 |
| The series' regulars, as seen in the titles of Genesis Climber Mospeada (Robotech flips this image for reasons unknown). |
The third Robotech arc, "The New Generation," tends to land in the middle of fan rankings: better than "The Masters," not as good as "The Macross Saga." Personally, I think... that's actually about right. It takes just shy of a third of the series for it to find itself. Once it does, however, it improves immediately and keeps on improving until the end.
Closely adapted from source series, Genesis Climber Mospeada, this was the series that was least changed for Robotech. Because of this, I'm going to refer to Mospeada and its character names as the default, save for when I am specifically mentioning the Robotech version.
A WEAK FIRST ACT:
Mospeada doesn't get off to the best start. The first three episodes do their job of establishing the premise and introducing the core ensemble. Once that's done, the series delivers a steady diet of standalones that could mostly be shown in any order.
The goal of this phase of the series is clearly to build up the characters. Stig meets his childhood hero; Jim goes in search of the father of a dead war buddy; Houquet returns to her childhood home. All three of the aforementioned episodes - and two of the three series-establishing ones - boast the '80s stock plot that I've dubbed "The Evil Town Episode," with the regulars visiting isolated towns that are either under the control of a malicious figure or that hide dark secrets.
It's a stock plot for a reason. It's a reliable way to build tension, and some of these episodes are good ones. The problem is the repetition. Even The A-Team and Knight Rider didn't repeat this setup five times in nine episodes! By the time it was Jim's turn to be shunned in an insular little town, I started wondering if the group shouldn't just forget about the Inbit and declare war on their true enemy: small towns.
Around the series' one-third mark, I started to wonder why this repetitive series was considered to be better than Southern Cross. For all of its faults, the adventures of Jeanne and her squad at least had energy, a quality that seemed sorely lacking here.
Then, in Episode 10, the series found itself in a big way...
 |
| The mysterious Aisha (Marlene in Robotech) joins the group just in time for an Inbit attack. |
ENTER MARLENE - AND SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT:
Requiem of the Battlefield, the series' tenth episode, brings Mospeada to life. More prosaically titled Enter Marlene in Robotech, it is by any name the first "great" episode of this arc. It's expertly paced, and it manages to work in terms of story, characterization, and theme.
The episode sees Stig fall into a depression after he discovers the force of soldiers he meant to join has been wiped out. Jim and Yellow leave him to sulk and go to work cannibalizing the battlefield, upgrading the group's abilities with several new mechs, which helps to make the group's later victories more plausible. Most notably, Houquet and Ray discover Aisha in the nearby town wiped out by the Inbit. This amnesiac girl reminds Stig of his late fiancée, Marlene, who was killed by the Inbit... so Robotech, which has always tended to be more on the nose than its origin series, renames her as Marlene to make sure no viewer can miss the connection.
Aisha's introduction creates new dynamics among the group: Houquet and Yellow are protective of her, she becomes a friend to Mint, and the mutual attraction between her and Stig helps to humanize the previously stoic soldier. There's also a bit of added tension; we know right away that she's an Inbit in human form, but the group doesn't know this and neither does she.
Episode 11 goes right back to the "Evil Town" format, as the group seeks passage through a mountain range that is home to an Inbit fortress. Even here, though, there seems to be a sense of direction and energy that wasn't there before. Instead of the episode-specific conflict existing in isolation, it's actually followed up in Episode 12, in which the characters must find a way past the fortress to continue their journey. This begins creating the sense of the episodes building toward something, which thankfully continues from this point on.
It helps that this marks the point at which the series stops relying on small towns with secrets. There are still plenty of trope-filled plots, but Episode 11 stands as the series' final "Evil Town" episode (though Robotech arguably reformats Episode 21, Hired Gun, into one).
 |
| The introduction of Aisha helps to humanize Stig. |
CHARACTERS:
Mospeada initially has a problem with its lead. Stig is a mostly stoic protagonist, and he's particularly closed off in the early episodes. The writers seem to struggle with making such a person, who is inclined to neither chat nor joke, as the lead. As a result, early scripts show preference to the more outgoing Ray, with him taking either the lead or primary supporting role in most of the early episodes.
There are two episodes in which I specifically felt that Ray was favored at the expense of other characters. Ray takes the primary supporting role in the Jim-centric Fallen Hero's Ragtime, which revolves around the fate of a fellow soldier's father. I felt this role should have instead gone to Yellow; not only was he underused at that point in the series, as a former soldier, he might have had a more interesting reaction than Ray.
A handful of episodes later, Sandstorm Playback sees an unconscious Ray have an episode-long dream that is influenced by Aisha. Given that Aisha was already being paired with Stig at this point, I felt this should have been a Stig-centric installment. This might have strengthened the bond between Stig and Aisha, while the dream adventure might have pushed Stig to start confronting both his anger and his hostility toward civilians, both of which are shown in the episode's opening scene. But no - Ray's easier to write for, so the episode goes to Ray.
Thankfully, this tendency evens out in later episodes. Stig thaws as he bonds with Aisha, and I suspect the writers had fewer problems writing for this less reserved version of the character. At this point, he actually emerges as the lead, rather than just being identified as such. The full ensemble is generally better balanced after this. Jim gets good character moments in The Ballad of Breaking Up and Trap Reggae; Yellow, underused in the series' first half, receives increasing focus in his interactions with humanoid Inbit Sorji; and even comedy sidekick Mint gets a handful of decent moments.
 |
| Arpeggio of Murder: The only Mospeada episode that was significantly rewritten for Robotech. |
THE LEAST CHANGED ROBOTECH SERIES:
Here's where I'd usually talk about the ways in which Robotech changed the characters... except this time, the American show really didn't much change them.
"The Macross Saga" sanitized Roy and performed all-out character assassination on Minmei; "The Masters" eliminated the already weak character arc that Southern Cross had created for Jeanne, in which she went from treating the war like a game to realizing that there were real consequences worth taking seriously... by pretty much presenting Dana Sterling as taking the conflict seriously from the very start. Even more aggravating was the way "The Masters" reduced Jeanne's well-written second-in-command, Andrzej, into generic meathead Angelo.
"The New Generation" maintains the characters as originally presented. Robotech moderately tones down Mint's obsession with matrimony, and Scott has more of a tendency to make '80s action movie quips than Stig, but the characters are basically the same in the American series as in the Japanese original.
This applies on a story level, as well. Genesis Climber Mospeada is easily the least changed of the three series, with most of its alterations being a question of matching the general Robotech continuity. The only individual episode that was substantially rewritten was Hired Gun, likely because Mospeada's Arpeggio of Murder tried to make sympathetic a guest character who was murdering dozens of men for entirely selfish reasons. Hired Gun rewrites this as revenge - which, while not admirable, at least makes his victims culpable for their own fates. Outside of this one episode, the remaining chapters are close matches in content, if not always in quality.
 |
| Lt. Commander Jonathan betrays his men... but he feels really bad about it. |
A LITTLE TOO MUCH SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL:
The case of Arpeggio of Murder/Hired Gun does draw attention to one of Mospeada's more bizarre tendencies. This is a series that, in three separate episodes, asks us to sympathize with characters who are guilty of terrible things: Jonathan's Elegy's Lt. Commander Jonathan, Lullaby of Distant Hope's Dogarbo; and Arpeggio of Murder's Rainy Boy.
Jonathan's Elegy is the least objectionable example, because Lt. Commander Jonathan actually has an argument for his actions. Giving the most dangerous soldiers to the Inbit allowed the rest of the population of the town to survive - and any doubt that his deal protected the town is dispelled by the fate for the town that the episode's closing shots heavily imply. Even so, Jonathan remains a man who sold out soldiers who trusted him, and yet the regulars end up memorializing him with a respect that's denied to any of his victims.
Arpeggio of Murder is worse - so much so that it became the one episode that Robotech significantly changed. In the original, Rainy Boy murders soldiers because the Inbit have promised to make his body whole if he manages to eliminate 100 of his fellow troops. What happened to Rainy is horrific, and his desire to be whole again is understandable - but his mass murder of innocents nullifies any chance of me sympathizing with him. Robotech changes his motives to vengeance, with his victims being the comrades who abandoned him. This makes it less repellent when he's framed as a tragic figure. Even so, I found it laughable when the regulars labeled him as a "hero." He's still a murderer in this version - He just has a better motive.
The most egregious example comes in an otherwise very good episode, Lullaby of Distant Hope. This episode's town is located at the base of a mountain that's home to an Inbit base. Little surprise, then, that people and families want to get past the mountain to settle someplace safer, a desire that wealthy and unscrupulous Dogarbo preys upon. He takes people's life savings in exchange for maps of a safe route. The maps are fake, and he's actually sending his victims straight into the hands of the Inbit.
At least Lt. Commander Jonathan and Rainy end up paying for their crimes, losing their lives while saving the series' heroes. Dogarbo also saves the series' heroes, at the cost of... some nifty unmanned fighters that he uses to fool the Inbit into thinking they killed their targets. The loss of those fighters is his only punishment. His crimes are not exposed, and he continues to subsist on the giant hoard of cash he's fleeced from desperate people that he sent off to die. He even gets to marry the woman he loves. I can't be alone in thinking: What the ****?
A single example could be put down to spotty writing. Three times indicates that the series thinks these monsters in human form deserve forgiveness, even heroes' burials, even as their victims remain unheralded. I was able to overlook it to enjoy the series itself - but it's fair to say that I was not on board with this aspect.
 |
| The Inbit attack civilians in New York Bebop. |
OVERALL:
Though I thought it had a weak start, I ended up enjoying Genesis Climber Mospeada. I liked the characters (for the most part; I never really warmed to Mint), and I think the show found a good balance of character material and action as it went along.
Unsurprisingly, I found myself generally preferring Mospeada over its Robotech version. The characterization seemed just a little bit sharper, the music was usually better integrated with the action, and I almost always prefer an unnarrated drama to a narrated one. Still, the viewing experience in total was largely the same between the two series.
"The Macross Saga" remains the strongest of the three Robotech arcs, simply because Superdimension Fortress Macross is a better show than the other two source series. Still, Mospeada is an enjoyable mix of '80s action tropes with some decent character writing, and it gets better as it goes. Of the three series, Macross is the only one that I'm likely to revisit, but I'm glad to have taken the time to watch them.
Previous: The Masters
Next: The Movies (not yet reviewed)
Review Index
To receive new review updates, follow me:
On BlueSky:
On Threads:
No comments:
Post a Comment