Today’s Old School Wednesday Review comes from Alix!
Alix Cameron is an erotic romance writer who also works in Communications strategy and developement for Multi Player on-line role playing games. Living in Melbourne Australia, with her two ginger Ninjas, 2 ginger cats and a black greyhound, she is currently writing and researching an erotic novel base in modern history.
Romancing Alix Blog: http://romancingalix.wordpress.com
Say hello to her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/romancingAlix
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Do you remember your first crush? I do!
He is quite dashing.
It was Rick Hunter, the dashingly handsome and extremely talented fighter pilot from the 1985 anime series Robotech. He spent every Saturday morning with me for the duration of the 85 episode American produced series. In Australia at that time, we were being dazzled in the afternoons by the likes of the British masterpieces, Doctor Who and the Goodies, with Saturday mornings lending themselves to Hanna Barbara productions and Looney Tunes favourites. Robotech was fresh, exciting and extremely different. It was the first serial based animation drama, that took to our screens. Chronicling it’s characters over the span of three alien wars, a long journey back to earth and many many years. Rick Hunter was a hero, and my hero.
We first meet him as a young mischievous pilot who quickly gets involved in countering an alien attack on a south Pacific island. Taking the cockpit of a Veritech fighter, ( a transformer ) for the Robotech Defence Force, we watch his career begin to unfold. By the end of the series, he is Admiral Hunter, and revered as one of earths most influential military commanders. He ages with style too, sporting a sexy scar and pure white hair!
We watched him mature, and deal with the pressures of work and his personal life. He was engaged in possibly the most exciting animated love triangle I have ever seen. His Commander Lisa Hayes and a successful pop singer Lynn Minmay were two well developed female characters who held positions of power and were in control of their own careers. Strong female role models that were not present in other western series of the time. We were use to single episode plots and one dimential characters. Robotech rocked my world.
Tom Cruise, eat your heart out.
I feel in love with Rick Hunter and subsequently the series because we were treated to a true plot and detailed character development, presented in the beautiful images of Japanese anime. Rick tackled real dilemmas and we witnessed the effects conflict and war have on human nature. Robotech treated us as a mature audience, encouraging engagement and gave us a cast of very memorable characters, amazing machines and an epic story.
Rick Hunter originated as Hikaru Ichiyo from the Japanese anime The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and it is the appropriation of the Japanese anime that still has Robotech and anime fans in tense disagreements. Carl Macek produced Robotech by cutting and pasting three separate Japenese series together, Macross, Southern Cross & Mospaeda. He re-scripted it, had it dubbed with an American voice cast and packaged it for the Western market.
I have no intension of entering into the bebate of this appropriation and deciding if the originals are better, they are different and I see them as separate. Robotech introduced me Japanese anime. I have subsequently watched all three series that were used and throughly enjoyed these originals, but for varyingly different reasons. It would be difficult to say if I would have investigated Japanese anime had it not been for my love of Robotech but it definitely introduced me to the look, feel and pace, which made for a smoother discovery of the wondrous worlds that comes from other Japanese series.
I strongly recommend revisiting Robotech and if you never watched it, now is the time!
3 comments
1 ping
I like your review. I think you have made a very valid point about keeping Robotech separated from the debate with it’s originals, and I had never really thought about how strong the female characters were. I have gained respect for the series. Thank you.
I’m glad you enjoyed, and I hope you think about re watching the series. Enjoy!
Ah, yes… Another “Robotech made everyone on the planet a anime fan”! And because Macross was white washed (Hikaru is too forign of a name, let’s just call him Rick) and rewritten as Robotech, the Japanese people that made it (Shoji Kawamori) don’t deserve any respect for their work. Sure, without Macross, there wouldn’t be a Robotech, but what Robotech fan cares about that? They’re just Japanese, made for Harmony Gold to exploit… No need to treat them as people at all, right?
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