Robotech

Robotech is a 1985 mecha anime, and one of the earliest big import series into the English-speaking world. In fact, it was arguably one of the first anime created for the English-speaking world, since Robotech was created by butchering editing three completely unrelated (but visually similar) short-run sci-fi/mecha animes - Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA - and redubbing them to present them as different sagas in a single ongoing multigenerational combat. Due to being one of the first major anime dubs to be aired on English-speaking TV channels, Robotech can be credited with exposing Western audiences to the (at the time) greater maturity and seriousness of anime compared to comics and cartoons, and thus paving the way for the anime & manga boom.

Plot

Long ago, a race of humanoid aliens (the Tirolians) landed on a planet of bug aliens (the Invid), and learned that a flower native to the Invid's homeworld could be transformed into both a superfuel and a genetic modifying agent. The Tirolians promptly ravaged the planet to claim all of this plant, which the Invid called "the Flower of Life" and the Tirolians called "Protoculture", using it to advance their own culture. Most prominently engineering a race of giant cloned warrior-slaves called the Zentraedi (or Zentradi, however you prefer) to go out and conquer worlds for them. Unfortunately for the Tirolians, the guy who found the Invid's homeworld (Zor) had his own agenda; he only gave them sterile cloned versions of the Flower of Life, and kept the real seeds for himself aboard his personal warship. Eventually, he grew sick of the other Tirolians, by this point now calling themselves "the Robotech Masters", and sent his ship off into deep space, result in both the Tirolians and their Zentraedi forces suffering a critical fuel supply shortage that would ultimately doom both races if not arrested, and resulting in the Zentraedi being sent out to find Zor's battleship... which also gave the Invid, newly transformed into a race of biomechanical killing machines, a chance to launch a devastating war against the Tirolians for the remaining supply of Protoculture.

Nice going, Zor.

Zor's battleship crashlands on a deserted island on Earth in July 1999, interrupting World War 3 and causing humanity to get its shit together to study this new technology and form a united military in case whoever created the ship comes back from it. Reverse-engineering its systems gives them "Robotechnology", which mostly means energy weapons, forcefields, and mecha - the most impressive of which, during the first saga, is the Veritech; a space-capable jet fighter that can transform partially or wholly into a giant humanoid robot. They also repair and rebuild the battleship, finally getting it ready to travel back into space again in February 2009...

Which is when a Zentraedi fleet shows up on Earth and an automated attack from the "SDF-1", as the rebuilt ship is called, blows up some scouting vessels, causing the Zentraedi to discover that it's on Earth.

Nice going, Zor.

Thus begin the Robotech Wars...

The First Robotech War

The SDF-1, due to the ignorance of humanity knowing that you do not try to make a hyperspace dimensional jump in a planet's orbit, attempts to flee the attacking Zentraedi by "folding" to the Moon. Instead, they teleport the SDF-1, the entire city that had sprung up around it, and two aircraft carriers into orbit around Pluto. Luckily, they manage to get the civilians and a plethora of useful materials into the ship, to the point of literally rebuilding the city in its cavernous interior, and weld the ships to the SDF-1's sides for added firepower. The first half of the war consists of the SDF-1 trying to fight its way back to Earth, followed by a devastating battle that ravages the Earth and the Zentraedi alike, resulting in a forced peace due to mutual near-annihilation. Cue a roughly 10-15 year period of rebuilding wherein the majority of Zentraedi fail to adjust to civilian life and retreat to the devastated southern hemisphere to rearm. Humanity decides not to leave things to chance and forms the Army of the Southern Cross to exterminate the Zentraedi, which they do.

The Second Robotech War

Learning about the existence of Protoculture (but not that the Flower of Life is hidden within the wreckage of the SDF-1, because the Zentraedi themselves didn't know this because of certain events in the First Robotech War making them think it had vanished from the battleship), and the Robotech Masters, humanity sends an expeditionary fleet consisting mainly of veterans of the First War(i.e.: The Macross cast) to Tirol to either sue for peace or, failing that, hit the Masters first on their territory... but ironically, the Robotech Masters have already set off for Earth. In fact, the Robotech Masters have had their collective asses kicked by the Invid, and want to seize the universe's last supply of Protoculture from humanity without alerting the Invid as to where it can be found. Instead, they cause a new war with humanity that ultimately ends with the Flower of Life being literally seeded across Earth, which alerts the Invid (currently battling the Earth expeditionary fleet and the remnants of the Tirolians left on Tirol) that they can find Protoculture on Earth.

It bears mentioning that this final disaster was caused by a clone of Zor, the Tirolian who started the Robotech Wars, called Zor Prime. So once again: nice fucking going, Zor!

The Third Robotech War

Invid divisions break away from the Tirolian war and invade Earth, crushing the devastated Earth military and conquering the planet. Soldiers are sent back to Earth from the expeditionary fleet to try and liberate their homeworld from the Invid... twice. Both times end in a devastating defeat for the Robotech Expeditionary Forces and leave the Earth devastated and depopulated. Survivors of the liberation forces go to ground and try to maintain a guerrilla war, eventually finding some success as the Invid become distracted with the possibilities offered by the Flower of Life and human DNA. Eventually, the Invid evolve into energy-based lifeforms that leave the Earth rather than allow it to be destroyed by a vengeful Robotech Expeditionary Force, who have returned with powerful new weapons and are willing to obliterate the Earth than allow it to remain under Invid control.

The Sentinels and the Shadow War

An incomplete, American-original story made to try and milk the franchise in the 90s, redone in the 00s, and revived in the 10s to try and reboot the franchise. When the Expeditionary Force(which included all the Heroes from the First Robotech War) left for the Robotech Masters' Homeworld, they found the remnants of their Empire under siege by the Invid. While fighting them off, they also met the Sentinels, a group of freedom fighters from alien races that had been conquered by the Robotech Masters, then the Invid in turn. Bascially, the reason the Expeditionary Force didn't immediately turn right back around to return to Earth the second they found out the Masters had left was because they were stuck fighting both the Invid as well as some evil assholes in their own ranks.

As the Third Robotech War came to a close, however, the Haydonites betrayed the Expeditionary Force. The weapons they provided the EEF, the Synchro Cannons and Neutron-S missiles, turned out to be traps(basically, the Neutron-S missiles would've sucked Earth into a black hole had the Invid Regess not destroyed them on her way out).

Races

Humans: Good old humanity. Notable in this series as being the only species that still has a culture outside of warfare, although ironically they become increasingly militarized and aggressive as alien races keep kicking the shit out of them. Weirdly, human DNA is remarkably similar to that of both the Zentraedi and their Tirolian makers; in the base material, this is because they were all different branches of a long-shattered precursor race, the "Protoculture", but in Robotech canon this is chalked up as just an incredibly unlikely but ultimately happened chance.

Zentraedi: Giant humanoids engineere by the Tirolians - originally as super-sized laborers, then repurposed as warriors. Are strictly segregated into one-gender ships, reproduce by cloning, and have no culture outside of warfare and military functions. This is one of the Tirolian control methods to keep them in line. The other is strictly modulating just how well they understand the technology they rely upon - Zentraedi can use robotechnology, but they can't fix it. They depend entirely on the Tirolians to repair, restore and replace anything that can't be crudely patched up. Humanity's ability to build and create fascinates them, even if they do initially fail to realize that a lot of the shit humanity is doing aboard the SDF-1 is wild guesswork and a lot of dumb luck. Humans ultimately manage to subvert many Zentraedi to their cause by showing them the existence of a world outside of fighting, although in the long years of peace after the First Robotech War, many of those converts ultimately fail to handle peace and go back to fighting.

Tirolians: Master scientists who live in a culture where everyone is part of a triad, and/or a biomechanical entity. The pioneers of Robotechnology.

Invid: Hive-minded alien bugs that could consciously mutate themselves by consuming the Flower of Life. Initially believed extinct when the Tirolians took all the Flowers of Life, they survived, mutated into combat forms, then came after them for revenge. Then came to Earth when the Flowers of Life bloomed again. Ultimately, they evolve into energy beings and fuck off into deepest space.

Sentinels species':

Kabarrans: Big Bear-people.

Praxians: Amazons who reproduced through cloning via otherwise-lost technology.

Garudans: Fox-people from a world with an atmosphere basically laced with LSD and Magic Mushroom spores, leaving the population in a constant state of psychoactive awareness. In order to live off-world, Garudans have to wear rebreathers that mico-dose them with tiny puffs of their atmosphere.

Haydonites: A mysterious race of robots.

Sepheians: Crystal-rock people

Perytonians: Horned coneheads who seem to practice honest-to-Gygax magic. Their world suffers from a cursed never-ending battle from ancient times that rages randomly across the planet. Anyone who gets caught in the conflict and dies is doomed to join it.

Mechs

As mentioned, Robotech is one of the oldest mecha series to make it to Western shores. If you swing over by the Battletech page, you'll discover that some of their earliest mechs were taken from Macross. See the "Unseen" for more on that.

Veritechs: The most iconic human mecha, Veritechs are transforming mecha, able to switch from the form of a space-capable fighter jet to a humanoid fighting machine. They can also adopt an intermediate form, which basically adds the arms and legs to the jet, which is supposedly more maneuverable and quicker than the humanoid form, but has the advantage of letting the jet use arms, which is more useful than you might think. There are many different models and makes of Veritechs across the three Robotech Wars.

Destroids: A wide category of non-transforming humanoid mecha, mostly used as tank-equivalents, since they aren't as quick or mobile as Veritechs. They have a reputation as cannon fodder, since they featured most heavily in the First Robotech War, where land-based suits were hardly of much use in the vacuum of space.

Battloids: The Army of the Southern Cross prefers to use lighter non-transforming mecha to supplement their Veritech forces. Not as heavily armed or armored as the Destroids, but faster and more agile.

Veritech Hover Tanks: A spin-off to the Veritech program, this time with a base form of an anti-gravity tank instead of a space jet.

Cyclone: Another Veritech spin-off, a motorcycle that can shift into a jet-propelled exoskeleton around its rider.

Battlepods: The Zentraedi's main mech is basically a glorified cockpit with armor and guns mounted on two spindly legs. They also wear a wide variety of Power Armor, which practically counts as mechas since Zentraedi are about 20 feet tall.

Bioroids: Heavily armored flight-capable non-transforming humanoid mecha used by the Robotech Masters, whose partially psionic control-method makes them overlap with oversized Power Armor.

Invid Mecha: The nameless array of flight-capable mecha used by the Invid in battle. Design aesthetics means these mechs have a strangely organic look, almost like giant biomechanical insects or crabs rather than machines.

Reception

You have to remember, Robotech was one of the biggest anime of the mid-80s... but it's also so edited, even beyond the whole "weld three unrelated series together by redubbing them" thing and the addition of a constantly intervening narrator, that a lot of anime purists revile it. At the same time, this was the first mainstream encounter with "cartoons" that had serious storylines and genuine depth; this was one of the first times that 80s kids saw main characters die. No beating around the bush, either, characters were legitimately killed off! Because of this, there's also a very loyal fandom for the series as well.

The novelizations, however, are skub in printed form, being pretty much hated by almost every fan, save for a small crowd of diehards, and have been ignored by all other delves into the series.

So why does the anime fanbase hate it so much now? Well, consider Battletech. Particularly the whole "Unseen" debacle. Well, Harmony Gold has been like that with the entire Macross franchise, which as noted below, has gone well beyond the original series in the years since. Harmony Gold's litigious nature has for a very long time been one of the factors(but not the only one) in keeping much of the Macross series stuck in Japan.

/tg/ Relevance

One of the first big successes for Palladium was licensing the official Robotech RPG - remember, this series was fucking huge in the late 80s. Palladium then tried to create a squad-based tactical miniatures game called Robotech RPG Tactics... which was a steaming pile of crap, even by Palladium standards. The Battletech community appreciated the models, though.

A new mainline Robotech RPG was released in 2019 by Battlefield Press and an even newer one in 2020 by strange machine games.

Robotech also was one of the inspirations for the RPG Battle Century G by GimmickMan, particularly in a number of powers ones mech can have such as missile barrage and transformations.

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Macross

No discussion of Robotech can be had without a discussion of Macross. This mecha franchise began with Super Dimension Fortress Macross and continued with several sequels, prequels, and spin-offs for another 35 years, often drawing on and combining the aspects of music, mecha, and civilization in different ways. However, unlike SDF Macross (and SDC Southern Cross), almost none of the later works have been exported to the West. The problem lies in the snarl of contracts, trademarks, and copyright conflicts surrounding the original production and the subsequent licensing of the first series to Harmony Gold, creators of Robotech. Suffice to say, fans of Macross are still bitter that Harmony Gold owns all the trademarks in the US and Europe but none of the rights, and always tries to get its cut, although a quick google search leads you to the fact Harmony Gold only owns the shit for the original Macross. But ever since Harmony Gold and Big West FINALLY settled their decades long dispute, the back and forth between the separated fandom has long since past...OR HAS IT?

So for a quick rundown of how that series went:

Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Robotech's "First Generation" is actually a fairly faithful translation as far as 80's anime goes. This makes sense, as Robotech would've only been a translation of Macross had US Syndication practices at the time not mandated 60+ episodes. There are of course the then-customary name changes, but the most important changes are:

[*]The Zentraedi were fighting a force called the Supervision Army. In fact, the Macross was one of the SA's gunships [*]The term "Protoculture" referred to the original civilization that created the Zentraedi. [*]Dolza's massive fleet was not the Zentraedi's main force.

Macross: Do you Remember Love?: A movie retelling of the story. Despite significant changes in story, character, and mecha designs, it has proven to be as well-loved and influential as the original TV series, arguably moreso. This is partially due to the animation direction of one Ichiro Itani, who began his now famous style of intense close-range aerial dogfights and fighters firing assloads of missiles with twisting contrails(The infamous "Macross Missile Massacre") here.

Macross II: The first attempt to follow up on Macross' success. A three-part OVA(Basically Direct to Video, but with anime OVAs are usually the good stuff as opposed to, say, Disney's junk sequels) made as a 10-year anniversary celebration of the series. Unfortunately, it was mostly average. Essentially, the Zentraedi's creators, here called the Marduk, attack Earth. Even more unfortunately (but fortunately for us), Macross' creators Studio Nue were not involved in its creation, and as soon as they got their hands on the series again, this was tossed away into its own alternate continuity...

Macross Plus: ...And this is what they made instead. Also a three-part OVA that was later compiled into a movie. The U.N. Spacy is holding tests for their next-generation Valkyrie(Veritech) on the planet Eden, and the pilots for the two potential models just happen to be a pair of local boys who are old childhood friends... who had a falling out over the same girl... who also happens to be returning to Eden as the manager for an AI singer. Oh, and Ichiro Itano is back on animation, so you know this is gonna end in missiles.

Macross Plus is considered one of the masterpieces of the series, and also just happens to be the Directorial debut of Shinichiro Watanabe and the Compositional debut of Yoko Kanno. And if you're wondering why that's important, I have two words for you: Cowboy Bebop.

At this point, we'd like to note that unlike the rest of the series, Macross II and Macross Plus actually did get official releases outside of Japan(also a possibly unofficial release of DYRL). Harmony Gold was reeling after Haim Saban(the guy who brought us Power Rangers) snatched up a lot of their talent, and somebody figured they'd get something out while the getting was good. Plus' release was actually pretty good, even setting aside the fact that they got Bryan Cranston(yes, THAT Bryan Cranston) to voice the protagonist. Except for the 4th episode of the International release, where they had to re-dub it, and settled for David Hayter(again, yes THAT David Hayter).

Macross 7: No, we didn't skip anything. You'll note that Macross Plus took place on another planet, right? Well, after the devastation of Earth, Humanity decided that keeping all your population on one planet was a bad idea(Also, Dozla's fleet in Macross was just one of many). So after a few rounds of cloning(and a little interbreeding with Zentraedi), they sent out several colony fleets to find new worlds to settle. This is the story of the 7th Colony Fleet, and them running into the guys who originally built the Macross. A full TV series, 7 isn't as well received due to elements many people saw as being kind of silly at the time(the protagonist is a musician with his own Valkryie that he controls with his guitar, for example).

Macross Zero: A prequel OVA taking place in the tail end of the Unification War that erupted on Earth after the Macross crashed on Earth. An alien artifact is found on a south pacific island, and both the UN and the Anti-Unification forces want to uncover its secrets.

Macross Frontier: The third full TV series. This involves the Frontier colony fleet, and their encounters with giant space bugs called the Vajra. Made for the 25th anniversary of the series(with plot and references to previous entries galore), it hits a better balance of Real Robot action and the more fantastical elements than 7 did, and is another contender for best entry in the series.

Macross Delta: The fourth, and so far most recent, TV series. Set eight years after Frontier, the story concerns a disease where abnormal fold waves are causing uncontrollable aggression in people, and the singing group with the power to counter those waves and cure it. There is also tensions with the alien world of Windmere, who has not-unjustified beef with the New UN Spacy.