Trivia / Robotech

• Approval of God:
  • Many people that worked on Southern Cross praised the altered characterization of the characters and the more professional battle chatter.
• Development Hell:
  • The Hollywood adaptation of Robotech is one of the longest film development projects ever to be stuck in the 7th circle of development hell. Many screenwriters, directors, and leading actors have been rumored to be connected to the project — but no live action films have been released. Currently, Sony has the rights and are moving forward with a film franchise with James Wan directing the first film.
  • And Robotech Academy is now stuck too because of failing to meet its gigantic Kickstarter goal to produce a pilot.
• Disowned Adaptation:
  • This interview reveals that Shoji Kawamori isn't pleased with Robotech, calling it a "pirated version" of Macross due to Harmony Gold not even asking for his permission regarding its usage, effectively making it plagiarism. On the other hand, he at least appreciates the fact that it helped expose his work to the West.
  • Carl Macek has disowned Robotech: The Movie due to the Executive Meddling by Cannon Films he endured during production; see below.
• Enforced Method Acting: Michael Bradley said that if he knew in advance that Yellow Dancer was supposed to be Lancer disguising himself as a woman to avoid being killed/apprehended by Invid forces and their collaborators, he would have tried to use a feminine voice or at least, pretend to dress up with female clothes while recording the music in the booth.
• Executive Meddling: The plot of the Robotech: The Movie was once going to be vastly different, but had to be changed drastically once the creators of Macross realized this movie could somehow interfere with their profits from Macross: Do You Remember Love?. Somehow.
  • The movie was pulled because it was successful with adults but not with children, the demographic which is considered the film's main audience.
  • When Cannon Films president Menahem Golan watched an early print of Robotech: The Movie, he complained that there were "too many girls and not enough robots and guns", and as a result, Macek was forced to add footage from Southern Cross, despite the difference in film resolution. Macek then presented the final cut to Golan, who responded, "Now that's a Cannon movie!" Macek has since disowned Robotech: The Movie.
  • Even the genesis of the show had this going on. Harmony Gold did not originally own the Robotech name. That was owned by Revell-Matchbox, who were using it independently to sell model kits and toys licensed from Japan, including from Super Dimension Fortress Macross. This presented a problem for Harmony Gold, as it a) cut off at the knees much of the ability to sell The Merch for Macross and; b) essentially gave free advertising for the company that could sell such merch. In one of the few non-litigious moves Harmony Gold made, they instead partnered with Revell, taking on the Robotech name for the series they were putting together, allowing both to profit from the shared licenses.
• Improv: There were many different Ad Bumpers for the show. Each would feature a different character for the show lending their own style and adlibs to the "After These Messages" and "Now Back To Our Show" lines.
  Sean Phillips: Hey, sweetheart, Robotech is back!
  Commander Leonard: The United Earth Forces are ready, so stay tuned for Robotech!
  Nova Satori: As you were! Robotech is back!
  Exedore: A brief intermission is requried for these urgent messages!
  Exedore: Robotech shall now resume transmission.
• Incestuous Casting: Mother and son Alexandra Kenworthy and Gregory Snegoff play Azonia and Khyron, respectively.
• Insistent Terminology: The rulers of the Invid are known as the Regent and Regess. The term regent refers to a "placeholder" ruler who stands in for a monarch who is alive but either absent, infirmed, not yet of age, or otherwise unable to rule. This raises the question as to who the real Invid monarchs actually are. Also, the title of the female Invid queen-mother figure was originally rendered as "Regis". Not really a title, this Latin term meaning "for the king" is typically included in the names of places such as manors or lands owned by the crown in question. This is what led the writers, believing that they were correcting an error, to retcon the title as "Regess". In practice, the term "Regent" is gender neutral and the term "Regess" does not actually exist outside of Robotech.
• No Export for You: Due to the massive and convoluted legal snarl between Big West, Tatsunoko, and Harmony Gold, very few Macross series will ever make it across the Atlantic.
  • This doesn't just apply to Macross, but it also applies to anything that features Macross as well. The Dreamcast version of Super Robot Wars Alpha almost got released Stateside^note at the time, Gundam Wing was at the height of it's popularity, and the anime boom in general was at it's peak in the US, since almost all of the licensing companies who held the stateside rights to the titles said yes...except for Harmony Gold, who said no, since they didn't want SDF Macross to be brought to the states and interfere with sales of Robotech, despite the fact that the latter had ended over a decade ago^note and mind you, they didn't say "You can bring it over if you change the names to Robotech ones", they outright refused. And the reason why Banpresto couldn't just dummy out the units from Macross was because they were important to the plot of Alpha. And although nothing has been confirmed yet, quite a few fans suspect that the only reason Super Robot Wars V was able to get a multi-region release was because of the absence of Macross in any shape or form.
  • Due to their association with Macross, both the original Southern Cross and Mospeada series have been hit pretty hard with this too, having not seen much of a release since the mid-2000s sub-only sets by ADV Films. To this day however, it's not clear if it really is the Macross snafu that's preventing a re-release of the titles or not. What it does mean is that any future media based on Robotech proper can only be based on Mospeada.
  • In 2021, this restriction was seemingly lifted, as Harmony Gold and Big West reached a settlement where Harmony Gold were given blanket rights to distribute and market any and all content involving strictly Super Dimension Fortress Macross as Robotech, with Big West approving the Robotech movie for global release, with Harmony Gold accepting Big West's right to distribute everything else made after it.
  • Bad Export for You: Said legal snarl also prevented the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross from being released in western countries ^note excluding Latin America, at least for the Do You Remember Love movie, due to legal loopholes involving the respective laws of many of these countries, especially Mexico, whose constitution blatantly forbids the enforcement of foreign laws and contracts in Mexican soil, unless having very good legal reasons, like plagiarism, for a good example. for quite a while after interest in unedited anime grew; so all we had was Robotech, which essentially became this. Probably due to lack of demand (and the folding of ADV before any releases could be managed), this is still the case in the UK.
• Re-Cut: In 2004, the entire series was re-edited using new remastered footage from Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada respectively. Since broadcast was no longer a concern, this new version was able to restore most of the footage that had been cut from the three series for time and content. The series now has more violence and nudity than originally seen. The only footage they couldn't put back in were the ones that involved dialogue. Also, the openings/ending sequences were revised to be unique to each individual series, and any title sequences were redone in modern graphics. The audio was also remixed in 5.1 with new sound effects.
• Referenced by...:
  • StarCraft: The Battlecruiser pilot is a dead ringer for Captain Gloval, Lzerhusskie accent, 'stache, and all.
  • The Star Wars animated shows contain references to Robotech/Macross, courtesy of Dave Filoni, who was a fan of the show.
  • Star Wars Rebels:
    • One of Kanan's early concept designs heavily resembled Roy Fokker.
    • According to this article, Ezra borrows some character elements from Rick Hunter.
    • In "Fire Across the Galaxy", the engine room that the Inquisitor and Kanan duel in was inspired by Robotech (though All There in the Manual specifically cites Macross). Especially the three background pillars, which look like the ill-fated anti-grav engines that ripped out of the Macross early in the show's run.
  • Star Wars Resistance: Captain Doza also strongly resembles Captain Gloval.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The show's final action sequence of Rex in a Y-Wing trying to catch a falling Ahsoka may be based off of this scene.
• Science Marches On: As is the fate of many depictions of dinosaurs from before the late 1990s, there is not a feather to be seen on any of the cloned dinosaurs in the Invid Genesis Pit.
• The Other Darrin: Miriya Sterling was voiced by Edie Mirman in The Macross Saga and Catherine Battistone in The Sentinels.
  • Dana Sterling was voiced by Melissa Newman in New Generation and Lara Cody in The Sentinels. According to series creator Carl Macek, Newman "had completely disappeared from the acting community," and that he had lost touch with her.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The franchise is somewhat infamous for having many projects planned, but undeveloped. There's also Robotech III: The Odyssey, which never saw the light of day. It would have picked up where New Generation and The Sentinels left off, creating a 260 episode series filling up all weekdays of the year, creating an endless cycle. There's also rumors of a 4th and 5th series, but they were never mentioned by Carl Macek himself, only being hinted at by other members of the production team. Robotech 3000 was another attempt to continue the series, this time in CGI, that never got past a trailer. There's also a few projects stuck in development hell; see above. The only derivative works that have been successfully completed since the end of the original series are the Shadow Chronicles sequel film and Love, Live, Alive, a localized version of a Mospeada OVA.
  • Also, Robotech: The Movie was originally supposed to be a dub of Macross: Do You Remember Love?, but Mega Zone 23 was chosen instead because Harmony Gold couldn't license the former. DYRL? did eventually get a poorly-received Hong Kong Dub unrelated to Robotech, but still hasn't been properly released in North American territories.
  • Beyond that, the original plans for Robotech: The Movie (and the first cut) had it as a relatively straight adaptation of Megazone 23, with the story set on Earth during the Macross era. Early plans for Sentinels featured Eve along with the hero (Mark Harris), heroine (Becky Franklin), and villain (B.D. Edwards) from the movie^note In other words, Shogo, Yui, and B.D. from Megazone 23 as major characters. When Executive Meddling forced Harmony Gold to revise the script to include Southern Cross footage as filler, Robotech II: The Sentinels had to be revised to match, resulting in multiple Decomposite Characters. The hero and heroine roles in Sentinels evolved into Jack Baker and Karen Penn, the "Eve II" Robot Girl became Janice Em, and T.R. Edwards emerged after filing off the serial numbers (and the backstory with Roy Fokker) from the newly renamed B.D. Andrews. Mark and Becky from the movie also received new last names in the revised script.
  • In addition, Carl Macek had originally intended Super Dimension Century Orguss on being the second Robotech series (and Southern Cross as the third), since it was the second in the the "Super Dimension Trilogy" that started with Super Dimension Fortress Macross and ended with Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. All three shows were unrelated in story, but all were from the same studio, and shared many production team members and story concepts. When he couldn't secure the license to Orguss, Southern Cross was moved up to being the second series, and Tatsunoko's Mospeada was chosen for the third. This explains why that season is by far the most unique of the three. Orguss did receive a faithful dub in the early 90s from LA Hero, but it was shelved after 17 out of 35 episodes were dubbed.
  • The mid-90s saw the release of Robotech toys under the Exosquad banner, and rumors have swirled in the years since, with the most popular one being the alien forces seen in the series finale of Exo Squad (a Cut Short situation) would've been tied to the Robotech universe in some way. But per story editor Michael Edens, he and the other writers didn't know about anything relating to a potential Robotech crossover until they saw the toys; he did say that he would've been happy to incorporate Robotech elements as long as it didn't interfere with their own plans. (Them not crossing over on-screen may have been for the best, because then Exosquad was exempt from all the massive legal troubles regarding Robotech.)
  • And then, at the end of it all, there's the fact that Macek's original plan was just to do a straight localization of Macross itself, with no other material attached; it only fell through because Macross by itself wasn't long enough for networks to take a serious look at it in syndication. If Macek had made it work somehow, the situation still would have left Harmony Gold as the rights-holder for American Macross productions, but without the additional baggage there would at least have been more incentive to bring the other titles over from a continuity perspective, and since Macross was the biggest success of Robotech regardless, it probably would've done just as well by itself and HG could've pointed to the show's international success on top of the domestic success and encouraged a sequel earlier than Macross 7. It's one of those ultimate what-could-have-beens that might've changed huge swaths of the licensing landscape for decades.
    • Had the straight localization gone through, there would have been different names for the characters. For instance, Hikaru Ichijyo/Rick Hunter would have been localized as "Rick Yamada".
    • This came extremely close to happening, in fact. The plans were so far advanced that the first issue of Coleco's comic adaptation of the show was still Macross-branded when it went on sale with the Japanese logo, and using (at least in original printings) the "Yamada" name for Hikaru/Rick.
  • Robotech had a somewhat more convoluted production history than the average viewer might realize. The originator of the "Robotech" IP was actually Revell-Matchbox, who used it starting in 1983-1984 for marketing licensed model kits and toys from Fang of the Sun Dougram, Super Dimension Fortress Macross and, somewhat ironically, when you look above, Super Dimension Century Orguss. The original story was vastly different to what was seen on TV in 1985. As originally published in a 2-issue DC Comics miniseries, the saga would have revolved around a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits acting as La Résistance against alien invaders on a far off planet. The series was abruptly cancelled, (with what was intended to be a three-issue miniseries compressed into a two-issue), when Revell entered into a partnership with Harmony Gold to avoid both sides treading on each other's IP toes over the rights to Macross.
  • Then theres the Nintendo 64 game, Crystal Dreams. Ohhhhh, Crystal Dreams... Originally announced in May 1995, over a year before the system was released, and as a launch title no less. It entered a famous and protracted Development Hell, with many joking that the entire project was cursed. The original developers, Game Tek, went bankrupt in 1997, only for Ocean to pick up the slack and eventually can it after an unspectacular showing at E3 1998.

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