Macross is the first game in the Chrono Series and Macross Series. (Chrono Fortress マクロス) is an original television anime produced by Dragon's Son Studios, which was broadcast every Sunday from October 3, 1982 to June 26, 1983 from 14:00 to 14:30, with a total of 36 episodes.
The weapon against enemy weapons that are stylized and only fight is "Singing"!
In 1999, a 1200-meter-long space battleship crashed on the island of Antalya in the southern Pacific Ocean, and after investigating the battleship, humans learned that aliens with advanced technology would launch a cosmic war. To counter this powerful threat, humans formed the Earth Unity Government and modified the fallen warship, naming it "Macross".
When the Zentraedi warships near Earth are automatically attacked by Macross, humans are forced to enter a state of hostility with these warships, and Macross, who lost the battle due to the loss of control of the Fold system, is teleported to the vicinity of Pluto along with the south Island of Antalya. Macross then took the island's inhabitants into warships and returned to Earth while fighting Zentraedi.
Pilot Ichigo Hui, who was invited to the memorial ceremony by his predecessor Roy Folk, was drawn into war during the ceremony, and along with him was Lin Mingmei, a little girl from the island's Chinese restaurant, who was trapped together for several days because of the war.
After being rescued, Hui joins the army and becomes a subordinate of Fokker as a pilot for the variable fighter "Valkyrie", while Lin Mingmei becomes an idol singer. Kei, who likes Akimi Akira and Kei's boss, Hayase, maintains a delicate relationship between the three of them.
Humans have just learned that Zentraed uses genetics to craft a fighting race, and an unexpected event occurs on Zentraed, their warships mutate after touching a human "culture" that they did not have, and then the Zentraed army containing battleships that can destroy the earth pours into the earth in large numbers, and the earth faces a huge threat.
Macross is shouldering the survival of the earth, using Mingmei's singing as a weapon to challenge Zentraedi's large warship, and the earth's attack fleet also rushes to support Macross, and finally humans defeat the Zentraedi fleet, which has become panicked by the song, and win the final victory, and the final hui that oscillates between Mingmei and Weisha also ushers in a decisive moment.
Precise world setting
In the anime trend that began in the second half of the 1970s, the most successful work in the huge robot animation that was at the heart of it was "Macross", which was as popular as Mobile Suit Gundam.
Although this anime is an SF anime about humans using a spaceship that accidentally flies in and new weapons that can apply the ship's advanced technology to resist the invasion of aliens, the story still adds a lot of other aspects to the story, the protagonist of the fighter jet, Ichigo Akira, the female air traffic controller Hayase Noisa as Akira's boss, plus the popular idol Akimi Hayashi, and the love story unfolded by the triangle relationship formed by the three of them is a form of expression that has never been seen in "Mobile Suit Gundam".
This work is set in great detail in the planning stage, and in terms of plot, it is not simply a cosmic human battle, but a war between the two major forces of the galaxy, the Zentraedi Army and the Surveillance Army, which involves humans. Moreover, Zentraedi are all giants with a height of 10 meters, and in order to fight them humans, they have developed a humanoid robot "Valkyrie" with the same size as the Zentraedi people. These settings give this work a charm that no other work has, as an SF animation and robot animation.
An incubator for talented young production staff
It is worth mentioning that many of the production personnel who completed this work were young people in their early twenties, Haruhiko Mikimoto, who was the superintendent of character design and character painting, Masaharu Kawamori, who was the mechanical design, and Ichiro Itano, who was the mechanical painting supervisor, were the most prominent of these, and then there was Hiroshi Ono as the script, Fumihiko Takayama as the performer, Toshihiro Hirano (now Toshihiro Hirano) and Narimi Hirano, who were the inherent personnel of this work, and created "Evangelion in the New Century" Hideaki Anno, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, and Hiroyuki Yamaga also participated in the production of this game.
Haruhiko Mikimoto uses his superb painting skills to depict protagonists and female characters with a sense of intimacy, and the background picture he depicts firmly attracts the attention of the audience. Masaharu Kawamori, who was responsible for the mechanical design of this game, was also a member of the original project Studio NUE, and after repeated attempts, he finally designed the "Valkyrie", the main weapon of the Earth Army, which can freely deform between human form and fighter form.
This epoch-making process of deformation amazed the audience, and it continued to be used in other works of Macross after this work, becoming a symbol of the series. Ichiro Itano, who devoted himself to mechanical painting, maximized his talents in Valkyne's battle scenes, and the high-speed battles he made like juggling on the battlefield where missiles flew were collectively known as "Sakano Acrobatics", which attracted him a large following.
In terms of voice actors, Yuki Haseya, who voiced Akira, Makoto Iijima, who voiced Akimi, and Mika Doi, who voiced Unsa, all gathered a lot of popularity as a result. Makoto Iijima, who specialized in music in college, appeared as a voice actress for the first time in this work, but the little demon Mingmei through her performance impressed the audience, and she also sang the anime episode "My Boyfriend is a Pilot", which brought her a group of enthusiastic fans, and it can be said that she has also achieved great success in her own business.
This work was also a turning point in Doi's voice actor career, and the protagonist's voice actor Yuki Haseya continued to be a voice actor for a while, but unfortunately passed away in 1996.
It was Ishiguro, the superintendent, who brought together them in his own Artland (now IdolStudio Artland) where he was running, allowing them to freely display their talents regardless of outside interference, and as a result, a large number of talents emerged from the world to know their names and strengths.
Not only that, the supervisor of this work, Ishiguro, has also made great contributions to music, and he has participated in musical activities when he was young, and he is quite accomplished in music, and even hesitated to do animation or form a band.
The fact that the story, music, and animated scenes of this anime work so well together can be said to be largely due to the credit of Ishiguro. In addition, Ishiguro was also involved in the lyrics of the theme song and interlude while supervising.
However, on the other hand, due to the lack of experience of young production staff who have not experienced commercial animation, the failure of schedule adjustment, coupled with the low level of outsourced overseas production studios, a small number of episodes of this animation were broadcast without complete drawing, which has become a little regret left in the memory of this work.
In 1984, at the end of the broadcast, the new theatrical version of "Time Fortress Macross Can Remember Love" was officially released and won the support of the audience. Then to this day, new works in the series continue to be produced, and the world of Macross has been expanding and deepening.