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.
Animanachronism 
I would say part of it is due to also to Gundam’s longrunning schizophrenia… it is difficult to really encapsulate Gundam in a single show or movie. On the other hand, while different Macross series come and go, Do You Remember Love is undisputably the crown jewel.
Another explanation I thought up was that I’m so used to seeing Gundam as one entity — for all its schizophrenia, if you work hard enough you can draw links between all its different facets, so that after — that I can’t untangle individual parts so easily.
There is really no way to play a Macross game without using DYRL as background music in the final stages of the Zentradi War… It’s just that good.
The decapitation scene near the climax is still etched deeply into my head, too.
I haven’t actually explored the world of Macross gaming at all (are there many Macross-based games, and if there are, have any made it into English translation?), but I can see that that might be the case.
Haha, I actually have a ‘complex’ relationship with DYRL. It’s the source of my appreciation paradigm in no small part to the title’s memetic capital.
However, the Macross and Minmay I fell in love with was from the original series (this goes with the rest of the cast as well), DYRL is like how I daydream about Macross and how it looked like (save for the SDF-1 itself w/c did NOT have aircraft carriers for arms!).
When I marathon the original series, I pause at some point in the big battle in ep. 27 and THEN play the DYRL battle song sequence for near-perfect justice.
Thanks for remembering love, my good man, and may you find other delights in the franchise as I have, where others see little to none.
Inserting an element from DYRL? into your marathon of the original series is a fascinating thought. I shall keep that in mind when I get around to finishing SDF Macross.
You make me want to go watch it. Maybe I’ll do that to commemorate.
I agree with Vendredi — while the story may take liberties with canon (since it exists in-world as a work of fiction itself), it very clearly says what Macross is in a neat two-hour package.
Yes. I can’t think of any other conveniently-sized package that’s typical of Macross . . . the Plus movie might count, but I feel that part of Plus‘s nature is that it is rather different to a lot of the rest of the franchise.
lol, downloading slowly…how witty! it was delicious.
Yeah. Actuall, this place’s eccentricities, and the general sense that it’s sealed off from the rest of the world, make odd educational institutions like the one in Marimite slightly more plausible.
Indeed. 25 years ago, Japan remembered love. But after going back and rewatching DYRL, I have to ask myself: did they forget since then? Or did “love” simply fall out of fashion in favor of “moe”?
I recorded this two years ago. It still encapsulates my thoughts on the subject:
http://animeworldorder.blogspot.com/2007/03/anime-world-order-show-50-watch.html
Hmm. Normally I don’t go in for podcasts, but I might make an exception this time. Thanks for the link!
It’s hard for me to judge the changes in anime and its fandom — as you can tell from the reference to Frontier I came to Macross in particular relatively recently.
But my uninformed guess would be that, if we really are living through some kind of ‘dark age of moe’, love will be back. It’s a persistent thing.
“To be in love….” Gotta love the old school Macross!!
My dear fellow, that horrible song you just mentioned is Robotech.
Now I don’t hate Robotech, with all its terrible and execrable faults. Before the series of tubes made anime distribution what it is today, Robotech was all the Macross I could get and we were friends for many years (I’ve also read all of the Jack McKinney novels many times over).
But “To be in love” the song, commit it to the flames.
I’m not sure if referencing V for Vendetta in a manner relevant to the post’s interests can be considered “pompous”, but i-i-it’s ok if it’s y-y-you, etc.
I’m also slightly more than just a little horrified that no one spotted your nod-wink eight comments in. Good job, though!
Just to add another layer, 2005, the year of the Tube bombings, was the year of the 400th anniversary of the original Gunpowder Plot.
Ahh good old Guy Fawkes :)
I liked Minmei more after watching DYRL. Because I hated her with a passion for most of the series.
It really is quite something spectacular and its a testament to its greatness, how, so many years on we can all sit down and still find it so utterly fantastic.
Yes! I’d hesitate to nominate anything as the one piece of anime which might unite most anime fans, but my first choice would be DYRL?. Though no doubt there’re a few people out there who’ve watched it but hated it, and many more who’d never be interested in watching it.