My Life In Fandom: Mercury Falcon & The (Re)Birth of Macross

Mercury Falcon is back with a retrospective on Super-Dimensional Fortress Macross, including the recent news, and it's worth your time.

Seriously, this guy's worth throwing a few shekels to if you can spare it. His stuff is fantastic.

This time, I want you to pay attention to the non-linearity behind the career paths of the key figures as well as the chaotic nature of the production of the original series as well as how Kawamori and his crew managed to improvise, adapt, and overcome each one in turn as best they could.

They managed to successful adapt to the difficulties of animating their original science fiction series, get it monetized via successful merchandising and music tie-ins, and in so doing launch the second Real Robot franchise and the second to gain global reach. If not for the decade-plus span between the original series and Macross Plus, it would be a truly equal rival to the Gundam franchise instead of the perennial runner-up with a passionate fanbase- and that legal block with Harmony Gold was a major issue in getting most of the franchise out there for purchase.

Again, that is gone now.

I fully expect that plans for a full-on global expansion will be announced later this year, with the first moves being digital streaming expansions followed by world-wide merch distribution deals being inked. As Macross remains friendly with Bandai, I would not be surprised to see a partnership that exploits Bandai's global infrastructure for distribution where it doesn't copy it. (The latter, for example, being a much larger and more visibile YouTube presence; they already have an official site and channel, but it's in Japanese.)

And yes, there's new stuff coming. This was announced in January.

The next Macross Delta movie comes later this year. Looking forward to it.