by the fans for the fans

Okay, this is a "spin-off" from the Project: Robotech thread, since I don't want to steal Tana Sarnt's thunder or hijack his thread.

Nikolay116 posted this video:


And I said:

(On another topic, that video you posted, Nikolay, raises my Macross Purist hackles. Why on earth do people take Macross Plus, or Zero, or Frontier, or DYRL, or (rarely) 7 material and slap Robotech music on it? What's the point? Is it trying to fool people? An expression of envy? Why try to turn something that isn't Robotech-related into Robotech? I'm honestly baffled by this. Looking at youtube video and RPG stats, you'd think Robotech was like the Borg, assimilating everything it can get its hands on.)

One doesn't have to go too far to find many, many examples of this.

Here's another:


And another:

(Admittedly, I find this one pretty damn funny, actually.)

As for the RPGs, most of those sites vanished along with Geocities, but I've seen everything from Macross to Gundam to Evangelion (!!!) included as "Robotech mecha."

So um...what's the deal? Its like when Macross II came out and some people wanted it re-edited for inclusion in Robotech...my thought was, "Why bother? It's out! It's available in the West! Robotech was only created because Macross wasn't long enough to release by itself. There's no longer any need to append other works on to Robotech."

So...um...am I overreacting by seeing this as a silly "Everything MUST fit into Robotech" mentality? Is it just par for the course? Or is it just brought about by confusion and is more to be pitied than censured?

(Oh, and a final note: if you read the comments for the videos, lots of Macross fans say exceedingly nasty things about Robotech. I'd like to take a moment to disassociate myself from those jerks. Asshattery should not be tolerated, no matter which show you like better.)

My interpretation is simple. Some people grew up with Robotech not Macross on the one hand. On the other hand many people really do not care about a product background as long as it is good enough. So they see essenstially macross stuff but they got used to music from Robotech. What would you do? The easiest solution is to do audioswap.

Why they call it Robotech then?
well, people like to promote themselves among others. As I said previously there are lots of robotech fans. Then calling your video "Robotech..." one can get their attention.

To support my view also there are for instance quite some videos (successful and with many views) where macross is mixed with top gun and other things people like in the first place.

Nikolay116 wrote:

My interpretation is simple. Some people grew up with Robotech not Macross on the one hand. On the other hand many people really do not care about a product background as long as it is good enough. So they see essenstially macross stuff but they got used to music from Robotech. What would you do? The easiest solution is to do audioswap.

Why they call it Robotech then?
well, people like to promote themselves among others. As I said previously there are lots of robotech fans. Then calling your video "Robotech..." one can get their attention.

To support my view also there are for instance quite some videos (successful and with many views) where macross is mixed with top gun and other things people like in the first place.

True...you do see lots of stuff from one show with music from another (countless animes, for example, have been edited to look like the Evangelion opening). And generally it's done for humorous effect or obvious trolling (like the Macross Frontier video I posted, or the collected works of Youtube user ROBOTECHTEHBEST).

But I dunno...maybe it's my own myopia, but I see something different in the Robotech vids. If you add Evangelion music to a Gundam clip (or a Haruhi clip, or a K-On clip), it's not like you're claim that Gundam IS PART of Evangelion. Ditto adding Top Gun music to a Macross or Robotech clip...no one is expected to believe that Robotech is a sequel to Top Gun.

But look at all the people on Robotech.com who show up and say things like, "I just saw Macross Plus!! It was really good but does it happen before or after the Masters Saga?" It doesn't happen every day, but it happens more often than it should. Or the Youtube commenters who likewise don't seem to know what's what. (Don't these people use Google?)

To me (and again, maybe I'm just overreacting), anything that adds to the confusion is annoying.

This is how I see it and how it mostly applies to myself.

It is almost fact that most original ROBOTECH fans could do without Masters/New Generation. The most popular portion of ROBOTECH is without a doubt the Macross Saga. Heck when I re-visited ROBOTECH in 2007 the first purchase I made was the AnimEigo Macross DVD Boxset. Even before the Protoculture Edition.

What you don't know can and will kill you!

Ignorance plays a big role. Fans like myself that re-discovered ROBOTECH, did not know its origins. Whenever I tried to recollect the series, confusion followed. It never made any sense as a kid why all of a sudden Dana appears in the intro (Robotech Masters) with no more mention of Rick Hunter, Lisa Hayes or the SDF-1. I think to myself, ". . . wait a minute! What happened to that couple that had been through so much? I've never seen anything like this before. Its a love/action/war/people die story. Characters in GIJOE never die, they don't even shoot bullets and never get hit by the 'lasers.' Where are the Veritechs? WTF!!!" To find out that ROBOTECH was three non-related anime series Frankensteined together by a story cleared that confusion up. Now what didn't make sense made sense because it couldn't have made sense.

Gubaba wrote:

But I dunno...maybe it's my own myopia, but I see something different in the Robotech vids. If you add Evangelion music to a Gundam clip (or a Haruhi clip, or a K-On clip), it's not like you're claim that Gundam IS PART of Evangelion. Ditto adding Top Gun music to a Macross or Robotech clip...no one is expected to believe that Robotech is a sequel to Top Gun.

But look at all the people on Robotech.com who show up and say things like, "I just saw Macross Plus!! It was really good but does it happen before or after the Masters Saga?" It doesn't happen every day, but it happens more often than it should. Or the Youtube commenters who likewise don't seem to know what's what. (Don't these people use Google?)

Like I mentioned, I probably would have asked the same question. You see the literal titles, Macross Saga and then you see Macross Plus the logic in the ignorance says they're related. They both have transforming airplanes!

Myopia Can Make You Insane

See, when you learn about something. Your first instinct is to research and learn about the subject. Not everyone knows *how* to use the tools available. Its the concept of having everything at your disposal but not knowing how to use it or even conceiving effort. What is second nature to you, is not to some/most.

Not only that, you have a certain acceptance and are genuinely interested in Japanese culture than most (I'm not saying I know you, I am simply projecting my own perspectives onto you as an example). So thinking out of the box makes sense. You can distinguish Gundam from Evangelion. You know Naruto is not the same as Bleach (even if some of the Naruto characters look as if they bleached their hair). This is probably why you're here on RTX, conversing with "lower life forms" (ROBOTECH Fans), at the protestive behest of a certain few.

At the end of the day, its just a cartoon and as Nikolay116 wrote:

Some people grew up with Robotech not Macross on the one hand. On the other hand many people really do not care about a product background as long as it is good enough. So they see essentially macross stuff but they got used to music from Robotech. What would you do? The easiest solution is to do audioswap.

Perhaps the people have spoken and the people want more Macross, in ROBOTECH. They don't know that Hikajojo exists, all they want is their Rick Hunter. I say ignorance conscious and subconscious alike are the culprits.

Gubaba wrote:

To me (and again, maybe I'm just overreacting), anything that adds to the confusion is annoying.

I don't think you're overreacting, you see the entire picture while others are merely staring at a pixel. It all ends up back at the blue pill or the red pill.

Well, I don't see this "phenomenon" as something that has a single certain motivation behind it.

It's doubtless that some of these videos are produced by those mouth-breathers who want to see the rest of the Macross franchise officially incorporated into Robotech somehow, and use these videos to exercise their pipedreams.

But there are other types of motivations to do these things, and I'll now proceed to talk out of my butt about them:

Obviously that there are those doing it for the lulz. Most members of this group would be Macross purists or at least dual fans, who think it's fun to juxtapose bad Robotech music over slick Macross animation, either to troll other people, or because they just get a personal chuckle out of it.

Regardless of the kerfluffles among anime geeks, there are many who, subconsciously or consciously, view Robotech and Macross as intertwined, even past the SDF-1 era. So for those searching for lulz, it feels like it makes for more humour than just throwing two random mecha series together.

And second, well, maybe there's just a sense of, for lack of a better term, curiosity. It goes back to that same sense of being intertwined that I just mentioned. It might not be rational, but fans will compare and contrast RT and Macross, beyond the common initial footage they share. And because of this, blending the two beyond that initial footage is inevitable.

I say this because I've done my fair share of small-scale "blending" between the franchises, such as comparing the various portrayals of the Zentradi,and so I don't judge these fans for their blending...

...except those who want Macross continuations to be merged into Robotech. There's no hope for them.

Tanks for the thoughtful responses, SIGHUP and Incisivis.

I know I'm unusual in that I never felt THAT much of a connection to Robotech, but ALWAYS felt a connection to Macross (hell, when I was eleven, I actually thought about writing a letter to Harmony Gold asking if they'd send me - free, of course - uncut, subtitled video tapes of Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada, so I could find out what I was missing). I mean, I liked Robotech - loved it, actually - but it always felt...muffled to me. I knew it was changed, but I didn't know WHAT was changed (except the names, of course).

Anyway, my point is that, as SIGHUP suggested, I'm approaching the material from a different perspective that pretty much everyone else here. When I was a kid, I felt like Robotech was trying to pull the wool over my eyes (and the novels and comics cemented that feeling further), but, since I had access to Japanese toy, book, record, and (later) video stores, I could learn SOME of the truth, but not all of it...not without getting fluent in Japanese (which was pretty much impossible at that time).

So when I see the Robotech theme blaring over DYRL footage, that feeling kinda comes back...like the people who make the videos are trying to cover up the fact that Macross as an existence separate from Robotech...and in THAT feeling, yeah, I'm overreacting.

As Incisivis pointed out, a lot of people are probably just doing it to be funny, like the "Sheryl singing 'Stage Lights Flashing'" video I posted above. And yeah, as I said, I thought that one was hysterical. I'm not as inclined to grant SIGHUP's idea that it's done in ignorance...I think anyone who has access to Macross Zero or Frontier probably has a good idea of what's what. But I'll concede that there's probably no malice behind it.

Incidentally, I was looking at Nico Video yesterday (which, for the uninitiated, is the Japanese version of Youtube, except the viewers' comments are shown ON THE VIDEO ITSELF). I watched a bit of Shadow Chronicles there, and most of the comments had me chuckling ("Is this trying to be Macross?" "Aisha? STIG?" "Poor Mark Hamill..." "The camera never moves!"), and when it got to Alex's death, someone wrote "KAKIZAKIIIIIIIIIIII!!" which had me laughing out loud.

So yeah...same thing in reverse, I guess.

The bottom line is that there are a lot of different levels of exposure to Macross and Robotech, and a lot of different opinions of how they should be in "contact" with each other.

The "never the twain shall meet" mentality with regards to the franchises, is, even in 2010 not as common as I might have thought.

I do tend to think of Robotech as something that everyone but the fans have left behind, then encounter people in public who respond to my saying, "I like Macross," with "You mean Robotech?" It's weird.