Xenon

Words can't express how much I loathe Harmony frakking Gold. With every. Fibre. Of. My. Being. Given this and their fan trolling announcement fan trolling at SDCC that DYRL and any future sequel containing any of the characters, mecha, and stroylines from SDFM are still prohibited, I think it's time for fans to go to war with HG. I mean, seriously, this is just crap.

True, that!

Amen. Should we change the expression 'jumped the shark' accordingly?

I think I have to disagree with you a bit, here. To me, it was always clear from the beginning that "Amuro always wins, because Amuro is the archetypical precocious, mopey teenager who can inexplicably master advanced military hardware like it's no-one's business.*" And, wouldn't you know it, he turns out to be a rare example of an evolved human with heightened abilities. Although, in connection with your central contention that Macross was written to be some sort of reaction to Gundam and Yamato (was it really? Source?), one could most certainly argue that Hikaru was almost everything Amuro wasn't. He wasn't particularly mopey, no especially remarkable natural 'talents' (except getting himself into trouble, largely thanks to his big mouth), and certainly was not precocious by any means — indeed, he made a real dog's dinner of his first (involuntary) sortie in the VF-1D, hardly telegraphing his future creditable standing as a UN Spacy pilot. And, actually, it's an interesting dynamic in SDFM that the main hero of the story (Hikaru) isn't all that special at what he does — unlike his supporting-character subordinate Max, who pretty much shows up his boss every time he sits in his bird. *As much as I really like Frontier, this was my big gripe with it. We don't just have one precocious teenager, no. We've got three of them! They should have re-named their unit Mary Sue Squadron. Also, do Child Protection Services not exist in anime? Seriously, this just shows bad frakking parenting is absolutely endemic in mecha anime.

Uff. I'm really not sure what to think about Sunrise doing the next Macross. I was really, really very late to the Gundam party (it didn't broadcast in eastern Canada, where I grew up, so I missed it then), and actually didn't start watching it until this year. Without wanting to turn this into a Gundam slag-fest ... it's definitely not for me. The original series is a really tough, meandering slog that doesn't believe in good pacing or character development, and Zeta Gundam didn't improve this in the least. I ended up bailing out on it three quarters of the way through Zeta. My point being that if Sunrise adopt Gundam-style storytelling for Macross, then we're in trouble. Well, not us, but the Macross franchise certainly would be. It's just not a good fit, in my opinion. That having been said, something Sunrise have going in their favour is the legacy of mecha anime — and if some of the click-baity articles on the web these days are to be believed, mecha anime is making a comeback, thanks to the last Gundam thing (in part, or in whole — opinions are varied). So, they bring that to the Macross party, at least. All the same, I have questions. Chief among which: with Sunrise producing this, what will Shōji Kawamori's role in this be, if any? According to the WIkipedia article on him, he's (still) employed with Satelight. Will he get brought on board by Sunrise? Or has he handed off his work, and is walking away from it, from here on in? What about other legacy Macross creatives, like Haruhiko Mikimoto? We'll see how that goes. When is all said and done, I'm happy we'll (eventually) be getting new Macross. Naturally I've got some wishes. Directed by: Shinichirō Watanabe Story: Masamune Shirow Character Design: Masamune Shirow Mechanical Design: Kenichi Sonoda Music: Yoko Kanno Oh, wait ... you mean my wish list is supposed to be serious and realistic? Sorry 'bout that. But, actually, not entirely: maybe it's time Kawamori does hand the work off to some different or new blood, as long as a new studio is getting involved. Might freshen the franchise up a bit? Also, I dare you to suggest that a Shirow/Sonoda team-up on Macross wouldn't be awesome. Go on. I dare you. In any case, my actual wish list: The core elements of the franchise (love triangle, conflict, singers/idols) need to be re-balanced badly, especially the singers/idols. I'm not suggesting we get rid of the concept entirely, but we need to focus less on it. SDFM/DYRL got the balance mostly right; M+ got the balance beautifully (and also completely subverted it, which was a pro move); M7 balanced it mostly okay, but the writing was on the wall; M0 skipped the idol concept (but not the music concept) entirely, and was perhaps too gritty; MF and MΔ just went way, way, way too far in idol territory. I would very much like to back to a proper space opera again with a well-rounded approach to what makes Macross what it is, is what I'm saying. On the back of the above, and related to it, I'd be keen to have a bit more of a 'mature' Macross on the next pass, and less tweeny-goofy — though not necessarily gritty, Gundam-stylee. M0 went in that direction, and it was a bit too heavy at times. That scene during the bombardment of the village, where the crying child is holding their dead parent's hand as everything explodes and burns around them? Yeah, that was a gut-punch I didn't need. Let's trim the fat, yeah? MΔ had entirely too many characters, and — if I'm being truly honest — I can't remember the names of most of them, and they mostly feel flat, un-developed, and un-memorable to me. It's kind of like those cheap pan-Asian or Indian restaurants you find everywhere in the west: 72 items on the menu that you order not by name, but by number, and none of them anywhere close to being awesome. Fewer items on the menu, so that they're all prepared with care and delicious, please. For the love of all of our mothers, please, please, please dial the art direction back a bit. With every successive series/OVA/film, it gets more and more over-stimulating with all the saturated colours, jammed-packed scenery, high frame rate action scenes with 65 000 split-second jump cuts within 4 seconds. I feel like I should be taking a couple of Ritalins after each episode of MΔ. In a similar vein, less is more. The artwork in modern Macross is so over-designed, over-wrought, and hyper-detailed that I feel like I'm looking at everything through a microscope. Clean up the artwork a little bit so that we can take more in as we watch. I'm not on Team SDFM Remake. Some here have suggested it in previous posts, and I know where they're coming from, but I don't think it's necessary. The SDFM story gets recapped/retold to some degree or other in every series and OVA since M7 — I'm guessing even the youngest fans have gone and watched either SDFM or DYRL (although, I really don't recommend DYRL as someone's first exposure) at some point, and caught themselves up. Someone earlier mentioned SBY2199 as being the gold remake standard, and I would wholeheartedly agree (god, what a magnificent piece of work, actually). But, the Yamato franchise is different than Macross, in so far as Yamato doesn't have decades of content that came out after the original show like Macross does — so, it makes sense for SBY2199 to exist. Especially if the plan is to keep going with new, original stuff after all the remakes are done (which I hope they do). What I would like to see, though, is a story that focusses on the adventures of Megaroad-01. It's been the biggest elephant in the room since Flashback 2012 (an elephant of Studio Nue's own creation, given they were adamant Macross was done after FB2012. This is on them), going largely un-addressed until MΔ, except in vague allusions. It's only in MΔ:AL that we started getting a bit more concrete info. At the same time, I also got the feeling MΔ:AL was kind of setting that story up, somehow. So, let's do it. Let's go back to 2012, and see what Misa, Hikaru, Minmei & Co got up to. And, to me, it makes sense to tell this story: without it, M+, M7, MF, MΔ (and, to some extent, M0, but for different reasons) wouldn't exist. If they play their cards right, the story could span the time from their launch all the way to MΔ:AL. It'd be a great opportunity for addtional, new world-building, too. I know Hikaru's voice actor sadly passed away years ago, but I'd be absolutely OK with re-casting him. Now, listen: I love Max and Milia. You love Max and Milia. Everyone loves Max and Milia. But, I really don't need them or their various progeny to turn up everywhere. So, unless there's a very good reason for the Jenius clan to turn up (I could see them having a part to play in a Megaroad-01 story, for example), I'm more than happy to move on from them. Also, whilst we're talking about story, let's lower the stakes. Not everything needs to be about world/universe-ending badness. So, so, so much of modern sci-fi and fantasy is about something cataclysmic, from Marvel to Star Trek: Discovery (spit) to Macross, and beyond. It's exhausting. Stop it. Magnificent, epic stories can be told even when the stakes are much lower (why, hello there, Macross Plus). I think that's about it. At the end of the day, though, the only real information we have is that new Macross is coming and Sunrise is producing it, which isn't a whole lot to go on. For all we know, it could be another 30-minute music video, FB2012-stylee, or another short film about one of the existing stories, like the MF one at the beginning of MΔ:AL. So, having this sort of wishlist might be an entirely pointless exercise. Still — if New Sunrise Macross™ doesn't have surfing SDFs, dancing Valkyries, and "Planet-frakking-Dance" playing five times per episode, we're already on the right path. Err, also: hi, there. New here.