Remember, Remember

Today’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of the premiere of Do You Remember Love? (Oi, Ghostlightning!)

In some ways this feels more significant to me than Mobile Suit Gundam’s thirtieth anniversary earlier this year, despite the fact that, as my tagcloud attests, Gundam is the franchise I’m more familiar with. But it may be precisely my lack of easy familiarity with Macross that makes DYRL? more prominent in my mind. It was very nearly my first Macross experience, only preceded by Frontier’s first episode, and it’s the one part of the franchise that I’ve since watched again. I can quickly call several scenes to mind: Minmei and Hikaru going on a date, for example, and of course the spectacular martial-musical fusion of the final scene.

Sadly I am restricted to memory myself tonight, as I didn’t bring a copy with my on my laptop and I won’t be able to squeeze one down this internet connection any time soon (apparently downloading slowly is preferred here). But even  remembering DYRL?, thinking of its delicious animation and its curious mixture of silly and serious, always uplifts me. I rather like the fact that this movie shares its anniversary with the 2005 Tube bombings: facing such gunpowder treason, love, in more than the narrowly romantic sense of the word, is not a bad thing to remember.

Macross Frontier: Hands in the Air

The first episode of Macross Frontier – the Deculture Edition of the first episode – was my first contact with Macross, excepting a dimly-remembered trailer for (I think) Plus, which I saw on a rented DVD ages ago. I’m not counting that trailer because I didn’t pay much attention to it, on the grounds that ‘you promised me giant robots, and these are definitely planes, not giant robots’.

How little I knew!

A Delicious Slice of SDF Macross

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Relieved of the requirement to always take itself seriously, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross has free rein to give us entertaining moments (like fishing in space) and brilliantly ludicrous design decisions (like a battleship with aircraft carriers for arms). It’s also what lies behind a sequence in the second episode which – as far as I can see – wraps up into one brief segment of animation the essence of the whole show.

Guncross, Madam?

It’s a bit like another Judgement of Paris¹

I finally thought I had conquered the urge to compare what are probably anime’s two most prominent mecha franchises, and Washi had to go and open the contrast-floodgates which I had just managed to close. Of course, I haven’t seen enough of either to properly do the job justice (Kaioshin ought to write this), but sometimes in life we simply have to use the best tools we have to hand, just as sometimes in anime we simply have to rely on the untrained teenager who’s been accidentally thrust into the cockpit of the military’s latest toy.

A Brief Note On GAINAXing

I was recently reminded that I originally planned a consideration of GAINAXing as a shorter companion piece or addendum to my remarks on the pantyshot. Perhaps these things are better for being mulled over for a month or so.

[Gimmick] KimiKiss 01 As Mecha

1. External forces arrive.

tabula rasa: Macross Frontier

Because normal hobbies are just plain boring

I realise that this statement might draw a chorus of derision, but I can’t pretend otherwise: I am a Macross virgin. The fact that ‘SDF’ stands for ‘Super Dimension Fortress’ is probably all I know about the first Macross series, and until I have a suitably-sized chunk of time to hand [cue hollow laughter] I’m unlikely to watch it or its sequels.

So the only way I can approach Macross Frontier is to take it simply on its own merits. I don’t like viewing part of a larger set of stories without context – nostalgia (while not inherently a bad thing) can destroy objectivity, but I think there’s a case to be made for perspective – still, given my penchant for mecha action with a romance garnish, I can’t really pass up on this potential dish.