What do you get when you combine gundam, intergalactic warfare, idols, giants, and a harem? Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Until doing my research after I had finished watching this show, I had no idea that this was a beloved series known in the west as “Robotech”. Never looked into any of the other series from this franchise, so my experience with macross and robotech starts and ends with SDFM at the time of writing this. With that said, is this anime from 1982 still worth your time four decades later?
Short answer is yes, but really. How many series are able to juggle a love triangle, intergalactic war, and idolshit this tastefully? I’ll tackle each of the aforementioned topics on their own. So firstly, the characters. I’ve actually heard from other people that the characters are their least favorite part of the show. My issue is not the character’s themselves, but rather how they’re written at times for the sake of plot convenience. Which I’ll get into more later. Hikaru does his job as the show’s MC. Initially a care-free show-pilot with talents beyond any of his contemporaries. Who eventually gets convinced by his bud, Focker (my favorite character) to serve the military. And he does, becoming someone who rises through the ranks very quickly and even gaining his own cohort of new pilots not long after he joins. Of his cohort there’s Max who is a genius and a natural when it comes to fighting, and Kazikaki who’s a lovable doof. Focker, for as little screen time as the guy gets, would honestly make for a better MC at times. Put simply, he is a chad among mere mortals. Before Hikaru joined, it’s made clear that he was the military’s top dog. On top of that, he was quite the womanizer and intellectual. There’s Minmay who is the series’s idol and initial love interest of Hikaru. She’s very dense, acts extremely childlike and is actually profusely unlikable. Despite her head and heart being in the wrong places most of the series, she has an innocence none can compare. Which is supposed to be her charm I’ve heard, which is kinda creepy.
Then there’s her hippie, antiwar, martial artist, cousin Kaifun. Whom she views as a brother figure, and also as a lover. He’s arguably the worst and most unlikable character in the series. When he was introduced, I thought it’d be ridiculous if he were to be Minmay’s romantic partner. Unbeknownst to me, I did not expect them to kiss once, let alone multiple times. I don’t see what she sees in him. He’s so anti-military that he refuses any help anyone associated with the military offers him, even a Napkin from Hayase for his wound after a scuff in a restaurant. Speaking of which, there’s Hayase, a widow of an army pilot, who sees Kaifun and also wants to butter his crumpet because he reminds her of her husband. In my eyes, she was the inverse of Hikaru to me. I didn’t like her much early on because it feels as if she was written to be an emotionally detached dolt who gets too swept up in her emotions to possess any sort of critical thinking. She eventually falls for Hikaru. Both he and Minmay(2/3rd’s of this love triangle btw) aren’t at any point made aware of her feelings towards him until the last two episodes. There’s General Global who I empathize with, since he’s always doing his hardest to keep the people of the macross safe, fight off the Zentradi, and convince Earth to let them come back. The guy is under heaps of pressure constantly and never cracks. Lastly, there’s the Zentradi who are all lovable, war obsessed, socially inept giants who, for the most part, turn over a new leaf when being exposed to civilized earth culture.
Alright maybe I didn’t like the characters as much as I thought I did. In a way, that’s part of the fun. I may not agree with the choices many of these characters make, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t fun to see what situations their shenanigans led themselves into. Also something else I’d like to add to the Zentradi discovering culture that I found neat was that, a small cohort of them disbanded from their main fleet to make their own paramilitary of rogues on Earth. Or what’s left of it at least. Despite refusing to live alongside humans(miclones) but also still are influenced by their culture. Imagine a less rigid and more socially aware version of the Zentradi of their main fleet. I thought it was interesting because it was discussed throughout the series that the main difference between miclones and zentradi was their exposure to culture. These Zentradi, though being exposed to culture, still hate humans. Driving home the point that no matter what similarities we as people might share, it is in human nature to fight and have differing opinions.
Now to sound less nit-picky, I’ll move onto what I adore so much about this show. Firstly, the fights and action throughout the series. As well as the design of the mechs. The show excels at showing large scale battles and the impact they leave on the environment unlucky enough to house those squabbles. Despite this, you might be under the impression that I dislike this series. You could not be further from the truth, because along with the action (that isn’t between humans at least) the show is great at one other thing. Being fun to watch. I cannot count the number of times this show made me audibly laugh, yelp, scorn, and or pause the show entirely to pace around my room covering my eyes, with my mouth a gape going ‘Oh my god.”. I can say that it’s been a minute since I’ve watched a series that’s kept me wanting more after each episode. Even the animation errors that plagued the middle of the series were more endearing than anything else. I was really only annoyed by the times when certain characters were written out of character for the sake of plot convenience. Which mostly only happens to Hikaru, when he starts being super aggressive and rude towards Hayase on the last leg of the series. They also make him more of an idiot who acts on impulsivity more often than before. Also Minmay’s songs, as good as they are, get grating after a while.
So is this show worth a watch four decades later? Yes, one-thousand times yes. I cannot stress how much fun it is to watch the battles between human and Zentradi, the Zentradi learning about culture, the crazy love triangle unfolding, and all the wild characters we meet along with their quirks. And surprisingly enough, it has an ending that I found very satisfying, much like this review.
