I Do Remember (Streaming) Love
Feb. 20th, 2024 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerCertain notices there’d just happen to be a one-time and altogether unofficial streaming screening of “the Macross movie” Do You Remember Love? managed to reach my eyes. In the midst of another “quarter,” working my way through multiple anime series according to a self-imposed weekly schedule (although I did manage to watch a few movies in the first weeks of this year before my schedule filled in altogether), and last having seen Do You Remember Love almost five years ago, as a somewhat impulsive addition to returning to the original Macross anime and a great number of other titles I could link to it in tenuous ways, the thought of just happening to drop in on the stream grew on me. One comment that showed up early on was that the movie would be streamed with its old English dub of uncertain provenance, linked with the more peculiar name “Clash of the Bionoids.” Having dared just short clips of that dub before might only have been an odd encouragement this time, although there was a thought or two about “leaving early” should the late night get to me. For that matter, I was uncertain about promises of a double bill that didn’t name the second title.
As it turned out, once I’d started watching the movie I stuck with it. I at least wondered about that comment I’m forever tossing off that I “switch to the dub track” only in the most exceptional and well-recommended of circumstances not because I dislike dubs the way a great many other fans seemed to back when I was getting into anime, but because of the affected concern that too much exposure might somehow have a negative effect. As I supposed that hadn’t happened for me regardless of a certain sense of British-accented cheesiness, I also considered how I just might have bumped over the years into a rare handful of disparaging comments about the movie. My first inkling that Robotech hadn’t been just an atypical cartoon somehow made in that indistinct yet domestic place where all the other typical cartoons were made had come from the first volume of the Robotech RPG, which had made certain comments about “the Japanese version of the series” almost as if it had expected everyone to know that secret already and, at the end of about a page and a half of “Japanimation side notes,” proclaimed “the Macross movie” to be “gorgeous” but “produced by a group of Japanese businessmen” such that it “recounts a twisted version of the original T.V. show.” When I signed up for “the Robotech Mailing List” as soon as I had email access, the hard core of technical-minded fans there could disparage the movie I still hadn’t seen as “sentimental” to some almost unwatchable extreme. Years after that, when I had managed to see it, I did interact with one fan who’d started watching a late cable rebroadcast of Robotech on a lark only to wind up almost solely interested in those giant adversaries the Zentraedi, and disliked how they’d been caught up in the general redesign work of the movie to look rather more monstrous or at least hairless. While I suppose I have my own quibbles over the new designs, things like “the way the pilot jumpsuits fit around the hips and the big squadron roundels on their chests seem to try a bit too hard” aren’t so much of a sticking point for me.
I did keep the commentary sidebar visible, which I don’t often do. All in all it did add a bit to the experience too. On discovering the second feature was a Japanese TV special from back when Do You Remember Love premiered four decades ago, I stayed up even later to see it as well, even if the behind-the-scenes glimpse could look somehow a bit mundane following the way the commentary had been enthusing about the production. Whether staying up later kept me from getting these thoughts together right away the day after is a small question.
As it turned out, once I’d started watching the movie I stuck with it. I at least wondered about that comment I’m forever tossing off that I “switch to the dub track” only in the most exceptional and well-recommended of circumstances not because I dislike dubs the way a great many other fans seemed to back when I was getting into anime, but because of the affected concern that too much exposure might somehow have a negative effect. As I supposed that hadn’t happened for me regardless of a certain sense of British-accented cheesiness, I also considered how I just might have bumped over the years into a rare handful of disparaging comments about the movie. My first inkling that Robotech hadn’t been just an atypical cartoon somehow made in that indistinct yet domestic place where all the other typical cartoons were made had come from the first volume of the Robotech RPG, which had made certain comments about “the Japanese version of the series” almost as if it had expected everyone to know that secret already and, at the end of about a page and a half of “Japanimation side notes,” proclaimed “the Macross movie” to be “gorgeous” but “produced by a group of Japanese businessmen” such that it “recounts a twisted version of the original T.V. show.” When I signed up for “the Robotech Mailing List” as soon as I had email access, the hard core of technical-minded fans there could disparage the movie I still hadn’t seen as “sentimental” to some almost unwatchable extreme. Years after that, when I had managed to see it, I did interact with one fan who’d started watching a late cable rebroadcast of Robotech on a lark only to wind up almost solely interested in those giant adversaries the Zentraedi, and disliked how they’d been caught up in the general redesign work of the movie to look rather more monstrous or at least hairless. While I suppose I have my own quibbles over the new designs, things like “the way the pilot jumpsuits fit around the hips and the big squadron roundels on their chests seem to try a bit too hard” aren’t so much of a sticking point for me.
I did keep the commentary sidebar visible, which I don’t often do. All in all it did add a bit to the experience too. On discovering the second feature was a Japanese TV special from back when Do You Remember Love premiered four decades ago, I stayed up even later to see it as well, even if the behind-the-scenes glimpse could look somehow a bit mundane following the way the commentary had been enthusing about the production. Whether staying up later kept me from getting these thoughts together right away the day after is a small question.