Trivia / Macross

• No Export for You: A large assortment of absolutely hideous legal snarls between Harmony Gold, Studio Nue/Satelight, Tatsunoko Production, and Big West – especially the last two – meant, for decades, that virtually nothing of the franchise that hadn't already been incorporated into the original Robotech adaptation (i.e. Super Dimension Fortress Macross) saw the light of day outside of Japan.^note This also affects Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, but not Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. Either way, neither of those series have been dubbed outside of Robotech.
  • Macross Plus apparently only got released in the West due to the absolutely titanic pressure that fans, critics, and other distributors put on the parties involved to not completely sit on triple-A-quality material needlessly (also, Harmony Gold was in a state of chaos at the time thanks to a staff-hunting raid by Haim Saban)^note Macross II also had a proper Western release, but that seems to be mostly because no one considers it a proper Macross series anyways (since franchise creators Studio Nue and Shoji Kawamori had no hand in making it to begin with).
  • Despite the insane sales of Macross Frontier's DVDs and soundtracks (which ended up posting sales numbers that had not seen in Japan in at least a decade), any plans for export looked extremely unlikely for fifteen years. Likewise, Macross 7, Macross Zero, and various video-game projects and the like all sat in limbo for upwards of 25 years.
    • In fact, Macross Frontier's incredible popularity worked against it, for a time. Even if all the parties to the legal morass were to agree to let it get licensed at all, conventional wisdom was that it would cost any licensor (especially an American one) several appendages and probably a few internal organs to get it, and that was before having to deal with Harmony Gold. And that is before having to deal with the hell that is Japanese record companies and music rights independently.
  • It's gotten so bad that industry insiders have said that it's likely nobody knows who has international rights for some bits of the Macross franchise, particularly Macross: Do You Remember Love?.
    • Robert Woodhead, AnimEigo's CEO, once said he does not expect to ever see a legal US release of Do You Remember Love? because of the titanic, multi-side battle (it's not just the usual culprits like Harmony Gold in the way, but also companies like Shogakukan, Toho and a few others who have some sort of interest in the film due to how it was made and distributed).
  • On a side note, Tommy Yune, representative for Harmony Gold, has stated that they're willing to license Macross Zero and sublicense it to whoever wants to pay their price; Harmony Gold may charge sublicensors out the nose, but it's actually in their interests to have as much of the Macross franchise licensed as possible, so they can earn royalties on it (they don't get squat from anything in Japan). As such, they'd no doubt also love to bring Macross 7 and every other Macross series to North America. However, the Japanese rights-holders, especially Big West, are quick to jump in and stop progress from happening, Big West having actively taken Zero's license off the market due to its massive grudge against HG for Robotech and keeping Tatsunoko relevant^note although as noted above, even if legal snarls were not an issue, the odds of Macross 7 being brought with all its music intact stateside are extremely slim; this is partially because Fire Bomber, the in-universe band for the series, has released 13 albums, and the record company has an "all or nothing" deal in regards to licensing. Although that being said, there isn't a major demand for Macross 7 to be licensed, due to the US having a lower opinion of the series than Japan..
  • On top of all that, you've got the VF-1/Transformers: Generation 1 Jetfire issue. TakaraTomy can't reissue the original Jetfire figure (the VF-1 mold would now be owned by TakaraTomy and their American partner in crime Hasbro's joint toy industry rival Bandai - which is also why Hasbro can't reissue any of the original 80's toys of former Transformers rival Challenge of the GoBots, as Bandai licensed them to Tonka at the time), but thanks to a later court ruling between Hasbro and Harmony Gold (the latter had sued Hasbro when the former rereleased a Skystriker jet plane in VF-1 colors as part of a set of G.I. Joe/Transformers San Diego Comic-Con-exclusive toys.), Hasbro and Takara can now release new versions of G1 Jetfire in all of his Macross glory so long as they stick to the modern Hasbro-created redesign of Jetfire, and Harmony Gold can't do a thing to stop it. Several years after the lawsuit, Harmony Gold would finally drop the hostilities and release a VF-1 fighter paying tribute to Jetfire's color scheme under the name "God of Flame" for their line of figures by Kitzconcept.
  • On the positive side, it seems that at least some of the parties involved may be trying to get around this with Macross Delta. The Japanese Blu-ray releases have the option for English subtitles, and Super Robot Wars, commonly saddled with the same issues due to liberal appearances by Macross, releasing in English in South East Asia, with several companies happily exporting to America and Europe.
  • Also, Macross: Do You Remember Love? can be legally bought in the US (at least via export from Japan) in a format viewable on unmodified US equipment, thanks to the US and Japan finally sharing a common Blu-Ray region. However cost is still a barrier as the Blu-Ray hovers around $100 new.
  • This legal snarl also caused some severe issues with the BattleTech franchise. FASA had bought (or they believed they had bought) rights to the designs in good faith, from Studio Nue themselves, and used the designs without molestation for 10 years^note In case you're wondering, the Valkyrie in its various variants became the Phoenix Hawk, Stinger, Wasp, Crusader and Valkyrie Mechs, the Glaug became the Marauder, and the Destroids became the Warhammer, Archer, Rifleman and Longbow. The Regult provided the basis for the Ostscout, Ostroc and Ostsol, though those three were so radically changed in the translation from Macross to BattleTech that they are officially considered by Catalyst to be original art and safe to use. However, FASA and Playmates Toys got into a legal battle when Playmates created several toys for their Exo Squad line that closely resembled their BattleTech equivalents (at the time, FASA was finalizing both toy and TV deals for BattleTech); naturally, FASA sued. However, Harmony Gold had sublicensed Robotech to Playmates as a tie-in to Exo Squad, and when they noticed that FASA was using the Macross designs, they naturally counter-sued. Nobody quite knows what the actual settlement in the cases were, but official word from Catalyst Game Labs, FASA's successor company, is that the discontinuation of the Macross, Crusher Joe and Fang of the Sun Dougram (of which the latter two were not owned in any way by HG) designs was part of an internal decision by FASA to bar all designs not created in-house in order to avoid any potential legal hassles, and not a legal mandate from a court. This policy, funnily enough, also forced FASA to stop using designs made specifically for them by Studio Nue for Japanese releases of BattleTech. However, since 2009, Catalyst has felt comfortable in resurrecting the Dougram and Crusher Joe mechs (realizing that the law is most likely on their side there), and as of late 2015, Mechwarrior Online has been successfully re-releasing the Macross-based "Warhammer" and "Marauder" designs, suggesting that Catalyst has worked out some kind of deal regarding Macross...
    • Notably, in the 2009 incident, Harmony Gold, against existing copyright at the time, and a letter sent to them by Studio Nue and Tatsunoko forbidding them from continuing the lawsuit, were able to point out a clause in the settlement which meant they effectively could still override Studio Nue, and they later, in 2017, did exactly the same thing to Harebrained Schemes, founded by FASA co-founder Jordan Weisman! ^note They lost this case too, and it was not only lost but dismissed with prejudice—any attempt to file suit again will likely be met with stern reprimand
  • For those readers who want to know how Harmony Gold (an American company) got into the Japanese legal snarl in the first place, you can thank some nameless, dense California judge. Harmony Gold created the Frankenstein's monster that is Robotech (see its entry), and as the legal battles over international rights heated up in Japan, they got involved to try and keep from losing the series – a Japanese court declared in 2003 that Tatsunoko never had the right to grant a license to Harmony Gold in the first place, which normally would have voided the original 1985 contract… except that American courts rarely acknowledge decisions from foreign courts (in fact, some states outright ban judges from doing so). This judge allegedly granted Harmony Gold not only exclusive control of the international distribution of the original Macross, but also inexplicably gave them permanent rights to license and distribute every Macross-related series that will ever exist. In other words, HG holds the trademark on Macross outside Japan and there's nothing the original creators could do about it except just refuse to license it out (which is exactly what they do) as a middle finger to Harmony Gold.
    • Tatsunoko, their bad blood having deepened since losing the fight in Japan (specifically, it was ruled that they own the original footage and international licensing rights for SDF Macross, but not the rest of the franchise), has taken advantage of the international legal confusion and continues to renew Harmony Gold's license (including the trademarks), as a middle finger to Big West and Studio Nue. At last check, Harmony Gold controls Macross outside of Japan until at least 2018... And by then there's a high chance they'd renew it again, pissing off the Macross fanbase. Big West and Studio Nue could try and get HG's contract voided in an American court… and they could win if they pressed it. But fighting complicated contract disputes in the USA is an incredibly expensive prospect, and no one in Japan wants to pay for that (there's also the not-exactly-wrong perception that American courts are inherently biased against foreign litigants – see the Apple/Samsung patent lawsuits for an example).
    • In 2017, as part of lead-up for the latest stage in the Battletech case, Harmony Gold took Tatsunoko into arbitration, to reaffirm their legal position ready for the case... and lost! While Harmony Gold had initially been forced to release Macross back to Tatsunoko in 2021, news emerged in July 2019 that they managed to hammer out an amended deal with Tatsunoko that extended that agreement until an unspecified date, to the utter dismay of Macross fans worldwide, with another blow dealt when Funimation announced that they too were getting rights to the Robotech franchise in October 2019.
    • Practically at the same time Harmony Gold were meant to lose the license to Macross forever, Big West, Studio Nue, and Harmony Gold instead announced that they had finally come to an agreement in regards to both the Macross and Robotech franchises, allowing for both the international release of most of the later Macross series and films as well as the Japanese release of the upcoming Robotech film. Unsurprisingly, a year later, virtually everything post-SDF got picked up for US and other international distribution.
    • At the end of March 2024, Disney+ announced an unprecedented global distribution deal, in Japan, America and Europe of everything (excluding the original series and Do You Remember Love? outside Japan), including the various movie adaptations, giving European Macross fans a one-stop shop for practically the entire franchise and American fans a much easier way to access the series that, only a few years earlier, would never have got licensed at all by anyone.^note The original Macross was originally licensed, through Harmony Gold's Robotech license, to Sony's Funimation streaming platform, with no other series licensed at the same time. This is the first dedicated global licensing deal ever for the entire franchise.