Robotech: The Complete Collection sees the venerable classic get another outing, this time with an entire 4-disc box full of extras. Can’t complain about that…

What They Say:
Robotech is a sweeping science-fiction anime epic that tells the story of a group of humans caught up in a series of wars, defending planet Earth from alien invaders. One of the first anime series to find a western TV audience, the series stands as a seminal and much-loved work of animated drama, having brought Japanese themes and animation styles to the west decades before the likes of Studio Ghibli’s Oscar-winning films such as Spirited Away. Based around space travel, alien technology and Transformer-style ‘mecha’ machines, this series is sure to prove popular with younger viewers as well as die-hard sci-fi fans.

Now, remastered from original elements and presented in a deluxe collector’s edition with over 10 hours of extras (including two hours of never before seen material), The Complete Series is the ultimate for any fan of manga, anime or science-fiction. Whether you’re a long-time fan or coming to the series for the first time, prepare to be blown away by all 85 episodes of this cult classic!

The Review:
Audio:
The audio on this release is provided in English-only, and has been remastered into 5.1 surround. A 2.0 stereo option is also available. The audio remastering has been used to give some added “oomph” to the sound effects, sometimes to the point where you can’t hear much else, while the dialogue has been left rooted to the centre channel. Minmei’s songs during the Macross arc are similarly lacking in direction. I definitely feel more could have been made of the new surround track than simply beefing up the explosions.

Video:
This release of Robotech appears to use the same restored masters that were used for Manga Entertainment’s release of the series a few back & is presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The restoration work done means the show is free of any of the usual signs of old age, while the DVD transfer is clean, with no signs of any encoding problems. The animation style clearly shows its early 80′s origins though, with low frame-rates, a lack of detail in many scenes, and character designs that aren’t particularly appealing.

Packaging:
The set comes in a thick card box with the leads from each of the three arcs – Macross Saga’s Rick Hunter, Dana Sterling from Masters and Scott Bernard from New Generation – posing on the front, with the usual promotional blurb and technical information on the rear. The box artwork has a foil feel to it. Inside, there are four “brick” cases – one for each arc, plus another for the “Robotech Archives”, the 4-disc extras collection. The covers of each set mirror the main box srtwork, just with a different selection of characters from that arc posing on the front. It’s a hefty set, and well presented.

Menu:
Menus are basically the same across all three arcs – a screen with a montage of clips from the episodes on that disc, and the Robotech theme playing in the background. Along with a Play All option, direct access is provided for each episode, along with an audio sub-menu to allow you to choose between the 5.1 and 2.0 tracks.

Extras:
Extras are spread across 4 discs, and here’s what you get:
Disc 1: Macross Pilot Episode (English), Macross Saga international clips, The Masters international clips, Galaxy of the Stars promotional reel, Toy commercials (1985-86), Toy line promotional reel.
Disc 2: Genesis Climber Mospeada (original unaired English pilot), Deleted scenes (from the original Japanese series), New Generation international clips.
Disc 3: Carl Macek’s Robotech Universe,Robotech series overview, Alternate episodes & scenes, Macross extended pilot (English)
Disc 4: RobotechL The Sentinels (movie), Robotech: The Sentinels 1987 promotional reel, Robotech: The Movie (1986) + animatics and trailer, original opening and closing sequences, Music videos, Robotech video games, Promotional reel (China 2005).

All this totals to over 9 hours of material, and to be honest I’ve barely scratched the surface of it all myself, but it’s an impressive collection nonetheless, going so far as to give a decent look into the shows that Robotech was originally adapted from. A very nice addition to the set.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Given that the three arcs really stand alone, we’ll look at each one in turn.

Macross Saga
A giant alien spacecraft, nearly 3 miles in length, crash-lands on Macross island in the South Pacific, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Faced with the knowledge that aliens considerably more powerful than humanity are out there, humanity put its full efforts into restoring the craft & learning from the advanced technology on board, which the scientists have dubbed “robotech”. Eventually the alien ship, renamed the SDF-1, is fully restored and ready for launch, but no sooner is it ready to fly than a race of warriors known as the Zentraedi come looking for the downed ship, forcing the ship and the inhabitants of Macross Island (now rehoused in Macross City, inside the shop itself) into a war that threatens the existence of life on Earth. That’s about as epic a premise as you could hope to have, and in some points the series lives up to its promise, but there are two problems running through the series that threaten to throw a dampener on things, depending how badly they bother you.

First, there’s a stretching of scientific reality to breaking point. I’m all for suspension of disbelief, expecially in SF stories, but I found myself shaking my head in disbelief a few times at the way things kept going conveniently wrong for the SDF-1 – what with anti-gravity generators floating off and Fold drives magically disappearing, the whole setup around the ship’s retreat from Earth after their first disastrous encounter with the Zentraedi just felt wrong. Add in the way the Macross Island citizens simply picked themselves up, moved their buildings into the ship (intact and apparently in the same layout the city had back on Earth) before carrying on as if nothing had happened, and my suspension of disbelief was being stretched to its limits. Some of the battle scenes later in the series were similarly “yeah, right” in style – one shot from a ground-based cannon destroying hundreds of thousands of Zentraedi ships, and so on. It just didn’t feel right.

The characters themselves weren’t helping, either. Star of the show Rick suffers from a bad dose of jealousy and has problems with priorities, singing idol Minmei is self-centered, bridge bunny Lisa really needs to lighten up, Captain Gloval seems to find it almost impossible to make decisions… You get the idea. The only really likeable character is Veritech pilot Roy, who gets killed off before he can really make an impression anyway. The English dub is also quite poor and difficult to listen to in places, with lifeless delivery of lines being the main problem.

It’s not all bad, though. There are some good mid-season character pieces, the Zentraedi characters really steal the show in some places as they attemp to come to terms with the human way of life, and the inability of some of them to give up the fighting life is a key plank of the later part of the series. “Inconsistent” is probably the best word for it – there are pieces of Macross Saga that fall into both the “truly bad” and “truly good” camps, and because the good moments are so good, the bad will have you screaming at the screen in frustration. It is worth watching, though – as much for its place in anime folklore as anything else, perhaps, but also because in its best moments it provides a really good look at what it means to be human.

The Masters
The Masters have followed the Zentraedi to Earth in search of the last remaining protoculture matrix, which seems to lie within the wreck of the SDF-1. Zor, who created protoculture, was one of the Masters, but his knowledge died with him and their attempts to clone a successor with the same skills have so far proven unsuccessful. Their need for protoculture is now growing desparate, as a third race, the Invid, are in turn following the Masters and searching for a source of protoculture – and the consequences should they get their hands on it are likely to be dire.

The Masters aren’t portrayed as being inherently evil or warlike – they just have a desperate need for protoculture, and Earth’s military are standing in their way. The issue here is that this feels very much like a problem that could be easily solved by negotiation (there’s no evidence that Earth has been using protoculture since the SDF-1′s destruction, or that the military is initially aware that the protoculture matrix the Masters need is even there), but neither side even makes the attempt – so we’re left with a war that feels more than a little contrived. That’s problem number one.

Star of the arc Dana Sterling comes across pretty much from the start as a bit of a ditzy blonde, who “earns” rapid promotion in the first few episodes as much through good luck as good fortune. She does have some things in her favour, though, such as the solid support of most of her squadron and a determination to do what’s right, regardless of the cost – two things that ensure she’s able to get out of most of the scrapes she and her team find themselves in. As the story progresses, their missions bring them into contact with some of the inhabitants of the Masters’ flagship – to all appearances human, but we’re told that at least some of them are androids or clones under the Masters’ control – and this is where we run into problem number two. On the basis of very brief meetings with two of the aliens (Zor Prime, the original attempt at cloning Zor who is now a bioroid pilot and group leader; and Musica, a mysterious woman who controls the bioroid pilots through her use of a harp-like instrument), both Dana and Bowie find themselves losing the will to fight against the invaders. If the invaders are androids or other “non-persons”, what’s the problem, and where does the attachment come from? If Zor and Musica are taken to be androids, it’s hard to believe why Dana and Bowie respond to them the way they do. From what I understand, this is a side-effect of the adaptation from Southern Cross, where those on the Masters’ ships were actually captured humans – think of the story in those terms, and it makes a lot more sense.

The war itself is presented from two main angles. There’s an overall view of the conflict as seen from the viewpoints of Supreme Commander Leonard (another man who’s more interested in his own standing than the greater good) and General Emerson, who pays the price for opposing Leonard’s war-at-all-costs attitude by being given command of a series of missions that seem designed to make sure he’s killed along the way. This side of the story gives some good excuses for all-out space combat, which looks pretty good given the age of the source materials and feels more “real” than the millions-of-ships engagements we saw in the Macross arc.

At a lower level, the adventures of Marie (posted to Emerson’s fleet), and Dana’s squad (who remain based on Earth) give a more up-close-and-personal view of the war, and thanks to the 15th’s mission to the Masters’ flagship and time within the clone city there, we get to see both sides of the conflict. As the Masters get ever more desperate to recover Earth’s protoculture supply, the clones find themselves on the receiving end of some particularly nasty treatment as the Masters try to even the odds, while contact with the humans and exposure to human emotions makes some question where their loyalties should lie. Add in a few budding romances, and you end up with a fairly good look at the human aspect of the war. There are a few silly moments, though, such as when one of Dana’s squad spots a guard patrol heading his way while in the clone city and opts to get out of the way by… chatting up a trio of clones right under the guards’ noses. Smart move there. Fortunately, while scenes like that do provoke the odd eye-roll, they’re few and far between.

Masters does have its moments, at least. The 15th Squadron are a likeable enough bunch, even if some of them are destined to be short-lived, and there’s a liberal sprinkling of action moments to help distract you from the story’s shortfallings. It’s also all presented quite well, given the age of the source materials.

Robotech Masters brings a new set of heroes and villains to the Robotech universe, without playing too much with the basic idea of the series – although there are some aspects of the original Southern Cross story that it would have been better to leave alone. While there’s nothing here that will set the world alight, Masters was never a chore to watch, and that makes it worth checking out.

New Generation
The Masters have gone, but in their place the evil Invid have invaded the Earth – it’s the only place where they’ve been able to locate a supply of protoculture, a substance essential for their continued survival, and so the remaining humans on Earth are enslaved and used by the Invid to keep them supplied with the protoculture they need.

Having learnt of the Earth’s fate, Admiral Rick Hunter sends an attack force to Earth to take on the Invid and free the planet from their oppression. It’s a great idea in theory, but in practice it soon turns into a disaster, as sheer weight of numbers allows the Invid to decimate the arriving fleet in just one short battle. Lieutenant Scott Bernard, a Veritech fighter pilot with the fleet, manages to survive the battle, and soon finds himself standing on the surface of mankind’s home planet – a planet he’s never before seen. Determined to complete his mission of destroying Reflex Point – the Invid’s base on Earth – Scott soon finds himself gathering a small band of freedom fighters around him, and the Invid soon become aware that they have a new threat on their hands.

In a nutshell, that’s the basic setup of New Generation. The first three episodes cover the formation of the group – one of the first to join is little red-haired orphan Annie (who fortunately doesn’t go around singing “It’s a Hard Knock Life”), as the series keeps to that old anime tradition of having at least one annoying kid of doubtful usefulness on the scene. More relevant to mounting a war against the Invid are Lancer (male resistance fighter by day, female singer Yellow Dancer by night), Rand (another resistance fighter who is the first person Scott meets after crash-landing his fighter), Rook Bartley (a rather withdrawn but attractive Cyclone pilot) and Lunk (who looks like a dumb galoot but was a qualified bio-maintenance engineer before the Invid invasion – and conveniently comes with his own Alpha fighter). Quite the rag-tag team, and it’s never really explained why most of the group decide to join up with Scott, but once they’re together a certain level of loyalty soon develops amongst the group and they work together quite well – although I never did figure out just what purpose Annie was meant to be serving.

The other part of the setting that didn’t quite make sense was how the Invid were running the planet. For all the talk of mankind’s slavery that’s given at various points here, most of the time it feels like life goes on pretty much as normal – people are working, humans are running their own affairs, leisure and luxury are still common (otherwise Lancer wouldn’t be doing such good business as a pop star), disgruntled youth form gangs and annoy people – there’s barely any feel that humanity’s oppressed or enslaved. The Invid do pop up occasionally and cause some problems, but their appearances have more of the feel of hit-and-run attacks, and not of them being Earth’s all-conquering invaders. The end result is that the premise feels a little bit off, and not quite right.

Once the introductory episodes are out of the way, the gang begin to make their way towards Reflex Point. The further they travel and the more contact they have with the Invid, the more the Invid Regess (their queen, if you like) begins to take an interest in their actions. For a race that wiped out the arriving human fleet in a matter of minutes, you would think that dealing with a small band of rebels would be a trivial problem, but not so – Scott and his new friends are skilled fighters and well-equipped, so for the most part they hold their own fairly well. As the story progresses, it also becomes clearer that the Invid may not be so much unable to deal with them as they are eager to use them for their own ends, and there are a few twists in the story as that side of the Regess’s plot is worked on. The problem here is that the series gets into a rut of “location of the week” that soon begins to feel a little tired – one episode we’re travelling through a desert, the next we’re in the mountains, a trip across the ocean then on to another desert. Rinse, repeat. Each location throws a problem at the gang, they deal with it, and they move on. After several cycles of that, things really do being to feel a bit same-y. That said, the people they meet along the way can at times be quite interesting (a group of people who have reverted to living like primitives, a group of elderly war veterans who don’t take kindly to Scott’s gung-ho attitude, a victim of the Invid’s gruesome experiments…) and are enough to keep you from losing all hope of the story reaching a decent ending.

Events begin to pick up a bit with the introduction of Corg and Sera. They’re creations of the Invid Regess, who has decided that the human form gives her race the greatest chance of survival. While Corg and Sera were “born” together and created in the same way, they couldn’t be much different – Corg’s a ruthless killer who’s quite eager to see the remnants of humanity wiped out, while Sera soon begins to suffer from difficulties dealing with human emotions that see her doubting the Invid mission and tempted to switch sides. Since Sera’s the one who is appointed by the Regess to deal with Scott and the others, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to find that, especially after meeting Lancer, she finds that the idea of killing humans really doesn’t appeal.

This is almost the same territory that the Macross and Masters arcs covered – a race of heartless killers come face to face with human emotions and find themselves at first unable to understand what they’re dealing with, and eventually some of their number fall in love with their enemies and end up siding with the humans. Having seen the basic idea before, and not that long ago, that does make the events in the latter part of the series very predictable. Perhaps if I’d been watching this arc without seeing the previous two it would have still had a sense of surprise about it and been a bit more enjoyable.

The other main thread to the story across these episodes is the arrival of Admiral Hunter’s fleet on a mission to free the planet from the Invid. This side of things will keep action fans pretty much satisfied, as it gives an excuse for some fairly decent battle scenes in the final episodes. While the fleet’s previous attempts to defeat the Invid resulted in humiliation, this time they’re prepared, with the new Shadow Fighters that are invisible to Invid sensors – just what’s needed to tip the tide of the war. The Admiral himself fails to appear, his ship having apparently gone missing during the final jump to Earth – a little story hook thrown in for the Shadow Chronicles movie to deal with.

Compared to the Macross and Masters story arcs, New Generation probably sits in between them in entertainment value – there’s more going on here than there was in Masters, but the epic feel that the Macross Saga captured so well is still sadly missing. It’s all presented well on screen, especially given the age of the source materials, but the lack of any unexpected surprises means the interest quickly wanes if you watch more than a few episodes at a time. It also never quite gets to the point of actually being dull, but it covers a lot of the same territory as the previous two Robotech arcs and gets quite repetitive within itself at times. Some believable characters and situations help keep the attention, but the series simply doesn’t hang together as well as it could have. It’s decent enough, but certainly not a classic story.

In Summary:
Overall, Robotech is a bit of a mixed bag – there’s some good stuff, especially in the Macross arc, but there’s a lot that just makes you cringe as well. Given the show’s status, the comparatively low cost of this release, and the sheer amount of extras that Go Entertain have crommed in with it, though, it’s probably worth picking up – at the very least so you can say you’ve seen it.

Features:
English Language 5.1, English Language 2.0

Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B-
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: A+

Released By: Go Entertain
Release Date: 5 December 2011
Running Time: 2125 minutes, plus 9hrs extras
Video Encoding: MPEG2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Toshiba 37X3030DB 37″ widescreen HDTV; Sony PS3 Blu-ray player (via HDMI, upscaled to 1080p); Acoustic Solutions DS-222 5.1 speaker system.