If the Macross franchise is a family of black sheep in the anime paddock, then Macross 7 is the fucking rainbow coloured weirdo of that already strange family, resembling anything else even less and standing out even more. And I think it's my favourite anime of all time?

Because Studio Nue decided to use pants-on-head Xbox naming conventions, despite being called Macross 7 it's actually the second main entry in the franchise. It follows a fleet of colonists from Earth in the year 2038, as they search the universe for hospitable planets, all the while being harried by space vampires from another dimension against which their only line of defense is, of course, a 90s-as-fuck rock band by the name of Fire Bomber. Of course.

It's probably worth mentioning that Macross 7 is pretty dumb. While the goofy charm was occasionally present in the original SDF Macross, in this it's cranked up to eleven. What's amazing though is that it treats it's stupidity with such sincerity that you end up taking it seriously as well. In Episode 1 I was saying, "Why the hell does that transforming fighter jet have a face, but no guns?". By Episode 27 I was saying, "Well I mean obviously the transforming fighter jet fires energy beams from it's mouth when it's pilot sings, how else do you expect it to defeat the enemy?" Not to mention said transforming fighter jet is piloted with a guitar, or that it has speakers built into it's robot boobs, or that it's most powerful weapon is a giant battering ram wireless speaker that it smashes into enemy ships so it can sing at them. But no, I'm getting ahead of myself. In my opinion the brazen absurdity is Macross 7's saving grace, as without the spice and genuine hilarity it brings the story would probably be a bit too plain to support it's 49 episodes.

Being relatively long for a Macross series, 7 is a fair bit slower paced than one might expect and is much more episodic in structure. The aforementioned space vampires are secretly kidnapping and brainwashing people in order to harvest a special energy that only humans can produce, but in between revelations concerning that you'll get an episode about Fire Bomber's bassist going on a date, or preparing for a concert, or maybe the fleet is accidentally being dragged into the gravity well of a red dwarf. You know, every day stuff. The story itself, when it decides to show up, gets pretty weird. The main narrative beats are pretty straightforward, but it veers off of the expected path as it gets near the middle, once they begin militarizing themselves against the threat. It brings in the franchise-wide theme of music and love being stronger than war in pretty much the most literal and stupid way possible (see: boob speakers). It certainly took me by surprise but it changes the dynamic of the whole show going forward, introducing much larger scale conflicts and playing Fire Bomber's rebellious rock band attitude against a wider political landscape, which I thought was genuinely quite interesting. As like any other Macross though, the war only makes up about half of the story.

While the main characters are Fire Bomber's vocalists, Basara and Mylene, the show takes on an almost soap opera-like feel as the cast of characters expands and it begins to follow a number of people as their motivations and personalities interplay amongst each other. It's the kind of show where if someone were to sit down in the middle of an episode you'd have to stop and go, "Well, you see, she likes him, but he doesn't realise it because he's autistic and thinks he's in love with a sexy alien chick, but this other guy totally digs her but he's in the military and he's trying to capture the sexy alien chick, but then a guy in a rivalling squadron..." etc. Much like SDF before it, it does a good job of incorporating antagonist characters into this as well. One in particular has a really nice redemption arc that culminates in some pretty heartfelt moments. Unfortunately, it also has the least conclusive main romance in the franchise in the fact that it doesn't actually conclude. Spoilers, I guess. Despite that, I found myself legitimately engrossed in the small dramas aboard the 7th New-Macross Colonization Fleet as much as I hate to admit.

I suppose I should talk a bit about the music in this music anime. Do you like rock music? Do you like late-80s, early-90s rock music? Of course you do! And that's good, because that's pretty much all there is. Reiterating how fucking weird Macross 7 is, there's no actual soundtrack. With the exception of episode previews and recaps, the BGM throughout the series is almost entirely diagetic, being comprised of songs being played in the scene either live or from the radio or sometimes just beats Fire Bomber's drummer is tapping out on a random surface. They even went so far as to make a handful of songs from other fake bands to play on the radio every once in a while. It's a novel and really cool idea, I think, and helps add to the soap-opera feel even if it's a bit pointless in the grand scheme of things.

The music itself is great. Fire Bomber released five studio albums (the latest being in 2009, 15 years after the series aired), all of which I think are pretty solid. Basara's singing voice is provided by a young Yoshiki Fukuyama of JAM Project fame and has the near ridiculous power you'd expect from him. Mylene's is by Chie Kajiura, who has a real deep, husky, Japanese Stevie Nicks voice and it weirdly contrasts against her regular talking voice actor, who is as high pitched and squealy as you'd expect a pink-haired 14-year-old anime girl from the 90s to be. Despite that, I really love Mylene's songs, which are generally a lot slower and softer than Basara's, and have a sound that's pretty unique from anything else in the franchise. Obviously, it comes down to taste, but liking the music helped a lot, as virtually every single action scene plays to a Fire Bomber song, resulting in some really awesome scenes built around the music. But, quite frankly, you absolutely can have too much of a good thing.

As with any long running mecha anime, Macross 7 has an apparent requirement to have at least one action scene every single episode. As a fan of such anime, I've gotten accustomed to that. A problem unique to this show, however, is that each action scene is accompanied by a Fire Bomber song, as previously mentioned. This wouldn't really pose a problem if they used their full discography, but they don't, and so the first 20 or so episodes suffer from repeating the same two or three songs over and over_ and over_. It gets better later on, but God damn I've heard Planet Dance and Totsugeki Love Heart a million times by now, I'm sure.

It also doesn't help that the animation of Macross 7 can get pretty mediocre at times. A lot of talking heads and panning scenes, all of the budget-saving animation tricks they had amassed by the 90s feature here. That's not to say it's all bad, but it's certainly no Cardcaptor Sakura or Turn A Gundam and the action scenes definitely take the biggest hit. This show probably has the most egregious reusage of stock footage I've ever seen, as well. Most series would typically have the decency to alter and shorten their transformation stock as they go, but nope. Not Macross 7. If I close my eyes I can still see the VF-17S transformation sequence as clear as day (which isn't entirely bad, since the stealth bomber-lookalike is one of my favourite VF designs in the franchise, but still). It's a shame, especially since the beautifully animated OP plays at the beginning of every episode, just reminding you of how you want it to look.

Between it's questionable animation management and absurd plotting, I'm really not sure if I think Macross 7 is a good anime. But that's fine, it knows it's dumb and thrives on that. There's a character that shows up in every single episode, who has whole scenes dedicated to her, but has no lines whatsoever and whose only purpose is to attempt and fail at giving Basara a bouquet of flowers. Why? Fucking why not I guess, because at the end of the day that's also part of why I love this show.

Macross 7 is the only show that I've ever finished and then immediately thought, "Did I really like that as much as I think I did? Let's watch it again and find out." So, I did. And, as it turned out, I did.