The Super Dimension Fortress Macross
The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (or just Macross) is an anime television series. An English-dubbed version was adapted as the first part of Robotech.
Macross is widely regarded as a classic of the genre, combining the tropes of giant transforming robots, apocalyptic battles, wartime romance, and victory through bubblegum pop music. It featured mechanical designs by story creator Shoji Kawamori of Studio Nue and character designs by Haruhiko Mikimoto.
The story concerns a city-sized alien spacecraft that crashes on Earth in 1999. Humans rebuild the spacecraft just before a fleet of alien warships arrive (Zentradi), determined to recover this ship that once belonged to its enemy. Meanwhile, a young pilot comes of age and struggles with a love triangle between a bubbly pop singer and a dedicated bridge officer.
The name of the series is same as the name with which the feature spacecraft was given, though it is typically shortened to SDF-1 Macross, since it was Earth's first Super Dimension Fortress. The word Macross comes from a wordplay combination of the prefix Macro in reference to its relatively massive size (though when compared with the alien ships in the series it is only a gun destroyer) and the Japanese pronunciation for Macbeth (Makubesu). (A sponsor insisted on Macbeth as a Shakespeare reference.)
A feature film, subtitled Ai Oboete Imasu Ka? (), was released in 1984, with a condensed version of the storyline and cutting-edge animation. (A shortened, English-dubbed version of the feature was also released to video as Clash of the Bionoids, though this is largely lambasted.)
The primary characters of this series are:
- Hikaru Ichijyo
- Misa Hayase
- Lynn Minmay
- Roy Focker
- Claudia LaSalle
- Bruno J. Global
Several sequel series and one prequel have followed, with most using a chronology created by the Studio Nue creators (while the rest followed their own storylines). The main Studio Nue chronology consists of (in chronological order):
- Macross Zero
- The Super Dimension Fortress Macross
- Macross Flashback 2012
- Macross Plus
- Macross 7
- Macross Dynamite 7
The Macross movie was later described as a "historical" movie within the Macross universe. In Macross Plus and Macross 7, it is revealed that there was a movie produced after Space War I (the original Earth-Zentradi conflict). Macross II was declared an parallel world story.