It's Been Long Enough: Macross Zero
Dec. 21st, 2025 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerRevisiting at last both an anime movie and an OVA series I’d first seen back in university addressed just the beginning of my “it’s been long enough” thoughts. The next title that had caught in my mind would give me a chance to reflect on those first, different years after university. However, I have to admit to thoughts of diminishing returns. I’d hoped I’d be better able now to understand what Patlabor 2: The Movie offered, and perhaps I did. Going into Bubblegum Crisis I’d wondered in an amused way about the varied constraints on what could be made commercially available at the dawning of “the anime market in (North) America” and how that would have changed formative experiences for less-connected fans; going out of it, though, I was a bit conscious of certain simplicities in that OVA’s core stories I didn’t find all that interesting. For the next title in my mind, I was thinking most of all of how Macross Zero seemed more a simple matter of that old insistence, or assumption, that once a title you’d seen “fansubbed” had been licensed, you were obligated to buy the legitimate release, just perhaps regardless of your previous reactions...
As I began to sort out some things about anime with actual exposure to it, I became aware there was a shadow world still beyond my reach at that moment, filled with titles you couldn’t buy translated but could see with the aid of fan-made subtitles. Maybe that echoes the years when Robotech for me had been reduced to prose adaptations and some drawings in an RPG volume, but I’ll admit to wondering just how you were supposed to step into those wider waters. It seemed a matter of knowing the right people, and that in turn seemed a challenge for me. I suppose I also have to admit the closest I did come to the mythic days of “fansubs on tape” was out-and-out video piracy. One person lamented on a Robotech mailing list that he didn’t have a copy of a particular fanfic, just perhaps one he’d written himself. I happened to have saved it. In thanking me he offered to “help me get something,” but instead of thinking of Macross: Do You Remember Love? or something similar I just asked for a selection of Robotech episodes crammed at worst quality onto a videotape.
Towards the end of my years at university, though, a certain number of changes combined in a particular way. It was becoming easier to play long videos on computers, at larger than postage-stamp size now, and while it still wasn’t easy to download those videos more acknowledged anime fans were showing up around me outside of the anime club (which, from the start, had made a certain point that it wouldn’t be involved in the distribution of illegal videos even if later on it was clear it could now show fan-translated titles without complications springing from the use of university equipment...) Before leaving university I’d managed to see two feature-length anime movies with fan translations encoded into video files that had shown up on recordable CDs, even if Escaflowne: The Movie had seemed almost ridiculously “edgy” compared to the appealing TV series and The End of Evangelion had just felt depressing.
What might have mattered even more than anime in getting me to sort through how to download long videos via dodgy means was Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes starting to show up online. I did poke further into the pre-BitTorrent sharing system that fan collective used for a while and noted anime videos were also available. I didn’t glut myself with those computer-screened videos in the days when anime DVDs were comparatively expensive compared to what I was making, even if I can’t claim the uprightness of renouncing them. This had something to do with not being quite plugged in enough to pick up on “the latest and greatest” as it showed up every three months in time to follow it week-by-week, and something to do with feeling intimidated having to decide which of multiple fansub groups offered “the best translation” and wouldn’t trail off partway through a series. However, when it came to a new Macross OVA, I was readier to step into murky waters.
By that point a general assumption was at least building that we were being denied legitimate Macross releases through the looming interference of Harmony Gold, regardless of linked insistences that that company wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on if someone with resources to deploy really professional lawyers would only get involved. For all of that, I did once notice a Macross Zero feature in “Newtype USA.” Years later, I saw someone claiming and complaining that ADV Films, linked with that magazine, had been negotiating with Big West in Japan to license the OVA. Unfortunately, so the complaint continued, ADV had then contacted Harmony Gold as well just to make sure there’d be no trouble, and on learning of that Big West had cut off all negotiations. The complaint had closed with the familiar blaming of Harmony Gold, but I have to admit to thinking “couldn’t what you said be interpreted to make Big West the intransigent party?”
That had shown up years after I’d got to the end of the Macross Zero fansubs, anyway, and the next thing I have to admit is reacting to the very end of the series and the resolution of the final fix the protagonist had been thrown into with “...Okay?” That reaction was still in mind as the legal logjam cleared at last and all of a sudden and the later Macross titles began lining up to be released. Macross Plus and Macross Zero had gone to the same company, but the Macross Plus set had been far more expensive, expensive enough to fall into that personal void burned out by take-them-or-leave-them “quasi-imports” from other companies. Ordering Macross Zero (and Macross II) “instead,” as other first plans to release the longer later television series fell through as a result of Right Stuf and its production arm being bought up, left me with a distinct sense of “being stuck with what everyone else supposes are the dregs.” A while after that the Macross Plus set did receive a one-day discount at “the Crunchyroll Store,” just about the sole place it could be bought; however, along with complaints from others that the discount was unimpressive it happened just before I left on vacation this summer, and I didn’t make the purchase, not wanting it to arrive while I was away.
Still, while I might not have been thinking very much of “the potentials of a second chance,” I’d reached the resolve to open my set and return to Macross Zero. After starting the first episode I did wonder if I’d actually watched it more than once years ago. It seemed a decent enough introduction by itself to the science fiction opening of the original series, mentioning how an alien starship had crashed on Earth (even if it mentioned how that ship, before it became “the SDF-1 Macross,” had been given a different name that became just a little embarrassing to a native English speaker when abbreviated...) I reflected on how Robotech had said a world war had ended after the ship’s crash while Macross had said that following the crash a war had been fought to unify the world, although it might be just a little harder to pontificate about Robotech making deliberate changes to raise less controversy in a particular market given “the Macross dub” that had preceded Robotech had also made the change. I also remembered how assorted Robotech spinoffs in comics and prose had put Roy Fokker, the mentor flying ace of the series, into assorted adventures before the main action had begun. Roy showed up in Macross Zero (with the ruder original spelling of his last name), but the OVA had its own main characters.
I did have to admit, though, to thoughts that the character designs of this OVA lacked some small measure of appeal. In recent years I have been ready to proclaim anime from “around the turn of the millennium” “doesn’t look as good now as it might have back then, especially compared to what had just preceded it”; Macross Zero’s backgrounds are lusher than some, anyway. The mechanical animation shifting to computer animation might not have been bad in itself, but bringing in a never-before-seen prototype “variable fighter” to acknowledge changes in actual fighter design since the VF-1 Valkyrie was drawn might amount to another slight dimunition of appeal. I did wonder a bit about the mecha not getting to “stand around” once transformed to robot mode the way the Valkyrie did in the original series. So far as memories went, anyway, seeing official subtitles for the closing song of the first episode raised amused thoughts that the people who’d made the fansub I remembered must have supposed that since they could recognize some French in the lyrics, everything must have been in French, which had led to pretty much making some things up...
As the MacGuffin of the OVA driving the battles and other character interactions pushes everything in more mystical directions, away from the original series and towards the other later works of the franchise, I did remember how I’d got to thinking of the Robotech novels, which had striven to explain away potential complaints about the entire middle section of the composite story with claims the main character had psychic powers a mad scientist (unseen in the animation) had been scheming to appropriate only for that plan to blow up in his face. Stretching the comparison a little further, I’d also pondered how the protagonist came to really embrace the transformability of his new fighter and compared that to how in the novels you absolutely had to have your helmet on to have your visualization of each transformation read by a brain scanner. In the OVA, of course, as with other instalments of Macross, pilots are shown every so often not needing to wear helmets to pilot their mecha in any mode. In any case I’d noted certain “your side’s committed all the sins you accuse us of!” counterblasts from the antagonists and started to wonder about this Macross instalment taking on the grim tone of a good number of Gundam series, and it just so happened that Macross Zero had been made about the same time as Gundam Seed, which I’ve sometimes doubled down on my doubtless easily attackable positive feelings toward by supposing it contained a bit of “Macrossian optimism” (along with a female singer).
After watching through four episodes I entered the final one very conscious of my deflated reaction the first time around. It did seem to start by telling us after the fact just how the final battle would be set up, but I was struck a bit later by the antagonists, who’d kept vanquishing the protagonists in battle, being brought down at last through not relinquishing their bloodlust at the right moment. This also amounted to an unlikely figure triumphing in the fight. Then, at the end of everything, having encountered the conclusion already did seem to leave me accepting it a bit more now. It might helped, too, to have seen a bit of Macross Frontier compared to it (and not the episode where its characters get involved in making a movie “adapting the true story.”) I counted that a bonus and kept thinking about the further titles I hoped to get back to at last. As well, it turned out the Macross Plus set had been discounted again for the Crunchyroll Store’s holiday sales. While people continued to complain about an inadequate discount, I gathered my resolve and put in an order. Then, the set received a steeper one-day discount a few days later, now breaking through a certain psychological price barrier. I winced, but as another part of my order had delayed it from being shipped, I took a chance on sending off a customer-service request to cancel the set from the order even as I tried ordering it again by itself at the new price. Customer service responded sooner than I’d expected, and I think the price difference was refunded to my credit card; for all that people complained about the bulk of the set as well, it did seem more impressive to me on arrival than other “quasi-imports” I’ve seen pictures of.
As I began to sort out some things about anime with actual exposure to it, I became aware there was a shadow world still beyond my reach at that moment, filled with titles you couldn’t buy translated but could see with the aid of fan-made subtitles. Maybe that echoes the years when Robotech for me had been reduced to prose adaptations and some drawings in an RPG volume, but I’ll admit to wondering just how you were supposed to step into those wider waters. It seemed a matter of knowing the right people, and that in turn seemed a challenge for me. I suppose I also have to admit the closest I did come to the mythic days of “fansubs on tape” was out-and-out video piracy. One person lamented on a Robotech mailing list that he didn’t have a copy of a particular fanfic, just perhaps one he’d written himself. I happened to have saved it. In thanking me he offered to “help me get something,” but instead of thinking of Macross: Do You Remember Love? or something similar I just asked for a selection of Robotech episodes crammed at worst quality onto a videotape.
Towards the end of my years at university, though, a certain number of changes combined in a particular way. It was becoming easier to play long videos on computers, at larger than postage-stamp size now, and while it still wasn’t easy to download those videos more acknowledged anime fans were showing up around me outside of the anime club (which, from the start, had made a certain point that it wouldn’t be involved in the distribution of illegal videos even if later on it was clear it could now show fan-translated titles without complications springing from the use of university equipment...) Before leaving university I’d managed to see two feature-length anime movies with fan translations encoded into video files that had shown up on recordable CDs, even if Escaflowne: The Movie had seemed almost ridiculously “edgy” compared to the appealing TV series and The End of Evangelion had just felt depressing.
What might have mattered even more than anime in getting me to sort through how to download long videos via dodgy means was Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes starting to show up online. I did poke further into the pre-BitTorrent sharing system that fan collective used for a while and noted anime videos were also available. I didn’t glut myself with those computer-screened videos in the days when anime DVDs were comparatively expensive compared to what I was making, even if I can’t claim the uprightness of renouncing them. This had something to do with not being quite plugged in enough to pick up on “the latest and greatest” as it showed up every three months in time to follow it week-by-week, and something to do with feeling intimidated having to decide which of multiple fansub groups offered “the best translation” and wouldn’t trail off partway through a series. However, when it came to a new Macross OVA, I was readier to step into murky waters.
By that point a general assumption was at least building that we were being denied legitimate Macross releases through the looming interference of Harmony Gold, regardless of linked insistences that that company wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on if someone with resources to deploy really professional lawyers would only get involved. For all of that, I did once notice a Macross Zero feature in “Newtype USA.” Years later, I saw someone claiming and complaining that ADV Films, linked with that magazine, had been negotiating with Big West in Japan to license the OVA. Unfortunately, so the complaint continued, ADV had then contacted Harmony Gold as well just to make sure there’d be no trouble, and on learning of that Big West had cut off all negotiations. The complaint had closed with the familiar blaming of Harmony Gold, but I have to admit to thinking “couldn’t what you said be interpreted to make Big West the intransigent party?”
That had shown up years after I’d got to the end of the Macross Zero fansubs, anyway, and the next thing I have to admit is reacting to the very end of the series and the resolution of the final fix the protagonist had been thrown into with “...Okay?” That reaction was still in mind as the legal logjam cleared at last and all of a sudden and the later Macross titles began lining up to be released. Macross Plus and Macross Zero had gone to the same company, but the Macross Plus set had been far more expensive, expensive enough to fall into that personal void burned out by take-them-or-leave-them “quasi-imports” from other companies. Ordering Macross Zero (and Macross II) “instead,” as other first plans to release the longer later television series fell through as a result of Right Stuf and its production arm being bought up, left me with a distinct sense of “being stuck with what everyone else supposes are the dregs.” A while after that the Macross Plus set did receive a one-day discount at “the Crunchyroll Store,” just about the sole place it could be bought; however, along with complaints from others that the discount was unimpressive it happened just before I left on vacation this summer, and I didn’t make the purchase, not wanting it to arrive while I was away.
Still, while I might not have been thinking very much of “the potentials of a second chance,” I’d reached the resolve to open my set and return to Macross Zero. After starting the first episode I did wonder if I’d actually watched it more than once years ago. It seemed a decent enough introduction by itself to the science fiction opening of the original series, mentioning how an alien starship had crashed on Earth (even if it mentioned how that ship, before it became “the SDF-1 Macross,” had been given a different name that became just a little embarrassing to a native English speaker when abbreviated...) I reflected on how Robotech had said a world war had ended after the ship’s crash while Macross had said that following the crash a war had been fought to unify the world, although it might be just a little harder to pontificate about Robotech making deliberate changes to raise less controversy in a particular market given “the Macross dub” that had preceded Robotech had also made the change. I also remembered how assorted Robotech spinoffs in comics and prose had put Roy Fokker, the mentor flying ace of the series, into assorted adventures before the main action had begun. Roy showed up in Macross Zero (with the ruder original spelling of his last name), but the OVA had its own main characters.
I did have to admit, though, to thoughts that the character designs of this OVA lacked some small measure of appeal. In recent years I have been ready to proclaim anime from “around the turn of the millennium” “doesn’t look as good now as it might have back then, especially compared to what had just preceded it”; Macross Zero’s backgrounds are lusher than some, anyway. The mechanical animation shifting to computer animation might not have been bad in itself, but bringing in a never-before-seen prototype “variable fighter” to acknowledge changes in actual fighter design since the VF-1 Valkyrie was drawn might amount to another slight dimunition of appeal. I did wonder a bit about the mecha not getting to “stand around” once transformed to robot mode the way the Valkyrie did in the original series. So far as memories went, anyway, seeing official subtitles for the closing song of the first episode raised amused thoughts that the people who’d made the fansub I remembered must have supposed that since they could recognize some French in the lyrics, everything must have been in French, which had led to pretty much making some things up...
As the MacGuffin of the OVA driving the battles and other character interactions pushes everything in more mystical directions, away from the original series and towards the other later works of the franchise, I did remember how I’d got to thinking of the Robotech novels, which had striven to explain away potential complaints about the entire middle section of the composite story with claims the main character had psychic powers a mad scientist (unseen in the animation) had been scheming to appropriate only for that plan to blow up in his face. Stretching the comparison a little further, I’d also pondered how the protagonist came to really embrace the transformability of his new fighter and compared that to how in the novels you absolutely had to have your helmet on to have your visualization of each transformation read by a brain scanner. In the OVA, of course, as with other instalments of Macross, pilots are shown every so often not needing to wear helmets to pilot their mecha in any mode. In any case I’d noted certain “your side’s committed all the sins you accuse us of!” counterblasts from the antagonists and started to wonder about this Macross instalment taking on the grim tone of a good number of Gundam series, and it just so happened that Macross Zero had been made about the same time as Gundam Seed, which I’ve sometimes doubled down on my doubtless easily attackable positive feelings toward by supposing it contained a bit of “Macrossian optimism” (along with a female singer).
After watching through four episodes I entered the final one very conscious of my deflated reaction the first time around. It did seem to start by telling us after the fact just how the final battle would be set up, but I was struck a bit later by the antagonists, who’d kept vanquishing the protagonists in battle, being brought down at last through not relinquishing their bloodlust at the right moment. This also amounted to an unlikely figure triumphing in the fight. Then, at the end of everything, having encountered the conclusion already did seem to leave me accepting it a bit more now. It might helped, too, to have seen a bit of Macross Frontier compared to it (and not the episode where its characters get involved in making a movie “adapting the true story.”) I counted that a bonus and kept thinking about the further titles I hoped to get back to at last. As well, it turned out the Macross Plus set had been discounted again for the Crunchyroll Store’s holiday sales. While people continued to complain about an inadequate discount, I gathered my resolve and put in an order. Then, the set received a steeper one-day discount a few days later, now breaking through a certain psychological price barrier. I winced, but as another part of my order had delayed it from being shipped, I took a chance on sending off a customer-service request to cancel the set from the order even as I tried ordering it again by itself at the new price. Customer service responded sooner than I’d expected, and I think the price difference was refunded to my credit card; for all that people complained about the bulk of the set as well, it did seem more impressive to me on arrival than other “quasi-imports” I’ve seen pictures of.