Zero Sum Game

They make money, we get a wretched prequel, what's not to love about Macross Zero?

Maybe I'm being too harsh. It's a very pretty escapist military sci-fi adventure with the usual doses of incoherent pacifist cum noble-savage idolizing anxiety. Ironically it's also the military slash technology equivalent of a skin mag, lovingly 3D rendered, and so provides the viewer with some compensation for it's ideological mush and narrative aimlessness. Though I suspect the creators may have had exactly the opposite intention.

The five episode mini-series takes place in the year before the original Macross series, during the global war which the arrival of the epynonymous alien battle fortress (in the original) brings to an abrupt halt by threatening humanity with an even bigger problem (pun intended - sorry!). In this series the war is between a vaguely NATOesque coalition with ostensible UN authority and an equally vaguely neo-Soviet opposition. They're fighting in the South Pacific over the rumors of the possible remains of an alien artifact. Shades of every Nazi-occult adventures based around the Second World War (from Indiana Jones to Cryptonomicon) thus inform the setup, but these threads are never really explored.

Almost immediately the backstory starts to fight with the logic of the first series. In the original, the fighter jets that transform into giant robots (symbolic transformation of American military might into Japanese technological innovation ne?) are a secret military response to the carefully hidden fact that the alien battle fortress was manned by humanoids ten times the size of Earthlings (hey I resisted 'puny'!). In Zero, the transforming jets are simply part of the global arms race. By the end, a few more liberties detracting from the twists and turns of the original have been taken (regarding, songs, culture, the origins of humanity, etc.) None are really necessary, or more importantly justified by at least making this a strong self contained story. The narrative is your usual fighter-pilot-boy meets alien-descended-shaman-girl bringing wreck and ruin to her pristine island. Rather than destroying all humanity, which is of course her part time job, his faith in her lets them fly off into the stars to (presumably) live happily ever after. Really the ending and the 'big secret' of the islands make no sense at all in the Macross universe, playing out like a cliched Playstation RPG ending.

In the end it doesn't matter. The draw is seeing Roy Fokker do a CG version of the classic missile ballet and pursue an obviously tragically doomed love affair. I have to wonder if there's anything here for folks who didn't grow up with Robotech (the American name for Macross), and if for those of us who did, the undercutting of many of the original's key myths won't ruin it. Still it's explosive robot action in an anime scene that's mostly humorous antics of endearingly hapless preteens, so I suspect it'll be popular.

For more realistic and even more beautiful dogfights mixed in with an evocative creepy sci-fi setting I highly recommend Yukikaze. For some logical consistency with the original Macross combined with decent story and animation that won't make you stab your eyes out (a valid reason not to revisit the original), Macross Plus in either movie or mini-series form is the way to go!