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Robotech Remembrances: Southern Cross
I resolved that in 2009, I would take the time I put towards rewatching anime series (always in part to reassure myself I'm not so completely mastered by the large quantity of DVDs I buy that I never get back to anything, thus defeating a purpose of buying rather than at least trying to rent them) and return to the series put together to make Robotech. After viewing Macross at the beginning of the year, deciding to rewatch the Megazone 23 OVAs (which have a more or less tangential connection to Robotech as most know it) seemed to open up a fair-sized pause in my project. Now, though, I've once again seen the anime series put in the middle of Robotech, but also the one most dismissed in a breath both inside and outside that composite series, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross... and yet, both even before starting into that specific anime again and in the process of watching it, I kept thinking that I'm at least interested in Southern Cross "more than I'm supposed to," and at times contrasting that to other mecha anime series from the early 1980s that receive wide praise but, when I have seen them, I've wound up thinking "I'm supposed to like them more..." Maybe it's just a case of "sympathy for a frequent target" carried to bizarre lengths, as opposed to heaps of praise making me elevate my standards in some subconscious way until nothing can meet them. In any case, I can identify "flaws" in Southern Cross, and yet in acknowledging them they don't seem to bother me as much any more; they're just something to be thought about.
It does seem often said that Southern Cross was cancelled early when it aired in Japan, either forcing a hurried conclusion or just plain leaving out a reconfigured continuation, and in any case bringing to a stop three series in the same time slot with "Super Dimension" in their titles. In Robotech Art 3, Carl Macek boasted about having managed to improve it in the process of including it in Robotech. However, in an "official PDF version" of the first issues of Protoculture Addicts I once bought, there's an interview with "Jack McKinney" (still claimed to be a single author) where it's declared that additions of the novels to the "second generation" fixed the problems this time... I've still run across comments that "even the novels couldn't help" "Robotech: Masters." (I have to admit that to me, working in new scenes where a "mad scientist" suppresses knowledge and encourages apocalypse so as to evoke mysterious psychic powers in Dana Sterling, whereupon his scheme blows up in his face and the "powers" that were the presumable point of it all aren't much mentioned afterwards, seems "a solution worse than the problem.") As far as the plot goes, though, I've thought that other mecha anime series from the early 1980s that I've seen take their own deliberate time to develop beyond the setup of their first episodes, and they run longer than Southern Cross. To be sure, one thought I started having this time was that as the war escalates around the midpoint of the series, the "central characters" are safely behind the front lines. I can imagine interpreting this as an attempt to comment on "what'll really end the war"; I can also imagine it being dismissed as "just not exciting."
In any case, the characters in Southern Cross take a lot of lumps. One thing about the anime that's struck me as somewhere between "peculiar" and "problematic" is that it seems to use its opening and closing sequences to present three female soldiers as significant characters, and yet those three are the only female soldiers we ever see in the series itself. A crucial problem to many seems to be Robotech: Masters calling the main character of those three "Dana Sterling," her impulsiveness and flighty nature apparently making her unworthy of being the daughter of the "cool" characters Max and Miriya. In Southern Cross, "Jeanne Francaix" may not be weighted by her family name, but if anything she might start out even more shallow... all I really seem able to say is that I seem to have an exceptional tolerance for that sort of thing, based if on anything on the general feeling that it's not really worth getting worked up over a fictional character or story. Not that long ago, I saw a "Buried Treasure" column on the Anime News Network site that looked at Southern Cross and made the suggestion that the series could be seen as a sort of "mecha comedy," and while that intrigued me in part because I hadn't really thought about it before, it still seems to be just a part of the story to me.
I'm also sort of interested in two other "character reconfigurations" between Southern Cross and Robotech: Masters. Robotech turns "Seifreit Weisse," a human captured by "the Zor" and burdened by having been brainwashed into fighting his own people, into "Zor Prime." I've imagined that this idea might have been eased along by the character having long, curly violet hair (although there's a nameless human character in one scene with a somewhat similar hairstyle), but I have also noticed he's not pallid like all the other characters identified as "aliens." As well, all his flashbacks to unfortunate events in his past put him in human uniforms... In Southern Cross, the character who became related to someone from the Macross Saga as "Bowie Grant" was in fact "Bowie Emerson," apparently the genuine son of the doomed general Rolf Emerson; with the connection established, I can convince myself there's a "family resemblance" to their character designs. I do have to admit I've wondered about the ramifications of what would have been an implied interracial marriage being written out of the series, though.
I once saw a counterargument to one lamentation that the middle of Robotech could have just been left out, responding by saying it's really the core of the work, presenting the tragic figure and genuine villains who set up the other two, "popular" segments behind the scenes, and giving them their comeuppance. (He also proposed that the Macross Saga was really an "introduction" that could be summarized and then otherwise left out, although he wasn't actually recommending that.) As well, Southern Cross seems to inspire the most interesting parts of a reconfiguration of a term from Macross, that "Protoculture" is made from plants and it's running out.
It's long been pointed out that Southern Cross was set on a planet other than Earth, and while "barren rocky planets" seem somehow common in science fiction anime series, it may have inspired thoughts of passing it off as a "post-apocalyptic Earth" to go along with what we see in the final episodes of the Macross Saga. Once upon a time, it seemed to be conventional wisdom that this planet had two suns, and one of them had been retouched out of the video when making Robotech, but now it's easy enough to see that it just had two moons, and the scenes showing both of them were cut out. The thought's occurred to me, though, that for a "frontier planet" everyone lives a comfortable urban life in a city, and that seems somehow connected to great effort going into designing many varieties of military uniform and body armour but not quite creating a really memorable setting for them... the better, perhaps, for the world to be passed off as another. At times, I do think that the particulars of the story's escalation do fit it better for unknown assailants arriving at a minor world than for "the Robotech Masters reach Earth," but perhaps I can dodge that mood by starting to dream about a "real crossover" between "Macross technology" and "the Zor"... although thoughts of crossover plots that are really driven by what the author likes better do begin warning me at that point. Too, there are moments in Robotech: Masters where the motivations of the characters seem very elusive, and they're a little more clear to me in Southern Cross... although it still takes an effort at just figuring things out that I can suppose other people don't make.
For all that I may have had vague misgivings about some elements of the Robotech novels from the start, so that when I was told those elements didn't exist in the series itself I turned to a downplayed, "realistic" interpretation a small and dedicated group encouraged, I've at least stuck with the thought that the novels try to play up "unifying themes" in all three "generations." From that, I may have started thinking that the romance bridging sides in Southern Cross can be seen as an alternative take on romance bridging sides in Macross. I suppose it would be far too much to call it "unsuccessful" as opposed to "successful," but the conclusion does seem to lend a more tragic feeling to it... but I've also decided to at least my own satisfaction that there's at once uncertainty and hope in the way things end. Maybe that's what helps me keep interested in Southern Cross.
It does seem often said that Southern Cross was cancelled early when it aired in Japan, either forcing a hurried conclusion or just plain leaving out a reconfigured continuation, and in any case bringing to a stop three series in the same time slot with "Super Dimension" in their titles. In Robotech Art 3, Carl Macek boasted about having managed to improve it in the process of including it in Robotech. However, in an "official PDF version" of the first issues of Protoculture Addicts I once bought, there's an interview with "Jack McKinney" (still claimed to be a single author) where it's declared that additions of the novels to the "second generation" fixed the problems this time... I've still run across comments that "even the novels couldn't help" "Robotech: Masters." (I have to admit that to me, working in new scenes where a "mad scientist" suppresses knowledge and encourages apocalypse so as to evoke mysterious psychic powers in Dana Sterling, whereupon his scheme blows up in his face and the "powers" that were the presumable point of it all aren't much mentioned afterwards, seems "a solution worse than the problem.") As far as the plot goes, though, I've thought that other mecha anime series from the early 1980s that I've seen take their own deliberate time to develop beyond the setup of their first episodes, and they run longer than Southern Cross. To be sure, one thought I started having this time was that as the war escalates around the midpoint of the series, the "central characters" are safely behind the front lines. I can imagine interpreting this as an attempt to comment on "what'll really end the war"; I can also imagine it being dismissed as "just not exciting."
In any case, the characters in Southern Cross take a lot of lumps. One thing about the anime that's struck me as somewhere between "peculiar" and "problematic" is that it seems to use its opening and closing sequences to present three female soldiers as significant characters, and yet those three are the only female soldiers we ever see in the series itself. A crucial problem to many seems to be Robotech: Masters calling the main character of those three "Dana Sterling," her impulsiveness and flighty nature apparently making her unworthy of being the daughter of the "cool" characters Max and Miriya. In Southern Cross, "Jeanne Francaix" may not be weighted by her family name, but if anything she might start out even more shallow... all I really seem able to say is that I seem to have an exceptional tolerance for that sort of thing, based if on anything on the general feeling that it's not really worth getting worked up over a fictional character or story. Not that long ago, I saw a "Buried Treasure" column on the Anime News Network site that looked at Southern Cross and made the suggestion that the series could be seen as a sort of "mecha comedy," and while that intrigued me in part because I hadn't really thought about it before, it still seems to be just a part of the story to me.
I'm also sort of interested in two other "character reconfigurations" between Southern Cross and Robotech: Masters. Robotech turns "Seifreit Weisse," a human captured by "the Zor" and burdened by having been brainwashed into fighting his own people, into "Zor Prime." I've imagined that this idea might have been eased along by the character having long, curly violet hair (although there's a nameless human character in one scene with a somewhat similar hairstyle), but I have also noticed he's not pallid like all the other characters identified as "aliens." As well, all his flashbacks to unfortunate events in his past put him in human uniforms... In Southern Cross, the character who became related to someone from the Macross Saga as "Bowie Grant" was in fact "Bowie Emerson," apparently the genuine son of the doomed general Rolf Emerson; with the connection established, I can convince myself there's a "family resemblance" to their character designs. I do have to admit I've wondered about the ramifications of what would have been an implied interracial marriage being written out of the series, though.
I once saw a counterargument to one lamentation that the middle of Robotech could have just been left out, responding by saying it's really the core of the work, presenting the tragic figure and genuine villains who set up the other two, "popular" segments behind the scenes, and giving them their comeuppance. (He also proposed that the Macross Saga was really an "introduction" that could be summarized and then otherwise left out, although he wasn't actually recommending that.) As well, Southern Cross seems to inspire the most interesting parts of a reconfiguration of a term from Macross, that "Protoculture" is made from plants and it's running out.
It's long been pointed out that Southern Cross was set on a planet other than Earth, and while "barren rocky planets" seem somehow common in science fiction anime series, it may have inspired thoughts of passing it off as a "post-apocalyptic Earth" to go along with what we see in the final episodes of the Macross Saga. Once upon a time, it seemed to be conventional wisdom that this planet had two suns, and one of them had been retouched out of the video when making Robotech, but now it's easy enough to see that it just had two moons, and the scenes showing both of them were cut out. The thought's occurred to me, though, that for a "frontier planet" everyone lives a comfortable urban life in a city, and that seems somehow connected to great effort going into designing many varieties of military uniform and body armour but not quite creating a really memorable setting for them... the better, perhaps, for the world to be passed off as another. At times, I do think that the particulars of the story's escalation do fit it better for unknown assailants arriving at a minor world than for "the Robotech Masters reach Earth," but perhaps I can dodge that mood by starting to dream about a "real crossover" between "Macross technology" and "the Zor"... although thoughts of crossover plots that are really driven by what the author likes better do begin warning me at that point. Too, there are moments in Robotech: Masters where the motivations of the characters seem very elusive, and they're a little more clear to me in Southern Cross... although it still takes an effort at just figuring things out that I can suppose other people don't make.
For all that I may have had vague misgivings about some elements of the Robotech novels from the start, so that when I was told those elements didn't exist in the series itself I turned to a downplayed, "realistic" interpretation a small and dedicated group encouraged, I've at least stuck with the thought that the novels try to play up "unifying themes" in all three "generations." From that, I may have started thinking that the romance bridging sides in Southern Cross can be seen as an alternative take on romance bridging sides in Macross. I suppose it would be far too much to call it "unsuccessful" as opposed to "successful," but the conclusion does seem to lend a more tragic feeling to it... but I've also decided to at least my own satisfaction that there's at once uncertainty and hope in the way things end. Maybe that's what helps me keep interested in Southern Cross.