Jeff J

Speaking of those games, what I'd do for an official compilation of 16- and 32-bit Macross games...

One specific observation I forgot to mention earlier: I don't think I ever read any behind-the-scenes comments on this, but one thing I always thought was strange was that even though the show relied a lot on reused animation, the team insisted upon re-animating the birthday gift scene in episode 29. Putting aside the sepia tones to make it more clearly a flashback, the re-animated scene just looks worse, making it IMO a confusing decision to use time/resources when stock animation would've made a lot of sense. At first I was thinking that perhaps they went for an artistic reinterpretation of the scene where Minmay's recall was imperfect, so why not animate the details slightly differently? However, the audio sounds almost exactly the same, which kind of squashes the imperfect recall theory. Also, it's the second of two flashbacks in that scene, the first's being when the VT-102 Battroid crashed into her room, and that reuses episode 2's animation (and thankfully so, considering the relatively high production value from episode 2). I wonder if there are other flashbacks that were redrawn that I might've missed/forgotten.

I actually think they got Kaifun right in the post-war arc. His story is one of a downward spiral, and one of the central themes of the arc is that it's a struggle for everyone to adjust to the new normal. Thus, that he'd be bitter and become an alcoholic that would lead to being more abusive is, IMO, pretty good storytelling. Plus, we needed to create impetus for Minmay to want to cut herself off from him. I don't think I was criticizing here. I was trying to say when I was 18-25 or so (and maybe 18-35), I probably would've said something like, "I wish the show gave a more realistic/practical explanation of how/why they could retrieve the buildings floating around in space, bring them into the ship, re-erect them, and get the electricity and water running, all in 12 days." These days, I say just go with it. I think "Kid's show" gets kind of bandied about like some sort of pejorative, when I think it shouldn't necessarily be thought of that way. And when I say Macross was a "kid's show," I say that as a compliment. "Kid's shows" don't use up screen time to explain nitty details but instead jump straight to engaging the viewers's imagination. Also, it's important to get appeal to younger viewers interested. I'm also a Superman fan, and somewhere I think WB and DC screwed up is they forgot to make their past few Superman movies appealing to younger audiences. That sort of leaves you with a rapidly-aging, shrinking audience, and waning interest in the IP. Compare that to something like Super Mario games or The Lego Movie where multiple generations of audience can enjoy. There's no one right way to do things, which is a change to my mindset since my early days of being a Macross fan. "Normal teenager" and bad decision making often go hand-in-hand, no? 😀 The show is predicated on a certain amount of relationship drama, and the drama results from a certain amount of dysfunction. If these three teens figured it all out quickly, it would certainly be a different show, and probably a less interesting one, too. If we tried to look at things objectively, or if we were somehow mentors/parents/counselors for Hikaru and Misa, and we wanted to give it to them straight instead of coddling them, I think most of us would say that they were making decisions that unnecessarily tortured themselves. They took unhealthy approaches to their relationships that needed correction, which is understandable given their age and circumstances, and gives the show its distinct personality, but (IMO) was nonetheless the wrong way to handle things. This is what I was alluding to when I said, "I think the principal characters engage in some troublesome behavior that people in real life need to avoid." Maybe there was a nicer way of saying that... And I think relationship drama is neither good nor bad, you just have to know your audience when you recommend a show. For some folks, these kind of rocky relationships or love triangles are just no-gos, which contributes to why I wouldn't immediately recommend this show to someone without knowing what that person is into. If I had to change one aspect of the back nine episodes, I'd probably adjust the timeline with respect to the relationships. Pretty much the only thing I'm not fully satisfied with is it feels like Hikaru and Misa are in relationship stasis/holding pattern throughout the two years between episodes 27 and 28. I thought it was kind of weird that she had the keys to his place and was washing up after him but the implication was that they weren't actually dating at that point. It just didn't feel right, at least not to me. I don't even mind the idea that Hikaru would be drawn back to Minmay even though he thought he conceded her away to Kaifun in 27. Stuff like that isn't unrealistic, especially given that he wasn't in a relationship. But going back to counselor mode, if we had to give advice to an 18-20 year-old kid and he told me he still has romantic feelings for someone he gave up two years ago, we'd probably all tell him either tell her or move on, just be decisive. And I'm fully aware of the production hell the creators had to go through. The animation and incomplete sound effects weren't the only thing affected by tight deadlines, so if the creators had less interference and a more forgiving schedule, they probably would've done things differently.

Hey all, The OG Macross series has been my favorite TV show of any kind ever since the 1990s. I'd rewatch it every few years, but it kind stayed on the backburner longer than usual. I'm obviously older and a lot of big life events for me happened since the last watching, plus I consumed a lot of other TV/movies since then for comparison. I thought it might be fun to look back at the series, nostalgia glasses (mostly) off, and give some general thoughts on how I view the series in 2024. (Sorry in advance for rambling on. I bolded main topics if you just want to skim.) I probably wouldn't recommend the show for most new viewers. It really hurts to say that. I'm overly protective of the series, but not so much that I don't see its faults. Also, because I'm a big fan, it would sting if I encouraged someone to watch the show only for that person to come back to me with a laundry list of complaints. The uneven animation and incomplete sound effects are a given, and not everyone would enjoy an early 80s Japanese pop soundtrack. But beyond that, I think the show's focus on a love triangle and a lot of the frustrating dramatic interruptions might feel like a tired cliche for a lot of folks who've seen a lot of that stuff in other fiction. More importantly, I think the principal characters engage in some troublesome behavior that people in real life need to avoid. There are also a few lines that Hikaru and Global say that are kind of outdated thinking about women and may be construed as offensive. Don't get me wrong, I think there is an audience out there, but I think the people to whom I'd recommend the show would mostly be either older fans who are into exploring retro stuff or younger viewers who are open-minded to more things and won't complain about visuals or get caught up in comparing this to series with modern ones. Even if I wouldn't recommend it to most, it doesn't make me love the show less, because regardless of whatever other people think, the show still resonates with me. Sci-fi is always tougher to sell to general audiences. There's no one-size-fits all for any genre, and sci-fi can be particularly hit-or-miss. The broadstroke themes of the show are, IMO, timeless. A lot of the show's plot elements have to be hand-waved by saying, "It's a kid's show." These days, I'm quite fine with that. In the past few years, I've actually come to enjoy kid shows and movies whereas in my teens and twenties I probably would've demanded more practicality or, dare I say, realism. I don't always agree with this Grant Morrison's quote, but I think it adequately describes why Macross is fine the way it is: "Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real." In the past, I'd probably be apologetic about how silly it is that they would reconstruct the city within the ship, but these days I'm quite fine saying, "Because it's a kid's show and having the city with normalish civilian life inside adds to the show's appeal." If I had to apply 2024 vernacular to describe some of the characters, I'd say Hikaru is a simp. Okay, that's nothing new, we all know his issues, but in 2024 we have a word for him that we didn't back in the 1980s or 1990s. However... Misa is also a simp. This is something that wasn't really brought up a lot in my Macross fan circles 20-25 years ago. Back then, Misa was probably seen as the most sympathetic (or should I say pitiable) character of the main three, and I think that's still the case. But so much of the conversation was around things like, "Rick (intentional use of Robotech names) is too blind to see what he has in Lisa!" when Misa (and Lisa, for that matter) exhibited a lot of the same, silly behavior of sitting and waiting for something to happen insteading of actively doing something about it, which Hikaru was guilty of. Claudia serves as the show's voice of reason (no coincidence that she's also the narrator), but one thing she fails to do that a good, real life mentor would is something along the lines of, "Misa, your relationship with Hikaru hasn't progressed much in two years, and he's still pining after Minmay. Huge warning signs! But if you really insist, fish or cut bait NOW instead of prolonging your misery!" Max is a chad. He is that guy. 😜 The worst part subplot of the series is Misa's crush on Kaifun. If you hate love triangles, then this just adds to the frustration. If you're tolerant of love triangles, then at least you're going to want to add something of real substance, but the quadrangle of Hikaru/Misa/Minmay/Kaifun has one edge that is clearly weaker than the rest. Kaifun was supposed to be able to shake Misa's confidence in her career and life mission largely because Kaifun reminded her of Riber, but that largely fell flat for me. They probably could've found a way for Kaifun to be able to challenge Misa on an intellectual and philosophical level without involving any romantic feelings on Misa's part. Anyway, to me it's quite telling that her feelings for him went away just like that. A couple episodes after going to see the movie because Kaifun is in it, she simply says she's not interested in him anymore. Speaking of Kaifun... Kaifun-centric scenes are a drag. I don't say that simply because he's one of the show's villains and we root against him. He fulfills the role of a villain pretty well, particularly in later episodes, but he's also not interesting enough that I care to see him on screen that much. During my rewatch, I noticed that the episodes that I remembered the least were the ones that featured Kaifun the most. While the back nine episodes are a mixed bag, I'm overall happy we got them because the pros outweigh the cons. The biggest complaints I've read are that they're superfluous, not as interesting as the first 27, and drag out the love triangle. I definitely see the point about the love triangle comments, and I understand if people don't find it as interesting as prior episodes, but they are important for world-building. We learn that humanity is NOT the Protoculture. We meet Komilia. We get a defined path forward for Earth and we get a great speech from Global why they're proceeding the way they are. Roy comes back for a flashback episode. More importantly, these episodes handle topics where most sequels struggle, namely just because the war is over doesn't mean the struggles are done. The Zentradi dissent is a great, underrated aspect of the show. I especially love Quamzin's character arc, specifically how he overcomes the Zentradi weaknesses of getting paralyzed in the presence of culture (and even being able to create culture, LOL) and become self-sufficient with repairs and engineering. He's quite the charismatic villain, but I also like how Hikaru disrespects him so much he says, "It's Quamzin, of course [the diversion plan] will work." The biggest thing I'd change about the back nine is change the timeline of the relationship development, because two years of stagnation doesn't feel quite right, but I dismiss the idea that the show should've ended at 27. I like Minmay more. Back in the 1990s, I always defended the character against the haters, so this might not be the type of transformation you're thinking of. But after my wife asked me to watch 500 Days of Summer, I read some of the reactions and commentary to the film and saw some had application to Macross. In particular, Joseph Gordon Levitt's character had an unhealthy attraction to Zoe Deschanel's Summer, which parallel's Hikaru's attraction to Minmay. Fans of 500 often ended up over-sympathizing with JGL's character and villified ZD's character, which wasn't the creator's intent and certainly not a take JGL agreed with. I think some fans over-sympathized with Hikaru's frustration and just ended up blaming Minmay for causing his heartache, or (incorrectly, IMO) blaming her for getting in between Hikaru and Misa, when Hikaru himself admitted it was his own fault for not talking about his feelings. I think the Minmay hate gets worsened by her portrayal in Robotech, and the Robotech novelizations made her straight up toxic. But really, what does she do wrong besides frustrate our protagonist? She's pretty honest in her feelings, or at least tries to be, but a lot of fans attributed her lack of reciprocation as malice or manipulation, which is unfortunate. And somewhat ironically, the youngest member of the show's main trio is the only one who didn't need a world-changing event like the apocalypse or being shipped off light years away to (try to) communicate her feelings. So good for her. My theory is Robotech writers wanted young fans watching the show not to feel bad about "Rick" choosing "Lisa" instead of "Minmay" so they pushed Rick/Lisa more than Macross did and made Minmay far less likable, less self-aware, and more selfish. Going back to the 1990s, there seemed to be this nearly consensus agreement that Minmay's portrayal in Robotech was more or less than same as in Macross, which always bugged me because I knew that not to be true. I hope that sentiment of sameness has been mostly debunked by now... I went from loving DYRL to merely liking it. Probably the closest thing to a hot take here, but I'm just trying to be honest instead of stirring controversy. I was introduced to the movie in the mid-90s through the awful Clash of the Bionoids. What I missed out on was that feeling of first watching the movie as intended, with the original cast and soundtrack and without the edits and bad dubbing. Watching a clean fansub was a fantastic experience, but already knowing the story kind of robbed me of the joy that comes from a first viewing. So why do I only like it now instead of love? It's because I love the original series too much with all of its details that simply couldn't be translated into the movie. The movie is still a great visual treat, giving Macross the designs and quality animation the story deserves, and it nonetheless added to my enjoyment of the franchise, but DYRL is still Macross-lite storywise. The movie still relies on having prior knowledge from the series for full enjoyment. As a standalone movie, it's good, but not nearly as emotionally impactful. Also, something that's become kind of off-putting for me is reading stories about how people would stand and applaud at THE SLAP. It's hard for me to love the movie as much if people cite THE SLAP as the "best scene," catharsis for all the (undeserved, IMO) antipathy built up against the character from the show. It's doubly true when said fans hated Minmay because of Robotech, which reinterpreted her in a way that wasn't quite intended. To be clear, I'm NOT saying she didn't deserve the slap. She had to be brought back to her senses, but I think large amount of fans relishing in the slap is unfortunate. If you made it this far, thanks for indulging me by reading. Peace.

Sometimes, lesser-covered characters like Max and Milia are better candidates for a spin-off series. Think of how the Breaking Bad universe spun off into Better Call Saul and focused on Saul, Mike, and Gus instead of doing a 6-season continuation for a character like Jesse Pinkman or making the prequel series about Walter White instead. I haven't liked every Macross title, but I do appreciate that they didn't go back to the well with Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay. Their story as is was satisfying and didn't suffer from sequel-itis. They're my favorite characters, and I'll always associate Macross with them ahead of any other characters, but this is one case where I think they made the right decision to leave well enough alone. Understood YMMV.

Loved this write-up. I always sympathized with the character and probably my single biggest problem with the RT translation is how much more frustrating/less relatable of a character they made her, and then the novelizations dialed it up to 11. Her personal arc is what I find most interesting about the last nine episodes. But I really like your point about how she ended her story on her terms. Anyway, even though Macross to me means the original series and everything that comes with it, I think the first trio's story conclusion is fine as is, abrupt as it may be. I don't want them to come back 35+ years later and screw with our own head canons that've been marinating for decades. Also, I don't want my guy Hikaru to be recast. Since so much of my love for Macross at this point is driven by sentimentality and nostalgia, I feel extra attached to letting Hikaru be forever Arihiro Hase.

Along the lines of "The Simpsons Predicted the Future" moments, I always liked to joke that Bill Clinton was at Max and Milia's wedding, and the camera panned to him when Minmay was announced.

Great exhibition, glad I got to experience it. I've been largely out of fandom lately, but this was a weekend I'll never forget.

What timing. I've been out of the fandom mostly for the past twenty years, but an old friend of mine invited me to come along to Otakon this year and I decided to check it out. I am at my parents' house in Illinois and dug up a Macross Plus art book that Shinichiro Watanabe and Yoko Kanno signed for me at Otakon 1999 and figured might as well ask Shoji Kawamori to sign it. Don't think I'm going to dive back into the fandom; being a Macross super fan took up so much time, energy, and money 😀, but for one weekend I'm going to embrace my fandom fully. Party like it's 1999... Shout out to anyone who posted on alt.fan.macross in the 1990s. It's stuff like this that makes it so hard to stay a super-fan lol. 😪

I think any time you watch anime or play Japanese-developed video games, you run a pretty good risk of having to suffer through "Gundam Seed syndrome" in one way or another. Macross Plus is the only project in the franchise that features ace pilots who come anywhere close to corresponding to real life ace pilot ages. Guld was about 26 and Isamu was about 25. I think Basara, at 21, was the oldest main pilot and/or protagonist of any other Macross series. Everyone else was in his or her teens. You get (IMO) the unfortunate situation in which you have teenagers, with teenager problems, inhabiting teenager bodies, operating war machines out in heavy combat. SDF Macross sort of hides that problem because besides hanging out with schoolgirl Minmay, Hikaru doesn't really live a teenager's life and could pass as a regular young military recruit. Macross 7 kind of avoids the issue because of Gamlin's professionalism, but falls back on that problem because Basara is impractically emo and Mylene is obviously a kid. I suppose Frontier is probably the worst in that regard because when the protagonists aren't in combat or singing, they're in high school, so I can agree to your point. Here's a quick aside about the abundance of teenage protagonists in Japanese action projects. Square Enix had an infamous presentation demonstrating the differences between Western and Japanese action heroes (P.S. Sankaku Complex isn't necessarily PG content; possibly NSFW). In fact, Square Enix was so concerned with the difference in demand from the respective audiences, they won't even release one of the games in the Nier series because the hero isn't manly enough (Sankaku Complex, again).

Since I haven't posted here that much, it's a bit of a surprise to me, and I actually think it's kind of cool. Macross II is a movie/series that, I guess you could say, my heart wants to like, but my brain tells me not to. Incidentally, I just saw the subtitled version of Macross II this past weekend. I only saw the US Renditions/Manga dub. All I have to say is that every line in the original audio track could be, "I like chicken fingers," and it'd be much more tolerable to watch than the American release.

Agreed, though I wouldn't necessarily watch it repeatedly. From a strictly storytelling point of view, the original series is king. It loses in a lot of technical categories: certainly its animation is outdated and many instances even bad for its time, the mecha designs were really basic, and I thought the sound effects could've used a lot of improvements. The music probably isn't as memorable, either, and obviously music plays a huge role in Macross in general. But the original put Macross on the map, and due to its success it probably gave the creators more latitude to go in different directions for future projects, leading to a lot of acrimony among fans. The characters were, throughout the most part, the most relatable, and they go through a fairly wide spectrum of realistic emotions. Finally, the pacing of the story is actually only second best to Frontier IMO, because the original goes through a handful of big jumps in time (4 months between episodes 6 and 7, 2 years between 27 and 28, etc.), but there's rarely a dull episode, the wide timeline does give the series more of an epic feel, and the way the characters progress seemed to fit the amount of time that elapsed in their universe.

A great thing about the original series is that filler episodes that didn't advance the story arc taught us a good deal about the characters, or progressed whatever relationships existed. I think 7 tried to do that as well, but those early episodes unfortunately ended somewhat repetitively: Basara acts rudely, flies in his VF-19, gets ticked off because nobody is listening to his song, and the flower girl missed a chance to give flowers to Basara. I'm all for episodes that are strictly about getting to know the characters. Likable characters make the series interesting, so even if it's 24 minutes of "a day in the life of" it can still be a great episode. Heck, "Phantasm" had very little new footage, but since it was one of the best dream sequences I've ever seen on TV, it's as enjoyable as any episode of the series. This leads me to another question. Who liked Basara? I know if I ever met a guy like Basara, I'd probably hate his guts.

I think the length problem was that there were just too many of those "slice of life" episodes, particularly early on in the series, and those early ones felt pretty repetitive. It's not totally atypical of anime series to start kind of slowly, but if you were watching the show during original TV broadcast, you would've had to wait about 3 months before they get into the main story arc. IMO, that's a bit of a long wait; even if you queued all the episodes consecutively, that's still more than 5 or 6 hours until you really start learning about the big picture.

It's probably a good thing that Macross fans are split about 7. IMO, it's drastically different from the original, and the fact that some fans are willing to express their disappointment shows that the "Macross community" aren't a bunch of mindless drones who'll like anything with the word "Macross" on it. Not that I'm encouraging Comic Book Guy-style vitriol on the web...

I would agree that the Robotech acting was no worse than ADV's, and maybe even better. At least ADV's not Macross II bad. I was bored the other day so I queued it on my NetFlix. It's not a good movie in any language, but I feel it becomes 3x more watchable if you stick with the original audio track.

K Yeah, I just realized you were talking UK, but the US Renditions info should be added to the thread. I also should point out that the Clash of the Bionoids VHS barely had any credits. Maybe they figured since it was 30 minutes shorter they figured they didn't need to acknowledge the staff...

I think Clash of the Bionoids excluded the word "Macross" from its title altogether. When I rented it many years ago as a teenager, I remember being confused by the title because nothing about it stood out. Only the box art tipped me off that it would be Macross-related. I also was under the impression that it was a cut of the full movie, so I incorrectly assumed DYRL sucked... I also thought Macross II was first released in the US by the now-defunct US Renditions, split into 3 VHS volumes. When Manga Entertainment took over, it was packaged as one VHS movie. Both of the above English dubs are terrible, BTW.

If 20/20 is "perfect" vision, then the original VF-1 is the "perfect" design. It has everything you need, and no big deficiencies or significant areas of nitpick. I own several transformable toys, and the VF-1's look in vehicle and robot mode, as well as its clean transformation, makes it hands-down the best IMHO. Since there are several different VF-1's from which to choose, I'll go with the VF-1S Strike (Red).

Hi guys, I looked semi-thoroughly through the boards for a review, but didn't see it. I own the AnimEigo boxed set so I felt I had no reason to purchase this. I did rent all the discs from NetFlix, but almost exclusively to see whatever extras they may be. Anyway, I'm mostly interested in knowing how the biggest Macross fans felt about the dub. I get the impression few like that they insisted upon pronouncing "Macross" to rhyme with "LaCrosse" or "across." Neither did I. I didn't find the voice acting to be particularly bad, but overall, it felt out of place. The only things that seemed right when I watched a few episodes was whenever Mari Iijima would say "Hikaru," which would momentarily right the ship for maybe a minute until English voices seemed wrong again. I didn't get very far with the dub, but I guess part of me looks at the dub overall and thinks it's probably a good way to expand the fanbase, and with any luck it could make it to some national cable station in lieu of you know what. So how did other Macross fans feel? My only stipulation for your answer is if you hate ALL English-dubbed anime, add that detail to your post. Thanks.

Interesting analysis. An abridged version of Macross 7 probably would've had a better pace, especially since the first dozen episodes are fairly repetitive. I also like the analogy that each Macross project is a sort of progression. Protoculture, as exemplified earlier, has a slightly different meaning from SDF to 7 to Frontier. It's just inevitable that as you progress on an idea, you're going to gain and lose people along the way. Some call it growth, some call it deviating off the path. The gap between SDFM and 7 is probably just wide enough to have an appreciable drop-out rate with ambiguous success in drawing in creating new interest.

Fair enough, but I think she still had the attitude adjustment in series. I just mentioned Robotech because most Robo fans I've encountered HATE Minmay, and I can't really blame them for it.

Did the Japanese viewers who watched the show during its original run (and by extension, didn't get influenced by the Robotech version) feel this negatively about Minmay from the original series? Or do people sort of forget about the character adjustment she goes in the last bunch of episodes of the series? I don't know why people hate her that much. Yes, she did face palm-stupid things, she didn't fully appreciate Hikaru early on, and initially wasn't cognizant of the horrors going on in the war, but all of that totally changes in the series. Toward the end, she gets the attitude adjustment you were looking for. We find out that she's super grateful for all the soldiers' sacrifices (especially Hikaru), was pretty compassionate toward all the war-torn communities whereas Kaifun was a drunk jerk controlling her life and siphoning as much money as possible from everyone, and in the last 10 episodes or so her biggest desire pretty much was to be with Hikaru. The last two selfish things she does were pretty understandable: she walks out on a concert (an impromptu one that Kaifun scheduled while sabotaging her best chance to get together with Hikaru) and asking Hikaru to quit UN Spacy because it was too stressful to wait for him to come home from dangerous military action. The latter, though, was counterbalanced by the fact that she was willing to give up her career for him. I don't want to sound too anti-Robotech regarding Minmay; I think HG probably made her less sympathetic, and Lisa more, because they wanted sensitive kids watching to feel better about Rick's choice at the end. That said, Robotech's Minmay isn't as representative of the original version the way the other main characters are. Seriously, you can line up corresponding scenes and see a pretty noticeable difference. In fact, I have. Maybe I'll share it sometime.

Thanks for the link. I've started reading the blog. I started with the DYRL entry from last December. One thing I learned was that Robotech (accidentally?) totally trashed Minmay's rep forever. Yes, she was bad in Macross, but in Robotech she was far less a sympathetic character, particularly in the first 10 and last 10 episodes. Seems like anyone who watched Robotech first will, in anime terms, "NEVER FORGIVE" Minmay. Honestly, I think her selfish outburst in DYRL is far worse than anything that happened in the show, and thus she's more sympathetic to me in the show than the movie. But Robotech version is deservedly reviled, I guess. Ironically, I stopped being an otaku around 2002, when the VHS fansub market started declining and it became so easy to get subbed anime for free over the internet. I don't know why; logically, that should've elevated me to an even higher level of anime geek, but for some reason the easy access took away something (mystique? fun?) and I started caring less and less. The last major anime purchase I made, I think, is the AnimEigo boxed set, and I preordered it on day one of preorders. That's what you call backward practicality, I suppose.

I guess that's what happens when projects under the same franchise label get released 25 years apart. Invariably, you're going to meet folks who have no exposure to the old stuff, but really love the new ones. I also met a lot of people who only knew Macross through Plus, but that was because it was the late 1990's. BTW, does SyFy still have Anime Mondays? I know Mac+ was on their cycle. Guess I'm starting to sound like a curmudgeonly old man... again...