Macross has always occupied an unusual place in the pantheon of giant robot anime. Its robots shift between traditional humanoids and fighter planes. Its history is determined not just by violence or politics but by pop music. Not to mention that while the series played a crucial role in spreading love for anime abroad, it did so as part of Carl Macek’s mash-up Robotech. Some fans might not even know that Macross continues to see new installments to this day, under the supervision of creator Shoji Kawamori.
Kawamori attended this year’s Anime NYC convention along with many other prestigious guests. He hosted two panels in addition to holding a roundtable interview with the press. The following condenses what I learned by attending the second of these two panels: a brief history of Macross, told from Kawamori’s perspective.
Macross: Do You Remember Love? (1984)
Because they aren’t humanoid, they won’t sell
Kawamori’s artistic career began 47 years ago in high school. Together with future character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto, he put out an action comic featuring powered suits in space. “Even though I was still a senior in high school,” Kawamori said, “this may have been the first ‘powered suit’ manga. Two years before Gundam!”
Kawamori loved Space Battleship Yamato, an animated series about a flying battleship directed by manga artist Leiji Matsumoto. (Folks in the United States may remember the show by its English name, Star Blazers.) He was also a fan of Studio Nue, which provided “design assistance” to Yamato before contributing mechanical design to influential robot anime like Combattler V. Kawamori had the opportunity to visit the studio several times before he joined in his second year of university.
One day the opportunity came for Studio Nue to produce an original animation project. Their first attempt was Genocidus, which featured character designs by Kawamori’s friend Mikimoto. According to Kawamori, the series featured “mecha that were not actually robots.” This was the time, says Sean O’Mara at ZIMMERIT, that Kawamori and his colleague Kazutaka Miyatake came up with the idea of robots with “inverted knees.” Unfortunately their sponsors wanted a robot that stood tall like a human. “Because they aren’t humanoid,” said the sponsors, “they won’t sell!”
Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982)
I’d be breaking ground
Kawamori and company refused to give up. “If they really want humanoid mecha,” they thought, “let’s make them transform, and be the biggest ever!” Forget a robot the size of a car, or a robot the size of a building. How about a robot the size of a city? It wasn’t just a question of scale. Putting a whole city inside of the robot, thought Kawamori and company, would immediately convey to the audience just how huge the robot was. This became the foundation of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross, for which Studio Nue’s 1982 anime series would be named.
Studio Nue were careful to differentiate the Macross from Space Battleship Yamato. The latter starred a giant repurposed naval battleship with a powerful front laser. The Macross by comparison was conceptualized as an aircraft carrier with fighter jets. Once again, though, Studio Nue ran afoul of toy manufacturers. These manufacturers were no fonder of fighter jets or aircraft carriers than they were of robots with inverted knees. Yet Kawamori believed his team’s unusual ideas were a strength rather than a weakness. Who cared if nobody had made a robot series about planes or aircraft carriers before? That just meant it was an untapped market. “If I did it, and it sold, I’d be breaking ground,” he said.
Macross: Do You Remember Love? (1984)
A professional singer’s debut
Kawamori studied how real fighter jets were built. In the process he learned that arms would fit on either side of the F-14’s engine. After drafting sketches and 2D renderings, he built a physical 3D model of what would become the VF-1 Valkyrie. It would have not just two but three forms: a superfast jet, humanoid battle form and in-between “GERWALK mode” that looked like a plane with legs. He brought this model to the head of the company that had rejected them before. Kawamori remembers that the company head “suddenly jumped up, grabbed the model and started manipulating it himself.”
Meanwhile, Mikimoto was hard at work sketching. He drew a picture of a girl wearing a cheongsam dress, singing into a mic at a Yokohama Chinatown restaurant. Studio Nue came up with the idea of making her “a professional singer that has a debut.” She became Lynn Minmay, perhaps the single most important character in the history of Macross. No longer would this just be a series about giant robots and transforming fighter jets. Minmay’s introduction brought love triangles, singing and a real silly streak.
Macross: Do You Remember Love? (1984)
You can’t end the war with a song, dude
Another of Kawamori’s allies was the animator Ichiro Itano. The two of them previously worked on the 1983 anime film Crusher Joe. When Kawamori came up with the idea of shooting off 3,400 fireworks in 20 seconds as animation research, Itano did him one better by setting them off on his motorcycle. (Jonathan Clements previously wrote about Itano’s motorcycle antics at his blog Schoolgirl Milky Crisis.) Kawamori thought, “he gets me.” Later he snuck Itano the design for the Valkyrie. When Itano saw the sketch, he exclaimed “the only action animator who can pull this off is me.”
Some time in the middle of Macross‘s production, Kawamori realized that the story wouldn’t come to a satisfactory end if it continued in the same vein. Earth was set to fight a monstrous battle against their alien foes, the Zentradi. But was that really what the series was about? “What if,” Kawamori asked his mentors, “I ended the war with a song?” To which his mentors allegedly said, “you can’t end the war with a song, dude.” But Kawamori wasn’t sure. The gimmick with the Zentradi was that they lacked any knowledge of culture despite possessing powerful military technology. If anybody could be convinced to put down their guns by a song, it would be them.
Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982)
Love drifts away
“As the original creator, I threw my weight around,” Kawamori said. “I will never turn down a challenge.” The result was “Love Drifts Away,” the climactic 27th episode of the series. It is Macross firing on all cylinders: grand declarations of love, the obliteration of Earth, and (most importantly) the power of pop music and kissing against confused alien invaders. Macross would continue for another 9 episodes, but “Love Drifts Away” is the peak of the series for me.
The Macross television series was followed by the even more popular film version, Do You Remember Love? The film earned Kawamori his first director credit, replacing the original chief director Noburo Ishiguro. Several people in the industry wanted him to do a sequel. But Kawamori didn’t want to do the same thing twice. He wanted his next project to be just as radical as SDF Macross was in its day. Once again, though, producers kept turning down his ideas for being too weird. It would be another decade before Macross returned to television screens.
Macross 7 (1994)
Why did that idiot shoot a missile?
Eventually Kawamori came up with the idea: “what if they fought through song?” At first this appeared to contradict the themes of the original Macross: songs were supposed to solve conflicts, not cause them. But Kawamori found a way to work around the issue. The protagonist of Macross 7 is a rockstar named Basara. He solves conflict with song but does not fight with it. Instead he is a devoted pacifist who sings to protect humanity from alien vampires. Fans complained that Basara was a loser compared to Hikaru, the hero of SDF Macross. After Basara was driven to fire a single missile in the second half of the series, though, those same fans yelled, “why did that idiot shoot a missile?” “We all hi-fived at the studio,” Kawamori said.
Truth be told, Kawamori understood that Macross 7 would be much goofier than fans of the original were used to. As insurance, he came up with an idea for another Macross installment. This one would tell the tale of a race to develop better fighter jets. He brought both concepts to producer Minoru Takahashi. Takahashi said, “if you don’t worry about working on both simultaneously, go ahead.” Kawamori’s young colleague Shinichiro Watanabe was brought in to direct the second project, which became the OVA Macross Plus. Even with Watanabe’s help, shepherding both series at once was exhausting for Kawamori. But “without Takahashi-san,” he says, “there wouldn’t have been any more Macross.”
Macross Plus (1994)
A not recommended maneuver
While working on SDF Macross, Kawamori had rode and piloted small Cessna planes. But he wanted to try a more acrobatic vehicle for Macross Plus. Together with Itano, he traveled to the United States for an acrobatic flight demonstration. Kawamori rode in a plane together with his instructor to do aerial maneuvers. While he sat together with the instructor, Kawamori could manipulate the controls.
“Up until then,” Kawamori thought, “I could understand aerial battles. But actually going through it blew my mind.” He realized that while you could easily see the road in a car, it was tougher to look down or out in a plane. Instead the pilot looked up or behind. It’s for this reason that Macross Plus’s Valkyrie units station guns behind the head to shoot up and behind rather than down. In the meantime, daredevil Itano did a “not recommended” maneuver and blacked out in his plane. Itano translated this experience into a similar scene in Macross Plus.
Another first for Macross Plus was that it represented Kawamori’s first collaboration with the composer Yoko Kanno. At first he was uncertain if Kanno would be interested in a series that asked her to compose “idol music.” Eventually, though, he came to realize that the idea of writing music for “the galaxy’s top singer” appealed to her. Kawamori would later work with Kanno on projects like the cult classic 1996 series Vision of Escaflowne, for which he wrote scripts. Not to mention that Kanno’s collaboration with Plus’s director Watanabe set them on course for their 1998 masterpiece Cowboy Bebop.
Macross 7 (1994)
No one loves anything more than lowering the bottom dollar
From this point forward, Kawamori discussed installments in the Macross series that had not yet been released in the United States. First came Macross Zero, a 5 episode OVA prequel to the original series that was released in 2002. During production Kawamori visited Colossus Studio in the United States. There he observed that they were incorporating more and more CG. Kawamori was surprised, because CG was seen in Japan as being prohibitively expensive. When he asked the folks at Colossus why they were using CG, their answer was simple: that “it was cheap.”
CG had certain advantages over 2D animation. It was particularly good at simulating camera work and camera angles. In 2002, though, the technology was still being developed, even in Hollywood. Macross Zero compromised by utilizing 3D for “fighter mode” but rendering action scenes via hand drawn animation. Kawamori saw this as yet another way to challenge himself and his team. Even so, he figured that CG would catch on because it was “cheap” rather than for the bragging rights. “In a capitalist world,” he said, “no one loves anything more than lowering the bottom dollar.”
Macross Frontier (2008)
No more love triangles!
Macross Zero was followed by the 2007 television series Macross Frontier to celebrate the franchise’s 25th anniversary. As was popular at the time, Frontier shifted the action from a military hangar to an academy set in space. It also featured not just one but two singers, the pop idol Sheryl Nome and the underdog Ranka Lee. Both were embroiled in a love triangle with young pilot Alto Saotome. The soundtrack, which spanned several albums and invented distinct styles for Sheryl and Ranka, was headed by none other than Yoko Kanno herself.
If anything surprised me during the panel, it’s that Shoji Kawamori says that he is now tired of love triangles. Macross Frontier was especially punishing in this respect, stretching the question of who Alto would end up with across an entire television series plus two original movies. When it came time for the most recent Macross series, 2016’s Macross Delta, Kawamori put his foot down: no more love triangles. But the producer disagreed. “You have to put in a love triangle,” he said. So Kawamori and company grudgingly inserted a triangle between the protagonist Hayate, aspiring singer Freyja and pilot Mirage. For the film though, Kawamori said, he chose to focus more on Hayate and Freyja’s relationship.
Macross Delta (2016)
Keep your eyes and ears open
The Macross series progressed from armed conflict (SDF Macross) to dogfighting (Plus), rock bands (Macross 7), school stories (Frontier) and even superpowered idol singers that fought together with the pilots (Delta). Then there was the elephant in the room, the upcoming Macross series in development at the famed studio Sunrise. Could this panel have been the announcement we were all waiting for?
Sadly, Kawamori had little to say about the new production. He did confirm, though, that he was working on it. “Keep your eyes and ears open,” he said. Just the language I’d expect from an artist that’s kept himself open to new ideas throughout his whole career, whether or not anybody else understood.
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