Macross: Do You Remember the Early 80s?

As a card-carrying fan of oldschool Japanese animation and pop culture, I make it a point to enjoy both cool new series like Sword Art Online and Chuunibyo Demo Koi ga Shitai as well as the classics. 2012 happens to be the 30th anniversary of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, one of the pivotal shows from the 1980s that’s responsible for the industry becoming what it is today, and I decided to re-watch the entire series in Japanese. 1982 was a very different time from 2012, and I found myself noticing lots of differences between modern anime series, starting with the lack of Korean and Chinese staff names shown in the ending credits — anime today is absolutely a “pan-Asian” industry, but this wasn’t true thirty years ago. The language was slightly different back then, too: characters often addressed each other using the word オタク otaku in its original meaning of “you and your family” rather than its current definition, which would be unthinkable today. For maximum irony, I decided to watch it on Blu-ray in full 1080p, and it was fun to identify little pieces of dust as they danced around on the animation cels, though overall the show holds up great considering it was released in the same year as MS-DOS 1.0. Incidentally, if you’re a Macross fan, got lots of cool products on the site like the new Macross the First manga reboot plus the upcoming “ultimate” Macross 30th Anniversary PS3 game.

I’m re-watching the original Macross for its 30th anniversary.