The Mechanical Centipede: The Rise and Fall of Robotech
While writing a review for the recent re-release of Robotech: The Macross Saga HD Edition, it occurred to us here at You Don’t Read Comics that the history of the franchise is a long and convoluted one. The fact that the review required a multiple-paragraph introduction to explain how the original show came to be in the first place was proof enough that we might need to spend some time looking in at how Robotech came to be, what happened to make the franchise a multimedia experience, and what happened afterward.
It began in Japan in 1983.
Animation studio Studio Nue and partner companies Tatsunoko Productions (Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets) and Big West (an advertising company) would release the first in the unofficial Super Dimensional trilogy: Super Dimensional Fortress Macross. Wanting to explore themes of war with a different twist from contemporary series Mobile Suit Gundam, director Shoji Kawamori would take more time focusing on civilians harmed by war by literally shoving an entire city’s population of non-combatants into a massive spaceship and taking the civilians and military both and throwing them just outside Pluto. On a quest back to Earth, tensions flare, civilians become warriors, romance blooms on the battlefield, and culture shock becomes used as a weapon. Macross was fairly revolutionary for the time, running an unusual 36 episodes. The series was scheduled to only last 24 (with some reports claiming 27), but absurd popularity added another storyline to reach 36 episodes.
The show was top-rated and proved to be the starting ground for many anime mainstays. Studios AIC and Gainax would spend their earliest days working on Macross episodes, while producers and animators like Kawamori would have massive careers that would span decades. It wasn’t just popular in Japan either, as early anime fans were starting to pop up in America as well.
While the first anime-focused convention held in America was the 1990’s Project A-Kon, smaller fan clubs who would import VHS tapes, Betamax tapes, and eventually Laserdiscs were cropping up as early as the late-1970s. One group in Los Angeles, the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, held their first meeting in May of 1977 and allegedly still meets to this day. Interestingly, they’re also one of the oldest “furry” meetup groups, though the club currently has gone to anime-only in recent decades. However, this group would actually be the first line in the many, many dominoes that would result in Robotech reaching the small screen.
You see, screeenwriter and anime fan Carl Maeck was a casual attendee of several C/FO meetings. He had even somehow purchased animation cels from Macross and other giant robot shows of the day through some dark pre-internet voodoo magic. He ran an animation art gallery back in the day, and an employee of an American localization company Harmony Gold would enter the building one day, and remark how his employers had the license for that show… but had no idea what to do with it.
You see, animation has always been a little weird. Back in the days before cable, syndication was the only way to get a show onto television unless you were funded by a major network. The concept was first explored by He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Your TV show would be shopped around to various networks, who would then slap together an offering package to send out to local station affiliates. These affiliates would then see if they wanted the show at all, and would buy the series to air whenever they desired. This is how you could get things like a Fox station airing Star Trek: Voyager episodes in the 90s, despite the show being a UPN production. Time slots were random, and could often just be used to fill in time. However, you needed a lot of episodes to justify 5-times-a-week syndication.
For animation, it was 65 episodes. And with Macross having 36, this left Harmony Gold without a damned clue what to do with this critically-acclaimed work of music, robots, and romance.
Knowing quite a few people at the C/FO were massively into Macross, Maeck had an idea. You see, he wanted to toy with direct distribution to the masses. Rather than trying to convince someone to air a 36 episode series, he was able to convince Harmony Gold to sell VHS tapes of a dubbed Macross series by mail order. The first four episodes were dubbed, with most of the voice talent just treating it like another weird Japanese product that would be ignored. Tony Oliver, voice of the main character Hikaru Ichijou (slightly-anglicized as Rick Yamada), was told that the series wouldn’t go anywhere and it wasn’t something to worry about.
Released as Space Fortress Macross in 1984, there were four VHS tapes that covere the first four episodes of the original Macross. Despite the minor name changes, those who’ve seen this dub actually remember it being somewhat faithful to the source material. And for people who loved it as Macross in those early groups like the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, it was probably a relief to have some kind of understanding as to what was going on without someone’s hastily typed notes. While the entire series of Macross was not converted into this dubbed format, it sold reasonably well. So well, in fact, that Cark Maeck had an idea on how to bring the cartoon to a wider audience.
You see, Harmony Gold didn’t just pick up the license to Super Dimensional Fortress Macross. They also licensed other shows from Tatsunoko’s vaults: 1984’s Super Dimensional Calvary Southern Cross and 1983’s Genesis Climber Mosepda. According to what little research exists, Southern Cross was the least successful of the three Super Dimensional shows made by Tatsunoko and had been cancelled at 23 episodes. Mospeda lasted 25 episodes, which is also unusual, as anime tends to rotate in 12 episode “couls” when aired on television in Japan. Likely, the Southern Cross cancellation is more of a rumor, as the shortened episode count could have happened due to a number of other things, like poor budgeting… which tended to affect a lot of Tatsunoko shows at the time.
Carl Maeck was also no stranger to how shows were localized at the time. Tatsunoko production Gatchaman was “bastardized'' into Battle of the Planets by localization company Sandy Frank. The series went from 105 episodes to 85, added in a robot like Star Wars’ R2-D2 to appeal to children, and removed much of the violence from the show to appeal to parents. There were also weird voice acting decisions made, such as one character speaking in mostly chirps and other bird noises while nearly every episode had someone thankful that the exploding countryside and buildings were all abandoned.
Please note, this was far from unusual. Tetsujin-28 and 8-Man were localized during the 60s alongside Tetsuwan Atom to become popular Saturday morning cartoon shows and afternoon after school adventures. They were all edited down to remove large swaths of violence, or at least what passed for violence in the 60s. In the 70s, the Americans were treated to their first anime designed for long-form entertainment: Space Battleship Yamato. Renamed Starblazers, the show kept most of the same plot elements, albeit with renamed characters and toned down death.
Maeck allegedly hated Battle of the Planets, and what it did to Gatchaman. This does make a degree of sense, as he was fairly into anime and wasn’t about to dumb down a show for kids. However, the only source I can find for this is a fluff piece for CBR. So take that with a grain of salt.
What Carl Maeck proposed to Harmony Gold was to combine Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeda into one ongoing series. The shows all featured transforming robots, and could be linked with timeskips, making it a generational show. Harmony Gold’s chief Frank Agrama was in, but they needed to find a name. As it turns out, the name of Robotech would come from a hilarious source.
American model company Revell wanted to capitalize on America's newfound love of science-fiction and giant robots, and had gone to Japan in 1983 or so to search around for model kits that would sell. Fang of the Sun Dougram from 1981 and the third Super Dimensional show Super Dimensional Century Orguss from 1983 would fill out most of their roster. However, they also landed the license for Macross model kits from Big West, and would put them into circulation in 1984. Revell would also land a deal with DC Comics, placing their model kits into the spotlight as…
It would get cancelled at issue 2. Whoops.
There was also a line of Robotech Changers, which covered the Macross and Orguss kits that transformed. They would not show up in the comic, but it did provide one weird little hurdle to the show’s production. With some of the marketing rights already tied up with a fourth company, Harmony Gold reluctantly struck a deal with Revell. The name Robotech would be applied to the franchise, Revell could continue selling the model kits, and everyone was happy.
Except it also looked like Revell had included tabletop RPG company FASA in the licensing nightmare by giving them the ability to use Macross designs in their Battletech pen and paper game. Dougram designs were also used in Battletech, but those didn’t result in the licensing nightmare and disaster that had an entire group of mechs become labeled “the Unseen'' years down the line and caused nothing but legal headaches for FASA. This isn’t confirmed in any of the sources I have found, but they are the only company to have licensing rights to both shows at any given time in America.
Die-cast vehicle manufacturer Matchbox would also be brought in to sell toys that weren’t model kits, resulting in some original toys and conversions of a lot of Macross merchandise. Amusingly, one of the Macross toys was already on the market as a Transformers character: Jetfire! He was changed to Skyfire for the series, with a design change, but it does look to be at the behest of Japanese company Takara rather than concerns over Robotech.
Our appreciation to the TFwiki for their tireless exploration of how weird Transformers gets!
So, rights for Macross were now shared between Studio Nue, Tatsunoko, and Big West… with the international rights all given to Revell, Harmony Gold, FASA, and Matchbox. And maybe Hasbro. That certainly won’t cause legal issues or needless lawsuits down the line.
However, the series Robotech was in production! The same voice cast from the aborted Macross dub would also return in their old roles. Now it would just take a little skill and a lot of luck for the series to be successful. But what kind of changes would Maeck make with 85 episodes worth of content at his hands, and a generation-spanning plot to make up?
To focus on the initial 36 episodes of Macross, very little actually changed. Yes, many names changed to reflect a more “international” cast, with a prime example being Rick Yamada becoming Rick Hunter. A more subtle example is Misa Hayase turning into Lisa Hayes, which honestly is how a lot of edits to Macross feel: subtle, but evident.
The show focuses on Rick Hunter and Lynn Minnmei (unchanged from the Macross material), as two civilians drawn into a chaotic war between the giant aliens Zentraedi and the overly confused Earthlings who’ve found an alien spaceship crashed onto Earth. Rick would become a fighter pilot, while Minmei would become an idol singer… whose songs would later be used as culture shock weaponry against the aliens. The overall plot remained the same, with one change: Protoculture.
To make a long story short, the concept of Protoculture in Macross was a vague phrase uttered to mean “a culture who came before us,” mythically the first race in the Galaxy. This wasn’t actually explained much in the original series, but would be expanded upon in future projects. When the alien Zentraedi came across the Macross, they assumed these weird small people were actually part of that culture, or descendants thereof. In Robotech, Protoculture became a source of fuel derived from an alien plant life that may or may not also be mystical in how it interacts with biology.
Amusingly, aside from the insertion of footage from Southern Cross to tie the shows together as the change in source material grew closer, that was the only major change made to the series. You could almost move from Robotech’s first saga to one of the many Japanese Macross spinoffs without a huge amount of confusion.
...oh, right. Almost forgot. Robotech has the weird localization of killing off more characters than the source material. Since they do die offscreen, that is likely how Maeck was able to get away with it.
Southern Cross and Mospeda would receive updates that would keep the general action, but drastically change names, character motivations, and even rearrange footage if it meant telling a more cohesive story.
Southern Cross turned into The Masters, and would focus on the Zentraedi’s handlers coming to invade Earth after the survivors of the first saga left to explore space. The daughter of two Macross Saga characters, Dana Sterling, would take up the mantle of main character, leaving us with one of the first Saturday morning cartoons with a female main character who blew stuff up.
Mospeda would become The New Generation and focus on a scout party returning to Earth ahead of the aforementioned voyage out to space returning home to Earth. The main pilot this time was Scott Bernard, who would do his best to make safe passage for that crew. The Earth has been taken over by the Invid, and they desire the flowers that make Protoculture energy. It would also keep the cross-dressing pop star from Mospeda, resulting in the gender-fluid Lance Belmont who sings as the female Yellow Dancer.
Amusingly, the series would have a lot of cheeky references to their source material that wouldn’t be noticed for decades. A great example is episode 63, titled Lonely Soldier Boy. This is also the name of Mospeda’s theme song, a very distinct jam.
The show was a strange hit, after it got sold to several national affiliates for airing. While I can’t find Nielsen ratings from 1985, it has been reported that the show was weirdly popular with adult women, as they enjoyed the romantic triangle between Rick, Minmei, and Lisa. Kids loved the action, and the ongoing storyline made people want to tune back in on a daily basis. Harmony Gold wasn’t about to leave their success up to chance either.
Working with an indie comic publisher, Harmony Gold would actually craft a comic tie-in that would be almost unheard of today: a direct adaptation of the entire show. The company Comico would begin publishing issues covering the initial Macross offering with dates of 1984, just in time to hype up the series. In order to keep from spoiling the series, but also to hype up the show as much as possible, the Masters and New Generation portions would receive coverage in comics the next year. This meant three ongoing Robotech comics, and they seem to have sold well for Comico.
They even preserved the best sequence of disguising your mech ever. Mad lads.
Amusingly, Maeck himself would be given writing credit for the first year of Macross-based comics from Comico, and would also work on them as an editor. Seva Stauch would work on the pencils, but I cannot find any credits of other comics they’ve worked on. Phil Lasorda, Gerry Giovinco, Vince Argondezzi, and Dotty Linberg were all credited with “inks, colors, and production,” a vague catch-all for almost everything else in the comic. Carrie Spiegle would work on the lettering for the book. Those who worked on the book would rotate out, like Markalan Joplin popping in to work on the script for the last half of the series, or Mike Baron working on the Robotech Masters series.
Sadly, at least half of the issues for Robotech would go uncredited. However, all of the people who worked away at the book would mostly preserve the look and feel of the various anime that had been collected to make Robotech. It did have some mixed results, however.
Again, sales numbers are hard to find, but each comic had enough issues to be a 1:1 conversion from cartoon to comic. There was even an ill-fated attempt to make a 3D comic. The main three comics would be published up until 1988, where Eternity comics would pick up the license.
But first, we have another stop. You see, Carl Maeck wanted to have a Robotech movie, and he knew just the item he wanted. Tatsunoko and Studio Nue were making a Macross movie called Do You Remember Love, which would tell an alternate version of Macross with stunning animation and a massive budget. However, both companies shot him down, as both companies calculated that they could make more money localizing it without Harmony Gold. They would later release it in the states with a butchered localization, calling itself Clash of the Bionoids.
Macek still needed his movie, but with Macross out of reach, what could he do? Well, the import scene was still bustling in 1985, and Macek somehow stumbled across the Japanese Original Video Animation titled Megazone 23.
Presented without subtitles to preserve the “what am I watching” feeling Maeck likely encountered.
As the OVA was released direct-to-video as one of the first of its kind on VHS, Laserdisc, Betamax, and even the obscure-ass VHD format, it’s likely that someone imported a copy and the entire C/FO watched Megazone 23. Or someone would pass a copy of Maeck, at the very least. The story was a simple one, with one 1984 Japanese resident Shogo Yahagi finding a weird motorcycle that turns into a robot and being drawn into a conspiracy plot that involves his entire life being a lie: that he lives in a distant future space colony, a generational ship that is waiting for Earth to heal from wars and pollution.
There was just one problem: it didn’t have an ending!
Megazone 23 ended on a major cliffhanger, with Shogo badly beaten and battered, and the villains of the story likely having won. That wouldn’t do, and Maeck had wanted the story to tie into the more popular Macross chapter of the story, so new footage would be needed. Maybe it could feature Rick Hunter and the other popular-
And then Tatsunoko productions shot that idea down, as they didn’t want it to mess with their Do You Remember Love marketing in the states. Canon Films, 80s schlock producer that would be distributing the movie, also wanted more action and “less girls,” as Megazone 23 was part romance… with one of the first sex scenes in anime. So Maeck would shoehorn the story in between the Macross and Masters storylines, and would use footage from Southern Cross to make the Masters tie-ins even more obvious.
The fact that Megazone 23 was produced on a higher resolution of film, and that animation produced for a small television screen would look miserable on a movie screen was lost on him.
Japanese animation studio The Idol Company was also contracted to make a new ending for the story. It would be action-packed and feature a smash-up conclusion between Shogo’s new namesake Mark Landry and brainwashed military men trying to serve the Robotech Masters. The studio was rather proud of this animation, and this new footage would be included on the B side of the laserdisc release of Megazone 23 Part 2 when it came out in 1986 as a bonus.
Unfortunately, Robotech: The Movie was a disaster. A limited theatrical run in Texas flopped for all the reasons you can consider: commercials for the movie only aired at 6am, viewer feedback found the links between the movie and the series to be vague at best, and most of the over the top violence from Megazone 23 was intact.
Oh. The attempted rape of the main female character was also kept in the movie for children. Awesome.
The movie would actually have a successful run in Argentina and Belgium, with a few VHS tapes surviving from the few month local home release before Harmony Gold and Maeck would ditch it like a crashing fighter jet. Copies can be found on Youtube to this day, but it’s one of the few things that isn’t missed by fans. Harmony Gold would also strike it from the canon as well.
Maeck had another project in 1986 to work on, though. A sequel to Robotech was being worked on, as an international joint project between Harmony Gold and Tatsunoko. Likely hoping to make Robotech II: The Sentinels into a Macross or Mospeda sequel, the two companies would share the production costs. As a sequel to Robotech, almost all of the core cast from both sides of the ocean would return and tell the story of Rick and Lisa as they would travel the universe to free all life from the clutches of the Robotech Masters and the Invid.
Unfortunately, Tatsunoko had the bright idea of having all the writing and plotting done on the Japanese side of things. Without the knowledge of how the proverbial sausage was made, the writers Sukehiro Tomita and Hiroshi Ohnogi (both Macross alums) tried making the series a crossover as it related the source material. It apparently took a prototype PowerPoint presentation with graphs and charts to explain how the content was different, but Maeck would strip writing duties back to America once the Japanese staff obsessed over new characters rather than returning crew.
Only three episodes would be produced, with toy company Matchbox backing out of the sequel before production on episode 4 could be completed. Maeck would blame the economic downturn that made converting the American Dollar into Japanese Yen remarkably less profitable in the mid-80s. June 1985 was a 100 pennies to 250 yen, while 1987 would bring the rate closer to 120 yen per dollar at the end of the crash. With Matchbox gone, Harmony Gold also had to back out or lose vast amounts of money trying to make a sequel that only they were funding in America, and no toys to make up the lost dough.
The finished three episodes would be shoved out as a “movie” on VHS in 1988, to low sales and minimal fanfare. Maeck would even have ideas of how to make a full 260 episodes of Robotech that would have the cast and crew looping around in time and literally ending the series with the opening of the first episode. However, these would never come to pass, as Harmony Gold just no longer wanted to put original animation into production.
1987 would also bring another dimension to Robotech to capture the imagination of the fans and those catching the series on reruns: novels! Under the pen name of Jack McKinney, James Lucerno and Brian Daley would work together to adapt the 85 episode series into a series of 21 novels overall. Books 1 through 6 would cover the Macross Saga, with Masters and New Generation only getting 3 books apiece. 5 books would cover the aborted Sentinels series, using the complete outline Maeck himself had constructed. Book 18 would resolve the whole Robotech plot line rather neatly, acting as an epilogue and a way to wrap up all the loose threads in a bow. 3 more books would come in 1994, and would fill in the gaps in the animated content to closer tie up how the stories all fit together.
Where these books really shine is that they actually flesh out the universe of Robotech. How the robots work so well is explained, as well as the state of earth before and soon after the crash of the alien ship that became the SDF-1. Protoculture would be expanded upon to be more of a psychic link that joins all life together, as well as a potential food source and even power source.
The books are, honestly, really good. They’re aimed at an older audience than the original show was, and give the audience a look into the heads of most of the cast through a third-person perspective. At the very least, the whirlwind romance of Max and Miria makes a little more sense this time around!
I mean, not by much. Max still wants to marry the woman who just tried to kill him with a knife.
The comics would continue under new companies like Eternity, Academy Comics, and Antarctic Press, but it would quickly fade into obscurity as the 1990s arrived and rolled on. Sure, it would be found in reruns on the Sci-Fi channel in 1993 to fill late night time slots, but no new content would arrive. New fads would arrive, and the kids eventually forgot about the adventures of Rick Hunter, Dana Sterling, and Scott Bernard.
And then anime became huge in America.
1998 would start the weird resurrection of Robotech as Cartoon Network launched their own evening Japanese animation block called Toonami to latch onto the popularity of new-to-America shows like Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z. Robotech, likely easy as hell to license now that it had fallen back into obscurity again, would be one of the initial launch programs for the Toonami block. While it would remain only for a short time, the show would also fill in time on the late night Midnight Run variation of the block, and many new anime fans would find Robotech again.
In fact, it was time for Harmony Gold to launch a new Robotech series and strike while the iron was hot.
Robotech 3000 was announced at FanimeCon 2000, and would have been a CGI series set 1,000 years in the future from the original series. The series was still in the rough draft phase when it was announced, but anime fans are a fickle beast. It was resoundly disliked by fans at the convention, and the company working on the CGI started to go through financial woes, killing the project.
Other projects would start and die, but 2006 would bring a new animated project to completion. Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles.
An original work using CG animation, this story attempted to act as both a sequel and ending to the original Robotech story. Made as a joint project between Harmony Gold and anime localization company Funimation, this would be Funimation’s first strike into their own original projects. The animation was… lacking in many places, but old Robotech fans were just happy to have something new. A promised sequel for 2007 would die behind the scenes as Harmony Gold cut off all ties with Funimation soon after the release of the movie.
2013 has been the last major gasp of releases from Harmony Gold regarding their baby. Robotech: Live Love Alive was a direct conversion of a Mospeda OVA of the same name from 1985. It brings back as much of the cast as possible, but it has the distinct problem of trying to act like an epilogue while the source material is a flashback and music video vehicle.
There have also been eternal rumors of a live action Robotech movie since roughly 2004. However, all of that is dwarfed by the one remaining elephant in the room:
The legal drama.
Remember how we mentioned that the rights to Macross were tied up with three Japanese companies? And four American ones for localization and licensing? Well, Harmony Gold would take the stance that they were the one company allowed to use the Robotech franchise outside of Japan, and began to use legal action to shut down the designs used by FASA. They would also block importing and large sales of Macross merchandise, according to many websites at the turn of the century. They would also repeatedly try to sue companies like Hasbro for the use of characters like Jetfire if they looked too close to a Robotech design.
Also, all releases of the Robotech source series attempted in the 2000s would have Harmony Gold in on the profit sharing. This would also include ADV’s massive release of the original Macross with a new dub using the original music and even Minmei’s Japanese actress Mari Ijima reprising her role for America.
Fans of the original shows would claim Harmony Gold have tried to block releases of other Macross content, but the release of Macross Plus in the late 90s suggests otherwise. Macross is a niche series outside of Japan, and the music rights for song-intensive shows like Macross 7 and Macross Frontier would likely cause any localization attempts to end in literal bankruptcy.
It did not help that Studio Nue, Tatsunoko, and Big West were all also fighting for the Macross rights during this mess. 2016 would bring up the closest we have to any kind of idea as to who owns what. Here is how it breaks down, from what I can see:
Studio Nue owns the intellectual rights, and can make new Macross shows. Do You Remember Love is also entirely theirs, in most respects.
Tatsunoko owns the distribution rights, and can license out Macross for international or home sales. The distribution agreements signed with Harmony Gold were good until 2022, at which point anyone could get them. However, anything beyond that for Harmony Gold could not be acted upon legally.
Big West somehow owns the designs of the characters and Mecha from the original Macross TV series. This is likely why the 1986 movie Do You Remember Love used different designs and the subsequent TV shows stuck to those new designs.
In 2019, Harmony Gold would say they had extended their contract with Tatsunoko for another 35 years… but what they plan to do is genuinely unknown.
You see, Harmony Gold has not released a new animated work since the 1990s. There have been a small slate of live action movie licenses and documentaries under their movie family, but little seems to have been released since 2003. The Shadow Chronicles and Live, Love, Alive are the final animated works we’ve seen from them in almost a decade, and there are no new works that fall under their license. Further, the most recent activity they’ve advertised is Los Angeles real estate holdings aside from a children’s movie in 2014 about people coming across Bigfoot.
The animation game has also changed. Rather than waiting to have enough episodes to syndicate, we have simulcasts where a show can be released both in English and Japanese on the internet at the same time. A dub doesn’t have to be made for kids anymore, and importing takes care of any toy issues for a series. Lord knows Harmony Gold knows about the latter: their Robotech online store is filled with imported Macross merchandise.
Robotech has a place in history. It’s a fantastically ambitious attempt to being long form storytelling to American audiences, while also refusing to talk down to children about the horrors of war and culture shock. Along with shows like Speed Racer and Voltron, it was one of the core shows that helped popularize anime in America in the proverbial stone age of American anime. The novels are a fantastic example of how to expand on your universe without falling into light novel trash, something Japan could use some lessons on these days. Even the comics, as spotty as they can be, are a solid example of how to re-imagine your work in another medium.
But Robotech’s time has passed, and it needs to only be remembered. It doesn’t need to be dragged along to new projects like a zombie. Fans have been arguing about the changes made to Robotech and if Macross is the superior show since at least 1985, before the internet was actually the internet we know today.
Put the show in that vault, and let it rest. Rick Hunter and his friends can relax, at last.
