Some Thoughts on Robotech: The Movies.

Original animation commissioned for Robotech: The Movie.

Robotech's 1985 run linked three distinct series into a single, multi-generational narrative. The episodes were sanitized for after-school viewers and for U. S. sensibilities and were Americanized in general. Still, it was the highest-profile early effort to present anime to Western audiences without directly dumbing down the themes.

As a young viewer at the time, I was spellbound. Most previous imported "Japanimation" titles were ones that had clearly been aimed at children in the first place, and they were further dumbed down for western audiences. Robotech strove to retain as much of that complexity as it could get away with. To young me, it felt as if I was watching an "adult" show that just happened to be in animated form.

I discovered the show when the second episode, Countdown aired. However, even the first episode was not Robotech's first broadcast...

Rick Hunter engages Zentraedi who are monitoring
(but not understanding) a human beauty pageant.

A BIZARRE PROLOGUE: CODENAME - ROBOTECH:

Execs had concerns about young American audiences being able to follow a complicated, ongoing narrative. Signs of this lack of confidence in their viewers permeate the series, from narration that occasionally feels all but omnipresent to such restating of plot points that I think Netflix used it as a template for its original films.

The single strangest attempt at handholding, however, is the "movie" that opened the series: Codename - Robotech.

A compilation film that covers roughly the first third of "The Macross Saga," Codename - Robotech was intended to make it easier for new viewers to follow the series. I'm honestly not sure how. The actual series opens with carefully paced introductions of both the characters and story elements. The movie clarifies that muddle of painstaking setup by instead offering... a context-free space battle in which characters we've never met rattle off Technobabble, with not a single explanation coming until a good ten minutes in.

The entire movie is a bit of an outlier. Unlike the other films, this was an introduction to the series rather than an attempt to continue it. Still, its very existence demonstrated Harmony Gold's lack of trust in its viewers to follow along; and its presentation, which prioritizes plot mechanics over characterization, foreshadowed Robotech's storytelling focus in contrast to the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross, which did the exact opposite.

Robotech: The Movie - Mark Landry and his girlfriend, Becky,
ride into an adventure that's been mostly forgotten. Thankfully.

"THAT'S A CANNON MOVIE!" ROBOTECH - THE MOVIE:

The success of Robotech's 85-episode run was enough to justify making a movie to bridge the gap between seasons. Unfortunately, the distribution deal was with Cannon Films under its most infamous owners: Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who became notorious for slashing budgets and meddling in productions, invariably to the detriment of the films they released.

With no time to create an original animated movie before the new season, Carl Macek fell back on what had worked for the series: adapting an anime, in this case popular original video animation Megazone 23. Macek reportedly delivered a passably faithful version... only to be told that there were "too many girls and not enough robots and guns," and that this was "not a Cannon movie."

This led to Macek tossing in roughly half an hour of footage from Southern Cross, necessitating deep cuts to Megazone. The result is a mess. Though I could pick out one or two episodes that I think are even worse, I'd label Robotech: The Movie as the series' creative low point. It was barely distributed, and it's largely forgotten today.

There are two silver linings, however. If not for Robotech: The Movie, I'm not sure I'd have ever actually watched Megazone 23, a highly influential work that's well worth watching for any science fiction fan. Beyond which, at least it pleased Menahem Golan, who boasted of the result: "Now that's a Cannon movie!"

The wedding of Rick and Lisa in Robotech: The Sentinels.

THE SEASON THAT WASN'T - THE SENTINELS:

After the first season's success, Carl Macek and Harmony Gold decided to pursue original animation for Season Two. Then the dollar/yen exchange rate shifted, making outsourced animation significantly more expensive. If this had happened a few months later, I suspect the season might have survived. With only three episodes complete, however, Harmony Gold decided that the expense was too much and canceled the project.

The Sentinels compiles the animation that was done into a movie. Fortunately, there is an arc: Rick Hunter balances his upcoming wedding to Lisa Hayes against preparations for the SDF-3's new mission, with the film ending after the wedding and just as the ship leaves Earth. This makes it feel less incomplete than it might have, even if it's evident that the most interesting part of the story is yet to be told.

I wouldn't label what exists as particularly good. Characters are bland, and the animators seem a lot more interested in the "B" plot, focused on the Invid invasion of the planet Rick's crew will soon visit, than in any of the scenes featuring the returning cast. Still, there are elements here that might have become interesting; and just having the casts of the three "generations" interacting with each other helps to unify the overall series.

Even so, based on what was produced, I'm not left with a sense that anything special was lost.

Young pilot Marcus Rush angrily confronts Scott Bernard in The Shadow Chronicles.

AN ATTEMPTED CONTINUATION - THE SHADOW CHRONICLES:

Almost two decades after The Sentinels, and almost certainly in part because of Robotech's healthy home video sales, Harmony Gold produced a continuation: The Shadow Chronicles.

The Shadow Chronicles is almost the flip side of The Sentinels. The earlier film focused mainly on the characters from "The Macross Saga," with smaller roles for a few "Masters" characters and a couple of nods to "The New Generation." In contrast, this film gives leading roles to Scott and Ariel from "New Generation," solid supporting roles to Louis from "The Masters" and to some crew members introduced in The Sentinels; and represents "The Macross Saga" only through a brief appearance by Rick Hunter.

I liked it better than The Sentinels. Unfortunately, it repeats one of the earlier movie's problems, in that it ends just as the story seems to be taking off. A sequel, Shadow Rising, was intended. Despite posting decent sales figures, though, Harmony Gold never managed to move forward with it. They've also never officially canceled it, leaving it in what seems likely to be a permanent state of limbo.

Love Live Alive: Lancer reunites with his friends.

A MINOR EPILOGUE - LOVE LIVE ALIVE:

To date, Robotech's final gasp is Love Live Alive.

I don't know whether or not this will be Robotech's final bow, as one more project keeps struggling out every decade or so. Still, there's an odd symmetry to it ending here. For most of the series' life, Robotech was made up of episodes of '80s anime series dubbed and edited to fit Carl Macek's multi-generational continuity. Love Live Alive carries on that tradition, adapting a music OVA that tied into Genesis Climber Mospeada; and as a compilation film, it provides a sort of mirror to the series' very first release, Codename - Robotech.

Genesis Climber Mospeada: Love Live Alive was a celebration of music. It had little dialogue, instead being almost all music, and it used its clips not to retell Mospeada's story but to punctuate emotions. Robotech reduces the concert to a single scene, with the rest being a bog-standard clip show. Judged on that basis, it isn't bad, and the frame scenes provide a bit of closure for the character of Lancer, but I wish Harmony Gold had retained the structure of the more memorable original version.

I didn't hate watching the Robotech re-edit. Unlike the Japanese original, however, Robotech: Love Live Alive did little to particular justify its own existence.

Lancer pauses in the ruins of a battlefield in Love Live Alive.

OVERALL:

I don't find the Robotech movies to be objectionable. At a minimum, they all manage to be passably entertaining. Even the awful Robotech: The Movie is bad in ways that are sometimes funny... and it's the main reason that I ended up watching the excellent Megazone 23.

But a bit like the Robotech version of Love Live Alive, the movies don't really justify their own existence. They don't make the series larger; The Shadow Chronicles, in particular, muddies the continuity, which just about held together through the 85 televised episodes.

Other opinions are always available. For me, however, the movies add up to nothing more than a handful of curiosity pieces. A viewer who stops watching after the television finale, Symphony of Light, honestly won't miss much if they chose to skip these - though at least they're not a painful experience to watch.

Previous: The New Generation

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Robotech: The Movie.

Mechanic Mark Landry acquires the top-secret MODAT-5.

Also Released as: Robotech - The Untold Story.

Original Release Date: July 25, 1986. Running Time: 85 minutes. Home Video Version: 29 minutes. Screenplay by: Ardwright Chamberlain. Story by: Carl Macek. Directed by: Noboru Ishiguro, Carl Macek. Produced by: Ahmed Agrama, Toru Miura.


THE PLOT:

The Robotech Masters have a plan. When the SDF-1 crash landed on Earth, human scientists transferred its data to a "mother computer." The Masters want that computer and its data, but they don't want to risk a frontal assault like Zentraedi Lord Dolza's failure. Instead, they try subterfuge, taking human prisoners for purposes of infiltration.

They find the perfect subject: Col. B. D. Andrews, a highly respected member of the military. They capture him as he attempts to fight off their attack - then kill the original and send a clone of Andrews back with orders to gain access to the computer and transmit its information to them.

Todd, one of Andrews's soldiers, notices the change in the colonel's behavior. He steals the MODAT-5, a mobile database terminal in the form of a motorcycle, and shows it to his friend, Mark Landry, a mechanic and an expert driver. He's midway through telling Mark about his suspicions when three security men show up. Mark gets away on the MODAT, but Todd is unable to escape.

Now it's up to Mark to discover exactly what Andrews has planned. Fortunately, he has help from EVE, the sentient computer whose data is coveted by Andrews and the Robotech Masters. Time is running out, though. Andrews has already begun transmitting his data to a disused satellite, perfect for interception by the enemy. Once the Masters have all the data, they intend to succeed where the Zentraedi failed - by annihilating all life on Earth!

Mark is ready for action - with a lot less
soul-searching than Megazone 23's Shogo.

CHARACTERS:

Despite using much of Megazone 23's footage, Robotech: The Movie is an entirely different film. This extends to the characters. Megazone's protagonist, Shogo, spends almost the entire second half processing the secret he discovers. Mark Landry, the Robotech hero, is far less shaken by his encounter with the fake Col. Andrews, being quippy and jokey in several of the following scenes.

Though B. D. serves as the villain in both films, Megazone's B. D. likely believes that everything he's doing is necessary. He even tries to recruit Shogo, clearly impressed at the young man's natural skill with the prototype motorcycle. Robotech's Andrews is a clone - in spy movie terms, a high-placed agent feeding information to the enemy. He's dismissive toward Mark when they meet, actively attempting to fill the young man with enough doubt to avoid further interference.

"Too many girls... This is not a Cannon movie."

BACKGROUND:

Robotech: The Movie had the misfortune to be a Cannon Film. Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, Cannon's owners from 1979 - 1989, were infamous for last-minute budget cuts and post-production tampering. Now, I grew up in the '80s, and I'll admit to having a grudging fondness for some of their schlocky output. But actual good movies released by Cannon were as rare as flecks of gold in the sand.

Carl Macek's intent was to do with Megazone 23 what he had done with Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada: deliver a passably faithful, if Americanized, version, making changes to fit it to Robotech's continuity. When he screened it for Cannon execs, he was told that there were "too many girls and not enough robots and guns," with Menahem Golan declaring that this was "not a Cannon movie."

Macek responded by throwing in almost thirty minutes of Southern Cross footage and reframing the main plot as a conspiracy set in motion by the Robotech Masters. Deep cuts were made to make room, jettisoning most of the character-focused material, and scenes were shifted around to relate what was left to the Southern Cross scenes.

Macek hated the end result, but it please Golan; per Macek, the Cannon co-owner looked at the newly mangled motion picture and declared: "That's a Cannon movie." Which then proceeded to barely get released in a couple of theaters in Texas and (somewhat strangely) in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

The bizarre thing? Megazone 23 has plenty of action. But I suppose Cannon just couldn't help being Cannon...

A newly-animated ending sees Mark battling, with
plenty of guns and robots. "Now, that's a Cannon movie!"

CUTS AND ALTERATIONS:

Because of the production nightmare, Robotech: The Movie is radically different from Megazone 23. You can actually watch Robotech and remain unspoiled for Megazone's major reveal and many of its plot points.

This makes attempting to itemize individual differences into a fool's errand - such a list would be longer than the review itself. So instead of doing that, I'm going to group the general categories of changes.

Scene Restructuring: Scenes are shifted around, partially to tie the main story together with the Southern Cross footage, and partially to change the emphasis. Megazone 23 opens with Shogo meeting Yui, establishing their relationship as of equal importance to the science fiction/conspiracy plot. Robotech opens with an extended action prologue that sets up the conspiracy plot. Even when Mark is finally introduced, it's not meeting Becky - It's receiving the motorcycle and fleeing from the armed gunmen.

Col. Andrews Is More Prominent than B. D.: B. D., the primary antagonist of Megazone, only becomes prominent in the story at the midpoint, after Shogo meets him. Robotech makes Col. Andrews important right away. Scenes of him plotting, which occur relatively late in Megazone, are moved up to the first third. The magic of voice over also makes him a major player in the Southern Cross prologue. All of this makes his part seem much bigger - in fact, for the first half hour, he's a larger presence than the movie's actual hero!

Relationship Story Is Cut Back - A Lot: Mark's relationship with Becky is only introduced after the conspiracy story is set in motion. She is already his girlfriend, which allows for the removal of all those pesky scenes in which the two leads get to know each other. Almost all of the relationship scenes are pushed together into a single ten-minute block, and most of these are rewritten so that the dialogue is less about them as characters than about the plot. This makes Becky, the female lead, into a peripheral character to such an extent that viewers unfamiliar with the original might wonder why she's even present.

The Big Reveal: Megazone 23's most memorable scene is the mid-film reveal, which Shogo stumbles across by chance while scouting locations with Tomomi for her movie. In Robotech, Mark is led to this secret when he's contacted by Eve. Kelly (Robotech's version of Tomomi) is not present. Oh, and since a major plot turn would apparently not be suitably exciting on its own, Robotech moves a bunch of the action from Megazone's climax into this set piece so that stuff can blow up real good.

The Slimy Producer Tries to Rape Becky: It made emotional sense for Shogo's character when he blamed Yui for her encounter with the producer, as she fully intended to sleep with the man for a role. Robotech alters the scene so that Becky is blameless: Slimy Producer Guy breaks into her room and assaults her, with her fighting him until Mark comes to the rescue. The problem? Mark still somehow blames her, which mainly leaves him looking like a Grade A ass!

The Ending: Megazone animation studio The Idol Company was commissioned to create a new, closed ending (the footage of which subsequently appeared in some Megazone releases). Mark battles Col. Andrews while rescuing characters from an airfield ambush. This is all extremely cheesy, particularly the final shots, and it doesn't make much sense... but it's also kind of fun to watch, as long as you remember to completely turn your brain off.

Rolf Emerson and Anatole Leonard struggle with an alien attack.
The viewers struggle with them being in the wrong movie.

TWO SOURCES THAT DON'T FIT TOGETHER:

The single biggest problem with Robotech: The Movie is the Southern Cross footage. The script makes a decent stab at tying the scenes from the two sources together. However, this very effort makes the Megazone scenes of secondary importance to the story. Because the Megazone scenes are rewritten to be purely reactive to the Southern Cross ones, it's the thread with Mark and Becky that ends up feeling like a subplot. 

It's purely in the Southern Cross scenes that the movie: establishes its plot; motivates the Earth government to grant the fake Col. Andrews access to the computer; sets the stakes, with the Masters declaring their intent to destroy the Earth; and even sees the larger threat of the Masters repelled. By the time Mark has his final confrontation with Andrews, the colonel has already been exposed as an enemy agent and the Masters have already been defeated.

Then there are the visual transitions from one source to the other. Discussions of this movie regularly touch on the quality of the film stock, with Megazone 23 utilizing 35mm while Southern Cross was on more budget-friendly 16mm. More jarring to me, however, was the switch between completely different art styles. Megazone's characters have more individuality in their proportions and a wider and subtler range of expressions, and the Megazone scenes are more colorful and dynamic than those from Southern Cross. If you were to downscale Megazone's footage to match Southern Cross's, the stark difference in the basic look of the two titles would still make it impossible to seamlessly cut them together.

I can think of no more damning indictment of the impact of the Southern Cross footage on this film than its own official home video version. By the time the complete Robotech DVD set was released, Harmony Gold had lost the rights to Megazone, so they created a 29-minute edit using only the Southern Cross footage… and it’s arguably less incoherent than the full length movie is! (credit to Gubaba on Bluesky for pointing out that this edit was done by the studio, and not by Macek himself)

The Robotech Masters plot the destruction of the planet Earth.

OTHER MUSINGS:

Robotech: The Movie is a mess.

Sequences don't lead into each other. Instead, each bit is an entity in itself. When Mark investigates a TV station, for instance, the scene kicks off with an internal monologue so that he can tell us why he's doing this. He meets Col. Andrews because EVE leads him there, with very little leading up to that. Even the new ending starts with Mark being led to the site of the final battle. You can split each bit into its own 10-minute short film (give or take), and each individual sequence would make just as much sense as within the larger movie.

The reshuffling of scenes creates continuity errors. A scene of Becky dancing has her footage re-looped, presumably to fit the music, with the same three shots shown multiple times, which I started to find quite funny after a few seconds. Kelly reviews footage for her movie, having recorded the MODAT transforming into a robot form... a couple of scenes before Mark discovers that the bike has that ability!

Finally, this movie doesn't even fit within the larger Robotech continuity. It is set between The Macross Saga and The Masters, with supporting roles for Supreme Commander Anatole Leonard (still an idiot) and Rolf Emerson. The humans directly battle The Masters at multiple points, and by the film's end are relatively easily defeating them in battle.

Now recall The Masters arc. For the first quarter of that arc: the humans have no idea who these aliens are; the battles are almost laughably one-sided, with the humans barely able to land a shot on the enemy; and they know so little about The Masters that they have to send Dana Sterling's squad into a downed ship to gather intel.

In short, the events of the movie have little internal consistency - and even less consistency with the actual series.

Like I said: a mess.

Mark basks in the aftermath of his victory.

OVERALL:

The one backhanded compliment I can pay to Robotech: The Movie is that I found it passably diverting. It has so little to do with Megazone 23 that I quickly stopped even thinking about the source film, let alone being annoyed at its mangling. This enabled me to enjoy the pretty pictures and action scenes on their own merits.

Much of the voice acting is decent, particularly in the Megazone scenes; the Robotech score is reasonably well fitted to the action; and it all goes by painlessly. Turn your brain off - I mean, all the way off - and there are worse ways to burn off 85 minutes.

So in the end, I'd agree with Menaheim Golan. To its core, it can absolutely be said of Roboech: The Movie:

"Now, that's a Cannon movie."


Overall Rating - Robotech: 3/10.

Alternate Version: Megazone 23

Previous Movie: Codename - Robotech
Next Movie: Robotech - The Sentinels

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Megazone 23.

Shogo and his friend Tomomi discover a shocking secret.

Also Released As: Megazone 23, Part 1. Basis for: Robotech: The Movie.

Original Release Date: March 9, 1985. Running Time: 81 minutes. Written by: Hiroyuki Hoshiyama. Directed by: Noboru Ishiguro. Produced by: Toru Miura.


THE PLOT:

Shogo Yahagi is a directionless young man. He works at McDonald's and spends his time zipping around Tokyo on his motorcycle. One day, he meets aspiring actress Yui Takanaka, and they strike up a relationship - much to the amusement of Yui's roommates, would-be filmmaker Tomomi and singer Mai.

Then Shogo's friend, Shinji, shows him the experimental motorcycle he is scheduled to test drive. The bike is a government prototype, and it's like nothing Shogo has seen before. But he's barely taken a glance at it before a trio of mysterious men appear, determined to take it back. Shogo gets away with the machine, but Shinji is killed.

Shogo soon discovers the motorcycle's capabilities. It has systems that can listen in on conversations through walls, as well as weapons systems and even the ability to transform into an armored robot form (of course). He resolves to find his friend's killers and avenge him.

That trail leads to a shocking discovery, one that upends everything he thought he knew...


FOREWORD - SEPARATE REVIEWS:

In addition to being a noteworthy anime title on its own merits, Megazone 23 formed the basis for 1986's Robotech: The Movie. My initial intent was to follow the same pattern of my episodic reviews: a single write-up, looking at the changes made between versions and their impact on the end product.

Then I actually watched both films and realized that this simply would not work.

Robotech's television episodes tended to be substantially the same stories as those seen in their parent series. They were Americanized, and often sanitized and simplified, but even the most changed episodes remained recognizable. Megazone 23 and Robotech: The Movie, however, are entirely different films that just happen to share a lot of the same footage.

As a result, I'm separating these into two individual reviews, with the Robotech one to follow next week. This will make it easier for me to organize my thoughts, and it should make both reviews more focused and readable.

Shogo with his love interest, Yui.

CHARACTERS:

Shogo is directionless in the way of many young men, though he seems happy enough in his life. He works at McDonald's. He spends his free time running around on his motorcycle, going out with his friends and picking up girls, and... that's really about it. He's hardly the right person to take on some multilayered conspiracy, and he seems to recognize this.

Yui and her roommates are more focused on their careers. Yui is introduced rushing to an audition and fretting about being late. This takes on a toxic quality midway through, when she comes very close to sleeping with a producer in exchange for a leading role. Tomomi is the most driven and the most independent of them, making a movie entirely on spec and filtering out anything that might interfere with her work. The final roommate, Mei, gets the least to do, and she might as well be wearing a tag that reads, "Don't Open Until Part 2."

One element that I liked quite a bit: Shogo's discovery genuinely impacts him, and he spends most of the rest of the movie grappling with what it means and what (if anything) he should do. This can be frustrating, as Shogo fails to act while events reach, then pass, a crisis point. When he finally does something, his actions are impulsive and foolish. In short, he behaves like a young man of his age and station, rather than like an action hero.

Yui and her roommates, Tomomi and Mei.

BACKGROUND:

Megazone 23 was released as an Original Video Animation (OVA), but that wasn't the intent. It was initially pitched as a television series, Omega City 23, but it failed to find backing. In the end, director Noboru Ishiguro and his studio, Artland, in collaboration with Artmic Co., released it as an OVA... and were probably as surprised as anyone when it ended up becoming an enormous success, sometimes credited with starting an "OVA Boom."

The story would be concluded in another OVA the following year: Megazone 23, Part 2, which was also a hit. I will not be covering Part 2 in this review series. I think it's an adequate finale, but I don't think it matches the quality of the first film; and unlike Part 1, it has no connection to Robotech. Part 3, released in 1989, is an entirely new story that's set centuries later. I haven't seen it, and reviews were noticeably more mixed for it than for the original films.

Three gunmen sent to recover the motorcycle. Suits,
sunglasses, and even a cigarette - so you know they're evil.

THOUGHTS:

I already knew Megazone 23's big twist before watching. It's pretty hard to avoid, as even the mention of other films inspired by this one will give the game away. If you somehow don't know the twist, please watch the film before reading any discussions of it. The reveal is extremely well executed, and I suspect would have terrific impact for anyone watching unspoiled.

The twist is far from the only reason to watch. This is a genuinely well-constructed story. The script spends a lot of time focusing on Shogo, Yui, and their friends, giving a good sense of their daily lives. The first half is mostly light in tone: plenty of humor, a visual style that emphasizes energy and vivid colors. Shogo is pursued by the men who killed his friend... but he doesn't seem all that concerned about these chases, mainly celebrating when he discovers that his motorcycle can transform into a robot.

The lightness of the first half makes the later tonal shift all the more effective. Shogo spends most of the back half of the story processing his discovery. The pace becomes slower, matching his grim mood. The story is now carried not by the likable young people, but rather by the villains, who proceed all but unchallenged until the very end. A particularly effective moment shows how society is changing via a music video. Pop star Eve sings a militaristic song on public monitors, the visuals behind her pure war propaganda.

The moment recalls one of the major themes of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, about the power of popular culture. There, it was a positive, Lynn Minmay's songs creating a bridge between societies to make peace a possibility. Here, that same power is used to entice Tokyo youth into enlisting for military service without understanding what they're enlisting for. It's worth noting that director Noboru Ishiguro, whose studio was the major force behind Megazone 23, was also heavily involved in the production of Macross.

B. D., the villain, shares information with Shogo.

OVERALL:

I have one real nitpick: The story peters out a bit near the end. The final scenes seem to be principally concerned with setting the stage for Part 2, and it leaves this film ending on a weak note.

Outside of that, this is not only an influential anime title - it's a legitimately good science fiction movie. I won't say more, because I don't want to reveal any of the film's secrets. Suffice it to say that this remains well worth watching.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Alternate Version: Robotech - The Movie

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