The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

[pirx]

international shipping from Japan is EXPENSIVE, so a lot of people probably weren't willing to drop a sum greater than the cost of the album just to get the CD by express mail.

Discs themselves aren't cheap as well. I recall in early 2000s when Gundam movie trilogy came out in Japan i ordered DVDs. 60$ EACH. Plus shipping. And then... after year or two it came out in US - same package. US DVDs+shipping would have costed me a lot less than from Japan.

This i think prohibits most of the fans outside of Japan to order BDs or DVDs and i might add accounts for serious % of anime piracy. If one can't get Macross (or any other anime) legally i highly doubt they will order 60+$ worth BD/DVD as an alternative. Plus disc media is on decline. Unfortunately orders from Japan are the only legit means to get Macross for fans outside of Japan. I don't think much has changed in recent years regarding Macross worldwide copyright issues.

[Seto Kaiba]

Discs themselves aren't cheap as well. I recall in early 2000s when Gundam movie trilogy came out in Japan i ordered DVDs. 60$ EACH. Plus shipping. And then... after year or two it came out in US - same package. US DVDs+shipping would have costed me a lot less than from Japan.

Some would argue that media prices in the US are actually the abnormal ones, being a lot cheaper than most countries on a per-episode basis. $63.50 per volume is pretty typical for a Japanese Blu-ray release. Europe and Australia have media prices fairly similar to Japan's, and much grousing you'll hear from the Aussies over that one... since they insist (not unreasonably) that they live in something of a media ghetto where they get only a tiny fraction of the releases the rest of the world gets and at a substantial markup.

(I've got a friend in Adelaide who will never let me hear the end of it.)

This i think prohibits most of the fans outside of Japan to order BDs or DVDs and i might add accounts for serious % of anime piracy. If one can't get Macross (or any other anime) legally i highly doubt they will order 60+$ worth BD/DVD as an alternative.

In all honesty, I suspect there are much bigger factors in play when it comes to anime piracy than the cost of physical media. I'd argue the biggest is probably the way that the distributors outside Japan only license the most popular or buzzworthy titles and ignore the rest, leaving audiences elsewhere with no alternative but to download a fansub. This leads to distributors carrying an awful lot of what my girlfriend likes to call "shonen battle shit" (e.g. Naruto) and ignoring more mature or interesting fare. Plus it's also the only way around titles that were stuck in "no export for you" status due to unclear ownership (e.g. a good chunk of Space Battleship Yamato), obstructive licensees (Macross), excessively expensive licensing (Macross again), or in some cases being banned by local government (e.g. Code Geass in China).

It may help that the Japanese Blu-rays tend to have a lot more in terms of "Extra Features" than what's on the rather unimpressive western editions... though the western editions try to make up for it by bundling Blu-ray and DVD editions together.

Plus disc media is on decline. Unfortunately orders from Japan are the only legit means to get Macross for fans outside of Japan. I don't think much has changed in recent years regarding Macross worldwide copyright issues.

Now that, I'm not so sure... there've been predictions of doom and gloom for physical media for ages, but paradoxically sales of physical media (esp. in music) are trending UP rather than down over the last few years.

[pirx]

By the way - are release dates for DVD and BD announced already?

Also - i must correct myself about unavailability of Macross outside Japan. Macross Plus OVA was available on VHS and DVDs, Movie edition also got released albeit as bad quality VHS transfer with hardsubs. And rightstuff had restored original Macross TV series DVD set.

[Seto Kaiba]

By the way - are release dates for DVD and BD announced already?

None that I've seen, no. The movie's only been in theaters for a month.

Odds are we'll probably expect to see it on Blu-Ray at some point in August or September.

Also - i must correct myself about unavailability of Macross outside Japan. Macross Plus OVA was available on VHS and DVDs, Movie edition also got released albeit as bad quality VHS transfer with hardsubs. And rightstuff had restored original Macross TV series DVD set.

To date, seven (technically eight) of the seventeen or so animated Macross features have been available outside Japan in some form or other.

Obviously the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series was initially only available in its terrible localization form. Streamline tried to do a subs-only release of the unedited original as a double feature on their "Perfect Collection" version of the localization, but it would've made speed subs look like a work of art and occasionally bordered on a blind idiot translation. It was later licensed by AnimEigo, who gave it a very well-done remastering for DVD. For reasons unknown, AnimEigo lost the license to ADV Films, who made an absolutely terrible English dub for their DVD release.

There was a terribad Hong Kong dub of Macross: Do You Remember Love? that made it to the states as Clash of the Bionoids, though it was cut and bowdlerized pretty badly.

Macross II: Lovers Again was available in its original OVA form on VHS as one of the first experiments in simultaneous US-Japan releases, and there was the so-called "Movie Edition" that came out after that, which later ended up on DVD.

Macross Plus made it over in both the 1994 OVA and 1995 movie editions without hassle.

Macross Frontier: Itsuwari no Utahime and Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa both have had at least one BD release that had official English subtitles, effectively circumventing the need to have a local distributor.

Macross Delta followed suit, the official Blu-rays have English subtitles on the main feature (but not the extra features), making the Japanese edition accessible to American viewers.

[Wingnut]

Macross Frontier: Itsuwari no Utahime and Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa both have had at least one BD release that had official English subtitles, effectively circumventing the need to have a local distributor.

Macross Delta followed suit, the official Blu-rays have English subtitles on the main feature (but not the extra features), making the Japanese edition accessible to American viewers.

No kidding. Wow. Those just got added to my wishlist as a result. Question is will they cost me the price of a real Valk to get?

[pirx]

You can check prices on either amazon.co.jp or cdjapan.co.jp

[Seto Kaiba]

No kidding. Wow. Those just got added to my wishlist as a result. Question is will they cost me the price of a real Valk to get?

When they were new, pricing was right around the average of ~$63.50 a disc for all three. The Combo Pack release of the Macross Frontier movies with the PS3 games on each disc may have gone up, since they were an in-demand item thanks to the English subs. The Delta BDs are still hovering right around the mean price point, though it's worth noting this is a nine volume series so that's about $600 when all is said and done.

EDIT: It felt a lot less painful doing it one volume every month or so as they were coming out than buying them all at once will.

[False Prophet]

How much do the races of the galaxy, other than humans, Zentrandi, Protodevlin, and Windermerians, remember about the Protoculture? I mean, there have been cases of forces claiming themselves to be "inheritors of the Protoculture's will" as a show of legitimacy. Does this imply that the Protoculture is generally at least respected and/or feared by aliens?

[Seto Kaiba]

How much do the races of the galaxy, other than humans, Zentrandi, Protodevlin, and Windermerians, remember about the Protoculture?

All told, I'd guess "probably nothing".

Thus far, the Zentradi are the one and only humanoid species yet encountered that has historical records of direct contact with the ancient Protoculture. 500,000 years without contact with the Protoculture has seen a lot of that history fade into myth and legend, a matter not helped by the revocation of some of their most important combat directives like "don't interfere with the Protoculture" and "leave the miclone planets alone" during the final stages of the war with the Supervision Army.

Humanity seems to have been an unusual case in that one isolated tribe did have a mytho-historical record of their one indirect contact with the ancient Protoculture via a sentient techno-organic construct. The Mayan islanders in the South Pacific unwittingly had a front row seat to the accidental activation of the Protoculture's last resort "just burn the place down and have done with it" measure in prehistory. The emergency shutdown measure left such an impression on the Mayan islanders that it became the focus of their religion. Whether they had any memory of the ancient Protoculture before that is unclear, but they definitely remembered the Birdman even after the historical facts were muddied by them lacking the frame of reference to understand what was going on and the subsequent mythologization of the events.

Like on Earth, there don't appear to have been any Protoculture settlements or ruins on Zola so the natives there don't seem to have had any reason to suspect they were once visited by aliens.

It's unclear how much the Ragnans and Voldorans knew before first contact with humans in the 2020s and 2030s, since the worlds of the Brisingr Alliance were less developed than Zola was when first contact was made. Zola's civilization had reached a level of development equivalent to the first half of the 20th century. Windermere IV's society appears to have been Late Medieval when Megaroad-04 blundered across their world. Even their knowledge of the Protoculture seems to come mainly from information humanity shared after colonizing their world. The ruins on Windermere played some kind of unspecified role in Windermere's religion, as Roid's family were a monastic/religious family who were devoted to tending to the ruins, but it's unclear if their use was in any way related to ancient contact with the Protoculture. Windermere doesn't seem to have realized what they had until 2060 or thereabouts.

I mean, there have been cases of forces claiming themselves to be "inheritors of the Protoculture's will" as a show of legitimacy. Does this imply that the Protoculture is generally at least respected and/or feared by aliens?

It doesn't appear to be.

The Zolans either don't know or don't care, and the attitude the Ragnans and Voldorans seem to take is that the Protoculture ruins are a thing that exists. Even most Windermereans don't seem to really care about the ancient Protoculture, and Keith actually resents them for cursing his people with such short lifespans. Roid seems to be kind of alone in genuinely believing in that manifest destiny stuff, and King Grammier is sort of using the whole racial destiny schtick to justify mobilizing the troops to push out the allegedly-inferior race that they already had a pre-existing grudge against... and golly this is sounding a bit Germany circa 1923 isn't it?

Humanity, at least, seems to have a healthy sense of caution when it comes to anything to do with a Protoculture relic... not from any ancient racial memory, but because bitter experience has taught them that there's at least a 50-50 chance whatever it is will turn out to be hideously dangerous either because it's boobytrapped, is a weapon of massive destructive potential with a mind of its own, and/or is something the Protoculture themselves decided was too stupidly dangerous for them to even consider using and sealed away to keep anyone from messing with it. By 2060, they appear to have become somewhat genre savvy about the whole affair and tried to head that one off at the pass by dropping the nastiest bomb in their arsenal on the Protoculture ruins on Windermere IV in the hope that they could destroy the Sigur Berrentzs and prevent the Delta Wave system from being activated.

[False Prophet]

I mean, there have been cases of forces claiming themselves to be "inheritors of the Protoculture's will" as a show of legitimacy. Does this imply that the Protoculture is generally at least respected and/or feared by aliens?

It doesn't appear to be.

The Zolans either don't know or don't care, and the attitude the Ragnans and Voldorans seem to take is that the Protoculture ruins are a thing that exists. Even most Windermereans don't seem to really care about the ancient Protoculture, and Keith actually resents them for cursing his people with such short lifespans. Roid seems to be kind of alone in genuinely believing in that manifest destiny stuff, and King Grammier is sort of using the whole racial destiny schtick to justify mobilizing the troops to push out the allegedly-inferior race that they already had a pre-existing grudge against... and golly this is sounding a bit Germany circa 1923 isn't it?

Humanity, at least, seems to have a healthy sense of caution when it comes to anything to do with a Protoculture relic... not from any ancient racial memory, but because bitter experience has taught them that there's at least a 50-50 chance whatever it is will turn out to be hideously dangerous either because it's boobytrapped, is a weapon of massive destructive potential with a mind of its own, and/or is something the Protoculture themselves decided was too stupidly dangerous for them to even consider using and sealed away to keep anyone from messing with it. By 2060, they appear to have become somewhat genre savvy about the whole affair and tried to head that one off at the pass by dropping the nastiest bomb in their arsenal on the Protoculture ruins on Windermere IV in the hope that they could destroy the Sigur Berrentzs and prevent the Delta Wave system from being activated.

Thanks for the information! I really should pay more attention.

Also, just for curiousity, was there any official publication about the Zentrandi language? I wonder if there are Macross fans that actually try to learn speaking it (like the Trekkies to Klingon.)

Also, had there been a confirmed male Zentrandi/female human couple? I was just thinking about how in human's eyes, Meltrandi are attractive yet Zentrandi are ugly. Seems like the artists could not bear to make Milia Jenius looked actually alien. (I'm not ranting or anything.)

[Seto Kaiba]

Also, just for curiousity, was there any official publication about the Zentrandi language? I wonder if there are Macross fans that actually try to learn speaking it (like the Trekkies to Klingon.)

As far as I'm aware, no... they haven't taken it that far.

The examples of Zentradi text seen on screen in the various Macross shows is pretty much all in English, their alphabet is just new symbols that replace the letters of the English alphabet. So there've been a few artbooks and such that have had English-to-Zentradi alphabet tables and there've been some goods like stamp sets that enabled fans to write in Zentradi by selecting the equivalent English letters. The closest they've come to having a properly developed phrasebook or anything like that are glossaries of Zentradi terms used in the show that've come up in a couple series artbooks.

Also, had there been a confirmed male Zentrandi/female human couple? I was just thinking about how in human's eyes, Meltrandi are attractive yet Zentrandi are ugly. Seems like the artists could not bear to make Milia Jenius looked actually alien. (I'm not ranting or anything.)

In all honesty, I can't recall anyone actually referring to Zentradi men as ugly in-universe. The command class and records officer class clone troops are anatomically a bit weird in their regular (giant) forms, but reportedly they're not that bad once they've been micloned.

A lot of the Zentradi depicted from the mid-90's are no less good-looking than the humans around them. Timothy Daldanton, Naresuan, and Vigo Walgria are three prominently featured ones, all of whom are pretty good looking, though I can imagine Timothy's unusually pale skintone or Naresuan being broccoli green might be off-putting to a few. Timothy and Vigo are well on the "bishounen" side of handsome (despite Timothy being well into his fifties c. 2050). Ernest Johnson's pretty good looking in Macross Delta, though he's got lousy dress sense (that suit he wears for Freyja's welcome party wouldn't have been out of place in Saturday Night Fever).

There've been a fair few couples that are Zentradi man/non-Zentradi woman. There's one in Michael Blanc's family tree, one in Ranka's too IIRC. The one that NOBODY saw coming was Roli Dosel, the short, kinda jowly spy who was prominently featured as a defector in the original series. His mixed-heritage granddaughter shows up in Macross the Musiculture as a supporting character, and is so lovely a lass that she's a Miss Macross 2062 finalist in the Macross 29 fleet. In Macross II's timeline, intermarriage between humans and Zentradi is so common that it's implied a significant chunk of Earth's population has at least some Zentradi heritage. Vigo Walgria, who is one of her acquaintances, has the eye of at least one human girl.

Zentradi of both genders have been depicted running the whole spectrum from gonk to gorgeous.

[False Prophet]

Also, just for curiousity, was there any official publication about the Zentrandi language? I wonder if there are Macross fans that actually try to learn speaking it (like the Trekkies to Klingon.)

As far as I'm aware, no... they haven't taken it that far.

The examples of Zentradi text seen on screen in the various Macross shows is pretty much all in English, their alphabet is just new symbols that replace the letters of the English alphabet. So there've been a few artbooks and such that have had English-to-Zentradi alphabet tables and there've been some goods like stamp sets that enabled fans to write in Zentradi by selecting the equivalent English letters. The closest they've come to having a properly developed phrasebook or anything like that are glossaries of Zentradi terms used in the show that've come up in a couple series artbooks.

I imagine as much. Maybe no anime studio would ever reached the level of details as western movie makers - Star Trek, or Avatar later, had to hire linguists working for a year or more to create Klingon and the Na'vi language respectively.

Also, had there been a confirmed male Zentrandi/female human couple? I was just thinking about how in human's eyes, Meltrandi are attractive yet Zentrandi are ugly. Seems like the artists could not bear to make Milia Jenius looked actually alien. (I'm not ranting or anything.)

In all honesty, I can't recall anyone actually referring to Zentradi men as ugly in-universe. The command class and records officer class clone troops are anatomically a bit weird in their regular (giant) forms, but reportedly they're not that bad once they've been micloned.

A lot of the Zentradi depicted from the mid-90's are no less good-looking than the humans around them. Timothy Daldanton, Naresuan, and Vigo Walgria are three prominently featured ones, all of whom are pretty good looking, though I can imagine Timothy's unusually pale skintone or Naresuan being broccoli green might be off-putting to a few. Timothy and Vigo are well on the "bishounen" side of handsome (despite Timothy being well into his fifties c. 2050). Ernest Johnson's pretty good looking in Macross Delta, though he's got lousy dress sense (that suit he wears for Freyja's welcome party wouldn't have been out of place in Saturday Night Fever).

There've been a fair few couples that are Zentradi man/non-Zentradi woman. There's one in Michael Blanc's family tree, one in Ranka's too IIRC. The one that NOBODY saw coming was Roli Dosel, the short, kinda jowly spy who was prominently featured as a defector in the original series. His mixed-heritage granddaughter shows up in Macross the Musiculture as a supporting character, and is so lovely a lass that she's a Miss Macross 2062 finalist in the Macross 29 fleet. In Macross II's timeline, intermarriage between humans and Zentradi is so common that it's implied a significant chunk of Earth's population has at least some Zentradi heritage. Vigo Walgria, who is one of her acquaintances, has the eye of at least one human girl.

Zentradi of both genders have been depicted running the whole spectrum from gonk to gorgeous.

I don't know why, but whenever I see clips from the original, the upper half of the Zentradi faces always gave me that alien feeling. It got worse if there was shade on it.

Anyway, was the reserve-engineering process of the SDF-1 Macross done entirely by U.N. Spacy-funded research centers, or were private firms allowed to join under U.N. Spacy's supervision? For just ten year and a world war, the rate which human reverse-engineer the alien technology was staggering.

[Seto Kaiba]

I don't know why, but whenever I see clips from the original, the upper half of the Zentradi faces always gave me that alien feeling. It got worse if there was shade on it.

Probably something to do with Vrlitwhai frowning all the time, and having very bushy eyebrows.

(If it helps, there's a hint in Macross Chronicle that suggests that Elmo Kridanik, Ranka's manager from Macross Frontier, may in fact be a relative of his... probably a son.)

Anyway, was the reserve-engineering process of the SDF-1 Macross done entirely by U.N. Spacy-funded research centers, or were private firms allowed to join under U.N. Spacy's supervision? For just ten year and a world war, the rate which human reverse-engineer the alien technology was staggering.

OTEC, the international alien technology analysis and research institute that reverse-engineered and rebuilt the wrecked alien starship into the SDF-1 Macross, was founded before the UN Government and the UN Forces were formally established.

The work was led by OTEC, but private corporations worldwide were participating in the construction process by applying the results of OTEC's research and reverse engineering to produce the necessary materials and the technology to restore the ship. Other private corporations were applying those same shared advancements in material science, technology, and related fields to other things like military hardware, cars, medicine, and an array of household commodities like personal electronics and entertainment.

Mind you, this emphasis on reconstructing the ship and building up planetary defenses was a massive economic stimulus even if it was eating a pretty substantial chunk of the global GDP. There wasn't really a world war on though, the Unification Wars were a series of little brushfire conflicts resulting from partisans who didn't want a one world government or who had some kind of grievance against the government. The Anti-Unification Alliance that grew up out of those conflicts wasn't really a national power or an alliance of nations, it was little regional powers and separatists supporting it along with amoral corporations who saw the opportunity to test new weapons tech in the field or were just looking to make a buck. For instance, there were Russian partisans supporting the Alliance, but the Russian Federation itself was a founding member of the UN Government.

[False Prophet]

Anyway, was the reserve-engineering process of the SDF-1 Macross done entirely by U.N. Spacy-funded research centers, or were private firms allowed to join under U.N. Spacy's supervision? For just ten year and a world war, the rate which human reverse-engineer the alien technology was staggering.

OTEC, the international alien technology analysis and research institute that reverse-engineered and rebuilt the wrecked alien starship into the SDF-1 Macross, was founded before the UN Government and the UN Forces were formally established.

The work was led by OTEC, but private corporations worldwide were participating in the construction process by applying the results of OTEC's research and reverse engineering to produce the necessary materials and the technology to restore the ship. Other private corporations were applying those same shared advancements in material science, technology, and related fields to other things like military hardware, cars, medicine, and an array of household commodities like personal electronics and entertainment.

Mind you, this emphasis on reconstructing the ship and building up planetary defenses was a massive economic stimulus even if it was eating a pretty substantial chunk of the global GDP. There wasn't really a world war on though, the Unification Wars were a series of little brushfire conflicts resulting from partisans who didn't want a one world government or who had some kind of grievance against the government. The Anti-Unification Alliance that grew up out of those conflicts wasn't really a national power or an alliance of nations, it was little regional powers and separatists supporting it along with amoral corporations who saw the opportunity to test new weapons tech in the field or were just looking to make a buck. For instance, there were Russian partisans supporting the Alliance, but the Russian Federation itself was a founding member of the UN Government.

Then how did OverTechnology were leaked to the Anti-U.N.? Were there defectors, or private firms sold it to the rebels?

Also, is there any official, up-to-date chronology of Macross? I'm interested in trivials such as when was human complete colonization of the solar system.

[Seto Kaiba]

Then how did OverTechnology were leaked to the Anti-U.N.? Were there defectors, or private firms sold it to the rebels?

Both.

Most, if not all, of the corporations who sold weapons and equipment to the Anti-Unification Alliance got the overtechnology they used through legitimate channels. One of the Earth Unification Government's big policy points was mandated that member nations and OTEC share new technological developments with each other. This at least theoretically prevented the larger, more powerful member nations from monopolizing new tech and using it to create power blocs within the government.

That said, companies were not required to disclose the results of their own R&D on applications of that OTM, thus maintaining competitiveness and private enterprise. The Anti-Unification Alliance wasn't above making use of leaks and espionage to obtain classified developments from the UN Forces. In particular, the Alliance variable fighter program headed by Sukhoi, IAI, and Dornier was only able to catch up to the UN Government and produce a combat-ready trial production VF (the Sv-51) before the end of the Unification Wars using the VF-0's development data that former lead VF-0 test pilot D.D. Ivanov stole when he defected.

Also, is there any official, up-to-date chronology of Macross? I'm interested in trivials such as when was human complete colonization of the solar system.

The Macross Compendium wiki (macross.anime.net) has a reasonably complete, if somewhat frustrating to navigate, chronology... though it's still being updated with content from Macross Delta.

Since terraforming technology in Macross takes a VERY long time to do its job (the est. time to restore Earth's ecosystem to pre-war levels is about 10,000 years), humanity's colonization has focused mainly on its search for Earthlike planets in other solar systems.

Besides Earth, only Luna and Mars have permanent civilian settlements on their surfaces. Jupiter's moons Ganymede and Europa are home to some mining and military bases, but that's about it for settlements on planetary or lunar surfaces. There are space colonies orbiting Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune though (most of which we're only aware of as the birthplaces of Macross 7 bridge bunnies).

[False Prophet]

Is FB7 cannon or not? Did the Fire Bomber, Ranka, and Sheryl concert actually happened? (Sorry if my question sounds stupid, but I am so confused watching the whole thing.)

Also, I do find it a bit strange that guys like Ozma and Chuck were fans of Fire Bomber. Personally, I thought their demographic were young adults.

And finally, before they embarked on the Megaroad, were Hikaru and Misa well-known to the mass, or were the whole popularity thing came after the Megaroad went missing?

[Seto Kaiba]

Is FB7 cannon or not? Did the Fire Bomber, Ranka, and Sheryl concert actually happened? (Sorry if my question sounds stupid, but I am so confused watching the whole thing.)

I don't see a reason it couldn't be, since Fire Bomber's members don't actually appear (they're only present in archival footage Ozma found) and the Protodeviln are still alive and non-malevolent now.

That said, I'd have to check the most recent version of the Macross chronology to see if it's actually on there.

Also, I do find it a bit strange that guys like Ozma and Chuck were fans of Fire Bomber. Personally, I thought their demographic were young adults.

Fire Bomber was a pretty big deal in 2045-2047, both as a chart-topping rock band and for their role in saving the Macross 7 fleet from the Protodeviln. They're still a pretty popular group throughout the galaxy, despite having broken up. Sheryl Nome's own concert in Frontier puts them in the same chart-topping living legends class as other "biggest in the galaxy" idols like Lynn Minmay and Sharon Apple... and later, Sheryl Nome and Ranka Lee.

Ozma would've been a little over 13 years old when Fire Bomber's first single hit the Galaxy Network, so it's not altogether surprising he would've been a big fan. Chuck's a little harder to explain, since he would have been a bit over 2 1/2 years old back then and would've broken up long before he started listening to music, but it's not inconceivable he picked them up from records imported to Ragna or maybe he became a fan in 2060 when the (in-universe reunion) album Re:Fire came out (he would've been 17 at the time).

It's worth noting that Fire Bomber is depicted as still being a pretty popular act in 2060 on Uroboros in Macross 30... with the sudden appearance of a time-displaced 2046-era Mylene and Basara being a real brick-sh*tting moment that sends several characters into gushing fanboy/girl mode.

And finally, before they embarked on the Megaroad, were Hikaru and Misa well-known to the mass, or were the whole popularity thing came after the Megaroad went missing?

I'm not sure they were necessarily famous, but Hikaru and Misa were both publicly acknowledged as heroes during the First Space War for having successfully escaped after being captured by the Zentradi... and they were both reasonably well known within the military, Hikaru for being a top ace and later the commanding officer of the SVF-1 Skulls, and Misa as the Macross's flight controller and as the daughter of a top UN Forces general.

I'd wager Misa was probably reasonably famous for a brief period in 2012, as the newly selected captain of Earth's first interstellar emigrant ship.

From the in-universe perspective of the people making Do You Remember Love? in 2030, Hikaru and Misa were probably an irresistible duo to focus on... the officer who made the first face-to-face contact with the Zentradi, and her ace pilot love interest.

Minmay, of course, was the REALLY famous one... singer, actress, model, beauty pageant winner, etc.

[False Prophet]

Say, is it true that Minmay's songs during the Zentrandi war were something similar to the tunes that the Protoculture created, which had imprinted itself on the Zentrandi's DNA and therefore had a powerful influence on them? But what about the whole fold waves/telepathy and live concerts? People I asked said that this discrepancy was caused by a retcon, but is this correct?

[Seto Kaiba]

Say, is it true that Minmay's songs during the Zentrandi war were something similar to the tunes that the Protoculture created, which had imprinted itself on the Zentrandi's DNA and therefore had a powerful influence on them?

The titular song in the movie Macross: Do You Remember Love? was, in the movie's version of the First Space War, a surviving work of popular music from the Protoculture's extinct civilization. The sheet music for it had been preserved in the Boddole Zer mobile fortress as a "fragment of culture" that was given to Lynn Minmay during her imprisonment that led to the cease fire, and Misa Hayase recovered the lyrics from the Protoculture's sunken colony ship. Minmay sang a translation of the song during the final battle of the war. The apparently latent memories of the Protoculture civilization combined with the culture shock of the music and its emotional context threw the Zentradi and Meltrandi for a loop.

Whether it's actually an ancient song or if that's just something they came up with for the 2031 in-universe film, I'm not sure... Kawamori's "Schrodinger's canon" attitude can be frustrating on topics like this.

The version in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series was a pop ballad composed for Minmay that worked purely on culture shock and emotional grounds.

But what about the whole fold waves/telepathy and live concerts? People I asked said that this discrepancy was caused by a retcon, but is this correct?

Not necessarily mutually exclusive, since earlier in DYRL? the Zentradi were still getting thrown for a loop by songs other than Do You Remember Love?.

Song energy wasn't properly identified and codified until over thirty years later, though its discoverer Dr. Gadget M. Chiba did indicate that even Minmay's recordings contained measurable amounts of song energy that suggested that she was producing ~10,000 Chiba units on average, about one tenth of Basara's technologically boosted output. Song energy's influence would have made the emotional content of the song more effective.

[False Prophet]

Say, is it true that Minmay's songs during the Zentrandi war were something similar to the tunes that the Protoculture created, which had imprinted itself on the Zentrandi's DNA and therefore had a powerful influence on them?

The titular song in the movie Macross: Do You Remember Love? was, in the movie's version of the First Space War, a surviving work of popular music from the Protoculture's extinct civilization. The sheet music for it had been preserved in the Boddole Zer mobile fortress as a "fragment of culture" that was given to Lynn Minmay during her imprisonment that led to the cease fire, and Misa Hayase recovered the lyrics from the Protoculture's sunken colony ship. Minmay sang a translation of the song during the final battle of the war. The apparently latent memories of the Protoculture civilization combined with the culture shock of the music and its emotional context threw the Zentradi and Meltrandi for a loop.

Whether it's actually an ancient song or if that's just something they came up with for the 2031 in-universe film, I'm not sure... Kawamori's "Schrodinger's canon" attitude can be frustrating on topics like this.

The version in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series was a pop ballad composed for Minmay that worked purely on culture shock and emotional grounds.

But what about the whole fold waves/telepathy and live concerts? People I asked said that this discrepancy was caused by a retcon, but is this correct?

Not necessarily mutually exclusive, since earlier in DYRL? the Zentradi were still getting thrown for a loop by songs other than Do You Remember Love?.

Song energy wasn't properly identified and codified until over thirty years later, though its discoverer Dr. Gadget M. Chiba did indicate that even Minmay's recordings contained measurable amounts of song energy that suggested that she was producing ~10,000 Chiba units on average, about one tenth of Basara's technologically boosted output. Song energy's influence would have made the emotional content of the song more effective.

Thanks! It is about time I watch the orginal and DYRL.

Say, I am still not completely understand the whole song energy think. Could a string of tuneless babbles still have song energy, or must it always be a song? Is there any difference to human songs before and after any Zentrandi understood human language? How much Chiba could a Sheri's song or a Walkure song produce? And should that number being an indication of the artistic talent of the musician, or is it purely born with?