Author: Jiu Yu /Anitama Cover Source: Haruhiko Mikimoto's original macross personnel
This year is 2016, 34 years after the TV version of "Macross" aired. In 1982, when the anime aired, no one expected it to develop into such a grand series, and now, its new works are about to air. Here, I briefly introduce the history of the "Macross" series and the various stories behind it.
<h4>birth</h4>
Time moves forward a little. In August 1980, Mobile Suit Gundam had just established itself as a classic, and many sponsors were clamoring to make robot animations as "real" as Gundam. Against this backdrop, the animation company Studio 鵺 (スタジオぬえ, 鵺 is a monster from Japanese legend) proposed a robot animation project called Genociders. In this project, the main robot is to install the A-10 attack aircraft on its feet, which can be called "real" a bit dirty. Such a project obviously could not attract the interest of sponsors, so Studio quickly proposed another backup project, "Battle City Mega Lord". This alternate project is about "a huge space battleship that can be deformed", "there are cities in the battleship", "the enemy is a huge alien", and the plot is completely different from the serious heaviness of "Genociders", which is biased towards lightness and funny.
*Note: Although Mobile Suit Gundam was broadcast with dismal ratings and even the last few episodes were cut, about half a year after the broadcast (January 1980), it was hit by the hot sale of Gangpula.
The results were unexpected. For sponsors, this backup project is much more interesting than the main project. Seeing that the backup project had become the right choice, Studio Eagle couldn't help but feel a lot of pressure and motivation - they didn't expect the backup plan to be adopted, so they stuffed a lot of joke content into it. As a result, Masaharu Kawamori, a new member who was only 20 years old at the time, was ordered to revise the plan to be more "real" together with his predecessor Kazuki Miyatake. Kawamori drew on the F-14, the world's most advanced fighter at the time, and redesigned the main airframe. The fighter mode became more handsome, and he took advantage of the east wind of robot animations such as "Mobile Suit Gundam" to add a robot mode to the fuselage, and at the same time came up with a third half-fighter half-human deformation mode. This "three-stage transformation" was definitely groundbreaking in the field of robot animation, and to this day, the deformed "middle mode" is the most recognizable symbol of the Macross series. However, such a model was not invented by Kawamori out of thin air; in fact, the first robot capable of performing a "three-stage transformation" was Gaita (of course, the transformation mode is completely different), and "Geita Robot" was Kawamori's favorite animation in middle school.
As a result, Mega Lord battle cities were adopted. Due to his lack of production ability, Studio Satoshi found ARTLAND, an animation company led by Ishiguro, and the work was officially named "Macross the Chrono Fortress".
SDF-1 Fortress of Macross. Kazuki Miyatake Macross & August Design Works
Now it seems that if Ishiguro had not pioneered (and in the case of Japanese, it is simply revolutionary) to let young animators play, Macross would not have achieved such a huge achievement. Since Masaharu Kawamori joined Studio at the age of 18 (yes, he was a student at the time, he dropped out of school intermittently until 1983), and has been involved in the creation of many robot animations under the influence of Kazuki Miyatake. In order to create Macross, he called haruhiko Mikimoto, a classmate with whom he had been working on doujinshi since high school, and Ichiro Itano, whom he knew in the animation industry (both of whom were only one year older than him). Mikimoto and Itano join ARTLAND, and Itano brings with him the familiar Toshihiro Hirano and Narimi Yukino. In addition, the young people who later formed Gainax were also persuaded by the people of Studio to work (basically volunteering) – so Macross became the stage for Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga, and others to first encounter commercial animation.
The core of the creative team of "Macross" is supervised by Shinichi Ishiguro, the script is Kenichi Matsuzaki, the machine is Set up by Kazuki Miyatake, the script & machine is supervised by Masaharu Kawamori, and the person is Set up by Haruhiko Mikimoto.
The people on this list, now known as the "stars shining," were all young people in their early 20s. These young people all have one thing in common – they are the first generation of otaku in Japan (*Note). All of these people were born around 1960, that is, when they grew up watching Astro Boy in childhood, they were inspired by space battleship Yamato when they were in middle school, and they were fascinated by Mobile Suit Gundam in adolescence, so they decided to make animation their life's work.
The biggest significance of the TV version of "Macross" is precisely this: it is the first commercial work deeply involved in the creation of otaku and fully in line with the taste of otaku. And its success is mainly because these otaku have grown up and begun to have considerable purchasing power. In this sense, "Macross" is the originator of the "otaku anime industry" that continues to this day.
*Note: Since the word "otaku" has now been distorted to the point of completely losing its original meaning, this article uses the term "Otaku".
<h3>In love</h3>
It is said that "Macross" is classic, but where does its classic status come from? Anyone who knows a little about animation can understand that 1984's "Can Ever Remember Love" can definitely go down in history, but just like "Space Battleship Yamato" and "Mobile Suit Gundam" (and not limited to this, such as the original "Star Wars" trilogy), it is difficult for people to understand the shock felt by the audience at that time. As Hideaki Anno commented on Mobile Suit Gundam: "I am absolutely confident that I can make a more interesting work than Tomino, but at that time, "Mobile Suit Gundam" shocked me that I would never be able to reach." ”
It is not simply the shock of "seeing a good film", but a shock that will fundamentally subvert the audience's aesthetics. In the field of Japanese animation, the next work that will bring this kind of shock to the audience is Hideaki Anno's "EVA", and after "EVA", let me say that there has never been such a work. This of course reflects the progress of the times and the industry, but if you do not dig into the roots of this shocking root, it is a tree without roots to comment on "Macross".
Specific to "Macross", its biggest feature is, of course, the two popular themes: love and air combat. Interestingly, as early as the fandom of Masaharu Kawamori and Haruhiko Mikimoto in high school, there were shadows of "Macross" such as the shape-shifting fighter and the singing heroine.
From this fanbook called "The Final Warrior", we can see the prototype of "Macross". From MACROSS PERFECT MEMORY
In fact, in the initial planning stage, Hayashi Myung-mi was only a supporting role, and the real heroine of "Macross" was Hayase From the beginning (the name of the planning stage was Hayase Yaki). Hayase's prototype is Millais from Mobile Suit Gundam, and it was deliberately designed not to look amazing- the biggest feature is the small eyes "inherited" from Millais, and it is well known that the popularity of Unsa is planted on this small eye (although the eyes tend to grow larger and larger as they go back). After the production of "Macross" began, Lin Mingmei, who was originally just a Kanban lady of the Chinese restaurant, made the production staff very like it (it was Mikimoto Haruhiko's idea to let her take the singer route), and finally was promoted to another heroine, thus giving "Macross" the most important soul (choosing Akimi or Weisha was a topic of debate among fans, but in fact, there was no choice from the beginning).
10 October 2011. Source:BEST HIT SERIES Super Space-Time Fortress Macross Macross Grastity》
You know, before "Macross", the love element in Japanese robot animation was very thin, and it can almost be described as "no" - especially compared with today's "no love, no drama" animation. Although as early as 1972's "Demon God Z", the protagonist Tujia Er had a girlfriend like Bow ShaYa, the theme of the work and the feelings of the two people are almost completely irrelevant (the most intimate behavior of these two people is dancing, the hottest disco of the year.) =）。 The same is roughly true of other works. 1978's "Fighting General Dimos" even used this as a slogan:
"The theme of this heterogeneous work is the love between men and women who have hitherto been regarded as taboos by robot animation..."
In Japanese animation, it is full of male and female love, male love, female love, human ★ love, ○× love... Today, such words seem like a world away. Just four years after "Fighting General Dimos" called "male and female love" a "taboo", Macross, which was based not only on the love of men and women, but also on love triangles, was broadcast. At this point, you should be able to understand why throughout the 80s, Lin Mingmei was one of the two dream goddesses of otaku (the other is Ram in "Fuxing Kid" that began in 1981), and you should be able to understand what an avant-garde work Macross was at that time in 1982.
Lin Mingmei's persona in each sentence, from "MACROSS PERFECT MEMORY"
The reason for this change is actually very simple: the creator and audience of Macross, the first generation of otaku, was exactly twenty years old at the time! Young men of this age, who are obsessed with creating and watching anime, what else can they use their accumulated hormones for? That's why 1972's "Demon Z" only makes the male and female protagonists dance, while 1982's "Macross" must dig deeper into the theme of love. Even if Macross didn't exist, it would only be a matter of time before similar works appeared.
<h4>Air combat</h4>
Also with age, the work of "Giant Robot Wrestling/Wave/Using All Kinds of Strange Killer Skills" such as "Demon God Z" can no longer meet the needs of the first generation of otaku. The impact of those classic animations is, to a large extent, the impact of the authenticity of the performance. For example, Space Battleship Yamato was the first animation to explode after the battleship was shot (imitating a real martyrdom), not to mention Mobile Suit Gundam, which pioneered the category of "real robots". In addition to the beauty girl fans, the first generation of otaku were also SF and military fans - don't forget that when they were in elementary school, the Apollo moon landing, the teenagers of the entire Western world were swept by the wave of science fiction, and in the context of the Cold War, it was strange that young boys were not interested in military weapons.
Gao Heyi's VF-1 Valkyrie illustration is full of courage.
"Macross" goes further in this regard: the military and SF examination of this game is very detailed, and in addition to the robot element, the opening of the OP animation is simply an air force documentary. In fact, although Macross is classified as a robot animation, its "air combat animation" flavor is far stronger than that of robots. Kazujo hui is not even an Amro kind of "hero who uses superb combat skills to change the direction of the battlefield", and his influence on the overall situation is very limited compared to Lin Mingmei ("Can Remember Love" has some enhancement to his heroic actions). All of this is evidence that Macross has become more "real" (by the way, later works such as "Teeth of the Sun" and "Armored Cavalry Voltamos" have gone so far that they have finally drilled the tip of the bull's horn).
It was indeed an era of rapid progress: even if there were many original TV versions of Macross, where many paintings collapsed, some of the combat scenes in it were completely unattainable in Mobile Suit Gundam only 2 or 3 years ago. The "Itano Circus" is a famous example; scenes that have left a deep impact on the history of animation abound in animation, such as the opening of the Monster mecha in episode 27, which became a hot topic in animation magazines at that time. It is said that just when Monster stepped on the floor of Gnaku, the college student who came to work in charge of the painting took 3 months — the man's name was Hideaki Anno. In fact, if you look back now, you can already see the prototype of the EVA launch from that paragraph.
Hideaki Anno is in charge of the clip (viewable), when he was a college student.
After the "Macross" hit, the "let the young people go and do it" trend became popular in the Japanese animation industry for a while - this extremely good atmosphere made many later masters stand out, Nagano Gou thanked this gift, became Sunrise's first machine/human designer promoted from the club (only 24 years old, only 4 months after joining the company), and Nobuki Yuki would give up his position as a civil servant and move to the animation industry (entering ARTLAND), also because he watched "Macross". Episode 27 for the sake of. Even the word "Otaku" in the original "Otaku" is said to come from Macross (a Akira is called "you", i.e. "Otaku").
To this day, the two major themes of love and air combat still attract countless viewers of the "Macross" series. Further, it is Macross that pioneered the model of "robot + beautiful girl" that has been passed down to this day and will continue in the foreseeable future.
<h4>Can ever remember love</h4>
Still on the way, Macross's huge commercial success was already confirmed (due to the fact that it was broadcast at 2 p.m. on Sundays when it was largely unoccupied, the ratings averaged only 6.4%, but the TV station that put it on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. generated a maximum rating of 36%). Since the robot animation at that time was essentially a "toy advertising film", at the request of the sponsors, the animation was extended from 27 to 36 episodes, but there was no plan for the content behind it, and there was no time to modify the plot, so the 9 episodes after 27 episodes had to be changed to describe the "post-war life".
Masaharu Kawamori's 27th storyboard, with END written on it, was originally intended to end the story here.
In March 1983, just five months after the TV version was broadcast, the production of the theatrical version of Macross was finalized. This is the timeless masterpiece "Macross Can Remember Love", and Masaharu Kawamori was officially promoted to supervisor in this theatrical version. At the same time, Hayashi's voice actress Makoto Iijima also made her official debut as a singer in September 1983. From the moment "Singer in Animation" and "Singer in Reality" were combined, a new "cross-dimensional" multimedia strategy was born. Since then, Lin Mingmei is no longer a character in an animation, but has become the industry's first virtual idol.
Makoto Iijima, who was only 19 years old at the time, was also the starting point of the "Macross" series of Singers.
For "Remember Love", it is enough to say that any praise is superfluous, and any list that does not put it in the top 20 of Japanese animation masterpieces is not objective. Japanese animation in 1984 reached a peak alongside the Japanese economy, and is likely to be unsurpassed in later generations: with the exception of "Can Remember Love", Ghibli's "Valley of the Wind" and Oshii Mori's "Fukusei Kid 2: Kirito Dreamer" were all released in this year, both of which are works that will forever be recorded in the annals of animation. In Gaianx's 1991 semi-documentary OVA "Videotape of OTAKU", a section of otaku waiting in line to see "Nausicaä" and watching the setting of "Remember Love" stolen from the studio was added. For the first generation of otaku, that was perhaps the best memory.
《So-so-yeditude》Fortress indefinance, comprehensive trivial thought neutral future goods settling. Kazuki Miyatake Macross & August Design Works
Everything in the TV version from Episode 1 to Episode 27 is compressed into a 115-minute movie, and various changes to the plot are inevitable. All discrepancies between "Can Ever Remember Love" and the TV version, including the opposing worldviews of men and women, should be subject to the TV version. At that time, "Can Ever Remember Love" was deliberately made into a "TV version of the drama", and later it was officially determined to be "the 20th anniversary of the first interstellar war launched by the unified government in 2031 in order to promote racial integration".
"Remember Love" was also a huge commercial success, and its theme song of the same name (the first divine song in the "Macross" series in my personal mind) achieved the 7th place on the Oricon chart, and Iijima Alsoi also became a big hit. "Can Ever Remember Love" was exported to the United States, which also detonated popularity, and then (this may be common sense), the Americans bought the rights to three completely different animations with completely different plots, "Overtime Fortress Macross", "Overtime Knight Southern Cross", and "Mecha Genesis Mospeada", and re-saved them into a work, which is what we know as "Battlestar Galactica".
Like all hugely successful Japanese anime, after Macross, there was a rush of follow-ups: 1983's Orguss and Mecha Genesis Mospeada, 1984's Dragon Cross... The level of these works is actually not worse than that of "Macross", and "Orguss" is produced by Studio and Ishiguro himself, but like all the follow-up works, they are all covered by the tide of the times, and if it were not for the fact that two of them were integrated by Battlestar Galactica, few people would know now (*Note).
*Note: In this series of works, only the 1985 OVA "Infinite Zone 23" is an exception, which concentrates a large number of original people from "Can Remember Love", which is very good.
Perhaps precisely to avoid the dog-tailed mink, the "Macross" work after "Can Remember Love" was not quickly mentioned on the schedule. It wasn't until 10 years after the TV version of Macross aired that Macross II was released as an OVA as a 10th anniversary. Unfortunately, it still can't avoid the fate of the dog-tailed sable.
Next articleWe will say.........
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