12/5/02
Anime
Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV
One fateful night a brilliant light appears in the sky and streaks towards Earth. A city in its path crumbles from its movement and heat of re-entry alone. It crashes headlong into an island and changes the fate of mankind forever. The object is an immense, empty, spacecraft. Man is not alone in the universe. A war rages across the cosmos and here is one of its machines of destruction. The people of the Earth decide that they have to rebuild the ship for the sake of everyone. A global government is put into place but wars break out across the globe. When the Unification Wars come to an end the ship is nearly complete. Two years later it is ready to go back into space. Our story begins here. Part war story, part romance, all anime...
Super Dimension Fortress Macross the TV series is 36 half-hour episodes long and is one of the most influential anime series of all time. In North America, Macross was blended together with two other anime TV series and turned into the famous Robotech. Macross is well worth all of the accolades it has received. The story is riveting, the characters live and breathe, and the music tremendous. The series manages not to be outdated despite obvious period (1980s) animation and pop music. On the animation front some scenes obviously suffer from financial constraints and are at least in one case pretty terribly done by some group different than the other animation. The music is still something to behold, and the vocal work of Ijima Mari-san is incredibly moving. Macross also boasts some amazing technical designs from the Fortress itself to the Destroid mechas to the famous Valkyrie fighter craft, and the Zentraedi arsenal. All in all an amazing anime classic.
DVD Notes
Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV was produced on DVD by the company AnimEigo. The series was put through a strenuous cleaning and tweaking process that performed miracles. The animation once blurry and dim is now bright and vibrant almost as if it were just done. The colours are strong and the details clear. A couple of the earlier episodes have some digital artefacting in the form of rainbowing, looking much like an oily spill instead of the usual rainbow lines. Otherwise the transformation is nothing short of amazing. These Macross DVDs are subtitled only with the original Japanese audio. The discs have the option to turn off the subtitles, and also to turn off the dialog and listen to just the sound effects and music. The audio on these DVD is excellent though there is little directionality in the front soundstage and the rear soundstage is not overly used and mostly mirrors the front. Still for an originally mono show this is great. The animated menu is a bit of a spoiler showing scenes from a fair bit of the series and is best to be ignored on the first watch through of the nine discs. There are no extras for the series, but there are "Easter Eggs" on the disc with different things to be seen.
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Thank you for reading my review.
Bob Male)
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