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Tags: Hikaru Ichiyo, Lynn Minmei, Macross, mecha, Misa Hayase, movie, Robotech, skull leader, VF Fighters, world war ii

Do you remember Macross? (Or Love, whichever comes first)

Posted on 20 May 2009 by admin

One of the great anime legends of all time. Such story. Such epic. Such fascinating story that comes with great scenes of robot-planes fighting scenes with a bit of love triangle that involves our young pilot hero, Hikaru Ichiyo who’s caught in between two women that are very important to his life. The series captivated my former childhood’s heart and soul, at that time. It had everything that any classic anime could attest to. It became a grand masterpiece that any mecha fan in my time would consider as their past time favourites. A fabulous series to watch and cherish for many years to come (which resulted a number of websites which brought up by several Macross fans all over the world to commerate them such as MacrossWorld.com and a Wiki site that looks into Macross’ universe in greater depth).

For most of you are probably aware the fact that this series has two versions of plots ie it’s catered for two countries’ audiences only. We have the Original Macross which was geared for the Japanese mainstream public (and other Asian nations), and then we have the English version which it was retitled as ‘Robotech Masters’ that targeted for the USA market. Solely. So how did such a great program like this ended up in two different continents of the globe with different titles yet the visual content and character development are the same?

Well. Before we unravel the details behind this confusion, let us take the journey back to the early 80’s when robot anime became a boon for Japan (and the rest of the world). A young Japanese student named Shoji Kawamori, who always wanted to get into animation industry to show his artistic talents and gifted-story telling abilities whilst he’s still studying in Keio University. At the time, it was a major difficult path for him to take as he’s studying and working on the story development of Macross at the same time so expectations and responsibilities soon overwhelmed him on a day by day basis. Nevertheless, he pushed on and decided to take this mission, as if it were a destiny for him. During those early years of the 80’s, it wasn’t certainly easy. But he succeeded it. With his long time university friend, Haruhiko Mikimoto, they both worked together studiously to deliver its great epic of drama. This success didn’t not come with one simple iteration they both worked on. Clearly, a lot of determination and preseverance made this possible. Getting a large mixture of geo-political warfares, a complex triangle-love romance, incredibly fast-paced robotic-plane technology, heartfelt songs/music and several memorable twists of humour was the grand scale of plan they had in store for us. As a avid fan, I would drop my had and applaud them with great sincerity.

At this time, Shoji Kawamori looked at the Real Robot subgenre for his Macross series. And it worked out pretty well. After all, you notably see that a lot of his mecha were designed closely on all of VF plane fighters models. They’re based on the actual XB-70 Valkyrie, a supersonic jet bomber that used in tactical warfare developed by the Americans several decades ago.

The story revolves around a alien spacecraft that landed onto one of the Earth’s shore in 1999 and a special military organisation came to that site to discover this technology was so advanced that it could prove very useful for the human race as part of global military strategy. They reversed-engineered the technolgy and gave it a name SDF-1 or “Super Dimension Fortress” Macross. When this project was completed in 2009, alien in a distant galaxy happened to arrive within the Earth’s solar system and detected heat source of the missing space craft as it belongs to them. Soon later on in the story, a space war broke out, Hikaru become a better VF-figther pilot and he eventually meet up Lynn Minmay and Misa Hayase in the most unusual relationships, we started to learn bigger truths about the alien encounters. Aliens know as the Zentradis after capturing humans, they started to believe humans were the ancestors of their race, known as the Protoculture. Meaning that human beings are “the first extraterrestial humanoid civilization in the universe that occurred over a million years ago. This civilization had proven leaps and bounds in terms of advanced spacy technologies they used/researched to make their race more powerful. They invented a sub-light travel velocity in time and space continuum. And 100 years later, Zentradi were genetically modifed thanks to the expanding influence of Proculture spread into wider colonization of the universe. The show gathered great accolades of fanfares around Japan and Asia all over.

On the other hand, we have the American version ie Robotech, which the production company Harmony Gold had obtained the licensing rights over Macross material along with the other two (Southern Cross/Genesis Climber Mospaeda) and re-edited the story lines and linking all three of them as a chronology that talks in a complete different medium compared to the Original. In Robotech, the Protoculture was termed

“powerful energy source, a catalyst in genetic engineering, a hallucinatory substance, and the described “lifeblood” of two different races. As the “foodstuff” and the by-product of the Flower of Life, it is used by one race, the Invid, in “finding the ultimate lifeform through the ritualistic eating.” The Robotech Masters also call it “the lifeblood of our existence,” and say their “foremost goal is to control this life force by conquering Earth” — from Wikipedia.org

Whatever that means… It makes little sense to me how and why Harmony Gold decides to create

such incredibly convoluted plot taking 3 mecha series merged into one so-called ‘chronology’ when in fact they bear no relevance against each other. They could have just made a direct translation of Macross story (even dubbing!) and tell things as they are and the story made more sense to common masses of mecha fans out there, so we don’t end up having divided opinions on who’s telling what stories and what. I never figure out why the American company took down this path of producing such translation, other than betting on the possibility of making a unique adaption of it series to call their very own “Macross” saga. I must say they were doing it pretty well with their little piece of work.

Anyway I must digress. Macross is, without a doubt, considered the greatest mecha classic of our time. People in my generation would remember how great the film gave us the sense of gravitation and we knew how other programs would find it hard to compete with the show that had this level of magnitude of success in its reins. The romance, eye candy, the environment, the incredible dog-fight style scenes of robot planes vs Zentradi, the wonderful designwork of Shoji Kawamori’s VF Fighters, the heart, the politics, etc etc. And last, but not least, the music and songs that captivated our hearts and minds that render our thoughts to enjoy everlasting tranquility and peace while humanity fights against those that threatens human ideals, and (hopefully) bring an end to war. “Ai Oboete Imasuka” – meaning “Do you remember Love?” in English. What a great song.

It’s truly gem to hear this over and over again. I find that its unique quality that today’s mecha anime would find it hard to compete its standards unless there’s new generation of anime artists that could surpass Shoji Kawamori. It could happen. We just don’t know yet.

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Tags: giant robot, mecha, Mitsuteru Yokoyama, Tetsujin 28, world war ii

Tetsujin 28 (Gigantor)

Posted on 19 May 2009 by admin

Tetsujin 28 battling with Mechanical crows

The show that started it all (well sort of. The show was not possible if it wasn’t for the great Osamu Tezuka’s Astro boy). This is the show that drew a lot of attention which inspired a large number of Japanese animators wanting to produce great mecha shows. It’s obvious to us who that person be ie (Go Nagai if you don’t know this already).

It was this show that gave Go Nagai the core reason and strong desire to spend countless nights and days wondering about designing his own concept of robot anime (and succeeded). And soon, more and more Japanese animators were able to follow Nagai’s footsteps to produce many great mecha anime shows they would be proud to claim. One generation after other.

Tetsujin 28, in its early days when it was converted from a manga publishbed by Shonen Magazine to a TV anime series. It ran for about 2 years in the early 60s

It was truly amazing how all the shows I used to love watching whilst growing up were made possible because of this 9-foot iron-clad giant that got Go Nagai so hooked and enabled him to make “mecha” as a mainstream genre for future artists to follow. So I decided to be inquisitive on this subject, wanting to find out more about it. I researched and googled everything about it, hoping there’s plenty of substantial information that could explain more about this mysterious iron clad giant (and how the mainstream public get to know it very personally), back in the 1960’s (since that’s the theme of this specific post). However, to my disasppointment, I could not find anyone reliable source of information that tells me how this show has been a positive impact in the community and how much do they really aware this program was the reason that propelled the drive for success of having so mecha shows for many generations (and more to come). No forums, no blogs, nothing. The best one I encountered is with this Youtube link that has opening of original show. ie 60’s.

I was left completedly stupefied that this video still looks pretty fresh as it’s been more than 35 years since this program was last screened on TV (or in today’s terms, Youtube), and we have dedicated fans out there who knews how incredibly important this “manga” series was to the mecha fan community. A community that would never exist without Mitsuteru’s contribution.

What would life be like without him? But still, I wasn’t contented enough in finding that there’s lack of “recognition” this series truly deserve. All I’m getting from my search results from Google.com, Microsoft.com, Yahoo.com were lots of Tetsujin merchandise, figurines, video games, DVDs sold on Amazon or Ebay and boundless of sites where people can give rave reviews on Tetsujin’s goods for incredibly low price when trading. Looking at it from a perspective, I say Tetsujin 28 was produced out from cries of help by the ordinary people to end all wars. Elements of famine, destruction, rivalry and conquest were the strong forces that “push” Mitsuteru to develop a story that involved building a robot that holds the characteristics of a hero. A people’s hero, more or less. When the author grew up in the horrific days of WWII, he witnessed significant events of B29 bombings in the Japan that brought a devastating end to the war and there was nothing Japan could do to prevent that. It was because USA had the secret plans of implement strategic long-range bombings over the land of the rising sun. Mitsuteru thought (in his fictional point of view) if Japan could have a “secret” plan to thwart American’s offense, Tetsujin 28 would be the answer. Tetsujin would be equipped with many of long-range weapons. And he can fly with a propulsion packs and it takes a remote controlled device to give specific commands that will help in accomplish the war-winning objectives. Tetsujin is also given with a Frankenstein-like complex ie meaning like Frankenstein, he’s neither good or evil. But he’s the protector of people from criminals and enemy robots. So making comparisons of these with other 70’s, 80’s and 90’s mecha I used to watch since little, there’s this sense of good old-fashioned story of “good guys vs bad guys” and Tetsujin 28 is nothing short of being an exceptions to that. In addition, robot character design isn’t hugely tied into the aesthetics of its sharp edges and incredible details of mechanical structure as compared to today’s mecha anime standards.

Tetsujin 28 and Frankenstein: See any resemblence between these two?

As he submitted this Tetsujin artworks to one of the teen publishing firms “Shonen”, the company were impressed with his works, started to make TV shows. Later, its series became a number one hit instantly and gained the reputation as the greatest sci-fi genre anime in the post era war in Japan. The series ran for about a decade spanning in mid 1950’s – 1960’s. With such incredible reponses, given the fact that books and magazines were hard to purchase as everybody have much money only for rice, it’s little wonder how he’s done well in exceeding his expectations of getting this much reception from the public. The show really turned itself out to be one of the great pioneers of Japanese animation genre in the history. Which begs the question – if Mitsuteru Yokoyama was truly the ‘godfather’ of giant robot anime (other than Go Nagai), why is that he’s not getting that same amount of recognition and respect as Go Nagai does? It was his works after all that gave Go Nagai all the great inspiration to make his own lineage of unique robot shows in the first place. So surely Mitsuteru Yokoyama deserves that much credit, if not more. Despite this, history behind these developments show that past, present and future mecha shows attributed to Go Nagai’s contribution to this subgenre. Like a blueprint for success, as old as that cliche personal development coach would love to use, Go Nagai is hailed the ‘mentor’ for many mecha communitis out there internationally. (Well, you could argue that Mitsuteru Yokoyama left Go Nagai “his” blueprint of success, otherwise it wouldn’t happen if it weren’t for him, wasn’t it?)

Nevertheless, Tetsujin did win several manga awards over the years (and some posthumous ones too) and so Tetsujin 28 was put into the spotlight for some time. We remember him well for bringing us the iron-clad giant whose impregnable body represents the model of any mecha that wants to be: strong, heroic, mysterious, unstoppable and powerful. And a symbol of peace and admiration (not to mention those ridiculous shapes of long-range missles that seem to come out of nowhere). That’s the beginning of a milestone Mitsuteru’s work set aside which ‘breeds’ many talented artists such as Go Nagai, Shoji Kawamori and Tomino Yoshiyuki to bring their wonderful mecha art creations to life. Ahh. If only they have the original series on DVD releases, that would certainly make my personal journal on mecha very ‘complete’.

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