Trivia / Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross

• Cancellation: Was cut down to twenty-three episodes from the planned 39, due to less than satisfactory ratings.
• Franchise Killer: Sorta. Southern Cross was the third in the "Super Dimension" meta-series produced by Studio Nue, preceded by the much more successful Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Super Dimension Century Orguss. This chapter ended things prematurely. Unsurprisingly, it's the only "Super Dimension" project, and the only series from which Robotech was adapted, that's not yet been released on Blu-ray as of writing.
• Troubled Production: This video summarises the situation that was happening around Southern Cross the best, gathered from what little information there exists on the internet. At first, the series was meant to be a parody of the mecha genre, and so Tatsunoko hired a character designer that was best known for lolicon manga (yes, the kind that are of questionable legality). Alongside that, the main Power Trio was meant to have names of actual historical figures (the finished product still has Jeanne who is a blatant Jeanne d'Archétype). Then, after deciding that the series would simply be too risqué, Tatsunoko ordered a massive Retool which would turn the series into more of a Science Fantasy anime that was a case of Follow the Leader to Aura Battler Dunbine (and for that note they even hired the character designer that previously worked on Dunbine to redesign the entire cast, which meant aging up the girls into teenagers). Then even that went bust after Dunbine became an Acclaimed Flop, and Tatsunoko, no longer certain of what to do and with the series' broadcast premiere date quickly approaching, decided to Retool the show yet again into the final form, as the romantic subplot was hastily written in, the fantasy angle becoming pure science fiction, and a trio of animators chosen to design the mecha for the show as "Ammonite"... which explains some of the rather oddball choices, like for example the Spartas hover tanks not even having a canopy. Needless to say, the resulting show was a mess and it ended up killing the Super Dimension franchise.
• No Export for You: For quite a long time, like the other series that made up Robotech it was not released outside of Japan in its original form. It has managed a brief American appearance on DVD courtesy of the now-defunct ADV, and does at the time of writing (September 2016) appear to be on Amazon Video, but sadly not in the UK in either case.

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