This ep is particularly awesome. I started this liveblog with some idea about reflecting on the big issues via Robotech (e.g. pop culture, Japanese fetishism, war n peace, lost youth, blondes vs. blue-hairs, etc) but now I just sound like a fanboy. I'm cool with it.
Yellow Lancer does a big rock concert to distract the human collaborators while Scott & team sneak into their base and steal some Protoculture, then the requisite fight with Invid Shock Troopers.
The real art of this ep is the soundtracking of the action drama with the pop/rock songs, a skill that I, Kenny Loggins, and perhaps a few other people on the planet really appreciate. The minor-key disco anthem "Look Up The Sky Is Falling" matches Scott & Co.'s underground crisis like a fine wine pairing, while keeping the apocalyptic overtones of the series perfectly in frame. Her next song, the upbeat rocky one, kicks in just as the team escapes the water trap and the good guys officially Start To Win. (For no reason other than my mind being full of crap, I know that that song is called "It Don't Get Any Better.")
Like the guy in "High Fidelity" says, These Things Matter. Yes the songs are stupid. Yes, the whole idea of heroes fighting alien villains is stupid. Yes, I am stupid. Yes, chest missiles are stupid. But you put them all together (for the record: songs, heroes vs. aliens, me, and chest missiles) and you have something really special that will last forever.
P.S. The music in "Tranformers: The Movie", while goofy, helped the story, whereas the music in "Michael Bay's Transformers", while ostensibly hipper, helped you want to kill yourself. Just as an easy illustration of what I'm talking about.
3 comments:
What bothered me about robotech even when I was a kid was the continuity problems. Like, we saw the entire planet get wiped away towards the end of the Macross saga, but then we see the statue of liberty and carnegie hall and denver just fine thank you in the third series. Did they really rebuild all that? Even though there was that SECOND war that happened too?
You've got the touch; you've got the power.
I guess I'll try to keep up with you starting here, Dom. You've done a hell of a job so far, serious. I liked that part about Mom. Do you think she thought it weird that an episode of a cartoon would end with a soldier saluting a corpse? (i.e. "Sue Graham, you were the most dedicated officer I've ever met in my military career. Goodbye."--that's just one instance. I believe there are at least three, the 3rd-epoch writers especially just going back to that morbid well.) Stuff like that was terribly formative for me.
For argument's sake, they discover Denver under a mountain, jwfbean, not that that coheres the timeline, like, geologically.
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