Making the Most

I forgot to mark the third year of my unusual relationship with Robotech. This is unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected, given that I’ve just been recovering from a bad patch with the fandom.

Over recent months, the many contradictions and disappointments in my fandom and Macross fandom had started to wear on me, leading to a phase where I spent more time wishing that my fandom experience were different, and mulling over my critical feelings towards the same, than enjoying what reality had given me.

I began to be overwhelmed by my (still valid) critiques of the Robotech novels and comics that had once been the building blocks of my interest, and by several other things that I won’t get into right now. I never considered turning my back on the novels, but I subconsciously tried to downplay their importance in forming my own fandom.

Thankfully, my friend John “Zen72” Thomas then released the last episode of his Robotech podcast, The Protoculture Times. Much, much longer than the other episodes, it contained re-run interviews and new ones, and was a great way to go out with a bang.

Zen is far more enthused about the Robotech novels than I am, and hearing him wax poetic about them brought back the feelings I had once had, before critical analysis kicked in. It brought my “spirit” back, even if my criticisms remained.

This was despite the fact that when he interviewed James Luceno, one half of the writing group which penned these novels. When Zen opened e-mail questions for Luceno, with the disclaimer that Luceno didn’t remember much, I tried to put forth a general question, to look like I was not one of those who expected the writers to remember everything. I wanted to understand some of the decisions made about the portrayal of the Zentraedi, the good choices and the bad ones.

Still, the response I received was what I had expected: the plots which had had such an impact on my fandom were strongly suggested to have been decisions made off the cuff, or ones whose motivation was lost in the mists of time. Given the speed at which those books were written that’s not surprising, but it’s still sobering to be reminded of the difference between authorial intent and my reaction.

What that in turn might mean is that, more than any other fandom, I’ve been left to my own devices, to make the fiction I wanted to have out of the stuff I’ve been given, for official material alone always bothers me in some profound way. It’s a sad state of affairs, when usually I’m a shaking canon junkie, but that’s the truth.

Still, somehow, taking a dip back into the McKinneyverse was needed to rejuvenate my nerddom. It’s a figurative dip, though. My increased critical sensibility didn’t vanish, and it does

What the novels gave to me was an extension and completion of certain characters. You know that I like Exedore, Breetai, Rico, Bron, and Konda the best, and the novels, no matter how clumsily, or inaccurately, showed these characters had hearts and minds worth delving into, and could complete their character arcs from the original series. Most of the rest of fandom seems to treat these characters as plot devices, but it’s not unreasonable to see them otherwise.

I later began to realize that their treatment was in truth not entirely rosy, but there are still moments worth preserving. I can spend my time thinking about what I would have done, or I could take what is given, but it is much easier to call back those positive feelings for the novels, and their strength has returned.

No matter how disinterested I am in the rest of the Robotech continuations, it would be stupid to put on a stoic face and pretend I was never energized by these books. This kind of thing is hard to explain to other fans, but it’s good to remember how true it is for me. I still want to be that person who waxes poetic about Sentinels Exedore, or who thinks Kazianna Hesh is her favourite female Zentraedi character, and thought parts of End of the Circle were actually fascinating.

About Two Girls -- A Year-Old Review of "Strangers in Paradise"

Originally posted January 15, 2010. I've since bought the entire Pocketbook collection.

Here's another "backburner" work that I'd been carrying around a desire for over the course of several years, but just now got the chance to explore: Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise. I took the first pocketbook out from the public library, and downloaded scans of all the rest...but I do plan to buy all the pocketbooks, and hence the complete series, now that I've finished reading it.

Strangers in Paradise is about the love between Katina "Katchoo" Choovanski and her best friend Francine Peters, a love that takes them several years and several false starts to realize, especially with Katchoo's shadowy past showing up to ruin things at the worst possible times. Part soap opera, part crime thriller, SiP spans over a hundred issues and is by turn humorous and heartbreaking.

Now, you know this blog is about exploding mechanical dragons and shit, but I really don't have a prejudice against works without fantastic elements. It's just that I started out liking genre material, and in the circles I travel in and the sites I visit, it's SF and fantasy which gets the most exposure. So I ventured into Strangers in Paradise without the sense that I was doing something unusual or personally transgressive.

And I really, really enjoyed this comic. There were a lot of tropes and ideas which usually annoy me or at least bring out my inner cynic, but somehow Moore usually manages to pull things off, though sometimes only by the skin of his teeth.

Normally I have difficulty reading stories where romance is the central element. A lot of the time, I end up frustrated, flabbergasted, and finicky about the characters' interactions and decisions, there seeming to need to be extra stupidity needed to move the plot along or create obstacles in a love story than in any other...or worse, no reason why the characters should like each other.

Somehow, though, I found the long build-up and frequent detours in Francie and Katchoo's relationship to be a pretty fun and interesting read, though with a few eye-rolling parts. It helps that there is the rough transition from being best friends to admitted lovers, their contrasting personalities and backgrounds, and the stigma against lesbiansim, makes for a set of pretty believable reasons why they two of them would have so much trouble getting together, even with their behaviour towards each other sometimes seeming outrageously flirtatious right from the get-go--though on the other hand, North American women can apparently get away with a lot more and remain "just friends" than guys can.

Katchoo in particular I was surprised that Moore pulled off so well, given how hard a character she'd be to write: glamourize her toughness and explosive anger as a "bad girl" thing and her painful backstory seems suddenly flimsy; overemphasize her pain and she'd seem too much like a woman in need of "rescuing", but mostly Moore gets the balance right.

Francine is a really fun character, too, although I curse her more than a little bit for being Genre Blind (dammit, TVTropes....) enough to realize that marrying a doctor would lead to many lonely nights, and having Brad Silver cheat on her was a little too easy of a way to remove him from the picture.

The times Moore seems to hint that Katchoo may be right about men, save for the sense that David is "one of the good ones" is unsettling, and it's a sense that, if I recall correctly, has lead to some accusing David of being Moore's self-insert character. David is fleshed-out enough that if he's a self-insert, he's the rare "good one" (again), and there are several other "good" male characters in the books.

A parallel plot (that I thougth was a dream sequence before it went on longer) in which an older Francine is depicted regretting leaving Katchoo behind for a "normal" life but eventually-ish fixes that, felt a little cheap to start with, since I usually don't like time-skips which spoil an ending (though they can also create suspense in and of themselves). But then, these fast-forward tales were contradicted by the actual storyline and the comics' proper ending, leaving me wondering what the point of was. Did Moore change his mind about the ending halfway through? Or was it a deliberate misdirection?

Blending the aspects of crime thriller and sometimes downright cartoony slice-of-life drama isn't done seamelessly, yet the thriller elements, as ill-fitting as they somtiems be, are so important to Strangers in Paradise that I almost can't imagine the series without them.

Darcy Parker may be a nasty villain, but she's also horribly cheesy at times. Having an incestuous attachment to David was pretty much the epitome of gratuitous over-the-topness.

That little fat guy with the curly hair and glasses who keeps showing up is a pretty irritatingly transparent shot at the "other" comics readers. We've all known people like that, but to have basically the same joke told over and over again, just with him in different jobs, gets tiring fast.

Likewise, the "SiP draws REAL women" back-patting is something I could do without. The art in SiP is fantastic, and I truly wish more female characters in comics were drawn (in all the ways that means) like Moore's cast, but you've got to let some of this stuff speak for itself, you know?

And as I said, the art is fantastic. Moore is great with facial expressions, both the realistic and the cartoony variety, and just draws everything well in a realistic but distinct style. This makes the comic's brief ventures into prose and script all the more annoying, though, and I wish he would have avoided that. I don't mind experimental layouts, but switching to prose in comics has always bothered me.

The only real problem I had with his art was that even with all the attention to detail, sometimes it was hard to tell certain characters apart before they spoke speaking. It often turns out that those characters are related by blood, but not always. I know I still mistook Casey for Katchoo, or vice versa, a whole bunch of times.

In short, love the comic, love the plot, and I'm getting the whole collection.

I Have No Heart to Lie – I Don’t Want an SDF Macross Remake

It seems I’ve had the bad luck to be caught in a fandom where the fans actually want a remake of the founding series. I’m talking about the fandom for the anime series Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, originally released in 1982 but with several spinoffs and a long continuity. In recent years, many hardcore fans have been crying for a remake of the original series.

Macross fandom is already in a rare position, because later works in the franchise rely on an ambiguous continuity. In 1984, a film adaptation called Super Dimensional Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? was released, and this film changed a lot of the original series’ visual details and plot. Later Macross productions draw from a vague background which hints at elements from both the television and the movie, though the movie has also been declared an in-universe film on top of that.

In this new millennium, Macross fans largely consider this contradiction no big deal, with many also seeing DYRL to be the superior rendering, with the primacy of its visuals in later productions cited as proof. In the most extreme cases, it almost seems like the original Macross TV series is treated as a test run, with Do You Remember Love? being the concept’s ultimate refinement, perhaps Macross’ Platonic ideal. In a climate like this, perhaps a desire for an SDFM remake becomes inevitable.

Recently there have appeared two works which have further whetted fans’ appetites for a remake: Macross Fever and Macross the First. Macross Fever is a pachinko game featuring re-animated scenes from the TV series, in the style of the TV series, while Macross the First is a manga retelling of SDF Macross using much of the style of DYRL, though with many original or previously-unused elements.

I’ve seen many Macross fans be utterly certain that these retellings, as well as the recent wave of reboots and remakes in Japan and America, should herald a remake of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, with an adaptation of Macross the First often specified. It’s all very startling, when the traditional picture of fandom is that it is hostile to any such re-imaginings.
 As well as being startling, it’s a personal aggravation, since I just recently discovered Super Dimensional Fortress Macross and love it to pieces. To suggest that series is a problem that needs to be fixed, a mere aperitif, is unsettling, especially since I’m left almost entirely cold by the rest of Macross.

I certainly have more generalized objections to remakes, but there are also idiosyncratic issues I would have with a remake of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, or even this strong desire for one. In essence, I’ve been disturbed by the post-SDFM Macross’ transformation of some of my favourite characters into new designs and personalities without an in-story explanation, something which started with the film versions.

They are the Zentradi, and I go into more detail with the Zentradi re-imagining here, and here, and it’s been a bee in my bonnet for quite some time. While Macross Fever did stick with the TV series Zentradi, Macross the First has largely not, and it is the one everyone is asking for.

It’s anybody’s guess whether the portrayals of the Zentradi in this theoretical Macross remake would draw more from the old versions or the new ones, but I don’t have much confidence in the former appearing. This is why I’m not interested in a Macross remake: more than any other fiction, there’s a strong chance of my favourite characters being changed beyond what is normal for this sort of thing, and nothing else could compensate for that.

Furthermore, I feel something has “gotten into” the Zentradi portrayal since SDFM, creating a situation where the Zentradi are largely a set of broad archetypes based on simplified versions of the original characters, along with the belief that only female Zentradi characters are worth caring about. I also worry about seeing this new dynamic being reflected in a possible SDFM remake.

I’ll confess the appearance of the TV series Zentradi in Macross Fever, though you only saw them for a few seconds, was tremendously exciting when these designs had been all been but forgotten. I do have eyes, recognizing that modernized animation can be more electrifying than older works, and that the original Macross was plagued with animation errors, from painting mistakes to characters going horribly off-model. Yes, on a visceral, immediate level, it is thrilling to think of my favourite Zentradi animated in a slick contemporary style, even with minor tweaks to their character designs, which do not upset me the way wholesale redesigns do.

Yet that immediate thrill can’t become actual desire for a remake, and not only because there is no guarantee the TV series Zentradi would be used. I am so attached to SDFM that the thought of a remake causes immediate dislike. I’m stubbornly sure that all my favourite moments in SDFM, and their larger context, would not be replicated in a way that could be better than the original.

I’m probably trying to now compensate for all this remake enthusiasm by being more the typical nerd about it. It would be nice to see my favourite characters re-animated with the right look, but I just don’t disagree with anything so strongly in Super Dimension Fortress Macross that I would want it to be fixed with a remake.

Yet if I were to push myself to be more open-minded, what could a remake of SDFM gain for me? I have already said I see flaws in the animation, and those would surely be fixed, but what else about SDF Macross do I find imperfect? Lots of things, in terms of plot. I wish that Max and Milia’s getting together wasn’t so creepy. I wish there was a more explicit understanding of what kinds of lives Exsedol and Britai going to lead, instead of their virtually disappearing in later episodes, though beforehand their prominence was satisfying.

Yet I always come back to this: everything has flaws, and the perfect form of a work cannot be achieved. Whatever is fixed in a remake, new problems will crop up, and some good things will have been left out. For anything gained, something is lost. So, when considering the issue in a broader context, why bother remaking something when you can never perfect it?

No, I’m firmly in the camp that would rather see those of Macross make something new, than remake SDFM.

Of course, there are other reasons why someone might take interest in a Macross remake. There is Robotech, the series that combined the original Macross with two other series in dubbing, leading to a Robotech/Macross fandom rivalry today (though Macross has been far more successful). If handled a certain way, an SDF Macross remake could jettison Macross from Robotech, since the first Macross series would be de-canonized and left to “belong” to the chimera series instead.

Typing this sends chills up my spine. While I’m not upset by Robotech or feel it an infringement on the original Macross, the idea of exiling SDF Macross solely to Robotech, in order to either “save” Macross or plug up this fandom rivalry, is abhorrent. It’s the highest extreme of the mindset that SDFM was just a rough draft, if it can just be given over to Macross’ “enemies”.

In addition, while Macross fandom is mostly calm about issues of continuity, perhaps this theoretical remake could realize exactly what the modern Macross material is drawing from. I once had those longings for explanation, but I eventually understood that any such clarification would create a world where my favourite designs were made secondary, if not entirely non-canon. Therefore, I prefer to have SDFM sit in its position as an indefinite part of the continuity, as long as it meant the entirety of the TV series Zentradi were on some level canon.

I’m not saying every Macross fan has to like SDFM or even afford it any respect as “the original”, but it’s a great show, and is not in desperate need of a updated gloss in order to be respectable. In the end, I can’t understand this desire for a remake, even if I try to see outside my own knee-jerk response.

The Animation of Sally Cruikshank

I’d already become aware that independent animator Sally Cruikshank was responsible for a beloved childhood short from Sesame Street, and that she had produced other, stranger animation, but going back to her catalogue for a second time made me realized how much I loved her material.

It’s entirely unsurprising. After all, her art is very brightly-coloured and extremely surreal, with a penchant for reptile-people…how could I not like it? When I have some extra money, I’m definitely going to buy the DVD of her shorts that she offers from her website, though the Sesame Street ones won’t be on there.

For me, it started out with the Sesame Street animation, “Above It All”, about an alligator-girl and her flight-enabling beanie. Normally I’d boo and hiss at a reptile with hair and lipstick, but the short was so good I really didn’t care. It perfectly captured (and may have triggered) some of my childhood dreams of flying.

Going through her catalogue reveals other Sesame Street shorts I remember/or are memorable. “From Your Head”is a great adventure in dreaming and thinking, and “ “Beginning Middle and End”   is another something I do remember from childhood; it’s about storytelling, and has a pterodactyl in it. Good times, and there are many more of such shorts, instantly recognizable.

When it comes to her independent work, the ultimate standout is the short “Face Like a Frog” an innocuously titled short which is the most bizarre cartoon I’ve ever seen. There is a bit of a plot, but it’s really just an excuse for weird shit to happen. Driving on a night road, a frog-man is lead by a frog-woman named Gluey to a hexed house that she thinks he can un-hex. The house turns out to be filled with her weird frog family. He does manage to escape with Gluey on a subway that goes to hell but “makes one stop in Miami Beach”. With the visuals it’s even weirder, and even the bland, brief dialogue becomes a window to strangeness once put in context. There’s also a cameo by Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo, as a lizard who tells the protagonist in song to avoid the house’s basement.

Two of her other longer shorts, “Quasi at the Quackadero”  and “Make Me Psychic” don’t quite match that level of strangeness, but they are pretty strange. The first thing you’ll notice is that the protagonists of these shorts are called “ducks” but like some kind of strange Muppet, with long muzzles in place of noses and mouths, and yellow colouring for the male characters, being their only presumably avian features. Cruikshank even admits that, “they came out looking like ducks only her, which is a wonderfully strange statement. One short is about a trip to a fair, the other about a device that allows its owner to have psychic powers, though both are given innumerable bizarre twists.

However, her more recent shorts are sadly disappointing. They lack the vibrant colour and detail of her older works, and instead look like crude MS Paint facsimiles of the same. The use of text-to-voice software over actual voice actors is also very off-putting, and the attempts at satirizing consumer culture (in shorts like “Whinsey on Your Phone”and the “Charbucks” series) also fall flat.

Still, her major material is worth checking out, and needs to be seen to be believed. Find most of her work at her personal YouTube channel, Sally Cruikshank Films, or her website Fun on Mars, through which you can order her DVD.

Pet Shop of Horrors

Pet Shop of Horrors, as a collective 4-episode anime and preceding manga, is a work I’m torn on. The bind it puts me in is not unlike what the animated version of The Maxx does:  in both cases, I know the original comic version has both a longer and more detailed storyline on its side, as well as the simple fact of being The Original. However, there’s just something a tiny bit more elegant and more compelling about the shortened animated version.

Pet Shop was originally a manga by Matsuri Akino. A pet shop operates in an American Chinatown, selling magical and fantastical creatures. It is run by the androgynous and soft-spoken Count D, who provides each customer with a contract; break its terms, and lessons will be learned, sometimes harsh ones, though external threats can also arise. It began as a series of standalone “episodes”, but as the manga goes on, continuity and recurring characters appear, and the plot formula appears in a greater variety. The OVA adapts four chapters.

In a general sense, I like both versions for their elegance, atmosphere, and emotion, with the occasional appealing message. Yet the manga version, there is comic slapstick inserted between the darker moments, sudden flashes of sweatdrops and wingding backgrounds that knock the viewer right out of the darker parts. Matsuri Akino never quite manages to balance these tone switches, but the OVA dilutes those comedic moments to ones that don’t feel as jarring when they appear.

Another aspect that draws me more to the OVA, against my better artistic instincts, is simplicity that its shortness preserves. The manga, because it is much longer, must, introduce more elements if it wants to remain active. The presence of detective Leon Orcot also ensures that more story needs to be told: if there is a recurring character who is not the master of everything, the anthology format is harder to sustain. Something demands that this recurring second cast member must be explored. However, this all feels like a distraction rather than an expansion of the show’s world. Leon is present in the OVA, but because it is so short, there is no need to go into further detail with him. I don’t truly blame Akino for adding more to the story than just letting it remain The Twilight Zone with animals, but there’s something alluring about the simplicity of the OVA.

Furthermore, as it continued the manga introduced more and more of D’s moralist preaching, which soured my enjoyment. Granted, the OVA adapted stories which did not have explicit speechifying, but the view it offers, a view of a smaller Pet Shop of Horrors without D speaking with disdain about mechanical devices, fad diets, American food, the sentimentalization of prey animals, or humanity’s treatment of the planet, is pleasing, and thus keeps my affection for D’s character intact. The OVA avoids the chapters where the pets’ human forms are represented as people with animal ears, horns, and what looks like cutesy Halloween costumes. Some of the pets here are chimerical, yes, but not in the same cornball fashion that a few later manga characters were.

I feel a little guilty making these complaints: most of the time, I do prefer a story’s original version, and I am a fan of the manga. However, here’s a once-in-a-blue-moon occasion where a highly reduced adaptation has something to offer that the source material does not. I still enjoy many of the other manga-only PSOH episodes, but the OVA’construction undeniably has its specific attractions.

There’s nothing else to say but that Pet Shop of Horrors is one of my favourite little pieces of Japanese animation. On top of everything else I’ve just mentioned, the music and the artwork are top-notch. I might not be able to reconcile my feelings about the OVA vs. the manga, but neither is easily forgotten. That the animated version remains so, even after reading the original comic, is proof positive of its quality.

The Greatest Generation

If fandom is something involving interaction with like-minded people, the seeking out of additional information, and the construction of meta, fanart, and fanfiction, then my first fandom was Transformers. Beast Wars: Transformers was my entry into that, but the Transformers work with which I most expressed the most overt geekiness was the third season of the original Transformers cartoon. In doing so, I cemented a lot of personal tropes and desires that I would express in later fandoms.

I actually like Beast Wars better on both a critical and affectionate level, but one of my peculiar tendencies is to lavish more attention on works I consider engaging but critically inferior. Perhaps it is because a less well-constructed work leaves more room for imaginative analysis, or that I revere the better works so much it would feel almost blasphemous to try to create my own inferior homages to them.

I left Transformers fandom around 2002, but recently re-watched Transformers season 3, partly in tribute to the year 2010, with the Japanese dub of the season once billed as a sequel series, Transformers: 2010.  My feelings had changed and yet had not changed, and I felt a comforting boost of joy and nostalgia. For my pleasure (and maybe yours), I’ll share my new thoughts on an old favourite.

I was born in 1984, and thus was too young to catch the original Transformers boom. I never saw season 3 when it originally aired in 1986, but only in 1999, due to the fandom’s tape-trading circuit. While the early Transformers cartoon is somewhat remembered by the general public, the third season is considerably less so. It had an all-new cast of Transformers, and lost a lot of the iconic staples and imagery that fans remember from their childhoods—gone were the deserts and canyons and transforming Earth vehicles, though these were already beginning to be phased out.

This was because of The Transformers: The Movie, which jumped the timeline forward from 1985 to the then-future 2005, killed off a lot of the original characters, and introduced new sci-fi settings into the mix. The third season followed from it, and some Transformers fans insist that the third season was a huge shark-jump, an enormous drop in quality with unlikeable characters and suddenly cracked-out storylines.

This opinion has become somewhat less popular throughout the years, with there being a notable number of fans who prefer the third season outright, or who are neutral towards it, or who see the entire original cartoon as a single body to be embraced or discarded as it will. The attitude that Transformers suffered in season 3 seems to be more the province of casual fans rather than fandom veterans, though as with everything else, there are exceptions.

When it is observed through adult eyes, however, it is hard to imagine the Transformers cartoon suffering any precipitous drop in quality. The series always suffers from poor animation, nonsensical plots, bad science, and tenuous continuity. And too, it always had some small spark of warmth and wit that makes it easier to understand why it is still so beloved.

I will admit that it was, on multiple levels, foolish of a series to shove an old cast out of the way for a new one, instead of gradually introducing them into the ensemble. However, any criticisms I make feel like lip service. I have utterly no interest in the original Transformers cast, and thus to have them bumped from primary character status is the best thing for me. It is only with this new cast of Transformers that the cartoon becomes engaging to me at all.

The third season of the Transformers cartoon left a deep mark on me and my relationship with fiction. I realized my taste for flawed characters who walked a little off the beaten path, who were snarky or standoffish or insecure. This was also the first time I began to more deeply consider why I chose to favour certain characters, and I still indulge in those thoughts for later characters. This was all in spite of the fact that many Transformers fans considered the newer characters more flawed and less competent than the characters who came before them.

Of course, when I speak in the generic, I’m really referring to the two new leaders, Galvatron and Rodimus Prime. Rodimus’ flaw was that he was insecure. A handful of episodes dealt with his insecurities over suddenly assuming leadership, either as one-off lines or major plot points. Galvatron’s flaw was that he was the TV version of insane: screaming, capricious, and violent.

However, since I now have a more cynical view of the cartoon’s quality, and realize that all of its faults were intrinsic to the whole, I don’t take too seriously any of the ethical issues raised by the characters or the storyline of season 3.As part of this new mindset, I am now uninterested in fretting over whether Rodimus Prime and Galvatron were “good” leaders or not. By adult standards, none of the Transformers leaders could command their way out of a wet paper bag, no matter how confident they were. The best thing you can hope for is that they entertain; no need to sweat if they might be leading their faction into a dark age, because Transformers didn’t really go into that.

My unconcern was also helped by realizing the series developed no real arc with either Rodimus or Galvatron. Their fans and haters alike will focus on certain episodes to define the characters’ infamous traits, but proportionally more of the episodes forgot these and treated them as normal cartoon leaders. In addition, with Galvatron the lines between “insanity” and just being a cheesy cartoon villain are sometimes pretty blurry.

As I’ve tried to grow and develop as a writer, I’ve realized that characters’ prominent traits usually need to serve a larger purpose, some relevance to the plot. Character flaws, for example, are things to purposely overcome or never overcome, depending on the tone of the story; they build towards a change, good or bad. Nothing of this sort happens in The Transformers. The flaws of Rodimus and Galvatron appear and disappear again and again, building towards nothing that isn’t resolved by the episode’s end. Much as the two characters fascinate me, I still see how poorly their story was told. Again, this is not an artifact of the series’ drop in quality in the third season, but part of the series’ general difficulties. The earlier seasons had no character arcs, either.

Yet because I love it, I am generous. I can see season 3 as a season that was trying to grasp at things that North American TV cartoons didn’t have a lot of at the time, especially through Rodimus’ existential angst. Sometimes it seems like it was trying to become something a little bigger than seasons prior. There are fleeting signs of a series that might care more about telling its own stories instead of appeasing the audience, which is a major step in writing a quality work.

I would have killed to be a fly on the wall when Hasbro and Marvel and whoever else decided to write Rodimus Prime and Galvatron in that way. Wanting to sell new leader toys is understandable enough, but why take this route wither their characterization?

Regardless of why they appeared, I liked them. I do have a stronger awareness that Rodimus should not have allowed his insecurity to get the better of him at all, but it’s still an interesting aspect on many levels. I also love how sarcastic and snippy Rodimus is at times, which his detractors fail to mention and is an amusing selling point. Galvatron is also amusing when he is angry, his rage is fun too, and there’s an additional dimension to his relationship with his much put-upon lieutenant, Cyclonus.

Cyclonus is another favourite of mine. He’s basically an evil robot Klingon who’s loyal to the bad guy despite living in a culture of backstabbers. At times, this loyalty looks doubly foolish, since he’s prone to getting a punch in the face from his leader when the writers remember Galvatron is supposed to be crazy.

I used to find an ethical dilemma here, constantly trying to prove that Galvatron did care for Cyclonus, but I just don’t worry anymore. Now my stance is that these characters are absolute villains in a children’s series, so it doesn’t really matter if one character I like will strike the other on the same side. In more serious or nuanced characters I might look twice, but for now I just let their relationship be. I still appreciate Cyclonus because he is imposing and arrogant rather than weak and sycophantic, giving some grandeur to his convictions, as foolish as they might look to an adult complexities. His genuine concern for Galvatron is also still strangely touching.

There is also Ultra Magnus, Rodimus Prime’s right-hand-man. With Rodimus, Galvatron, and Cyclonus, Magnus completes the quartet of beloved characters from season 3. While I like or tolerate the rest of the movie’s new Transformers, these are the ones that I truly declare myself a fan of. It makes for a neat package.

In Ultra Magnus’s case, he gets a bad rap from the fandom because of his “I can’t deal with that now!” line from the Transformers film, delivered when they’re under fire in space and it’s noted that their friends’ ship had gone down. Because of this, and the character’s humbleness, Magnus is seen as insecure and wimpish, though not met with such bile as Rodimus Prime is.

There have been many other versions of Ultra Magnus, met with more appreciation because they are more “badass” characters. Still, the 80s cartoon Ultra Magnus is my favourite. There’s something kindly and loveable about him, and he’s not really insecure outside of that meme--just modest and altruistic, always willing to step up to the plate when he’s needed. Magnus may come off as stolid, but I like stick-in-the-mud characters, sometimes.

My interest in the characters is what fuels my affection for the Transformers cartoon, creating an iron-clad shield against the series’ cheapness and ludicrousness. The earlier seasons don’t have that shield, which is why I cringe when I manage to catch a piece of them, and of most other 80s cartoons. Still, there are minor things that appeal to me outside of the four main characters.

First, while Rodimus, Magnus, Cyclonus, and Galvatron are the only characters I would declare myself a specific fan of, I have some affection for nearly every character associated with them--the original ones from the movie. Kup, Arcee, Blurr, and Springer on the Autobots’ side, and Scourge on the Decepticons’; I don’t include kid-robot Wheelie since he appeared later in the film, but I don't hate Wheelie as much as other people do. Arcee still bugs me somewhat, because she’s often just “the girl robot”, but I can’t totally hate her.

The idea that these six Autobots and three Decepticons should be “together” is indelible in my mind, and will taint any attempts to engage with other incarnations of them outside of the cartoon. Logically, I know that they (except for Arcee) were just toys that happened to be produced in the same year, and they could be mixed and matched however a Transformers writer pleases, which is what happened.

These characters had many other incarnations in the 1980s Marvel comics of the US and UK, in modern comics produced by Dreamwave and IDW, and even stories exclusive to the Transformers conventions. However, other portrayals of these characters never feel quite right, even if their stories were written better than the cartoon’s. Also, because better writing requires a less capricious status quo, “my” characters also ended up as secondary or tertiary cast members rather than the leads.

Further appeal can be found in some of the plots of season 3. While criticizing season 3 for being too outlandish is ridiculous in light of the many “wacky” episodes that aired before it, there were plenty of insane episodes in this season. In keeping with taking a less serious view of the cartoon now, I can laugh along with many of these insane plotlines, and find a cheerful joy in them due to my taste for the bizarre.

This bizarreness is also reflected in the art style of the series. Many episodes are populated with offbeat aliens and creatures, including the new antagonist Quintessons, and these monsters make the series even more engaging. The designs of the new Transformers are also more appealing, with a brighter range of colours, strange “futuristic” vehicle modes, and sleeker, more organic body designs.

And, even though it was established in a hasty and clumsy way, I still appreciate on principle the idea of the previously static Transformers universe undergoing some kind of change. Maybe not if I didn’t enjoy the result, but even so, for all its haphazardness, season 3 did try to establish a backstory and mythology for the Transformers, and did things like having the kid sidekick grow up and have a son of his own.

One of the ideas was that the Quintessons, random aliens from the Transformers movie, would turn out to be the creators of the Transformers, banished when their slaves rebelled. This is a very obvious retcon to an adult viewer, since nothing suggested this was the case when the Quintessons first appeared, and you can see painful attempts to shoehorn this in. Nonetheless, it was something. The comics, and many other continuities, instead proposed that Transformers were create by the robotic god Primus, for a grander purpose, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the Quintesson origin because the Transformers had to fight for their freedom.

As the Transformers brand has gone on to become a multimedia, multi-continuity franchise, nothing like season 3 was ever attempted again. While longer series had changes to the cast rosters, the leadership positions remained intact, with the main leaders always named Optimus and Megatron. Furthermore, while these series made several tweaks to it, nearly all incarnations of the Transformers replicated the premise from the original cartoon and comic.

My bias finds no problem when Beast Wars started this trend, especially since that series acknowledged the re-using of names in terms of historical gravitas, but after several more times it began to feel redundant. Since the franchise’s primary goal is to sell toys to the generations of toy-buyers that cycle ever more quickly, it’s no surprise that they would raid their own stores for the same thing over and over…very few would remember the previous iteration.

Still, I would like to see a greater variety of Transformers premises, which is another reason season 3 appeals to me. It was one of the rare times an “Optimus” and a “Megatron” were not in charge, and it was not just about fighting the enemy robots on Earth. I still enjoyed the newer material (I loved Transformers: Animated), but I craved difference, even when I was not the target audience.

Even though I have a slight preference for Rodimus Prime over Galvatron, I’d have to say the best episode of Transformers season 3 is “Webworld”, written by Len Wein and Diane Duane (yes, really), which focuses on Galvatron and Cyclonus instead. Threatened by the other Decepticons, Cyclonus tricks Galvatron to going to the planet Torkulon to be “cured” of his madness. It’s a world of webs, staffed by creepy simian aliens who put Galvatron through parodies of real-life psychological therapies. Galvatron ends up destroying the planet after he prevents the Torkulons from essentially trying to lobotomize him with giant insects (yes, really). It’s a strange episode full of purple and blue and orange with aliens everywhere, and nicely encapsulates both the stupidity and the small moments of earnest emotion that Transformers could have.

Not all the episodes of season 3 were great, however. Like most people, I disliked there being several episodes which focused on the new kid sidekick Daniel (offspring of the previous kid sidekick, though Daniel was much younger), and some were just a little too boring or absurd. However, my mellowed attitude means that even such episodes were easier to get through. There is also the alternate anime continuation “The Headmasters”, but as it’s a different continuity and has its own issues with characterization, I will ignore it for the purposes of this essay.

Still, the other shoe must drop, as they say, and by the end of season 3, I would have to contend with the same kind of hurried alterations that fans of the original seasons did. The two-part episode “The Return of Optimus Prime” aired after so many people complained about Optimus being gone. It depended primarily on continuity errors and contrivances, everything designed only to get Prime back on the table as quickly as possible. I can’t blame them, not when I embraced the same kind of immediate gratification for TF:TM, but obviously I didn’t like it, especially when later episodes acted like Rodimus Prime hadn’t existed at all.

Despite this revival of Optimus, the Transformers cartoon ended shortly afterwards. I’m glad that it did; there was something wrong about Optimus Prime living in the same world as Galvatron and Ultra Magnus and the rest--he was intrusive, a creature from an earlier aeon. Furthermore, if the show had continued, the 1986 characters would largely suffer the same fate as their predecessors: shuffled aside to make room for newer toys.

There were hints of that in the three-part “The Rebirth”which closed off the series. In this “season 4”, the new 1987 characters had the spotlight, and a whole bunch of them were introduced rapidly. There were even hints that Galvatron would be challenged in the future by one of the new villains, though the series ended on a cliffhanger.

In all this, it’s surprisingly easy for me to forget about the actual Transformers: The Movie. I had rewatched that more recently, and waited until the end of my rewatch to discuss it. As with season 3, I love this film dearly, though there is far less meat to it. Most of the character traits that I talked about weren’t present in the movie. Ultra Magnus is probably the character that gets the most play on those terms: Galvatron is there, but he is more of a standard “cool” character there, his insanity coming later, and Rodimus Prime mostly exists in his previous incarnation as the “teenage” robot Hot Rod. Just as with the television series, very little about the film makes any logical sense, but it’s still a treat, a blinding nostalgic rush of bright colours and laser blasts.

What more can I say? It’s one of those things that means a lot to you, but that you don’t feel comfortable recommending to anyone else, even other nerds. After getting older I can see the flaws more clearly, but the attachments to the characters are just as vivid. Here was where it all began for me, and it’s nice to go back once in a while.

Thundering Badasses

Yes, I’m going to revisit the world of the Zentraedi/Zentradi again from time to time. I’ve said most of what I wanted to say, but there are always these little things that demand addressing….

When I hear the term “badass”, I think of a character that is more than simply competent and strong. I think of a character that is absolutely impervious, unshakeable, and does everything with a smile or a roar. Such characters can be fun, but dullness can also come from being so perfect. I prefer characters with some kind of twist, some kind of twinge, a chink in their armour, a flaw on their surface, though that does not mean these characters are weak.

This is partly why I disagree that the ideal state of the Zentradi of the Robotech and Macross universes is for them to be more uniformly “badass” than they might be in the official materails. Granted, I’m also not comfortable with Zentradi being comic relief as the later Macross series sometimes have them, but total “badassery” isn’t the answer.

(Most of this applies to the male Zentradi characters, by the way, due to the portrayals of female Zentradi characters being far more uniform)

I liked the original Zentradi characters from SDFM because they are actual characters rather than symbols to show how great humanity is, having a fair range of characterization even when only providing exposition and chasing down humans. The thought of a homogenized Zentradi characterization undermines the power of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, risks turning into another show about beating up the cold, scary enemy aliens. If a major plot point is that the Zentradi and humans can find common ground, let the Zentradi have goofy, ugly, nerdy, and comical members, as well as strong, powerful, and refined ones.

Yet during my experience in Macross and Robotech fandoms, I get the persistent impression that others felt their respective universes could do with harsher, darker Zentradi. For one thing, there has been expressed preference for the redesigned male Zentradi from the Macross film Do You Remember Love?, whose darker, more alien appearance better suits this need. These incarnations also participate in a reduced storyline, so there is less room for that pesky humanistic portrayal to get in their way, are stripped down to their very essence of threat and their most basic transformation.

Some might say that the integration of these Zentradi redesigns into the main continuity demonstrates that the staff of Macross also believed that their initial male Zentradi were not intimidating enough; however, none of us can know that for sure. (Nor would this mean the original designs are full-stop inadequate.)

Yet I do wonder if it’s true, and what role this desire might have played in the radical retconning of Exsedol Folmo. He has never been a badass character, but this version of the character, which I call “Neo-Exsedol”, might be more in line with viewers’ wishes for the Zentradi. By being a more detached, stoic character, Neo-Exsedol might suit a more aloof Zentradi mien, of which the desire for more “badassery” is also a part. Perhaps someone, god forbid, even found Classic Exsedol to be goofy.

This all could be why some of my favourite Zentradi are disliked by the Macross and Robotech fandoms. Take Warera, Rori, and Konda, characters who, while they have a significant role in the story, are the absolute antithesis of what viewers expect members of a warrior alien race to be. They are immature, hedonistic, and ultimately good-hearted, never seen in combat, are comic relief, and their most resolute actions are done in the name of retiring from war. Some viewers might feel cheated, that characters like this rise to prominence and dilute the menacing nature of the Zentradi.

On the Robotech front, I’ll admit that the Powers that Were are far more obvious about what they would like the Zentradi to be. While some of the novels offer emotional growth for the original Zentraedi characters, some of the comics, particularly the work of writer Bill Spangler, are interested in making the general Zentraedi into a more stereotypical “proud warrior race”, and imposing this interpretation upon the new Zentraedi created for these stories. This fed back into the Robotech novels when the “Lost Generation” series of mid-quels were published and used several Zentraedi details from the comics.

These works do so in several ways. One is in providing Zentraedi with a harsh and grating native language (different from Macross attempts at the same, whose cadence I prefer over the Robotech one, disregarding its ridiculous phrase “Yack Deculture”). Zentraedi in this part of the comics even possess the concepts of honourable death and trial by combat, rather than simply winning any way they could and eliminating trouble without ceremony, as seemed to be the case in the original Macross. When new Zentraedi characters appear in the Robotech expanded universe, they are nearly always fighters, whether as rebels, mercenaries, or soldiers, rather than taking any kind of other path.

Never underestimate the stupidity of Robotech, you might say, but I would have thought the idea that the Zentradi weren’t a “proud warrior race” was a self-evident one. In fact, an important part of the story is that Zentradi have no culture at all, not even to apply ritual, honour, or ceremony to their fighting.  They simply do it because they are told to. Some individual Zentradi take personal pride in their accomplishments, but they are not a race of economy-sized Klingons.

The later Macross material has an advantage here, given that it shows the non-warrior Zentradi that the original series promised, and never adding the kind of “warrior culture” bunk that the Robotech adaptations did.

There can be “badass” Zentradi. By a certain margin, I think Britai, Milia, and Kamujin qualify, though Britai is more restrained, Milia is eventually “tamed”, and Kamujin is too clumsy for them to quite fit that mould. Comical Zentradi characters, too, shouldn’t define the whole of the Zentradi race, and there can even be comical Zentradi without substance. The point is that these characters, or any other character type, shouldn’t be used to define what Zentradi “should” be.

There is no character about whom I can say they are not a “true” Zentradi because they don’t live up to an imagined ideal. Even when I consider a character like Klan Klang to be almost mind-meltingly ridiculous, I can’t say that she isn’t a “real” Zentradi. Yes, her being Zentradi might intensify my negative response towards her, but if she were a human character, I would also dislike her.

Overall, both universes seem guilty of trying to “badass-ify” the Zentradi by creating a more stereotypical image of what a “warrior” race should look and/or act like. Macross is better about this sort of thing, since it’s harder to tell if their alterations to the Zentradi were done because the writers also felt the Zentradi should be more distant and “badass”, and there are counteractions to it. But the Macross fandom itself is not devoid of a desire to see more menacing Zentradi. The older Roboetch novels and comics also make an effort to present Zentradi as more of a stereotypical “proud warrior race”, which feels extremely off but might be related to a desire to make them more “badass”. I would simply have preferred a well-rounded characterization.