Was the Zentradi Alliance Self-Destructive?: Part 2

All right, the flip side: if Zentradi aren’t inherently dangerous to humans, what about the other way around?  After all, the Zentradi are often described as being "defeated" by humanity. It's possible to view the Zentradi story as one of forced assimilation, akin to what real cultures have experienced, and therefore the Zentradi as victims. Or their story can be seen as one of emasculation of powerful warriors, domesticated by humankind.

But while the Zentradi story can be compared to such real assimilation in order to study where Macross stands in relation to the culture of 1980s Japan, the specifics of the event are not analogous to any kind of human-human cultural assimilation. In the case of the Zentradi, unlike real human civilizations, they had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

While "warrior races" are common in science fiction, the Zentradi are different from that norm.  Fictional warrior cultures tend to have developed societies alongside their war-making, as well as codes of glory and honour. Zentradi, in contrast, have nothing but their military.

Again from Aaron Sketchley:

The entire society of the Zentraadi, who were originally Protoculture weapons, was a military organization that was controlled by strict military regulations. From the time that they were born, they were brainwashed and psychologically manipulated by the Protoculture in order to not take productive actions or do cultural things. Even after being separated from Protoculture control, only the uppermost individual of a main fleet knew of culture only as recorded knowledge, and the system didn't change. However, the Zentraadi who met mankind each awoke to culture due to the culture shock of such things as songs.

However, the Zentraadi weren't a completely uncultured race. The Zentraadi were created by the Protoculture as a combat race, and as such, they must be able to have a strong mutual understanding of each other in combat, so the Protocultures arranged a language and letters for them and gave it to the Zentraadi. As language and letters are things that establish the foundation of culture, one could say that the Zentraadi language and letters existed as the groundwork that received Earth's culture.

However, their language and culture is specialized in simplification, or military affairs, as the Zentraadi didn't create an advanced culture themselves (the language and letters are assumed to have been based on the Protoculture language and culture).

In reality, words that aren't directly related to military affairs don't exist in the Zentraadi language, such as "love", "marriage", or "mother". This is thought to have been caused by male and female Zentraadi living separately, and new Zentraadi being produced by cloning technology.  (http://sketchleystats.webatu.com/Trans/MCRworldguide/10BZentraadi.php)

While Exsedol once said there was a Zentradi proverb that combat was life, later events of the series suggest these words were meant to be hollow ones, since the ideal of combat is soon discarded or shifted by the sympathetic Zentradi--those that remain in the military make a choice to serve the human military instead. This is presented as a positive thing, and Exsedol himself shows an interest in the human world.

The statements from Macross Chronicle paint a bleak picture of the Zentradi life, and these, along with the content of the TV series, makes it easy to define the Zentradi alliance as a net positive for their race, and something completely different from the assimilation of existing cultures.

The Zentradi knew nothing of love or sex, and their only rewards are a boost in rank or the thrill of killing; this is a life they have not chosen, but were simply slotted into. These characters were, in short, lacking many of the fundamental experiences that make life wonderful. They were slaves, some of whom make that choice to rebel because they have seen something genuinely better.

If a lot of Macross material refers to the Zentradi as being “defeated” by humanity, that’s only because it’s technically true: the Zentradi do abandon their goals due to a challenge by their enemies. It also sounds more dramatic than “defected”.

But the Zentradi never chose to support the cause they were born for, so it’s no loss for them to abandon it. And while the two sides fought, the engineer of this “defeat” was actually song, and it did this by accident and was also wilfully accepted by the enemy.  It’s not an ordinary defeat, and so the use of the word “defeat” can’t be used to show why the alliance wasn’t meant to be a positive ending for the Zentradi.

There are also enemy Zentradi who get vanquished in the more traditional sense; the definition “‘Zentradi” includes both friends and enemies. “The Zentradi were defeated” doesn’t demean the alliance. For some of the Zentradi, it really is true. For others, it's technically true, but the details are more complex and it’s ultimately a good choice for them.

Furthermore, some view the pre-human contact Zentradi as embodying a machismo that gets destroyed when they fall for Minmay and are no longer badass warriors unbound by pansy interests like love and song. It's similar to the view of the character Kamjin Kravshera, who eventually finds himself concerned with the Zentradi's reputation despite being a hedonist himself. But whether it’s coming from a character or a real person, it’s untrue: Zentradi are strengthened, not emasculated, by human contact.

As has been said above, the Zentradi led a deprived, repressed existence. Yes, their armies had great physical and mechanical strength, but it’s hollow because there’s no glory in slavery. Physical strength is not enough to make a group of characters worth cheering on. They have to be "into" it, be dealing with something they chose, to become idealized figures.

Because of that, the Zentradi who allied with  humanity are the real badasses. Even if they did so just in pursuit of pleasure, they were strong enough to resist Bodolza, and to stick with their new lives. It sounds trite, but the courage to resist a system is more laudable than just being able to blow shit up because one’s absent creators told you to.

To some, "self-destruction" refers not to the disassembly of any Zentradi defeat or emasculation, but to the deaths of many Zentradi soldiers at the hands of humanity and the allied Zentradi. It's the trope of making peace with the enemy, but the climax of the story still involving fighting those of the enemy that peace can’t be made with. It’s often considered a contradictory or hypocritical trope.

In the case of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, the allied Zentradi and humans respond immediately and violently to Bodolza’s forces coming to destroy all of them. One could argue that this was justified because of the swiftness of Bodolza’s retaliation. The alliance has no choice but to respond equally swiftly. On the other hand, humanity could be condemned for not even trying to open negotiations.

Yet if Macross isn’t a totally sunny series, humanity might have had no time to do anything else but defend themselves. It might be the consequence of telling a story where nothing is totally perfect. But again, that lack of perfection doesn’t mean the positive aspects are invalid.

As long as some portion of the Zentradi benefitted from the alliance, the moral contradictions of Space War 1 don’t meant that the Zentradi/human alliance was meant to be self-destructive.

This is also true when you bring up the fact of Macross’s background, where it’s said that most contact between spacefaring humans and new Zentradi after the first war usually did not end in a Zentradi awakening. Circumstances could be better, but it is not all bad.

To view the Zentradi/human alliance as dangerous and self-destructive is to only look at the story in the most simplistic way. It is to assume that the presence of conflict automatically means the entire event was worthless. It is to believe that a series would squander all its time establishing sympathy for characters, and then yanking it away in the most clumsy manner possible.

At this point, I want to mention the Robotech universe, including the non-canon material published in the 1990s. This was where my interest in the Zentradi started, and so I’ve always got to mention it.

The novels and comics present a much more downbeat view of the Zentradi than the Macross universe does, though without the guts to mess with the canon Zentradi. Instead, they create numerous original characters to advance their cynical viewpoint.

The friendly Zentradi are whittled down into a small faction that settles into a nice space colony on the planet Fantoma after a life fraught with post-war infighting--they are also mostly unable to reproduce with humans, a fact that contradicts previous material.

The most shocking conceit was that after the internal wars died down, the last of the Zentradi who  live on Earth retire to the decrepit Factory Satellite and wait around to die off, refusing aid or contact from Earth: the best they can do is fight the incoming Invid invasion by sacrificing the satellite and themselves.

These things happen in the novels The Malcontent Uprisings, The Master’s Gambit and Before the Invid Storm, three midquel novels which are much more nihilistic and violent than the rest of the book series, and not only in regards to the Zentradi.

The novels were penned by two authors, Brian Daley and James Luceno, under the psuedonym Jack McKinney. Brian Daley died before the series finished, and James Luceno penned the three midquel novels alone, and larger portions of the books near the end of the original run. I’ve often wondered if the most extreme pessimism in the collaborative novels is due to Luceno, and this interview with him (http://www.megascifi.com/Q_A_WITH_JAMES_LUCENO.html) seems to confirm it:

JIM: The appeal for me, at any rate, was that the Zentraedi were an engineered, “vat-grown” race, created not only for exploration and, ultimately, warfare, but also one deprived of the ability to access a full range of emotions. As against, say, STAR TREK Vulcans, who had trained themselves to suppress or sublimate emotions, the Zentraedi were closer to cyborgs; until, of course, contact with humanity both provided at least some of them with a sense of what they might have been and doomed them as a race. This facet, more than the Imperative, is what made them interesting as characters, coming slowly unglued by music, interpersonal contact, and love. If only every “villain” was so easily seduced and redeemed.

In my original notes about the Zentraedi—jotted down sometime while I was working on the Malcontent Uprisings—I found the following quote, lifted from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game:

"If one of us [one race or another] has to be destroyed, let’s make damn sure we’re the ones alive at the end. Our genes won’t let us decide any other way. Nature [emphasis, mine] can’t evolve a species that hasn’t a will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist.”

Say what one will about the dubbing quality of Robotech, there is nothing in it that changes the ultimate story of the Zentradi  or undermines its benefit for both sides. Describing the Zentradi as “becoming unglued” and “doomed as a race” is a complete reversal of what actually happened. He seems to view the Zentradi alliance with Earth as another stage in their race’s defeat, and not their freedom. That the Zentradi only “might have been” a full people.

Since there are Robotech creations, they involve other authors interpreting Macross, and have little more authority than fan interpretations. But it doesn’t mean that Robotech initially presented the Zentradi story on pessimistic terms. The dub of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, whatever its other issues, presented the Zentradi story as positively as the original did. It was only later authors that twisted things.

Those Zentradi characters lucky enough to ally with humanity became a real people with human contact. Others, sadly, were only shown the initial shock of human emotions because they were approaching enemies, but that shock was only a pathway to a new life.

Overall, as long as the human/Zentradi alliance remains a part of future Macross series, and as long as we have good Zentradi and part-Zentradi characters on the side of humanity, the alliance can’t be something that should have been avoided. Not only because the earth would have been otherwise destroyed, but because the Zentradi would also have never been able to experience their own humanity.

That’s what makes the Zentradi one of my all-time favourite fictional races (though that doesn’t mean I like all the individual characters equally). It’s a feel-good story without falling into simplistic sappiness, with the value of art and freedom being paramount, but also a bit of comic relief.

Was the Zentradi Alliance Self-Destructive?: Part 1

In the anime Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Zentradi are a race of giant alien warriors, genetically identical to humans and capable of being reduced to human size. They function as proxy forces for the unseen and extinct “Protoculture” race; there are no civilians and the sexes work separately for the same military goals.

They attack Earth, but some find that exposure to Earth’s culture, (especially to the  music / persona of pop star Lynn Minmay), awakens repressed desires and causes them to question their system. A portion of Zentradi ally with humanity to gain these freedoms, and to save themselves from the authorities that now consider them contaminated. Following these events are a franchise of Macross series, in which internal unrest from allied Zentradi is a recurring plot point, due to a tension between the Zentradi past and their future.

Some fans have looked at these events and decided that humanity allying with the Zentradi was meant to be a fundamentally self-destructive move. “Self-destruction” can be defined in two ways.

1. The rebellions of allied Zentradi become intense and enough that the alliance becomes philosophically invalid.

2. Zentradi were emasculated by their choice of human contact, sacrificing their power and gaining nothing in return; other factions of Zentradi are even killed.

Either way, it suggests that the ultimate goal of the Macross plot was to undermine the alliance it set up, a cynical universe in which allies might destroy each other.

Yet the case for the this is not strong enough. The internal conflicts never lead to the destruction of the entire alliance, and there are positive Zentradi characters to counter them, not to mention the idealistic tone of the entire franchise.

Viewers confuse the presence of conflict with the rejection of previous ideals. Most stories don’t actually build sympathy for characters and then suddenly change their intentions without warning. The meme of the spiteful creator is largely false: with a decently-written story, any dark turns are foreshadowed to a degree.

In SDFM, the allied Zentradi the most prominent and sympathetic, with the antagonist Zentradi being the ones opposed to the values of the series. There is nothing which suggests conventional storytelling is not in play: the characters that we see the most of, and who enjoy the things the audience is taught to value, are the ones who represent the views of the series. In this case, the allied Zentradi are meant to be “right”.

Furthermore, the alliance provided humanity with a means of defense and ensured they were not wiped out. If the series was going to show the audience that everything was pointless, the peace between the races would not produce this huge benefit that was impossible to achieve otherwise.

Viewers’ pessimism probably starts with episodes 28-36, the “aftermath” episodes, in which viewers spend some time hanging around the post-war Earth. During these episodes, allied Zentradi rebel against humanity, Warera, Rori, and Konda have difficulty finding work, Exsedol loses faith in his people’s position, and all of this gets no resolution.

However, these episodes were hastily written, added when the series was suddenly extended after having its planned run whittled down multiple times, and so might not represent a breakdown that was planned from the start.

Even if you take the aftermath episodes as in synch with the rest of the story, they still don’t solidly prove that the Zentradi/human alliance is self-destructive, since the alliance still endures. It's just showing that things aren't always perfect. And it’s actually good to tell a story that doesn't have everything end flawlessly, because it means the work is not simplistic.

Aaron Sketchley translated this portion of the Macross Chronicle, a guide to the Macross Universe released as a magazine.

"Combat" is "life" for the Zentraadi, who have had their fighting instinct strengthened, and although they lost their creator, they continued to fight in the direction of their instincts. However, their meeting with the human race became a turning point, and some of the Zentraadi who were members of the Bodol Main Fleet knew of culture and chose the road where they walk together with mankind. The strong thought control by the Protoculture is likely to have been cancelled by the emotional stimulus awakened by "songs".

The proverb "yesterday's enemy is today's friend" appears to have been communicated at the galactic level, as mankind and the Zentraadi, despite having crossed swords with each other at one time, chose coexistence. For the human race that advanced into the unknown galaxy, there is no partner as reassuring as the Zentraadi, who stood nearby. At any rate, that reassurance is assuredly because the mythical giants are comrades. (http://sketchleytranslation.host-ed.me/MCRworldguide/10AZentraadi.php)

Though the article says that Zentradi have had their “fighting instincts” strengthened, it is also eloquently describes the alliance as a good thing, further supporting the idea that a positive view of the Zentradi/human alliance is the official Macross byline.

When stories change what they first appear to be, they don’t suddenly crush what seemed like a completely earnest plot. Usually, the seeds of the story’s dissolution are planted early on. If Super Dimension Fortress Macross were that deeply cynical a series, it would have shown it long before the aftermath episodes.

Furthermore, good as it is, SDFM is an adventure-romance series designed partly to sell model kits. It's doubtful that it was intended to send audiences through a metal gauntlet, to present them with a sweet story and then violently overturn all their expectations. What we see at first is what we are meant to see. The allied Zentradi are meant to be sympathetic, their actions laudable and helpful, and there is nothing strong enough to invalidate this.

Internal conflict with allied Zentradi remains a common plot point in the Macross franchise, but it tends to be balanced out by positive examples in those same stories. It’s not a matter of a facade of positivity with the ugly truth being constant conflict: examples of positive Zentradi exist on the large and small scales both.

Yes, half-Zentradi Guld Goa Bowman of Macross Plus was an aggressive man who assaulted Myung and nearly killed Isamu, and one of his superiors attributes his actions to his heritage. However, the last thing could have been meant to be a discriminatory assumption and not to be taken literally by the audience.

Even if it was meant to be taken at face value, Guld is just one man, and the OVA/movie that also involves a celebration of the treaty, a thing to counteract Guld’s individual actions. Otherwise, this is still a world that has still benefitted from such contact. Guld could simply had bad genetic luck, and has the Zentradi equivalent of mental illness.

For the Temujin and his rebels, Macross Frontier also has the Folmo Mall and its happy Zentradi citizens, as well as Klan Klang (despite the unrelated issues with her character). Macross the Musiculture has Zentradi rebels, but things turn out to be more complicated than they first seem.

To have these conflicts constantly pop up without changing the status quo (in a good or bad way), is a little strange, but the writers are probably just repeating a motif as multimedia franchises always do. Macross in general has a problem with repeating motifs even when they might not make sense in context. That some allied Zentradi keep fighting humanity doesn’t seem to mean anything, including a degeneration.

Yet if the question of self-destruction comes up, the material that viewers get shows that the alliance was an ultimately positive thing. Yes, it hasn’t been completely perfect. But you know what? Good stories are told when freedom doesn’t come easily or without sacrifice. The story of the Zentradi is not perfectly written, but from what we do get, contact with humanity meant to be a net good, and not something that everyone would regret later.

Not Wishing for Grit: Words from a Softy who Dislikes Macross 7

Macross 7 has apparently undergone a change of fortune. Once the black sheep of the Macross franchise, now it seems to be embraced by a large amount of the fandom, with all the role-reversal of fandom arguments that that suggests.

However, I'm still comfortable with disliking it: we can't all love everything. No problems…except that some associate a dislike of Macross 7 with certain traits that are the exact opposite of mine. The assumption is that those who dislike Macross 7 do so because they assume Macross is, or should be, a gritty, military-driven franchise.

This sucks, because I actually love the ideals and themes of the Macross world.  Themes about the life-affirming power of song and art are usually guaranteed to float my boat, and I'm a sappy, sentimental sort of girl. I even regret the prevalence of military hardware discussion on the fandom, when I would rather discuss plots and characters instead.

But I just don't like Macross 7. In fact, I really hated watching it, and haven't been back to watch it since I finished it three years ago. The way the themes and ideals of the series are presented just do not appeal to me, and I either dislike the characters or haven't any strong feelings towards them. I also don't like the style and look of the series, and I don't even find it appealing in an ironic, "look-at-this-crazy-shit-oh-my-god" way. It all adds up to one unappealing cartoon.

Let's start where most stories start, with the protagonist. Basara Nekki is the lead, and he's the type of character who only makes the world change, and never has his own world changed.
Basara's determination to "listen to his song", and his commitment to peace are both unwavering, and all that is needed is for the rest of the world to catch up to him.

I'm not saying a character who starts the story with everything he needs to succeed can't be an effective lead, but Basara is just so fucking obnoxious…. He's a loudmouth, an idiot, but one who's always proven right. He's always "on". It's both offensive and boring at the same time, and never gets any better.

And once again, I get it. I get that Basara is meant to embody the force of Art, the way that a creative person can become so passionately devoted to their work, and how this passion can change the world. I understand it because I'm into the creative arts, too, and usually I love artistic characters—but not now.

Just because you enjoy a theme, doesn't mean you enjoy all representations of it. I don't dislike Basara because I want a more "manly", rugged lead who thinks with his weapons: I do because his mannerisms are so irritating, and his strong convictions don't move me. It's nothing to do with a lack of appreciation for the power of music.

And yes, I don't believe that Basara was meant to be taken ironically, that viewers were meant to laugh at him for being bull-headed and/or he was meant to spoof a pompous "rock star" attitude. Macross has never been short on comedy, but it's never been about that kind of vicious, cutting humour.  In fact, one of the main characteristics of the Macross universe is earnestness: no matter how silly its premises are, they are presented with conviction, which is what I think is going on here.

While Macross 7 isn't short on comedy, it's comedy of the straightforward kind: slapstick and jokes and faceplants, without any criticism of the series itself. We are meant to see Basara as a great hero, a maverick whose methods may be bizarre, but who will be vindicated. As further proof, the name "Basara" refers to a mentality of freedom and forward thinking. That could be a joke, too, but it's even more doubtful.

Macross 7 is not an ironic series, in short. And even if there were, even if this was actually an ironic series, it doesn't excuse any visceral dislike a viewer might feel. "It's supposed to be funny" is never an excuse if you don't actually find it funny.

I don't have a problem with the rest of the new cast of heroes. I don't hate Fire Bomber at all, just Basara and his...Basara. Dr. Chiba gives me the willies, though, since he's a little too close to that particular kind of otaku that exists in real life.

I don't have anything against Gamlin Kizaki either way. He's a cool guy, but he never clicked with me. I guess he's popular because, despite his comic moments, Gamlin is a pipeline to the militarism that some desire from the Macross franchise. I'm not in need of anything like that.

Of course, I don't strongly like any of the newer characters, either, but that isn't enough to make a series repulsive. Veffidas Feaze has grown on me a bit, but just as an unconventional female Zentradi. I still consider her to be a shallow character; I know a character doesn't have to speak to have a strong personality, but Veffidas still doesn't succeed at it.

The second major reason I dislike Macross 7 has to do with the antagonists, the Protodevlin. At first mysterious aliens with their own ships and mecha, they are gradually revealed to be energy vampires inhabiting stolen human bodies or alien constructs made by the Protoculture. They feed on "spiritia", and Basara's music holds the key to defeating them, or at least making peace with them, partly because his life-energy is particularly potent.

I can buy that the "spirita" generated by music can be so intense, so powerful, that it could stop the Protodevlin in their tracks (among other things), but the Protodevlin just get on my nerves. They're hideous to look at, or to listen to.

The construct bodies, without fail, look ridiculous and ugly, like enemies from a Super Sentai show, or Inuyasha, all done up in garish, awful colours. Particularly bad is Gabil, a moth/elf/angel thing who always screams about "beauty!" There are plenty of attempts to make these characters sympathetic, but they never get through to me.

To make things worse, the Protodevlin are overhyped. It is said that they caused the downfall of the Protoculture, the mysterious galactic civilization that is responsible for creating artificial life and countless technological wonders. And yet, all it takes is Basara's music to make them realize peace, that they could create their own "spiritia" through the group. Even if these are only a handful of Protodevlin out of past legions, it's still so hard to believe.

There is also a personal reason for disliking the Protodevlin, and it ain't nothing to dismiss. Protodevlin apparently invoke an instinctive fear or anger response in the Zentradi, turning them into violent terrorists or complete cowards—except for Milia, for some reason, which makes the idea  less credible. It's so brainless, when the Protodevlin don't live up to their hype, and when it means that humans have to save the Zentradi, instead of both races working together, using what they've earned through previous stories.

The odd thing is that the Protodevlin can be considered parallel to the Zentradi in a number of ways, not only because some of their stolen bodies were originally designed to replace Zentradi. Still, this just proves my point that the presentation of a theme is even more important than the theme itself. I dislike the Protodevlin so much, while the Zentradi are one of my all-time favourite things.

Despite all this, I never believed that the Protodevlin would be blown away, destroyed, defeated in that standard manner expected of antagonists. I understand is not how Macross functions: it's a media franchise where a key motif is making peace with one's enemies. I accept that, but it doesn't mean I accepted the Protodevlin anyway. Their embodying a valuable theme made no difference.

Besides the new heroes and the antagonists, there's also the three returning older characters: Max, Milia, and Exsedol. Some viewers have said they watched the series for Max and Milia, while I watched it for Exsedol. I'm not proud to admit it, because watching a series just for a character, and not its plot or themes, always felt shallow to me.

Especially with this character. I know I've talked about this before, but it needs repeating to get the whole picture of my reaction to Macross 7. Exsedol is my favourite character in the franchise, and his form and personality were changed for no reason. Furthermore, Macross 7, he's not much of a character.

He's a talking prop, a background object who is too big to have any meaningful interaction with the characters, not that Exsedol is meant to. He's also virtually useless, with very few of his deeds things that could not have been accomplished by another character. All of this puts me in a bad mood for the whole series.

At the same time, Exsedol was also the only thing I ever cared about while watching the series, which proves how screwy my relationship with it is. I don't view fixation on a minor character as a personal problem, but the result of the larger stuff not being interesting. And while there's  nothing wrong with preferring a tertiary character, in this case I feel it's not "earned", because it's not about qualities Exsedol has now, but only what he used to have, back when preferring him to major characters was justifiable.

Max and Milia's portrayals are much better. They have lives outside of their military role, feel like actual characters who matter to the story. Hell, they even look (almost) the same after decades of life. I don't believe the difference in these portrayals is totally due to the relative differences in popularity—Exsedol's portrayal is just an unusual execution, and being tertiary doesn't necessitate making him less a "person". I don't mind Max and Milia getting more focus, just wish Exsedol were more "human" in his function and living.

There are problems, though. One is that Max and Milia are estranged at the start of the series, and it is never explained why. Many fans are content with making up their own explanations, but that never works for me. Stories shouldn't make fans do the mental legwork to fill in their background.

Many believe that Max and Milia's breakup was a commentary on the impossible nature of their relationship. These were two characters who had been bitter enemies, but Max defeated Milia on and off the battlefield, and they were married almost on the spot. There are many practical objections to this scenario, but in-universe there was never the sense that this was anything but a grand love story.

If their estrangement in Macross 7 was meant to be a biting commentary on the previous series, it would have been clearer. The only hint we get as to the reasoning behind the breakup is that Milia complains an "elite pilot won't take care of domestic matters" in the OVA Which One Do You Love?—which is a surprise, when Milia used to be the one tossing babies and blowing up kitchens. It looks like the writers went for the standard gender roles rather than the characters' roles, clearing up nothing about the individuals themselves.

In fact, a huge problem with Milia in Macross 7 is the way she's turned into a comic relief figure by drawing on ugly stereotypes of older women. Zentradi have, ideally, been a mixture of comical and serious traits, but Milia's portrayal relentlessly mocks her in a way that becomes uncomfortable, since it's tied to very real attitudes towards women.

She's portrayed as the meddling mother (pushing her youngest daughter to pick a suitor at age fourteen), the nagging wife, the insecure woman who snaps when you call her "old" or anything similar. While Milia in the original series could be hilariously vain and petty, you never get the impression that was what the writers drew on: instead, they went straight to stereotypes again.

The plot construction of the series also does it no favours. The plot of Macross 7 drags and cycles, with a lot of filler, stagnation, and other messes that are uninteresting if you don't care about the characters. The climax also depends on Geppelnitch, a human-bodied Protodevlin, becomes a "spiritia black hole", a monster that must be stopped...because why the hell not, right?

I realize that newbies are encouraged to just watch Macross 7 in small doses to avoid burnout, but if you need a set schedule to make yourself enjoy a series, that defeats the point of watching something for entertainment. A series should be enjoyable no matter how you take it in.

Also, while Basara's ability to affect the Protodevlin can be defined as an abstract power, Macross 7 attempts to make it literal, in the form of song energy that can be quantified, measured, and implemented. This does lead to some silly visuals, like rocker-piloted mecha with giant speakers, but more than that, it spoils the ideal of music being transcendent, suggesting it's all about a superpower rather than artistic passion. I've backed off over the years, to see that one view of music's power doesn't necessarily cancel out the other, but it does chip away at the power of the concept.

Just as the Protodevlin are ugly to look at, so is the rest of the series. I don't mind the low animation quality so much, or the reused footage, because TV animation has always had those limits. The character designs are good as with all Macross series, but the colour palette of Macross 7 has so many garish blues, pinks, yellows, and purples it just becomes unpleasant to witness. Some of the futuristic outfits and stage clothes are also hard on the eyes, too.

Whatever other problems my dislike might suggest, I know my differences with Macross 7 are not due to wishing for a more gritty Macross franchise. I like the idea of music being able to change the world, of making peace with one's enemies, and of sticking to ones' convictions: I just don't like this particular series. I like the themes Macross embodies, but Macross 7 takes them to unappetizing extremes, and has several specific problems that further bring it down.

A Better Breed of Bitch: Female Zentradi and the Assumption of Superiority

I always used to notice this weird thing in both Macross and Robotech fandom: the consistent off-the-cuff assumption that female Zentradi (or "Zentraedi") are a higher quality of soldier and personage than the Zentradi men. Nothing in any Macross material states this, so it's "fanon" in the truest sense, meaning fans coming together and agreeing upon some truth that they all perceive in the material, but that is not actually an official part of the universe.

I can think of a few reasons why this perception took root, but none of these reasons are enough for me to declare it a canonical "truth", or even something that aligns with my own interpretations of the series. This is true for Macross or Robotech, though only Macross' material holds weight. The Robotech-exclusive material can be studied more as a reaction to the original Macross, than something equal with it.

(Oh, and I'll add "Meltrandi" here to get search results, but I pointedly don't call female Zentradi "Meltrandi" because they don't need a special term, and it's used very rarely in media outside of DYRL, whose portrayal of Zentradi I hate anyway.)

The first reason that female Zentradi might be considered a better breed is that all of them are beautiful. The only"unconventional" female Zentradi design is the very muscular but otherwise pretty Veffidas Feaze of Macross 7. Any other female Zentradi are generically gorgeous according to the standards of modern culture, with the only thing odd about them being anime hair. Male Zentradi designs, on the other hand, run the gamut from the ugly to the handsome, with weird skin colours and the occasional cybernetic attachment.

As time goes on, the design gulf between the genders grows wider. The film Do You Remember Love?  added giant brains to male Zentradi advisors and more extensive cybernetic attachments, and hinted that all male Zentradi soldiers were now bald. Not all of this was carried through to the main continuity, but much of it was, so that we have male Zentradi who still look like normal humans, but other characters with a more intense variety of "ugly" designs. The female designs, however, remain unchanged across all continuities.

There is also the question of whether the male Zentradi's goofy anime faces are meant to represent actual physical deformity, with buggy eyes, saggy skin, and apelike features. I don't think they were, though the Robotech novels certainly thought so. However, even if it's not deformity, it still represents the greater range of character designs among male Zentradi.

I'd argue that nobody on the creative ever intended that female Zentradi were literally more beautiful than male Zentradi, were be manufactured to be exactly that. Rather, it's just that old thing where male characters can have a wide variety of body types, while female characters must all be generically sexy. It's not actually part of the characters' biology, but just a motif that's used without thinking. In this case, I think fanboy-pleasing is part of the intention, but other than that, there is no deeper explanation for why female Zentradi are always "hot".

And viewers should never underestimate the power of beauty. Female Zentradi could be assumed to be of a higher class, more refined, intelligent, and elegant, simply because none of them are ugly or goofy-looking. My reaction is sort of the opposite—having a wider variety of character designs makes the male characters more interesting and engaging, while the more uniform female designs are duller.

It's also harder to call a group flawed when they have little screen time. While beautiful female Zentradi might make for popular characters, in the original series only Milia (Miriya) and Laplamiz (Azonia) had any substantial role, and only a small number of female soldiers and staff had any lines at all.

And even though Laplamiz exists, Milia Fallyna is undoubtedly more prominent. As usual, whenever a character is the major representative of their group in a series, he or she starts to define the series' representation of that group. Milia, who is beautiful, skilled, and whose comical moments are minimal, therefore becomes what viewers think all female Zentradi are like, because we see little to contradict that. And so the logic goes, if female Zentradi are all close in quality to Milia, of course they are superior to the men. In other words, because SDFM has a smaller amount of female Zentradi in speaking roles, it's easier to base the faction off of what we do see, than to assume it is diverse.

But to me, having less female Zentradi characters makes their faction less interesting, not more. I just can't imagine the entire faction being like Milia, every soldier only a little bit shy of being an "ace". Why would that be true of any army, even a fictional one? There have to be female equivalents to the Regult pilots that die like flies, Zentradi women who simply weren't fast or smart enough.

Regardless, I sometimes wonder if female Zentradi are given prominent roles in later stories, exactly because Milia was so popular. This is especially true if you include characters of mixed Zentradi/human race, but even so, most of the major Zentradi characters following Space War 1 have been female: Klan Klang, Veffidas Feaze, and the returning Milia. Likely this is just due to following what worked with the audience before, but I can see how this might contribute to a greater perception of the "worthiness" of female Zentradi to the fanbase, if the female Zentradi characters keep being the primary ones.

Male Zentradi also have many types of mecha, while female Zentradi have only one: the Queadluun-Rau battle suit. The Queadluun-Rau is one of my favourites, a big, bulky machine that's a far cry from the sleek and sexy armour I expected. Other people seem to agree with me, as the Queadluun is a popular choice for mecha art and kitbashing.

 However, there's when the only female mecha is this wonderful, powerful death machine, it brings up the reputation of the female fleet. While the male fleet has smaller, more disposable mecha, such as the "legendary" Regults/Battlepods that get destroyed by the boatload, if the cool Q-Raus are all you have, it makes the female fleet look cooler by comparison. We all know there are female Zentradi soldiers dying left and right in the actual battles, but Queadluuns just look better than those fragile walking eggs, and the former might overwhelm the latter truth.
(I've also wondered if writers were  less comfortable with using female characters as disposable infantry, and that is why female Zentradi don't do ground warfare. The only exception is the "Draug", a female Zentradi ground vehicle found in the PC game Macross VOXP, and its obscurity might still prove the above point. Also, it looks like a squished Queadluun rather than having a unique design.)

Notably, the upgraded mecha that cracked the "mainstream" of Macross are the Queadlunn variants: the Queadluun-Rae (or Rare) from Macross Frontier, and the Queadluun-Quilqua from Macross 7: The Galaxy is Calling Me. Sure, there are many upgraded versions of male Zentradi mecha, but they are confined to games and guidebooks, while anime releases are the backbone of Macross media. Furthermore, the Queadluun-Rae had several toys made of it, strengthening its representation. The accidental implication is that female Zentradi mecha reflect the supposed quality of their owners, both of being more worthy of being perpetuated and upgraded than their male equivalents.

Once again, though, my reaction is to prefer a range of things than just one "cool thing". I love the Queadluun-Raus, but was disappointed to understand it was the only mecha that female Zentradi had (despite those mysterious Regults in the belly of Laplamiz' ship, which have to be a continuity error). More is better, a wider range of things is more appealing.

I realize that no one takes stock in Robotech these days, but to make a point, I'll say that the Robotech expanded universe has its fair share of material that could promote this view of female Zentradi as superior. However, in this case this material is, if not strictly "fanon", still the result of people not involved in the original production looking at the material and drawing their own conclusions.

Every new female Zentradi created for this side of the Pacific is still good-looking (and usually has a name that sounds feminine to English-speakers, for some reason), and are more prominent than any new male characters created, with the most important ones being Seloy Deparra and Kazianna Hesh. All of them are Queadluun pilots, or in this case, the messy Romanization of "Quadronos", but given that their army was made of little else, I can let that slide. However, the focus on only creating new female characters for prominent roles might suggest a greater perception of "worthiness", the same way that most prominent new Zentradi in Macross are women as well, especially if we include those of mixed race. It's an odd coincidence.

In the original Palladium Robotech RPG, the only character class that a female Zentradi can have is "officer", while the male classes include the ranks of Officers of the High Command, Fighter Pilots, Officers, and Foot Soldiers. That makes so little sense: if they are all officers, who the hell do they have authority over? The exact reason for this choice is never given, but to me it seems like they thought a female Zentradi army would be more glamorous and didn't think about anything else.

Furthermore, when James Luceno wrote the midquel Robotech novels, he decided to chronicle the pointless and contradictory self-destruction of the Zentradi race. Stupid, but he also made a point of saying that the female Zentradi lasted longer, and that their deaths involved a last-ditch attempt to protect the earth. The choice of which gender to survive longer could have been random, but given what else we've seen, Luceno may have been another one of those who thought that female Zentradi were just better.

Newer Robotech material just doesn't deal with Zentradi because of the legal trouble surrounding Macross, but the newer version of the Palladium RPG does something very strange. You see, the Robotech dub made a few mistakes and had male voices among the female Zentradi one-offs, and the RPG tried to explain it by saying male Zentradi were assigned to "menial duties" among the female fleets.

This defeats the entire plot point that Zentradi were sexually segregated, which was a major component of their character arc. Besides that huge error, though, it might suggest that Palladium has bought into the fanon hype, because female Zentradi are just too cool and glamorous to concern themselves with the menial day-to-day running of a ship.

All of this is based on guesswork, since no one, to my knowledge, has ever actually said why they believe female Zentradi are of a higher calibre. Looking at what we're presented, I see plenty that would trigger that perception, but no real evidence for it. Furthermore, it helps me understand why, even though I'm a female Zentradi fan, the actual female Zentradi characters never interested me that much. It's because there are less of them in speaking roles in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and in that group, a narrower range of designs and roles. What seems to make some fans think they're of a greater quality are the same traits that make me disinterested. Which is a shame.

Guilty Pleasures: Neo-Exsedol

Picture it: a character you've grown to like a great deal, is suddenly, totally, rebooted. He looks different, acts different, and sounds different**, and absolutely no in-story or out-story reason is given for this. It is taken simply as a given, and all other media versions of the character are now that one (with the exception of one video game).

Thankfully this does not happen often, but one taste of it is bad enough. It happened to Exedore/Exsedol from Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, a secondary character whom I had grown strongly attached to in a short while, eventually declaring him part of my personal A-List. The reasons for doing this make complete sense to me—the character wasn't all he could have been, but I had a cool little emotional connection to him.

**the different voice is actually the result of the actor, Ryunosuke Obayashi, having difficulty doing Exsedol's original higher pitch. I only leave the voice change as a neutral note, and it was never a big problem anyway.


It's not just that Exsedol was changed, but that the changes undermine the original appeal. The original Exsedol had something of a character arc, and an active interest in the human world, and combined comic relief with being useful and intelligent. The new Exsedol is simply sitting there, providing exposition or comic relief, adding almost nothing to the story. He's not really a character, so much as a talking piece of furniture. Also, the original character design was much cooler.

I've run the emotional hamster wheel several times, and am still unable to decide what my exact feelings are towards "Neo-Exsedol". I can't reject this version, totally, even though I've gotten a lot more confident in my dislike. Nor can I accept the reboot totally, either, or change my perspective on the issue to make it less grating.

At the start, and for several reasons, I tried very hard to acclimate myself to Neo-Exsedol. I was afraid of being petty, of disrespecting the creator, and of rejecting a new character out of hand. Now I understand that among all the mocking of nerds for getting upset about changes to media, the simple truth gets lost: people get attached to fictional things, they have reactions to them—that's what fiction does. It's far from wrong to dislike a media change that gets you right here…the difference is not being an ass about it.

Therefore, I've become much more confident in my dislike of Neo-Exsedol, but the fact remains that I am still attached to the character. I like that Neo-Exsedol looks like a B-Movie monster but is still a nice guy. There's a kind of sad, friendly sweetness to him that you don't often see in giant-brained characters. Nothing about him would actually annoy me except for that he essentially takes the place of a character I liked very much.

Making these points are not a failing. I won't avoid or apologize for making comparisons between the two, or wishing one were more like the other. I could interpret this as two different universes with different versions of the same character, but I just can't do it, especially because other things have not changed.

Being unable to decide whether to just ignore this reboot of Exsedol, or to like it whole-heartedly, is what makes this a guilty pleasure That, and having any attachment to a reboot of a character that also makes you squirm is the other reason. If you can't be decisive over trivial stuff, what good are ya?

Happy Anniversary!

Today is the 30th anniversary of the first airing of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, one of my anime Holy Trinity. I can't pretend it's been with me for a long time, but the hold it's had on my brain more than makes up for it. It's a series that mixes so many different tones: goofy absurdity, sweet idealism, some cool mecha action. It's also got a great cast of characters, with arcs extending beyond the main cast members.

In short, we love it here at the house of the Pterobat. It's true, yeah, that I love it the most for the Zentradi, but come on...that's the proof that the show had such a good secondary cast. I'll never think that story arc is about anything about the power of culture, and the rediscovery of humanity.

I hardly ignore everything else, though, because SDFM as a whole is just awesome, and that's no lie. Like the best series, you have your personal preferences, but you embrace the work as a whole.

Some Small Words About Macross: The Musicalture

Being a poor peon stuck in North America, I won't be able to see the latest media project for the Macross franchise: a short-run musical with an all-new cast and story, called The Musicalture. At first I thought it would be one of those hilarious anime musicals that retold some of the previous media stories with cheesy costumes, but it being a new story was a surprise and a further interest-booster. I hope that some generous nerd will put it up somewhere with subtitles because…damn, it's Macross. I love Macross, despite all its problems.

There are two things about it I'd like to note, based on the details given about the storyline and characters.

First, one of the characters, Sonia Dosel, is said to be the granddaughter of Rori Dosel, aka Rico, one of my favourite tertiary characters from the original series. This is common to a lot of media franchises, but it is a Big Deal for a Macross thing, for a few reasons. One is that I'm in a state to always be hungry for any kind of acknowledgement that my favourite Macross characters existed and succeeded at anything, and are actual characters instead of things to be noted in summary.

As I've said before, Macross often steamrolls my favourite characters in ways that make no sense. Rori in particular was said to have become a bitter-burned out alcoholic that leeches off his wife, after being presented as a comic relief character with a positive role to play in the story. I still say that you don't have to like the character to see why this is a fucked up idea—it completely goes against the tone of the series and the expectations raised by it. Sonia's existence doesn't necessarily negate this sort of path, but I'd like to think it does, if only in my own mind. You know that the people behind this musical probably didn't find that obscure bit of trivia about Rori, but it's nice to imagine that it suggests familial success right from the get-go.

 The "descendant of so-and-so" is often a lazy device for media franchises, but it gets a pass here for a few reasons. Macross likes to move ahead with newer characters, with returning characters being rare, and descendants even rarer, so a little indulgence on that side is okay. Secondly, using a tertiary character makes it seem less like an old-fan grab than it could have been, and more like building a world with a past.

I have no reason to be interested in Sonia as a character, but it's still interesting that she exists.

Another thing about The Musicalture storyline is that there is a hostile movement growing among Zentradi in the fleet. I'm not worried anymore about my criticism I make of Zentradi unrest being read as me wanting the Zentradi to be saintly, so I have to say…I am okay with this idea, because some conflicts linger for centuries. I still stick by my notion that allied Zentradi unrest is similar to prisoners or Vietnam vets being unable to live "on the outside", than any kind of ingrained corruption that invalidates their story arc in SDFM.

If The Musicalture becomes popular in Macross fandom, I "can't wait" to see fans interpret this newest conflict as exactly that, acting as if SDFM built up to the Zentradi freedom, only to say, "Whoops, it's not positive after all! Surprise, it's self-destructive!". I still can't understand why some fans don't get that if a series spends some time tending a concept and presenting it a certain way, it's not going to turn around and completely declare that concept a waste. Showing allied Zentradi unrest doesn't invalidate the positive aspects of the Zentradi alliance—it just adds some complexity and realism to the mix.

On the other hand, if Macross wants to build a world with some internal conflict, I got to ask where the anti-Zentradi unrest is. The only thing I can recall is President Glass muttering in frustration over the Galilia 4 incident in Macross Frontier, and it's not as solid. I just figure if you're going to add some realism to spice up your world, it should include making things two-sided. It'd be really cool if the Zentradi unrest was partly a result of poor action by humans, but I'm not holding out.

Guilty Pleasures: Robotech Anything

Once upon a time, a guy named Carl Macek and a company named Harmony Gold redubbed three unrelated anime series as if they were generations of a multi-part saga. 1985's Robotech was composed of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeda. At one time its relatively uncensored content seemed like a revelation to American cartoon viewers, but anime fandom grew and passed the need for Robotech by.

In 2008, Robotech had a random and brief television run in Canada. I decided to watch it, got into it, passed on to the media franchise built around SDF Macross, at first because of my interest in the Zentradi, a race of warrior-slave aliens who rediscover their own humanity in something both sweet, but touched with absurdity.

Robotech isn't a guilty pleasure because the TV series is an inauthentic representation of other peoples' art. It was bought fairly, and the component series didn't disappear. No, it's three basic things:

One, Carl Macek turned out to be a lot more arrogant than I thought he was, claiming credit for the qualities of Robotech that obviously came from the original anime, and being rude or dismissive regarding the Japanese staff. I value giving the right credit for media, so this is a real groaner.

Secondly, except for a few nice people, the remaining fandom is composed of die-hards more concerned with meaningless speculation and back-biting instead of enjoying anything. It's incredibly frustrating to watch Harmony Gold and the fansbase both refuse to give up, and keep feeding on each other. It's one of those stupid times I let a fandom's bad behaviour made me feel bad about my interest in something.

Thirdly, Robotech had its own toys, novels, and comics. The expanded media had huge flaws, but other things in them got a lock on my brain. This more about feeling liking things of that quality should be "beneath" me than it is about artistic integrity. On the other hand, I don't think they're the most awful thing ever made, either. Just mediocre stuff whose badness is inflated because it perverts the parent anime.

These are the things that I still go for:

* Sentinels Exedore: Exedore was my favourite character, who got spun off into multiple redesigned versions and this one was the closest to what I wanted to see from him. He's not a "true" version of the character, but I have the least nerdy guilt over this. I don't mind the way he looks or dresses and doesn't know what a Trojan horse is. Those Robotech novels, purely by accident, gave his character a sense of post-Macross emotional development, active involvement, and sense of completion that made my interest in Exedore skyrocket. Also, I don't consider the PTSC version to be the same thing.

* Kazianna Hesh: She is the only female Zentradi I liked for a long time, until I decided that Veffidas Feaze was okay. Kazianna, I don't only like because she at some point rocked the casaba with one of my favourite official characters...instead, somehow, through her brief moments, she had a sense of being a "real" character, which is very rare for a character created specifically for Robotech. The fact of her not being an official Macross character, and being unable to easily describe what gives her a personality, is the crux here.

* The Malcontent Uprisings (novel and comic versions): A story about one final push of allied Zentradi unrest is a worthwhile thing, and I liked the conflict between Max and Milia, which gave them a bit more depth as characters. "Depth" might not have been the original intent for those characters, but making their relationship more complex does work. However, TMU also does almost nothing with the allied Zentradi males, and much of the story prioritizes the military thriller aspect rather than exploring the situation via the characters most affected by it. The novel version is also too cynical about human/Zentradi relations, as if it's meant to be a display of self-destruction rather than a bump in the road.

* Tavisha and Rosarik Simons's Robotech Clone comic series: This has little to do with the Zentradi, and not much to do with the rest of Robotech, either. Though these are still licensed comics, only a few token Robotech things appear, and largely it tells its own surreal sci-fi story that may be informed by anime as a whole, with a little bit of New Wave SF. In other words, they show the signs of aspiring original creators struggling to get out, and this might be why they seem to be higher quality than other Robotech comics.

* Novels 15-18 of the Robotech Universe: I know Robotech II: The Sentinels, a sequel planned exclusively by Macek, would have sucked. Sentinels Exedore notwithstanding, I largely see a bare-bones sequel filled with dorky-looking aliens and cheesy plots, with shallow new characters, bad art design, and having no idea what to do with previous characters. Yet I kind of like the outer bits of the novel version. Not flaws I mentioned, but the crazy cosmic shit and the internal divisions among the humans. It's loaded with clichés and never fully fleshed-out, but there's something compelling about it.

Some of my attachment was because I always start off fandom with an uncritical phase, absorbing everything. I read these works before my opinions and my critical senses had solidified for a new fandom, before I started even caring about certain characters or themes. Back then, all I really cared about was Exedore, and not the themes behind the Zentradi. When that all changed, I kept shaving off the attachment to the Robotech things I had previously enjoyed, to be left with those small things mentioned above. Because of those, and because of general apathy, I don't hate Robotech at all, for anything.

Another benefit of the experience was that I had to think hard about the nature of prequels and sequels, when exactly a character is fit to be continued and when not, and whether it makes a difference to enjoy something just for the small things, or enjoy a work as a whole. It helped me define my relationship to those issues, and become more aware of myself as an artist.

I'm not interested, however, in any modern attempts to extend Robotech, your Shadow Chronicles comics/film and your Development Hell live-action movie. Nothing that I find to be a "guilty pleasure" is there anymore, and everything seems rushed and charmless, boring rather than offensive or especially not sucking me in.

The Last Robotech Novel [That I Read Out of Order]

I have an ambivalent relationship with the series of Robotech novels, based on the 1980s anime mash-up. On one hand, some of the novels introduced concepts that helped to soothe the various issues I had with the way other continuities handled my favourite characters and things, and also provided me with fanfic fodder. On the other, the novels are generally poorly-written, and also do horrible things with my own favourite concepts. It's a conundrum.

Because of this, I dragged my feet on finding the last two "Lost Generation" Robotech novels, the trio of "midquels" written when James Luceno was the only living half of the "Jack McKinney" duo. The other "Lost Generation" novel, The Zentraedi Rebellion, is, as I've said before, one with which I've made lemons out of lemonade, and which was founded on a solid concept.

However, The Zentradi Rebellion suffered from the same basic problems as the other two novels, which are excessive "grittiness", and redundancy. I'm sure they also mess with continuity, too, but I'm not so invested that I would spend time figuring out how exactly they do.

Recently, I managed to find the last of the "Lost Generation" novels, The Master's Gambit, in a used bookstore. It actually precedes Before the Invid Storm, which I read beforehand, but my apathy should be a clue as to why that doesn't matter too much. I read The Master's Gambit in three days, feeling the urge to wash my hands of it but unable to stop reading. It's one of the few times I've succumbed to that nerd disease known as completism.

The three novels roughly correspond with each "generation" of Robotech, and this one is parallel to the middle-segment Robotech Masters series. A lot of its content is supposedly based on Robotech: the Untold Story, a movie combining the anime film Megazone 23 and other footage to create a Robotech movie that never saw a wide release. I cop to not seeing either Megazone 23 or Robotech: the Untold Story, and look at this novel in terms of how it fits into the overall scheme of what I do know.

While others may not accept the spot-welding of three unrelated anime series, the world portrayed in The Master's Gambit seems even farther afield from the common ground the original series supposedly had. The more familiar world of military politics and impending alien arrival, is combined with a story about hackers, information trading, and neo-yakuza in future Tokyo, sending readers off-balance.

What The Master's Gambit does add to the plot and characters is almost universally, unrelentingly, bleak. This is a problem of all three "Lost Generation" novels, and I might as well re-articulate it here. The mainline novels already tried to up the sexual and violence quotient from the edited anime, but the Lost Gen novels go up higher, and add so much cynicism to them.

For example, there is the portrayal of Dana Sterling as a "wild child" which includes "seducing" the older Terry Weston, which is pretty wrong and horrible. An older man doesn't get "seduced" by a teen, okay? I don't care what erotic fanfic you like to write. Terry Weston was the protagonist of a minor Robotech comic series, so I'm not caring about the stain on his reputation, but it all sounds like something added to make the novel "edgy" without larger consideration. It simply doesn't compute with the world of Robotech to have this type of storyline, nor does it match with the cheery, peppy Dana Sterling of the animated series. Pair this with the very broken understanding of statutory rape, and we have a barrel of fun here.

(Another odd thing about the novel is that Luceno likes to pepper the Japan sequences with Japanese terms and phrases, most of which are translated, but it still reads like a bad anime fanfic. There is also a character named "Misa", which might be a reference to the original Macross.)

This is totally unsurprising given my Zentradi obsession, but the extremely dour perception of what would happen to the Zentradi stood out the most to me. However, even if you don't have any particular sentimental attachment to the Zentradi as a concept or as characters, their fate nicely shows the underlying problems of the "Lost Generation" novels, and is the example of lazy writing.

Yeah, the main series of novels did stupid things with the Zentradi, too, but the last two "Lost Generation" novels really do exceed them. They portray a world in which the humanity and human contact that the allied Zentradi wanted, everything they defected for, has completely gone to shit, due to a combination of xenophobic government policy, and the Zentradi's own inability to escape an ennui that comes with no longer being warriors. To that end, they have all self-exiled themselves to the non-functional Factory Satellite, where they basically sit around and wait to die, their only action taken being to become a sacrifice to protect the Earth.

Now, plenty of stories have been written to end in absolute failure, usually to make a larger philosophical statement. And I can see where Luceno might have gotten some of his ideas from: the later episodes of the TV series do show Zentradi having problems adjusting to human life, including turning on their allies and being unable to know what to do with their lives. However, there are still the questions of tone and quality to consider.

Macross is, even in the Robotech-dubbed form, a series about hope and sweetness and taking silly things seriously. It doesn't shy away from displaying the darker aspects to life, but that is only to bring its idealistic nature somewhat back down to earth. A grim tale of failure doesn't organically follow from a series about love triangles and giant alien fanboys. Problems with the Zentradi come off as bumps in the road, nothing to define the entire allied race or their future.

Furthermore, if a bleak ending is not justified by anything deeper than "Life's a bitch and then you die", it just seems like the author ran out of things to actually do with the characters or ways to build up their world/plot, and decided to just be lazy instead.

Conveniently, the only Zentraedi who could give lie to this perception of their race's future are either gone or dead. I'm still sore about Rico, Bron, and Konda being killed off due to an unexplained illness, but at least they were treated with some level of sentimentality and respect. The last two Lost Generation novels name-drop these characters but without any of that sentimentality, or dwelling on how their actions (spearheading a rebellion against their oppressive military structure and never being a danger to humanity) might contradict the views seen in these novels.

The basic idea is instead that even if the Zentradi thought they wanted freedom from the military lifestyle, their own instincts betrayed them even more than humanity's political backlash did. There is even a scene where Rolf Emerson, Dana's surrogate father and caretaker, actually pauses to wonder if Dana's temperamental behaviour is the result of her Zentradi genes, and the "gentle" genes from her human father helped to temper them. And this is supposed to be a heroic character? It doesn't manifest in his treatment of Dana at all, but it's still jarring.

It is particularly shocking because the Sentinels novels, which run parallel to these books, but were written before, have a much more sentimental treatment of the canonical Zentradi characters. There are several wrong-headed moves made, such as Breetai sacrificing himself to end a karmic cycle of violence, and Miriya quitting the military, but a reader gets the impression we're meant to care about these characters, and they're meant to be happy/doing the right thing. I wonder if these ideas were the product of Brian Daley, and Luceno had the darker vision of the Zentradi?

Another place where this is evident is in the portrayal of Exedore, my favourite character in the whole thing. In the Sentinels novels, he is presented as a benign figure, participating happily in scientific and social endeavours and having an amicable nature. In The Zentradi Rebellion, he is cynical and harsh instead. Now, I decided to interpret this as his jackassery being intentional, but a result of stress and an over-applied pragmatism, plus the mean streak that he already displayed in "Blitzkrieg", all that he eventually learned better from to become the nicer Sentinels Exedore. However, now I can easily see that these are simply two different views of the same character, without any intention of progression.

I might be generous and say that as far back as Carl Macek's original plans for a Robotech sequel, which these novels are based on, he wanted to suggest the Zentradi were very low in number, and that, due to the speed of novel production, Luceno just came up with something on the fly, without considering the larger implications involved. Even so, the results as well as the circumstances should be looked at critically.

And anyway, if the line is that Robotech is all one series, why try to get rid of elements from the first "season" when these elements could be integrated into the whole with a novel version, enhancing that perceived unity? It doesn't make sense. (An alternative explanation is simply that Macek was considering the total proportion of Zentradi, allied and not, who died, which in this case, the remaining defectors would be smaller in number, in comparison to the original intact, living army).

Are there any good things in this novel? Actually, I thought that Luceno's world-building, his little allusions into how societies and social hierarchies have changed after the near-apocalypse were interesting, actually feeling as though they were part of a developed setting that offered enough glimpses to make a reader feel satisfied without overwhelming them with exposition. The military and political manoeuvring would have been fascinating to read about if it did not enhance the character relationships in the TV series, and really didn't have that large an impact on the overall narrative. Nor does the part of the story with the Robotech Masters offer anything more about the race's vaguely-explained backstory. If the narrative had gone more places with these things, it would have been more fulfilling.

I would like to think that even if I had read these two novels while working through the strongest stages of my Robotech obsession, I would still be able to use the good things the other novels provided for me with a clear "conscience". However, I wouldn't like to try out that hypothesis, and am glad they were both encountered later, because god only knows the vast quantities of nerdrage they would have inspired when my interest was at its peak.