Robotech... a franchise that helped introduce Macross to the states, but at the same time helped bar Macross from the states as well.
Robotech was the creation of Carl Macek and Harmony Gold at a time when Anime was slowly starting to see an early boom in a very heavily edited form. You had Speed Racer, Voltron, Star Blazers, Transformers, Battle of the Planets, you had a large variety coming out. Harmony Gold wanted in on this bit of the pie as well. So they got a hold of a Japanese Anime called "Super Dimensional Fortress Macross", But seeing as it was 36 episodes and could not meet the minimum standard episode limit of that day and age, they bought up 2 other unrelated anime series. "Super Dimnsional Calvalry Southern Cross" and "Genesis Climber Mospeada" and attempted to try and interweave these three unrelated series into the multi-generational war with a technology known as Robotech.
And here in lies it's fault... Even though Macek got the stories all to line up and work together, He left out certain details or changed certain details in scenes that while they may not be caught as a child they can surely be caught as an adult and left wondering "what the hell is going on?, Why did they do that?, What?!?!, Wait a minute... How many people died?, Where is Rick Hunter?, etc, etc." You'll be left sadly with more questions than answers by the time your done watching all 86 episodes along with The Sentinels, Robotech the Untold Story, Shadow Chronicles, and Love Live Alive.
Minmei in this version only ever sings 2 songs and both are sung by Reba West (And if you've ever heard her sing, it's like nails on a chalk board) and both songs are "I'll be a star" and "We Will Win" which are terribly lackluster and repetitive in the way they are done. It's obvious they were not written by a song writer (And probably written by Macek himself). Ironically "We Will Win" Got an album of it's own from Harmony Gold and there are 10 different versions of the song on that album.
There are some more technical faults with both the legacy and remasters. I will focus on remasters first. There remastered audio (existing in all previous re-releases of the remastered versions) in order to access the original Mono track if you've got a 5.1 surround system. You need to set your surround sound system to Mono in order to get all the original 1985 sound effects of the series. The Remastering is also heavily over saturated across all 3 series. So some details are heavily lost. They may be minor, but it would be like someone saying "The Mona Lisa needs more saturation" and suddenly she's a brighter yellow than before and much the background detail is lost. It's an extreme example, but it gets the point across that the remaster is over done. Not to mention that it puts back in the gore scenes and the nudity scenes which are great for the older fan base that grew up with Robotech in 1985. It's not great however for a still budding younger fan base. Robotech was made for Kids with an adult style Saturday morning cartoon story. It's more recently that Harmony gold went and took a more adult style story telling trying to move away from the kid side of things and just try to sell there product with a bit of blood and sex and the nostalgia factor.
The legacy version however is perfect if you wanna introduce your kid to the Robotech franchise, for it cuts out the gore and the nudity, it is how the show appeared in 1985. but it has the major flaw of being taken from the old master tapes (What they used in broadcasting years back and sometimes still use today), I kid you not. When DVD first hit shelves, Harmony gold didn't wanna go through the time of actually remastering Robotech for a proper DVD release, so they took the old master tapes they had, handed them over to ADV, who transferred them to DVD and released it out to fans. This became known as the Legacy edition (something that is impossible to find new, so you have to find it second hand.) So the legacy versions will have a bit of a blur to them and the picture quality has faded drastically. It still has the original 1985 mono track which is good. And the original Text effects from that era too.
Would I personally recommend anyone new to Robotech watch it or buy it? I honestly couldn't recommend anyone watch it, unless your already a Robotech fan who enjoys the nostalgia, or you have an archaeological curiousness about it.
If you have an almost archaeological curiousness in ancient English dubbing of the 80's, and wondering how Robotech got popular, I say watch it. It's what I did and it's what later got me introduced to all the original series that Robotech is based on.(which I highly highly recommend to watch over Robotech.)
Lastly due to the whole inconsistency of not providing a child friendly remaster edition of Robotech (Like the legacy version, and cutting out the gore and nude scenes). I couldn't recommend it to parents that want to get this for there children.
Robotech was the creation of Carl Macek and Harmony Gold at a time when Anime was slowly starting to see an early boom in a very heavily edited form. You had Speed Racer, Voltron, Star Blazers, Transformers, Battle of the Planets, you had a large variety coming out. Harmony Gold wanted in on this bit of the pie as well. So they got a hold of a Japanese Anime called "Super Dimensional Fortress Macross", But seeing as it was 36 episodes and could not meet the minimum standard episode limit of that day and age, they bought up 2 other unrelated anime series. "Super Dimnsional Calvalry Southern Cross" and "Genesis Climber Mospeada" and attempted to try and interweave these three unrelated series into the multi-generational war with a technology known as Robotech.
And here in lies it's fault... Even though Macek got the stories all to line up and work together, He left out certain details or changed certain details in scenes that while they may not be caught as a child they can surely be caught as an adult and left wondering "what the hell is going on?, Why did they do that?, What?!?!, Wait a minute... How many people died?, Where is Rick Hunter?, etc, etc." You'll be left sadly with more questions than answers by the time your done watching all 86 episodes along with The Sentinels, Robotech the Untold Story, Shadow Chronicles, and Love Live Alive.
Minmei in this version only ever sings 2 songs and both are sung by Reba West (And if you've ever heard her sing, it's like nails on a chalk board) and both songs are "I'll be a star" and "We Will Win" which are terribly lackluster and repetitive in the way they are done. It's obvious they were not written by a song writer (And probably written by Macek himself). Ironically "We Will Win" Got an album of it's own from Harmony Gold and there are 10 different versions of the song on that album.
There are some more technical faults with both the legacy and remasters. I will focus on remasters first. There remastered audio (existing in all previous re-releases of the remastered versions) in order to access the original Mono track if you've got a 5.1 surround system. You need to set your surround sound system to Mono in order to get all the original 1985 sound effects of the series. The Remastering is also heavily over saturated across all 3 series. So some details are heavily lost. They may be minor, but it would be like someone saying "The Mona Lisa needs more saturation" and suddenly she's a brighter yellow than before and much the background detail is lost. It's an extreme example, but it gets the point across that the remaster is over done. Not to mention that it puts back in the gore scenes and the nudity scenes which are great for the older fan base that grew up with Robotech in 1985. It's not great however for a still budding younger fan base. Robotech was made for Kids with an adult style Saturday morning cartoon story. It's more recently that Harmony gold went and took a more adult style story telling trying to move away from the kid side of things and just try to sell there product with a bit of blood and sex and the nostalgia factor.
The legacy version however is perfect if you wanna introduce your kid to the Robotech franchise, for it cuts out the gore and the nudity, it is how the show appeared in 1985. but it has the major flaw of being taken from the old master tapes (What they used in broadcasting years back and sometimes still use today), I kid you not. When DVD first hit shelves, Harmony gold didn't wanna go through the time of actually remastering Robotech for a proper DVD release, so they took the old master tapes they had, handed them over to ADV, who transferred them to DVD and released it out to fans. This became known as the Legacy edition (something that is impossible to find new, so you have to find it second hand.) So the legacy versions will have a bit of a blur to them and the picture quality has faded drastically. It still has the original 1985 mono track which is good. And the original Text effects from that era too.
Would I personally recommend anyone new to Robotech watch it or buy it? I honestly couldn't recommend anyone watch it, unless your already a Robotech fan who enjoys the nostalgia, or you have an archaeological curiousness about it.
If you have an almost archaeological curiousness in ancient English dubbing of the 80's, and wondering how Robotech got popular, I say watch it. It's what I did and it's what later got me introduced to all the original series that Robotech is based on.(which I highly highly recommend to watch over Robotech.)
Lastly due to the whole inconsistency of not providing a child friendly remaster edition of Robotech (Like the legacy version, and cutting out the gore and nude scenes). I couldn't recommend it to parents that want to get this for there children.