The Birth of Macross

the super dimension fortress macros was a tv anime released in 1982. in japan the series was a hit both on television and in the toy isle and only a few years later it would be brought overseas and adapted into the robotech saga where it spawned an entire generation of western anime fans despite its popularity and accolades though the series was a mess behind the scenes with the staff struggling to complete episodes and not always succeeding it was a struggle that in the wrong hands could have resulted in a disaster of a series but macross pulled through and despite shortcomings and setbacks is considered an anime masterpiece with much of the deserved credit going to the relatively young staff especially series creator shojikawamori shoji kawamori was born on february 20th 1960. unlike many of his contemporaries in the anime industry he didn't immediately gravitate towards drawing or painting but rather he preferred to spend his time building with block toys and paper craft in 1969 neil armstrong set foot on the moon and it was here that kawamori's obsession with space began kawamuri had stated he wanted to design rockets for space travel however there was no japanese equivalent to nasa at that time in 1971 kawamori changed trajectory from engineering to animation as he became captivated by a new anime series unlike any other scene on tv at the time [Music] loop lupon iii was widely considered the first tv animation aimed at an adult audience the main characters were thieves the cops were portrayed as foolish and characters would die in less than fantastic ways unlike traditional anime the bulk of lupon's advertising was in newspapers where adults would be more likely to find it than children but this had the unintended effect of most people not even noticing the series this resulted in very low ratings and the poor performance of the first three episodes led to tms firing director masa akiosumi who was unwilling to change future episodes to fit a more optimistic tone tms hired two new directors with more experience on anime directed at children and these two directors hayao miyazaki and isao takahata would make lupon more cheerful and his gang less apathetic this would be the rendition of lupon most people are familiar with today but according to kawamori it was those original seven episodes directed by osumi that ignited his interest in anime and kawamuri would credit masa akiya sumi for his directing style after enrolling in ko junior high school kawamori started a group called the ko group with his fellow classmates including future macross character designer haruhiko mikimoto and screenwriter hiroshi onogi a common interest among the group was their love of the anime space battleship yamato and it was soon discovered that studio nue the company responsible for the designs of the series held fan conventions called krikon named for their previous name crystal arts the ko group became regular participants in the convention creating art and attending panels discussing science fiction it's important to know that in the late 70s two groups dominated mech designs studio nue and mecca man studio nuai was known for their high attention to detail and their focus on realism while mecha man's designs had a much more comical look intended to stand out on toy shelves with their art style only shifting following their work on mobile suit gundam as the real robot genre began to dominate anime in 1978 after enrolling in ko university kawamori joined studio nue where he quickly caught the eye of one of the studio's founders kazutaka miyatake with his work on anime such as toshio daimos and gordian warrior in 1979 mobile suit gundam premiered gathering a devoted following similar to that of space battleship yamato often considered the first real robot anime the series was popular with fans of hardcore science fiction including kawamori and the staff at studio nue komori and his friends even created a popular gundam fanzine called gunsight one this fan zine would introduce many to mikimoto's art style and would pave the way for studio nua's popular gundam century reference book known as the first book to catalog the in-universe history and science behind mobile suit gundam in 1980 miyatake and kawamori competed in an internal design contest for a tv project called genocidis known internally as project g to get inspiration kawamori went on a skiing trip with some of his friends and noticed the way that skiers bend their knees when going down a slope this inspired a mech design with inverted knee joints similar to what would become the gur walk seen in the macros valkyrie separate from kawamori miyatake also came up with the idea for a mech with inverted knee joints though his had four legs and more closely resembled the ata t walkers from the empire strikes back kawamori won the design contest and in august of 1980 studio knew i began meeting with potential sponsor wiz in regards to adapting project g it was rejected not wanting to lose a potential deal a second pitch was hastily thrown together based on unused concepts from the french japanese co-production ulysses 31 this proposal included a giant transforming space battleship that contained a city of civilians living inside it whiz liked the concept so kawamori began working on a premise setting the series in the year 1999 the same year as the popular japanese disaster film prophecy of nostradamus the series was set in the not so distant future where an alien battleship crash lands on earth only to be rebuilt by humans into the series titular transforming robot this new project was titled battle city mega road or mega load being a double pun and was essentially a parody of the shows that the staff liked like gundam and yamato the main mech was called the breast fighter as it launched from the battleship's chest the captain would be selfish putting himself before the earth itself and having a beautiful wife that was too good for him the bridge would be all women who spent too much time gossiping with the exception of the chief who'd be the heroine of the story and fall in love with the male lead images of the daedalus attack were drawn up and in december of 1980 whiz requested a serious proposal after the crash of the mega rhodes mothership it took 10 years to unify the earth and repair the ship setting the main events of the series in the year 2009 during the festivities of the mega road's launch the aliens attack and citizens flee seeking shelter inside the giant mega road battleship the aliens are divided into two armies the inspectorate and the axis who themselves are in the midst of a civil war it was decided that a high-ranking officer from the inspectorate would be sent aboard the mega road as a spy based on a picture of a girl in a cheapout dress in mikimoto's sketchbook the staff decided to add an idol-like girl aboard the mega road this girl named sai minmei and later lin minmei would be a popular girl on the ship drawing many to her chinese restaurant she'd have a relationship with the main character but dump him leading to a relationship between the hero and the heroine the idol was based on real world japanese idol seiko matsuda who was popular due to her innocent girl next door persona and her music would captivate the aliens similar to how the german song lily marlene was popular in both axis and allied countries in world war ii in august of 1981 it was apparent that project g wasn't getting off the ground and that mega road was going to be the project chosen for animation and so kawamori began removing all the slapstick and parody elements instead proposing the series as a romantic comedy set in the midst of a cosmic war around that time main sponsor wiz dissolved but production continued as it was expected new backers would feel more positive about the new premise that october the anime adaptation of rumiku takahashi's arusa yatsura premiered and it was feared that releasing a parody centered around love triangles would be too predictable so kamomori began removing the remaining comedy elements from the series initially mega road was planned to run for 52 episodes but due to the detailed mechs backgrounds and battle scenes that were difficult to draw the episode count was reduced to 48. this still proved to be too much work though and a few months later the episode count was again reduced this time to 39 in january of 82 advertising agency big west approached studio nue and agreed to sponsor the series bringing on toy company takatoku to produce the toys the series was aiming to premiere at the start of the july or october broadcasting cycle but once again due to complications in animating the series the episode count was reduced this time to 23 episodes noburo ishiguro studio artland was chosen to animate the series due to their close relationship with studio nue however due to artland's relatively small size tatsunoko was chosen as the main contractor with artland and tatsunoko's subsidiary anime friend subcontracting ishiguro who was also the director of space battleship yamato was brought on as chief director essentially serving the role of gaiden kawamori and his mostly young inexperienced staff the character designs for the series were done by kawawri's childhood friend haruhiko mikimoto whose art style was heavily inspired by gundam character designer yasuhiko yoshikazu with mikimoto referring to his own art as quote running on the rails that he laid out without being able to close the distance allegedly the choice of mikimoto as character designer led to some members of artland to protest the series as they felt mikimoto was far less experienced than them only having been chosen to work on such a large project because of his friendship with the staff the main character of the series hikaru presumably named for star trek zakarusulu was heavily inspired by yamato's susumu kodai who joined the military following the footsteps of his older brother hikaru wasn't following the footsteps of his biological brother though but rather his senpai roy fokker though some dubs of the series did opt to use the phrase big bro in place of the japanese denotion of senpai roy himself was based off gundam's slagger law and many characters in the series would reference works like gundam yamato and star trek around this time big west president yoshimasu onishi suggested studio nue changed the title from mega road to macbeth onishi was a huge fan of shakespeare and felt that the title would be fitting for a show that depicted tragedy the team disliked the name but compromised on the name macross after they explained that the name macbeth couldn't be trademarked macro sounded similar to macbeth in japanese and was made by combining the words macro meaning large and across meaning across mono means one and rail means rail that september one month prior to premiering mbs contacted the staff to tell them that the anime premiering in the time slot after them an anime adaptation of the tokusatsu rainbow man was facing production issues as a result the first episode wouldn't be ready to air and would have to push its premiere back by one week to fill that time mbs would air the first two episodes of macross as a one-hour special this was an issue as episodes were already taking longer to produce than expected and now production of episodes had to be expedited by one week the first episode of the super dimension fortress macros premiered on october 3rd 1982 and despite the slapdash nature of the early episodes mixing serious moments with what seem like scenes left over from the comedy scripts [Music] the series was a hit though the animation wasn't perfect and they didn't even have an ending sequence instead looping the shot of hikaru in a plane funnily enough they technically never got around to animating a true ending sequence as the official ending credit sequence for the series was a live action segment filmed in artland studio macros premiered at 2pm on sunday with the network trying to turn this time slot into a popular anime time despite macross being a success the time slot never actually worked as the series initially received poor ratings only becoming a ratings hit after episodes were rerun on wednesdays at 5 30 pm this combined with the excellent sales of the takatoku vf1 valkyrie toy brought the series enough success that one month after its series premiere mbs requested 13 more episodes this would bring the total episode count to 36 episodes as a result what was planned to be episode 23 was stretched to episode 27 and the final nine episodes would contain a new story set two years after the end of the war known to fans as the reconstruction arc the story would follow the character's interpersonal drama with few battle scenes to make it easier to animate in order to produce episodes in time several episodes were outsourced to korean animation studios star pro who produced what could only be called infamously bad animation it wasn't unusual to receive off model animation from foreign studios but this was usually corrected by the japanese staff before the episodes aired unfortunately there was no time to make such corrections in the case of macross and these episodes to this day remain as a blemish on this beloved series the production issues really came to a head on episode 11. in an issue that was bound to occur the episode wasn't completed in time and what aired was a version composed mostly of keyframes missing in between animations unlike the star pro episodes this episode was eventually completed and aired properly in reruns and on home video releases but the network was furious in order to give the animation team time to catch up episode 14 global's report was created using pre-existing footage only a few weeks later kawamori learned that another recap episode was needed to give the animators more time to complete the episode kawamori hated the idea of having to run another recap episode but he came up with an idea to at least make the episode interesting the episode is situated as hikaru having a nightmare and scenes from earlier episodes are taken out of context usually for comedic purposes [Music] foreign in order to impress the network and make up for the poor quality of animation noburo ishiguro himself directed episode 27 the episode in which the majority of life on earth is obliterated and the macros takes on the zentraedi fleet ultimately ending the war this episode pulls out all the stops containing what is hands down the greatest animated sequences the series has to offer painstakingly animated by men who would become anime legends ichiro itano and hideakiano due to the popularity of the series production began on two new projects while macross was still airing a sister series and an anime film at the time compilation films that combined episodes of a series to make one long story were popular but for macross it was instead decided to make a film with 100 new animation the goal was to simplify and remove plot details from the original to make a single unified story with greater focus on what kawamuri considered the important aspects of the series these aspects were the love triangle between hikaru misa and minmei and the concept of an idol song ending a cosmic war working on the film the remaining episodes of the series and the sister series were taxing for the staff with the sister series orgas seeming to suffer the hardest for political reasons production of the series was changed from tatsunoko to tms who didn't have any experience with titles that were made as a toy tie-in according to miyatake the staff would call her mechs like the nikkei khaki colored even though takatoku had already created promotional material where it was black gold and red small issues like this arose a lot and miyatake had to keep a close eye on the staff to the point where he started receiving credits as a story editor partway through the series the plot for the series drew heavily from buck rogers in the 25th century and the design for the main character k and his friend orson are just the preliminary designs for hikaru and roy early episodes suffered from similar issues as macross with animation being outsourced to korea sometimes climactic battle scenes will recycle animation from the opening and sometimes characters will just turn into other characters also for some reason the backgrounds are littered with emerson lake and palmer album covers anytime i show these to people they think i photoshopped them but seriously they're just there i feel like this would have been a legal issue except no one watched the show meanwhile kawamori moved his attention to working on the macross film being one of the few staff on macross not to have any credit on orgis at the time tatsunoko had a strong working relationship with studio topcraft who assisted with the animation of the macross film despite having their own film in production at the time nausicaa of the valley of the wind the film had a budget of 400 million yen and was hyped to the point that fans began waiting in line overnight prior to its release the film premiered on july 7th of 1984 to rave reviews with many praising the animation and characters who transitioned perfectly to the new continuity [Music] unfortunately official releases of both macross and macross do you remember love were scarce due to the legal issues surrounding the robotech series there was a subtitle box set from animego and adv re-released and dubbed the series in the 2000s but those are long out of print and cost a fortune on the secondary market aside from those there have been no other official releases of macros or its successive series like macross 7 or frontier however seemingly out of nowhere in april of 2021 it was announced that the legal battle had ended with both sides reaching an agreement shoji kawamori and haruhiko mikimoto have both made public statements voicing their excitement that macros will finally be attainable to fans overseas so despite a chaotic production and years of uncertainty it looks like the future of mac ross is pretty solid [Music] special thanks to all my patrons who helped make this video especially off here makash who donated to my highest tier to make these videos i often have to buy out of print dvds and books and sometimes including with this video i have to pay to have materials translated so every donation helps a ton plus you'll gain access to my discord and earlier access on my videos [Music]

Channel: MercuryFalcon

Views: 47,355

Rating: 4.9568343 out of 5

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Id: poSfKrx-i9g

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/BortTheStampede]

This is a really solid video I found about the origins and production of SDF Macross! It also has sections on Orguss and DYRL.

I also recommend following up this video with this video on the making of Bubblegum Crisis by the same guy.