El-Kabong

Ok, lets see if I can't clarify. . .

In Japan, there were three seperate TV series: Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, Genesis Climber Mospeda and Southern Cross. In 1984 (or thereabouts), Harmony Gold imported, dubbed and edited the three shows into one long story arc. Thus Robotech was born.

A couple of years ago, AnimEigo extensivly restored Macross and released it as a big boxed set of the whole series, or as a couple of smaller boxes. The content is the same, just the package is changed.

ADV and Harmony Gold released Robotech as indiviual discs and a series of 3 disc boxed sets with an extra disc available only in the boxed package.

ADV a short time later released a boxed set of both Mospeda and Southern Cross - un-dubbed, with subs only.

ADV and Harmony Gold will now release a remastered Robotech, using the AE Macross footage, and restoring some (but not all) of the cut material. These will be seperate discs, and NOT include the extras from the 3 disc sets.

So to sum up:
Set 1) SDF Macross (Restored, Uncut, Japanese only)
Set 2) Unremastered Robotech (edited, w/ extras, english only)
Set 3) Southern Cross (Uncut, Japanese only)
Set 4) Genesis Climber Mospeda (Uncut, Japanese only)
Set 5) Remastered Robotech (Restored, slightly edited, no extras, English only)

There - does that straighten things out?

DVD Josh

As to content (please correct me if I'm wrong EK), there will be a total of SEVEN Robotech Remasters

Vol. 1-3 - The Macross Saga
Vol. 4-5 - Masters
Vol. 6-7 - New Generation

These will cover the 85 Robotech episodes.

I got this from Robotech.com.

El-Kabong

I dont think that the restoration work on Robotech Masters or New Generation will be as extensive as what AnimEigo did for Macross (they took over a year rebuilding the show from the ground up, at the cost of about a million bucks), but I understand that there will indeed be some clean-up and remastering done to the last two parts of the story arc.

But of course I'll freely admit that my information on the remastered Robotech may not be 100% - I havent been paying as close as attention as I should. But that sounds about right.

El-Kabong

Oh, BTW - over at Anime on DVD forums, someone found a copy of volume 1 at Best Buy the other day and posted their thoughts of the disc. You might want to check out what they have to say HERE

littlefuzzy

From what I understand, they are using the AnimEigo Macross footage for the Remastered version... Of course, that only covers the Macross portion of Robotech.

DVD Josh

Got mine coming from DDD

Now here's a question - is Macross a self-contained storyline? Basically, would I have to get vol. 4-7 of Remasters to get the "whole story"?

Breakfast with Girls

The three series are unrelated.

They were artificially and somewhat haphazardly edited into one storyline for Robotech, with certain story elements changed.

DVD Josh

Thanks. Are the Masters and New Generation storylines on par with Macross?

Bcolon

Macross is almost universally thought of as the best of the 3 by far. New Generation, to me is a close second. Masters is the series that had the most amount of difficulty tying to the others. IMO. Some of it really does not make sense. Part of the problem is that the original Japanese anime it came from was never finished so the series does not get a proper ending.

All three series pretty much stand on their own, but there will be talk of past characters and previous events. Many of the questions you might have while watching New Generation are never answered. So you could watch all three as separate shows, it just won't be as fullfilling. Hopefully many of the questions from the 3 series will be answered in the forthcoming Robotech 2004.

They are all worth getting though.

El-Kabong

Well, I'll put it this way - Southern Cross was cancled before the last 3 or 4 episodes were made. It pretty much tanked in the Japaese TV ratings. Harmony Gold managed to work around the lack of an ending in Robotech, but the series still doesnt do anything for me. I've seen it a couple of times, but when I watch Robotech nowendays, I'll skip the middle arc.

Mospedia, on the other hand is pretty damn good. Not quite as good as Macross of course - but then few shows are.

eau

Found an interesting website highlighting the differences between Robotech and Macross:

http://protoculture.lebhead.com/

It looks like the episodes are essentially intact except for the addition of some elements to link the story to the next chapter, and for some characters name change. Perhaps the biggest difference that is offensive to some Macross fans is the change of the definition of Protoculture.

El-Kabong

Names and removing nudity - not really a big deal. The Protoculture change, on the other hand, is rather a huge rewrite. It went from a intangable idological concept to a Macguffin energy source that was stored on the SDF1 (the crashed spaceship). Fans get in an uproar because that changed premise changes the whole focus of the show. And rightfuly so.

Me - I can live with both versions. I'm not that big into my Anime Purity when both versions are available.