's back when EVERY local channel showed cartoons from 5am( starting with Bullwinkle & Rocky on ch. 2, ending w/ Looney Tunes Hour on ch. 7) to 12pm. Cartoons nowadays, don't have that rush of excitment, I mean the Nicktoons, are good, but kids today, will never have what we had. From G.I. Joe(80's) to Transformers( the original gen. 1), to Robotech, they gave the animated series the same type of audience that comes with your most watched reality show. Damn, I miss growing up.

To begin let me tell you something about Robotech: Robotech was created by taking three Anime that were not in any way related (Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Southern Cross and Mospeada) and creating a single series - Robotech - from them. This is because back then there was a minimum length for shows to be aired on US-TV and Macross was too short...

I must admit after watching "The Masters" my expectations for "Mospeada" aka "The New Generation" were not all that high. I was surprised!
Mospeada has by far the best Animation of the three parts of Robotech but there are other things that set it apart.
First this series hits a quite different tone than the other parts. Macross and Southern Cross (Masters) were all about a giant war between massive armies, including vast space and ground battles. Mospeada has such battles only in the beginning and in the end. The rest of the series focuses on a small band of freedom fighters with seldom more than a dozen Mecha involved in any single battle. Those small battles are masterfully done though. Unlike in Southern Cross and (to a lesser degree) in Macross, battle footage is almost never repeated. Choreography is nice and though each episode ends with the obligatory battle against the invid, every battle seems unique. (Even the recap episode had an own story!)
The second high of the show are the characters! I've grown to like each and every member of the small band. They are given much time to develop, and though some episodes might be considered filler by some, you learn a bit more about one of them each time.
Third the atmosphere: Macross and SC seemed a bit lacking in that department. You wouldn't have known how the characters felt, if the narrator hadn't (persistently) told you. In Mospeada you get the feeling of a small group, constantly hunted by overpowering forces right from the beginning, you feel the suspense when they are hiding from another invid patrol. Yes much of the time here is actually spent AVOIDING battles, which makes this show fell more real than the others.
Finally Yellow Dancer has a much better singing voice than either Minmei or Dana Sterling!
Differences between "The New Generation" and "Mospeada": Few that I could tell... For once the armada of the humans trying to reclaim earth does not return from deep space but comes from Mars. You can read "Mars base" written on some of the ships. I don't think there was an Admiral Hunter or a SDF-3 either in the original show.
The "Invid flower of Life" probably doesn't exist either, but the references to it are few and far between and can easily be substituted with other things.
Having its focus on a small group instead of the Big Picture probably saved the show from too drastic editing.

When I purchased this I had how many episodes comprised the "new generation" I was pleasantly surprised. I remember New Generation the 3rd chapter in the saga of Robotech as being one of my favorites next to the Macross Saga. Scott, Rand, Rook, Lance (or Lancer), Annie and that big Mexican looking dude that reminds me of Hunk of the Voltron series. They all struggle to get to Reflex Point to kick some Invid butt and their adventures are the stuff of nostalgia. I thought I would never see Robotech again after it went off the sci/fi channel but now it's back thanks to fans around the world. Robotech fans rejoice!

This is my favorite act of the robotech saga. I remember taping the series daily in my youth to get the whole series on tape. Don't expect a great trasfer to the DVD format though because the first two robotech acts are about as bad as it gets as far as picture quality goes the only advantage of the dvd format for this release is that it won't suffer from degradation due to time.

What makes this the best of the three Robotech acts is the great story line, character development, and the awesome mecha. Who doesn't want to hop on to a Cyclone and kick some Invid [behind]. This also features some great animation once again probably the best animated of the 3 acts. Highly recommended and its easier than buying the dvd's separate.

Great customer service and product was what I expected. My Husband enjoys watching it everytime.

But, I didn't like the second generation of Robotech at all but watched this last generation several times. It is clearly the best of the three. The story line was more intimate and characters are absolutely the most recognizable. I can't wait to get my new dvds so I can learn to love this series all over again.

It wraps the storyline of Robotech in a satysfying way and it has good character development as well as a good plot. I believe that people would probably wonder why didn't they strech the episodes to 36 like the Macross saga when there are so many things that can be said for the main characters. Even though the Macross saga is the classic one it sometimes gets tiring and repeats itself. However, the new generation moves smoothly not only in the robotech main's story but also in the characters' story. Add the coolest mecha in the whole series and you guess why this might be the best one of the trilogy.
One last thing I would like to mention is that this series was like a myth to me when I was 10-13 as I could only watch it in some foreign channels, while I didn't even understand the language well. The series never aired in the Greek channels. The magic about this anime is that now that I am 25 I enjoyed it even more and the magic still remains. It still gave me the chills when I heard the opening tune of Robotech.

** SPOILER WARNING **

I guess I must be the oddball that thinks that Robotech Masters/Southern Cross was the better of the two post-Macross series -- It is in this reviewer's opinion, that New Generation was indubitably the worst season of Robotech. Though there are some good aspects of New Generation, these have already been covered by others and so the reviewer will focus on what are deemed to be the bad things about New Generation that some fans tend to sidestep.

New Generation picks up where Robotech Masters left off, with the Invid invading the Earth after having detected the presence of their precious Flower of Life upon conclusion of the Second Robotech War. A returning portion of the Robotech Expeditionary Fleet (Carelessly called "Mars Base" although this fleet was returning from the homeworld of the Robotech Masters, not Mars..An editing mistake never rectified) is all but annnihilated-- save for one survivor-- Scott Bernard, who undergoes a series of adventures with his growing band of resistance fighters in a quest to destroy the Invid headquarters, Reflex Point.

I was extremely excited about the post-apocalyptic feel about this and the different tone this was going to take from its predecessors, but the execution was botched up. For starters, even though some fans say that this series has a "good storyline," unlike the other two seasons which had an ongoing storyline with each episode building up from the one before it, New Generation took a much more episodic approach, particularly in the first half. Many of the episodes were characterized by adventures distinct enough from one another that they that could have been re-arranged in any order without deleterious effect on the overall storyline. i.e. It was not necessary to watch Episode B before C since none of the events in B had any bearing on C, and vice-versa. In this reviewer's opinion, episodicity may be effective for casual Saturday Morning cartoon viewers, but not for getting absorbed into a long, evolved and rich tale.


In addition, the first half of the third season was marred by excessive repetition in that most of the episodes had a predictable formula: The heroes would overcome some problem and be attacked by yet ANOTHER random patrol of Invid near the end of the half-hour. This same formula was staple for the first 14 episodes or so, with few exceptions. This really accentuated the aforementioned episodic feel of this season. As a result, this repetition and lack of a continuous story-arc made New Gen feel more like a Saturday Morning cartoon akin to Voltron (nothing against Voltron, just not Robotech) than to the first two Robotech seasons. Like Voltron, most of the first approx. 14 episodes of New Gen were characterized by episodicity and a climactic (although predictable) big battle near the episode's end. It didn't help that Lunk looked a lot like Hunk from Voltron, but I digress.

The above mentioned episodicity problem of New Gen would have been more palatable had the Invid side of the conflict been better presented (like they were in Macross or Southern Cross). Unfortunately, although there is some focus on the band of freedom fighters, the Invid are mysterously left in the background, only manifesting themselves as a random patrol of adversaries that the heroes dispatch without much difficulty at the end of many of the episodes. For most of New Generation, there is very little showing the Invid side of the conflict-- their thoughts, motivations, fears, plans..etc. It didn't help that many of the episodes had little to do with the Invid (except with that random and predictable battle near the episode's end), as the challenges the freedom fighters faced often had to do with other outside forces such as thugs, immoral businessmen, bad weather..etc. Interestingly, this is in sharp contrast to both Macross saga and the much-maligned Robotech Masters, where the enemy side of the conflict was a big focus of both.

Another thing that bugged me about this third season was the unsatisfactory resolution of some episodes. This may be a consequence of the episodic format of New Generation making it difficult for unresolved adventures to continue on over into subsequent episodes. Case in point was the ending of the episode where Rook defeats a rival gang and along with Rand meets up with her mom that she hadn't seen in a long time. Rand explains that he had already spoken with her mom, although the episode never shows this- it was done behind the scenes. Her mom had never been mentioned up to that point nor was there any evidence in the episode that Rook was looking for her mom. Inexplicably, without her mom ever saying a word, the reunion doesn't even last 10 seconds before Rook inexplicably takes off leaving her mom behind. She mentions something about thinking her mom was disappointed in what she had become but the character development in that sequence fell flat and the viewer is left thinking that there could have been much more. Again, there were many instances like this throughout the series with unresolved story arcs and missed opportunities for character development.

The first 14 episodes were so repetitive and episodic that by the time that the storyline picked up in the last 12 episodes or so, it was too little too late. Regardless, both the character development and story improved considerably in the second half. Around this point the mystery surrounding the simulagent, Ariel, and her visions kick into play,as she plays a key part in unraveling (finally) some of the Invid plans. Other standout moments include Sera developing human emotions and beginning to question the Invid ways, Lunk's breakdown setting off a temporary disband of some members, and Rook/Rand's relationship beginning to take off. Unfortunately, I find Annie to be more annoying than Lynn Minmei can ever hope to be and easily wins the coveted honor of "The Jar Jar Binks of Robotech" for me. I just found it so unbelievable that the band would let this tiny, annoying girl with no combat usefulness whatsoever tag along on so many dangerous adventures. It would have been the equivalent of Minmei joining the Skull Squadron, failing to shoot down more than one enemy plane, yet somehow surviving all the missions! I understand Annie was meant to be comic relief, but Macross and Southern Cross did without such a character.


Other things that made me cringe about New Generation was that many of the actions scenes were cinematic to the point of incredulity. In Star Wars, stormtroopers could be shooting the heroes in plain sight and miss them utterly. Well, New Gen took this principle to new heights. There were many, many embarrassing sequences like this but I will recount here one in particular. In one of the first episodes, Rand had turned on his protoculture-powered blaster and alerted nearby Invid of their location. The Invid had the heroes surrounded and were shooting at them at *close range* in a clearing(of course Annie was just doing nothing), and the blasts would continually go past the heroes' shoulders while they were turned away from the blasts, having a full conversation to boot, and ignoring the enemy fire! At least in Macross and Southern Cross, targets made attempts to avoid enemy fire, whereas in New Gen, enemy fire would continually miss even though the target would not even try to get out of the way! This can only be attributed to really lazy animation.


As much as I absolutely love The Robotech music, I am of the opinion that this differently-flavored chapter could have been given a few tunes that better described its post-apocalyptic feel. Still, the basic Robotech music works well just not as well as it does with the first two chapters.

Although New Generation is the worst of the three Robotech seasons, it is still a crucial part of the saga, particularly, if one wishes to be up to date with the latest project (Shadow Chronicles) and any subsequent ones.
New Generation is actually worth closer to 3.5 stars, but due to the reviewer's opinion that the average reviews for this part of the saga are significantly inflated (as high as Macross??? WHAT?!), he gives New Generation 2 stars.

I loved Robotech as a kid. It was cool animation and at the time was about as deep as cartoons got. So when I saw the series offered on DVD I bought them right away.

If you have gotten this far into seeking these discs for purchase, chances are you are familiar with the subject matter and the characters, so I will not give a summary. I will assume you, like me, watched this when you were younger, was devastated when the show was removed from TV and haven't seen since.

Well, at the ripe old age of 28, the animation isn't nearly as good as I remember, the animation is not as revolutionary as I remember, and the story isn't nearly as edgy.

Additionally, there aren't any extras to speak of, the transfer isn't anymore crisp than you would get on a video, and it is just slightly annoying that with each episode you get the credits (both beginning and end), preview of the next episode which is really not needed and the commecial break (no commercials just the we'll be back and the we're back).

Just a bit of a let down for this lover of nostalgia. I'd say this is closer to 2 1/2 stars. Still fun to watch.