ep 85: symphony of light

So this is what happens:

The Invid launch hella shock troopers against the returning RDF fleet.

Corg owns Scott in a dogfight and then takes out a bunch of other Alpha fighters just to drive the point home that he owns people.

The RDF fleet gets ready to fire off Neutron-S missiles to decimate the Earth's surface, because that seems like a really good idea.

The gang hangs out with the Regis and watches the battle in space. They see the Shadow Fighters launching towards Reflex Point. They appeal to the Regis for a peaceful solution. How boring would these series be if they ever came to a peaceful resolution?

Marlene asks Scott if it's possible that he could love her. She plays the "I feel so strange whenever I'm with you" card. I like when aliens use the word "strange" because they don't know the word, "horny."

Rand and Rook get in their Alphas and attack Corg. They are acting all couply now. This is clearly why they get trashed. (Never underestimate the battle prowess of a single unloved Invid simulagent.)

Corg breaks out of Rand's full nelson because Rook doesn't want to shoot him? Because he's cute? Wha? Anyway...

Scott comes back in the Beta Fighter. It's Blue Hair vs. Blue Hair to the death.

Scott beats Corg finally with some arcane mecha-fighting move. It's difficult to explain how, but, big surprise, it involves launching about THREE DOZEN CLUSTER MISSILES AT HIM.

Scott: "All this destruction means nothing." Well, unless you have stock in the Cluster Missile manufacturing companies. Then you're making out like a bandit.

The Regis decides to move on. She speaks of "a world that even now calls to me." No other discussion of what that world might be.

The RDF fleet admiral decides to launch the neutron missiles, like a big military-industrial douchebag would.

Sera and Lancer mecha up and repel the attacking Shadow Fighters. The Shadow Fighter battloids don't have much in the way of heads. Curious aesthetic decision.

The Regis absorbs all of Reflex Point and her entire race into a giant energy phoenix and leaves Earth. No packing boxes or moving trucks for this one. That is when you know you're dealing with advanced technology. The phoenix annihilates the neutron missiles and most of the RDF fleet on its way out. Isn't that convenient?

Lancer does a final concert in a slinky orange dress, singing "We Will Win." At this point, perhaps it should be redone as "We Have Won, Alien Bitches!"

Scott says his goodbyes to the gang, because he'd rather go roam around in space looking for Admiral Hunter then stay and make sweet love to Marlene, who has gotta be tired of wearing that jacket at this point. I Don't Know What's Wrong With That Guy!!!

Lunk announces that he wants a farm.

Rand and Rook talk about their future, which will probably involve babies, fishing, and occasional cleaning of the old arm cannons.

Lancer whips off the dress and reveals himself to be a guy, shocking his amassed fans. (Not only that, he's screwing a green-haired alien fighter pilot....but oh, in this universe, that's more socially acceptable.) Again, this is a pretty great moment of gender-bending to occur in a cartoon aimed at pre-teens in the '80s.

As Scott leaves the planet, Lancer closes with "The Way To Love." In my mind he comes back for an encore of Pat Benetar's "(Stop Using) Protoculture As A Weapon."

Last shot: Lancer's song playing, Scott's Alpha/Beta fighter flying off towards the moon, and somehow Scott ejects Marlene's holo-locket out of the fighter so that it falls back towards Earth. How did he do that? Maybe there is one of those little chutes for disposing waste like in airplanes? I guess that for those long trips in the Veritech they must have some way of getting rid of their poo. Kinda makes you wonder what they did in X-wings, doesn't it? (Do not, in any form, attempt to respond to the question.) Of course in Star Wars they had the astromech droids to clean up all their shit. Anyway, digressing, the closing image leaves it wide open what the hell Scott's doing with his life, as well as what Lunk's gonna do on his farm with a yappy dwarf teenager and a heartbroken hottie unemployed alien double-agent. Perhaps they'll grow tomatoes (that transform into kitties).

Preview of next episode: a return to the beginning of the Macross saga, episode 1, "Booby Trap."

And with that, my childhood ended.

ep84: dark finale

I never saw this one completely 'cause my own VHS copy back in the day was skagged.

Scott and the real Robotech Army prep to attack Reflex Point. In an interesting coaching decision, Scott leaves Rand, Rook and Annie behind 'cause they're not in the regular military. For some reason, Lancer and Lunk are, although Lunk's major tactical function appears to be the driving of trucks. Anyway, this sets up a wonderful scene of Lancer saying farewell and giving Rook a goodbye kiss. He is a straight player, that Lancer.

Rook and Rand join the battle anyway, so we get some cool Cyclone action vs. the Invid enforcers. Mid-battle, Rand tells Rook "he's fond of her" and she gets all wide-eyed.

LESSON LEARNED FROM ROBOTECH #84.3: fighting aliens at the end of the world offers many hookup opportunities.

So they finally get into Reflex Point, and the Regis (queen of the Invid) gives her big "I-am-the-Alpha-and-Omega-puny-humans-pay-attention-to-me-because-of-my-reverby-voice-and-also-I-am-emanating-energy-tendrils-constantly-so-you-know-I-am-kind-of-the-Big-Deal-around-here" cult-leader/pyramid-marketing-pitch monologue. Booooooring. All-powerful alien monarchs, they all talk the same.

Getting a little verklempt here. One episode left.

ep83: reflex point

It's on now.

Man, so this is gonna be over in 3 episodes. It's the last month before graduation. For my next trick am considering "V: The TV series" from 1985. Any ideas, as if anyone is listening?

Or I could just start blogging seriously about the movie I'm working on.

Anyway.

LUNK: "I can't believe you're making a movie of this!" The group chastises Sue Graham for standing by and running a camera during a battle. So quaint. These days if someone records a massacre without intervening, they're a hero.

That's kind of all that happens. There's a bit of cool business with Alpha-Beta separation and Rand dogfighting an Invid simulagent who looks like Legolas, and Sue Graham's flowing raven hair as she dies, and the reveal of Marlene's green-bloodedness. But mainly the whole thing just makes me wish I had a life (or a transforming motorycle.)

ep82: the big apple

This is absolutely one of the best episodes. Why? Because it's about people fighting for their right to PERFORM AT CARNEGIE HALL IN A MUSICAL DANCE NUMBER.

Anyone who is a fan of "Escape From New York" or Marvel Comics can appreciate the fantasy of a post-apocalyptic Manhattan; with close-quarters street battles fought tooth and nail between renegade heroes, alien shock troopers, a transvestite cabaret singer, and his gay dancer friends in leotards.

SERA: "It's that Earth Rebel who causes the disturbance within me!" As Michael Jackson says, it's all for the love, L-O-V-E.

Seriously, the fight between the Battloids and Shock Troopers in what might be the West Village is pretty sick. This is our first glimpse of the Beta Fighter's Battloid mode, which eliminates a key weakness of the humanoid form by having a missile launcher instead of a head.

In the end, the musical theater geeks win. It is implied that the show, alien occupation force notwithstanding, must go on.

ep81: hired gun

This one's sort of a lame tangent. Dusty Ayres? Captain Harlock is calling, and wants his gruff back.

***Actually this episode has one good part in which Rook and Rand are surrounded by Invid and they have the brilliant idea to "use our combined cluster rockets!" Why, yes, let's! After all, we're so used to firing off all of the Alpha's 226 little rockets to destroy 2 or 3 targets, why not for once we apply a little military efficiency and shoot off all of both Red and Green Alpha's 44 thousand missiles in One Gigantic Wad to eliminate an overwhelming horde of targets?

Sorry, I get a little excited during the cluster rockets scenes. It's something about the knee-missiles....waaah.

ep80: birthday blues

Well it's been about, what, eight episodes since we had a gratuitous shower scene, hasn't it? So we're totally due. Marlene and Rook and Annie all share a sauna after Annie's birthday party. Rand peeps at them. It's very "Porky's."

I had this memory that Lancer also joined them in the shower, in all his naked hairless hermaphroditic glory, but thankfully that weirdness didn't actually happen.

I like to think that Annie's "ET" cap stands for something, like "Extra-Terrestrial" or "Entertainment Tonight." Or "Eternal Tourist."

This one also features the first listen at Yellow Dancer's cover of "We Will Win" accompanied with what I believe was a popular anime motif of the period: slow motion sepia-toned photos of the characters set to yearbooky sentimental music. What? It's Japanese. You know someone was taking pictures of the whole thing.

ep 79: frostbite

This is it. The last VHS tape in my inherited collection. Apparently we skipped across a few episodes to arrive at ep 79: I did search the previous tape carefully, but found only a Bikini Model Competition from some midwestern state (which was clearly being taped over, just to be clear.)

This is The One Where They Discover Denver and Eat Vienna Sausages.

Scott goes shoe-shopping with Marlene, which means he's really in it for the long haul.

Lancer goes crazy with the chest missiles. You'd think the backblast would fry off his chest hair. Oh wait, chest hair...never mind.

Not so much of note here except that it is another one of those hella romantic post-armageddon fantasies: After the fall of humankind, you can go hang out in a deserted Denver and walk the streets and just take whatever shit you want.

ep74: annie's wedding

The great thing about anime is there is no Jumping the Shark. Anime has no sense of normal or acceptable boundaries. The Shark can be Jumped in every single episode, or several times in one episode. In anime, major characters can die, people turn into pigs, they switch universes using a magic chunk of tofu, it's All Good.

So in this one the gang meets some kind of jungle tribe that ties them up with thorny ropes and then one of them tries to marry Annie. Well first he tries to marry Lancer by throwing him into a gunny sack. And then Annie takes pity on him (he's named MacGruder, for some reason) because he's such a noob and tries to seduce him with flowers in her hair, and then shock troopers show up and the tribe tries to fight them with arrows and tomahawks, and Lancer swings on a vine, and....oh hell, I'm just gonna take a nap.

priceless bit of dialog from that episode, as the team argues:

ROOK: Oh c'mon you two. I know what, Lancer, sing us something!
LANCER: You think you can just turn me on and off like a music box?

ep73: sandstorm

WHAT is THIS shit? Rand's on a DRAGON.

I've never been a fan of the dream sequence episodes. I mean do we really need to know that Rand has hero delusions and subconscious lusty fantasies for the nigh-obnoxiously lithe females in his freedom fighter crew? Isn't the whole anime series already an extension of those fantasies for the creators? I just don't think we get much more information here.

Plus, I don't really need any insights into what the Invid eat, or how they breed, or whatever. That backstory is superfluous. They're heavily-armed slug creatures who came to Earth to conquer the crap out of it and use all its natural resources. It's not like that's such a foreign concept to anyone who's been alive in the last two thousand years.

ep72: the fortress

Rand and Annie attack an Invid hive on skis.

Scott: "If only they weren't so undependable! I'd know if they were in serious trouble or just goofing around!"

Annie, of her cobalt limpet mine: "Hey, I carried it, I think I should be the one to plant it!'

Annie falls down and needs to be saved by Rand like four times, but she does plant the shit out of that mine. It explodes the brain-sensor thing into a cloud of protoplasm that floats around and then slimes our two heroes.

Rand, upon being released: "I've had it and I'm gonna slaughter those animated trash compactors!"

Marlene screams and whines alot as Rand slaughters the animated trash compactors. She takes Annie's crown as Least Useful Member of the squad. Also, technically, she's younger than Annie.

Nothing really awesome happens in this ep except for some cool dogfighting....until the end, when we have a gratuitous scene of Annie and Rook splashing around in a lake and Marlene stripping nekkid to join them, cause she "doesn't understand human ways." If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that.

ep71: the secret route

OK, this ep is fascinating.

Lancer meets an old flame, and stares deeply into her eyes...while dressed as Yellow Dancer.

We learn the origin of Lancer's cross-dressing, which had something to do with eluding Invid who were coming for wounded male freedom fighters. His old flame came up with the idea of throwing him in the makeup and the dress. How often does THAT happen?

Yellow puts on a really cool Marlene Dietrich-esque outfit and introduces a song as "an old Minmay song," although the song they play is "Look Up The Sky Is Falling." Imagine a fact even LESS cool to know than the fact that one of the songs in "Boogie Nights" is from "Transformers: The Movie." That's what I just wrote.

But the fascinating part is the whole ep concerns a secret route through the mountains which is fraught with much Invid peril...and I like to think, a metaphor for the unparalleled transformation of Lancer to Yellow Dancer and his own "secret passage" towards gender re-identification and his public/secret life as a pop enigma.

Also, they play all 3 big Yellow Dancer songs in this ep. There's a great audio cut to the guitar solo in "Lonely Soldier Boy" as Carla is leaving Yellow, the tranny rock star that she inadvertently created. It's sort of like the "Up Where We Belong" moment from the end of "Officer and a Gentleman," except much, much, much more weirder and Japanese.

Way to go, Yellow. Way to go.

ep70: enter marlene

you darn tootin, she enters.

also on this VHS tape: original TV ads for the action figure series "Rambo: Force of Freedom."

(How did kids play with the Rambo toys? What were his missions? How did he act as a "Force of Freedom?" Did he always start off captured, or on the run from the U.S. Govt? My point here is that Rambo's opponent was everybody, including mostly all military leaders and representatives of all armed forces in every nation he got dropped in. If Rambo saw the G.I. Joe team, he'd probably find a reason to fight them. And I guess that would be awesome.)

Anyway.

Some fanservice (that's the otakus' polite word for Totally Gratuitous T&A) as Marlene enters, of course naked. With big hair covering her parts. Yawn. OK, OK, you guys win. Little boys' imaginations captured everywhere. Sigh.

They also find the BETA FIGHTER! Which, as discussed below, is basically the Alpha Fighter's knobby bitch.

Not really feeling this ep. In kind of a bad mood. Marlene's screaming freakouts ain't helping any. The problem with Marlene is that just as the gang was starting to cohere as a team, here comes the moody alien spy-girl who's gonna be mysterious and awkward and need all the attention, and constantly get it by being naked at inappropriate times. I guess she's a necessary character to give Scott something to do besides launch 196 cluster missiles at everything he sees. I just don't remember liking her.

ep 69: the genesis pit

I just think it's cute that Scott and Rand bring Annie along on this important reconnaissance mission when she honestly can do nothing but scream and hang on to the back of the cycle. I mean what's she gonna do if they fall into a Genesis Pit or something? Start ovulating?

...shouldn't have typed that. Should not have typed that. Never let the monster free....

Speaking of beasts that live in dark pits inside of us, I've never been big into dinosaurs. I don't understand what's so awesome about them, and I question their nerdcore cred. That is, geeks who are really into dinosaurs, and science-fiction that involves dinosaurs, just seems wrong to me. I mean, I understand that they were amazing creatures, but the problem is they really existed. I just can't geek out about that.

ep68: eulogy

Colonel Wolff in this one sounds kind of like he's being voiced by Charlton Heston. I know that's not the case, but wouldn't it be great if it was?

ep67: paper hero

RAND: "I hope you know what you're doing, Lunk."
LUNK: "Hey, when did I ever know what I was doing?"

I love the tough-guy talk coming out of the animated non-racially-specific googly-eyed people.

whoops, i have to kiss you now

Another thing about this ep. Rook cons Rand into kissing her, to save face, or for some convoluted reason. Much like the scenes in Macross where Lisa and Rick snogged for "strategical" situations.

What is it with all the fake non-committal kissing? Is it because the original anime didn't want to show "real" kissing? (The actual couples in Robotech, notably, spend much more time staring deeply into each others' eyes [and blowing things up together] then actually kissing.) Or is it just for tease/fanservice, the titillating suggestiveness of kissing someone for pragmatic reasons, when both of you only sorta kinda want to.

Anyway, it's cute.

HILARIOUS RANDOM LINE PROBABLY ADDED TO COVER SOME JAPANESE-ISM THAT DIDN'T TRANSLATE #67.2:

Rand, as he's driving off, to Rook's family: "Get a job!"

ep66: hard times

Oh there is some funny ass shit in this one where Annie's pestering Rook to eat some chicken (in her rapid-fire voice-actor-fitting-long-line-to-short-lip-movements-style): "Hey-Rook-it's-time-to-eat-better-hurry-up-or-there-won't-be-any-left-c'mon-doesn't-this-piece-of-meat-smell-good?" Then Rook swats it out of her hand, and the drumstick falls to the ground, and Annie whines, "Now it's all dirty!"

There's no real reason Annie has to say "Now it's all dirty!" Except to iterate that she never ever never stops talking. Which is hilarious. Great job, voice actor. ROTFLMAO.

Also of note: whenever Lancer takes a shower, his persona is totally feminine, up to and including daring/denying the guys (e.g. Rand, Lunk) to "peek" at him/her naked. Which is, I dunno. Kind of Advanced Topics in Gender Studies, if you know what I mean.

adaptation

So the day after I mused about getting stuck with the Harlequin-romance-novel era of movie adaptations, it comes out that they just gave all 150,000 books in the Sweet Valley High series to Diablo Cody. Ha.

I remember the Sweet Valley High books. I wouldn't feel one twinge of anything if they were made into movies. I know a few girls who might.

ALL the American Anime Adaptions are going to fail HUGE. Probably financially, absolutely artistically and conceptually. Only the Japanese should be live-actioning their own anime. "Akira" isn't even a good movie for chrissake, it just looks so cool because it's drawn cool, ya know?

The only one that has a chance is Robotech, because its story has been fine-tuned into the Western soap opera milieu, and still only if they do a few things exactly right, like Max & Miriya, Yellow Dancer, songs by Kelly Clarkson, and making it a two-parter skipping the Southern Cross.

...Don't get me wrong, it would be great to work on....almost any adaptation project...but getting put on "Connect Four" or "Care Bears: The Movie" would be basically like getting the Beta fighter, pictured here. It's great because it's an amazing space fighter that transforms and has like 188 missiles and you can blow things up with it....but it's not the cool jet-looking one that has sleek lines and transforms into the sexy-looking battloid that, let's face it, has even more missiles and takes the point against shock troopers. The Beta fighter is not that thing; it's useful but kind of lumpy.

Re-liveblog on hold because I'm in NYC doing meetings for my screenplay "Look For Water." I really wish, though, that I'd brought the Robotech: Battlecry PS2 game I got for $5 with me, 'cause I'm staying in an apt with a PS2.

(I got exactly the wrong PS3, btw: the one that doesn't play PS2 games, but also is not slimmer and more expensive. FML.)

A confessment: My timeline for becoming successful as a writer-director has never been based on outracing death, but rather on wanting to be in the mix before they stop making the nerd-adaptation-movies and move on to, I dunno, Harlequin romance novels. It'll be a pain seeing the Robotech, JLA, West Coast Avengers films if they come out and are directed by some indifferent yokel, knowing that I didn't do enough to avoid the tragedy. We'll see if in a few years I look back on this post and weep while watching the Mike Bay-directed Robotech, in which the Valkyries have their chest missiles replaced with heaving breasticles, as they swoop in and attack, inexplicably, Miami.