My Cultural Diet

Given that it was created to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the original Macross series, which was the basis for Robotech here in the States, Macross II: Lovers Again was one of the most anticipated anime sequels at the time. Unfortunately, Macross creator Shōji Kawamori was not involved in its production, nor was the original studio, and it shows. To put it mildly, Macross II is filled with shoddy, inconsistent animation and character designs. (I actually rewatched several scenes to see if they really were as bad as they initially appeared. They were, every single one of them.) The mecha designs are actually pretty cool — I did enjoy the brief glimpse of the VF-XX variable fighter — but the animation is routinely sketchy and subpar, and the space battles are an incoherent mess. Macross II’s storyline has the requisite love triangle and messaging about love (and pop music) overcoming war and hate, but the characters are so bland that it’s hard to care about them. As for the series’ protagonist, a brash young journalist named Hibiki Kanzaki, he’s arguably one of the most annoying characters in the entire Macross franchise. All of this is a shame, because the OVA had the potential to expand the Macross universe with the introduction of the Marduk civilization. If any doubt, though, remains concerning Macross II’s quality, consider this: when Kawamori and Studio Nue returned to the Macross franchise, they retconned Macross II into an alternate continuity and released the far superior Macross Plus as the official Macross sequel.

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