The morning sun had just risen over the rim of the concert stadium, casting bright shafts of light across the deserted stands. The sunlight just barely reached the stage at the rear ground level of the stadium. Upon the stage, where she had been standing just a short while before, was Lynn Minmay herself.
It was extremely unusual to see her alone without any sort of entourage. She had not told them she would be stepping out this morning. She did feel slightly guilty that they were likely freaking out right about now and trying to find out where she had gone to, but she had had to come here alone.
Gazing out across the stadium at the empty stands, she could see in her mind’s eye the crowds of cheering fans that had filled them the previous night. Last night had been the final performance of her Goodbye Tour. Why was it a goodbye tour? Because later today she would be boarding the SDF-2 Megaroad-01 before it launched on its maiden voyage. Many people had reacted with shock when she had announced this. Indeed, it had even drawn a response from her estranged cousin Lynn Kaifun. In the letter he had expressed outrage that she was “going along with some moronic plan cooked up by the government.” Yep, that was Kaifun all over. Minmay never had understood what exactly her cousin had against the military and government, although she was pretty sure it had to do with the Unification Wars. Still, that attitude had seemed horribly out of place in the war against the Zentradi but at the time Minmay had been so wrapped up in having her dream come true that she hadn’t paid much attention. Once the Earth had nearly been destroyed though, it was harder to miss Kaifun’s attitude, especially once he started drinking.
In any case, Minmay hadn’t deigned to respond. She’d grown fed up with Kaifun and his attitude and that was partly a reason why she wanted to go with the Megaroad. Mainly she just wanted to get away from Earth. On Earth people saw her as almost something of a demigoddess. The Girl Who Ended A War With Song. It was part of the cause of her apathy some months ago when she had wanted to give up on singing and just live a normal life with the first boy she had ever fallen in love with, Hikaru Ichijo. She had struggled to find meaning in her songs but as long as she still had those unresolved issues with Hikaru and Kaifun’s condescending and bullying attitude, her singing had languished. Once Hikaru had finally made a choice, things seemed to become so much clearer.
Hikaru. She hadn’t thought about him in a while, at least not until she received the invitation to the wedding of Major Hikaru Ichijo and Admiral Misa Hayase. She had thought it would hurt, seeing those words. Instead, she felt a sense of happiness she hadn’t felt in a while. Everything became even clearer when she’d gone to the wedding and seen how happy Hikaru and Misa were with each other. Even though she still felt some twinges of sadness because of her love for Hikaru (yes, she did still love him in a way), seeing him so happy made her happy. And that was what made her a good person, she decided. It was then, during the reception, that she had sang one of her most famous and powerful songs, Ai Oboete Imasuka (Do You Remember Love?), for Hikaru and Misa. Some had said later on that it might not have been appropriate, but they hadn’t seen Hikaru and Misa’s faces.
Still standing on the stage where she had sang her final song, Tenshi no Enogu (Angel’s Paints), Minmay swept off the wide-brimmed hat she was wearing and bowed one last time to the audience in her memory. Even though she harbored no regrets for deciding to leave Earth, it was still a little hard. A man had once said that Earth was the cradle of humanity, but that humanity would one day grow up and have to leave its cradle. * Such a big change was a little nerve-wracking no matter how you sliced it but Minmay was a completely different person than she’d been when a dashing pilot in his transforming fighter had rescued her. She’d grown up. And that wasn’t a bad thing, she thought.
So I was watching Back to the Future Part II tonight and one of things that struck me, especially since we're in 2011, is that the future of 2015 in the movie isn't going to look ANYTHING like the movie. It's gonna be damn dull for the most part. Here's a list.
No self-lacing power sneakers by NIKE
No self-adjusting, self-drying clothes
Teenagers will definitely not wear their jeans inside out as a fashion statement
No futuristic cybernetic implants
No flying cars
Spandex and foam in neon colors won't be in fashion (Not that I'd want them to be)
No life-size holographic billboards
No holographic movies
No Jaws 19 directed by Max Speilberg
No robotic attendants/waiters
Probably no Pepsi Perfect in a futuristic bottle
You will still have to use your hands to play video games
The Cubs still haven't won the World Series
No mechanized baseball bats
Car bodyshapes aren't going to look all that futuristic
No TV screens that can double as window shades
No computerized houses
No automatic hover-walker for dogs
No biometric monetary transactions
No hydroponics in the ceiling
Wearing two neckties with your suit won't be in fashion
There wont be a kitchen appliance that can turn a tiny dehydrated pizza into a full-size cooked one.
No fancy video glasses that let you watch TV on them or have video-phone conversations.
Vietnam probably won't be a premier vacation spot
And the most heinous offenses: No Hoverboards and lawyers will definitely not be abolished!!
Now BTTF2 did get some things right but I only found a few.
Flat panel, Hi-Def TV sets. Although I haven't seen anyone try to watch six channels at once.
Live, real-time video conferencing and chatting
Pepsi and Coke will definitely still be here
Teenagers and tweenagers are definitely as obsessed with yapping on phones as in the movie. We just have smartphones instead of vid-glasses. The phone obsession has been around for a while though.
Inflation is bad but nowhere near as bad as in BTTF2. (Hey kid, thumb a hundred bucks to help save the clocktower!)
Remember, they likely started in on Pre-Production for BTTF2 in mid-1988. Kinda wish their version of the future was ours but as Doc Brown once said, "The future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one."
In the year 1999 an alien spaceship crash-landed on Earth and forever changed the fate of the human race. The new United Nations Government quickly began rebuilding the ship and plumbing the secrets of its construction. This paid off ten years later when aliens known as the Zentradi entered the solar system searching for the lost ship. Unfortunately, computer systems on the newly-named SDF-1 Macross opened fire on the Zentradi and ignited humanity’s first interstellar war.
In March 2010 the war was brought to end, largely thanks to the crew of the Macross who were able to bridge the gap between human and Zentradi. During the period of reconstruction that followed, the reorganized UN government determined that best way to protect humanity from the threat of extinction would be to spread itself out among the stars. This Space Emigration Plan was finalized in September 2011 and the following September the first of the long-range colony ships, the SDF-2 Megaroad-01 was launched from Macross City, Alaska. Thereafter the UN Spacy (United Nations Space Navy) would launch one or two Megaroad ships every year.
The plan suffered both success and failure. Soon after the Megaroad-01 departed Earth, the planet Eden was discovered and colonized. Due to its proximity to Earth, it quickly became the second most populated planet in the known galaxy. But in the year 2016 the Megaroad-01 vanished without a trace near the galactic core, a fact that the UN Spacy concealed for many years. Despite this rocky start, the seeds of humanity slowly began to spread throughout the galaxy, alongside their Zentradi brethren. In September 2030, the first of the New Macross-class colony ships entered service. Capable of carrying millions of colonists instead of the thousands that the Megaroad ships could, the New Macross-class quickly became the cornerstone of the colonization efforts.
Arguably one of the most famous of these fleets was the Macross 7, commanded by legendary war hero Maximillian Jenius. In 2045 they encountered a race of mysterious beings known as the Protodeviln that threatened not only the Macross 7 fleet but possibly the entire known galaxy. Thanks to the actions of Macross 7 resident and rock musician Basara Nekki, the Protodeviln returned to the dimension they had come from, never to threaten the galaxy again.
Humanity and Zentradi alike continued to march onwards through the wilds of the galaxy. In the 2050’s certain social factors and unrest led to the reformation of the UN Spacy into the New UN Spacy (N.U.N.S.). Soon afterwards, the central government of the United Nations was moved to one of the newer Macross fleets, the Macross Frontier (Mac25). In 2059, the Macross Frontier encountered the alien race known as the Vajra. An insectoid, super-dimensional lifeform, the Vajra aggressively attacked the Frontier fleet until it was learned that a conspiracy from the Macross Galaxy fleet (Mac21) was intending to use the Vajra to basically take over the minds of all living beings in the universe. Fortunately members of the private military company Strategic Military Services discovered the source of the conspiracy and in an epic battle over the Vajra homeworld, the Galaxy conspirators were defeated, the Battle Galaxy carrier was destroyed and the Vajra departed the Milky Way to meet another Vajra swarm from what is most probably the Andromeda Galaxy.
The year is now 2065. Some of the social unrest that prompted the development of the New UN Spacy and the reorganization of the United Government still persists. And there are some who would take advantage of this weakness. There are still rogue Zentradi fleets roaming the dark corners of the galaxy, the Macross Galaxy is still out there and other threats may lay hidden in the galactic reaches that humanity and its allies have yet to explore…
At this point in most Americans lives I imaghine, it's hard not to miss the fact that it's been ten years since 9/11. I wonder if the terrorists really did think that it would be a grand joke that the date September 11, 2001 would include the numbers 9-1-1 and that that just happened to be the telephone emergency number. Bah, at this point who cares? But we did at one point, on that terrible day.
It's kind of funny, I've never really thought of myself as someone who would be touched by historical events. Prior to 9/11/01, the single most historic thing that had ever happened to me had been when John Glenn had gone back into space aboard the Space Shuttle. That was in 1998. Well, that and maybe the premiere of Star Wars Episode I in May 1999 (probably the most anticipated premiere in the last fifty years). The Oklahoma City bombing had occurred in 1995 but, again, I was too young to know or care about it (perhaps it is slightly ironic that Timothy McVeigh was executed by lethal injection exactly three months before 9/11). I was too young to care about when the World Trade Center had been originally bombed back in 1993. Too young to vote for Presidents Bush or Clinton, to have seen any of favorite 80's movies in the theaters. Return of the Jedi would come out about three years before I'd even be born. I'd never seen a Van Halen concert or a Hendrix concert, didn't care about the O.J. Simpson murder trial, and never saw an Apollo lunar landing. My parents had only been married for about 7 months when the first Star Wars movie came out in 1977. And of course, my grandparents were barely out of college when Pearl Harbor was bombed in World War II.
Oh, well there was Gulf War I, but again, I was too little at the time to care about a distant war on the other side of the world. At five years old, 1st Grade was my biggest concern. Or would it be Kindergarten at that age? Meh, whatever.
So what was I doing on the fateful morning? Well, things were going like they usually were. Dad was off at work at Kennedy Space Center. mom had taken me to Seminary, which I had just started as part of being a High School freshman (in September 2001 I would have been a month away from turning fifteen). We got back from the teacher's house probably around 7:30 or so. I can't remember if my brother was with us or if we had left him at home to sleep. We had breakfast and got down to work on our school lessons (we were both being homeschooled that year; starting with my brother's freshman year, we went back to real school). Mom was moving back and forth between the living room, kitchen and den doing her mom things and watching Good Morning America. She must have either missed it, GMA didn't hear about it until later or maybe she didn't turn it on until just before the second plane hit, I can't quite remember. What I do remember is Mom telling us to come and see the TV, that the World Trade Center was on fire. That's certainly what it looked like, scary but not especially so, not when you didn't have all the facts. A short time later, I heard Mom suddenly yelling, "Boys! Boys! Come here quick! A plane just crashed into the Twin Towers!" We rushed into see that now both towers were burning, plumes of volcanic-looking smoke belching into the air. It was certainly surreal, the kind of thing you're supposed to see in movies and TV shows, not real life. But at that time we didn't know what was going to happen next, that the true horror had only just begun.
About an hour later, the first of the towers collapsed. I have a memory of watching this on TV but I can't quite remember if I watched the first tower collapse or the second one. In any case, it was plainly obvious that hundreds, probably thousands of real living people had just died on live television. We called people. Our grandparents and many of dad's family live here in Utah and when the second plane hit, it would have been just past seven in the morning there. Certainly everyone was up when the towers collapsed. Across the Atlantic, my mother's family lives in England. When the first plane hit the Trade Center it would have been about quarter to four in the afternoon there. I called many of my friends, one of them passing on one of the many erroneous stories of the day, that a bomb had been placed on the National Mall in Washington DC. I think many of us, so far away from New York, just wanted something to do so we didn't have to watch all this on TV the whole time.
For my Dad, it had been a normal day at work. He alternates his time between a building at Kennedy Space Center called the ARF and a lab building in amongst the old rocket hangars at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The normal day eneded as he describes it, when someone ran in and said that it was all over the TV and radio that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. After that people pretty much abandoned work and listened to whatever they could. KSC was in lockdown anyway. I'm sure, for the three of us back home the thought crossed our minds more than once if there were going to be attacks against KSC. It's not so far out of the realm of possibility you know. In 1972 terrorists called Black September threatened the Apollo 17 Saturn V. No small threat considering that a fully-fueled Saturn V would have exploded with the force of a small nuclear bomb. In any case, as I recall, Dad didn't come home until late that night and then we stayed up watching the news channels about the aftermath of the attack. I think we all knew at that point that this meant war.
So that's the story and the memories, imperfect as they are. And here we are ten years later. Is the world a better place? To be fair, there has never been another attack of the same scale on US soil. I think many people are forgetting that. But what else? We've fought two wars and soldiers in those wars have died. In my own personal opinion, the war with the Taliban was completely justified and a little more so when we finally killed bin Laden back in May (caught and compromised to a permanent end according to WWE champ John Cena). The war in Iraq... well that's a whole 'nother can of worms that we'll not get into at this time. But to me, the world has pretty much been going downhill ever since 9/11, with a few exceptions here and there. About a year after 9/11, the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed on reentry, due largely to managerial incompetence at NASA and the nation's pride took another blow. Now here we are in 2011 and the Space Shuttle has been shut down with no viable replacement (thanks largely to the Obama Administration and more incompetence at NASA). Thank heaven my Dad is already close to retirement.
There are bright spots. The WTC is being rebuilt and the new 1 World Trade Center will be finished in 2014 with the rest soon to follow. I've served a mission for my church and Savior, as has my brother and our cousins. One of my eldest cousins is about have his first kid. My family are still in good health for the most part and Dad has a job. What the next ten years will bring is anyone's guess but I'm not too worried. We got through 9/11 and we can get through more. For all our flaws, we're the United States of America. It's what we do.
Originally in my SDF Macross review I said the macros was Top Gun meets Battlestar: Galactica meets Transformers with a dash of Star Wars thrown in. Well no where does the Top Gun analogy become more apparent than with the 4-episode mini-series(or OVA) Macross Plus, released in 1994. The story features two rival jet fighter test pilots in a setting that is highly reminiscent of the classic Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer flick. There’s planes, space, dogfights, pretty girls, but unlike Top Gun, Macross Plus features a psychotic AI pop star, a kinda-sorta love triangle and a futuristic setting.
Macross Plus marked the return of Shoji Kawamori to the Macross franchise. Initially he hadn’t wanted to do anymore work on Macross after DYRL and Flashback 2012 were finished, which is why Big West went ahead and made Macross II without him and the others. In making Macross Plus, Kawamori had originally wanted to do a show that was just about test pilots, probably in a more modern setting. It sounds like the studio then made the stipulation that it had to be a Macross project and so, Macross Plus was born. I guess Kawamori must have been feeling very creative that year because 1994 was also the year that the full-length series Macross 7 premiered.
In order to properly capture the art of fighter combat for the animators, Kawamori, choreographer Ichiro Itano (famous for the Itano Circus missile animations) and other staff members travelled to Edwards Air Force Base in California to take lessons from dogfighting school Air Combat USA. This is reflected in the absolutely awesome fight sequences in the anime. Even just the animation of the Valkyrie variable fighters flying around is superb.
Famous director Shinichiro Watanabe was also hired as a co-director for the production. He’s probably most famous here in America for the series Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo and, of course, Macross Plus. Watanabe always makes good stuff and this is reflected in the quality of the animation. Watanabe also believes very heavily in the ties between the film and its score and the power of music (one of the central themes of Macross). So, it’s not so surprising that the composer of Macross Plus is the prolific Yoko Kanno. Kanno is pretty much the Japanese equivalent to John Williams. She’s worked on some of the most famous and successful animes in Japan as well as live-action movies and television. Some of the most famous projects she’s worked on include Macross Plus, Cowboy Bebop, The Vision of Escaflowne, Wolf’s Rain, Turn-A Gundam, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Macross Frontier. She would probably most famous here in America for the jazz, blues and funk-inspired themes of Cowboy Bebop. As for her work in Plus, her talent shines through especially in the songs for Plus’s idol singer Sharon Apple. Three of Sharon’s songs are in English, one in French and four are in the fictional Zentradi language. There’s only one Japanese song in the whole soundtrack and that’s Myung Lon Fang’s “Voices.” (which actually got dubbed into English but is still very good; sounds a lot like an Enya song.)
"Voices"-Japanese Version
"Voices"-English Version
With all this star talent in place, it was time to make the series. Macross Plus takes place in the year 2040, 30 years after First Macross. It starts off on the colony planet Eden where childhood friends Isamu Dyson, Guld Goa Bowman and Myung Lon Fang are introduced. Isamu and Guld are trying to fly a self-propelled glider that they’ve built. Fast forward to 2040 and Isamu finds himself back on Eden to be a test pilot for Project: Supernova, a competition being held between two rival companies, Shinsei Industries and General Galaxy, to field a new variable fighter for the UN Spacy (United Nations Space Navy). The two competing designs are the YF-19 and the YF-21. Project: Supernova is based on the real-life Advanced Tactical Fighter competition that the US Air Force held between the Lockheed YF-22 (which became the Lockheed-Martin F-22 Raptor) and Northrop’s YF-23.
In any case, Isamu is assigned to be the test pilot of Shinsei’s YF-19 and finds out that his childhood friend now-rival Guld Bowman has been assigned to be the YF-21’s pilot. Here’s where a lot of the similarities where Top Gun come into play as you could very easily say that Isamu, with his recklessness and cocky attitude, is Tom Cruise’s Maverick and Guld is Val Kilmer’s Iceman. It’s clear right from the get-go that these former friends have a clear dislike of each other for some reason and this is magnified even more when they find out that their other friend, Myung, is on Eden also and is now the producer for Sharon Apple, the known galaxy’s hottest entertainer… and supposed fully-functional AI.
Both Isamu and Guld are somewhat confused by this as Myung was a fantastic singer in youth. Concerns over Myung fade somewhat as the two engage in multiple aerial duels with each other as the testing of the two prototypes heats up. Also, we learn that Sharon isn’t as advanced as we claim. When Isamu and some friends attend her concert on Eden, we find out that Myung actually provides the emotions for Sharon as an emotions program is the one thing that Sharon still lacks. Things begin to get a little suspicious when the holographic Sharon shows an inordinate amount of attention to Isamu. Sometime later both Isamu and Guld get a strange electronic phone call saying that fire will break out in the concert hall. Isamu chooses to ignore it but Guld races to the concert hall and rescues Myung from certain death in a fire… exactly as predicted. From the way that the cameras were moving and how the fire just started up, it’s pretty clear that the Sharon AI started the fire. Things get even more tense as the rivalry between Guld and Isamu results in an accident. Even though it’s a fairly serious matter, the General in charge of Eden’s New Edwards Base sweeps the whole thing under the rug. As Myung and her team depart for Earth so that Sharon can participate in the UN Spacy 30th Anniversary celebration of the end of the Human-Zentradi war, we learn that the reason the General swept the accident under the rug is that UN Spacy has been secretly testing the unmanned Ghost X-9 fighter, which seems to be superior to both the YF-19 and YF-21. A furious Isamu decides to go to Earth and screw up the ceremony where the X-9 will be unveiled. The YF-19’s designer Yan Newman goes with him and Guld is ordered to go after both of them in the YF-21. This turns out to be a good thing as Myung discovers at the eleventh hour that Sharon has indeed become self-aware and like all advanced AI’s that gain self-awareness
Hint, hint.
she restrains Myung and tells her that she is doing what she is doing because Myung’s thoughts have given her life. She loves Guld and Isamu even more so and wants to give him the ultimate emotion that he is seeking. This is sort of going to involve killing him. Isamu and Guld at this point are doing their level best to blast each other to smithereens in one of the most kick-arse dogfights in the whole series. Guld has a slight advantage due to the YF-21 having the Brain Direct Interface, which allows Guld to control the YF-21 with his thoughts. But just as Guld closes in on Isamu and fires the killing shot, the BDI breaks through the mental barriers Guld had in his mind. He finally remembers what the incident was that drove him, Isamu and Myung apart. As a half-Zentradi, Guld had lived with those fighting instincts his whole life but then things began to change in their little circle of friends. Myung and Isamu became more than friends and when Guld burst in on them during a tender moment, he lost control. Guld attacked Isamu and pretty much sexually assaulted Myung before he regained control. After that incident, Myung and Isamu left Eden and Guld blocked the memories out as he regained control of those instincts. Thing is as part of that he blamed Isamu for supposedly hurting Myung but Isamu let him go on thinking that, not wanting to let his friend, who truly loved Myung, to remember what he had almost done to her.
Guld thinks this realization has come too late but Isamu managed to survive the missile barrage. As the two friends are about to reconcile, the Sharon Apple-controlled Ghost X-9 comes screaming out of the sun, guns blazing. Guld, who can more easily manage the X-9 with his YF-21 tells Isamu to go rescue Myung. Guld then heroically sacrifices himself to destroy the X-9. Isamu arrives in Macross City and realizes that the holographic projection of Sharon has hypnotized the whole city and the AI itself has infected every computer. This is no more evident as the good old SDF-1 Macross has been launched from Lake Global to intercept him, even though it’s been lying there for thirty years. Dodging anti-air laser fire at every turn, Isamu tries to destroy the central core that Sharon has infected while trying to rebuff her holographic hypnosis. Kind of a hard task considering that Sharon can take the forms of various hauntingly (literally) beautiful women! At one point he looks like he’s about to give in when Myung starts singing her song “Voices.” Isamu snaps out of it and in true Luke Skywalker-fashion, pulls off a hundred to one shot and destroys the central core. Sharon’s AI unit explodes and the day is saved as Myung watches Isamu soar over the city.
Now first of all, I have to say that after the disappointment that was Macross II, Plus was about 10x, no, 100x better. I seriously wanted to have Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone or Cheap Trick’s Mighty Wings come blaring out of the speakers as the YF-19 and -21 danced across the sky. I mean, I enjoyed this so much I think there was only two things I really want to have them improve. They could have explained Sharon’s self-awareness a bit more and also why she seemed so intent on hypnotizing people and why she wanted to kill Isamu.
I also didn’t care much for Myung as well. I don’t dislike her but I think to myself “Gooooossshhh! Get off the pity wagon and stop being so damn depressing, especially when you’ve got guys like Isamu and Guld around." I don’t really blame Isamu for being more interested in Lucy when he got back to Eden than Myung.
Other than that this was solid, first-rate, no holds-barred, thrill-riding fun. I would not be embarrassed to say that I enjoyed Macross Plus more than Transformers 3, and that’s saying something. The characters, planes, visuals (none of that damn moe crap), music and sounds all come together beautifully. The fact that this was a good dub as well is an extra plus. With the talents of VA’s like Bryan Cranston (TV’s Breaking Bad), Richard Epcar and Beau Billingslea, it’s actually a joy to listen to as the actors actually emote. What a concept! All in all, on the MAHQ scale of stars, this gets five gold stars! Now if only it had Danger Zone…
Historical Note: The Ghost X-9 was deemed too dangerous if its controls were ver hacked, so the YF-19 won Project: Supernova. The -19 was mass-produced as the VF-19 Excalibur Main Variable Fighter and was the plane of choice for Macross 7’s Basara Nekki. The YF-21’s dangerous Brain Direct Interface was removed and it was produced in limited numbers as the VF-22 Sturmvogel II. The BDI would show up again in the VF-27 Lucifer from Macross Frontier.
When a movie or TV show has a sequel that’s separated from it by a number of years, you still like to think that not much is going to change. Take Ghostbusters for example. The first movie came out in 1984 but Ghostbusters II didn’t come out until 1989.
Where Macross is concerned however, there really is no true sequel to the original series. The 1984 movie Do You Remember Love? was a cinematic retelling of the series and Macross II was set eighty years later. When Mac2 was retconned, the next production in chronological order was Macross Plus, which is still set 30 years later. Now, that all doesn’t mean there isn’t actually a sequel of sorts to First Macross, it’s just not quite what you think it would be. Released in 1987, Macross: Flashback 2012 is a 30 minute music video that is largely made up of clips taken from First Macross and DYRL, hence the title Flashback. There is a story there but it is very short. This is primarily due to the fact that most of the new footage that was used in Flashback was intended to be the final scenes of DYRL but weren’t ready in time for the movie’s release date.
Disregarding all the flashback footage, the story is thus: It is September 2012, nine months after the end of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross and Quamzin’s failed attack on New Macross City. The city has expanded and the SDF-1 has nearly been repaired, looking much like it does in DYRL. Lynn Minmay has arrived in Macross City to perform the final show of her Sayonara World Tour. The OVA then goes into all the flashback materiel before switching back to the ‘present.’ Minmay walks around the deserted concert hall where she gave her last show. We see Hikaru Ichijyo, one of the heroes of the last series, test flying the new VF-4 Lightning III variable fighter. He’s now married to Misa, who is about to take command of humanity’s first super long range colonization ship, the SDF-2 Megaroad-01. Minmay recalls the days of her youth, about how she wanted to be a singer and left her home in Yokohama to go live with her aunt and uncle in Macross City because her parents were not in favor of it. She remembers arriving in the city and seeing a poster about the SDF-1 Macross, which shifts to a scene of her in New Macross City looking at a poster for the Megaroad.
The Megaroad-01 is launched and thousands cheer her on as she soars up into the sky. Minmay waves to the people below from one of the observation decks as Misa directs her crew from the ship’s bridge, stealing glances outside at Hikaru in his Lightning III. The ship reaches orbit and joins with an escort fleet of Zentradi warships and sails off into a bright new future with our hero and heroines.
At least that’s what you would like to think. The one thing I don’t like about Flashback is that it doesn’t reveal the characters’ ultimate fates, which in this case is pretty important. The video also focuses pretty exclusively on Hikaru, Misa and Minmay (except for the flashback clips), but we do know some of what happened. A year later Hikaru and Misa have their first child, a little girl named Miku Ichijyo. We know that Max and Milia have eight children (seven natural, one adopted), all girls, and are seen again in the 49 episode series Macross 7 with their youngest daughter Mylene, but that’s about it. We don’t really know what happens to Claudia or Admiral Global or the bridge bunnies, although I suppose it’s not terribly important. Ah, I almost forgot Breetai and Exedol. The Zentradi tactician Exedol goes with Max and Milia to the Macross 7 fleet and I believe Breetai becomes UN Spacy Commander-in-Chief at some point. What I’m saying is, that it would have been nice to have had the whole cast get a send off.
There is one other thing that bugs me a little bit about this particular snippet of Macross lore. You see in Flashback we get Hikaru, Misa and Minmay riding off into the space sunset, but what you find out if you look it up is that the Megaroad-01 disappears without a trace near the galactic core in 2016. I’m a bit annoyed about that if only for the implication that Hikaru, Misa, their daughter Miku and Minmay all die a cold, lonely death in the forsaken depths of deep space. Me, I like my characters to have a happy ending, like the end of Return of the Jedi.
All in all, Even though Flashback really is just a long music video set to a bunch of Minmay songs (although I’m not sure why they didn’t include My Boyfriend is a Pilot), it’s worth watching for that new footage and as a chance to see these particular Macross characters one last time. Besides, maybe it’s not all bad as that. Maybe the Megaroad-01 is next to the second star to the right and straight on ‘till morning.
