War and Culture: The Thematics of SDF Macross

 Spoilers

When I first began to watch through Super Dimension Fortress Macross, I didn't enjoy what I was watching as much as I'd hoped. Previously, I had watched through the original Mobile Suit Gundam, and had become a fan of Yoshiyuki Tomino's work. I really liked how he animated his fights with so much consistant detail to motion that you could realistically imagine each movement of each mech. The younger, Gundam-inspired Macross, on the other hand, always focused more on the large-scale battle as a whole instead of individual fights. They were a fast-paced, energetic flurry of movements that were over in an instant. This stylistic difference isn't bad, and it eventually becomes the show's strength, but it also forcibly denies individual connection with the mechs. New to the series, I didn't then realize the intention: To connect you with not the individual fighters, but to the Macross, a modified alien battleship large enough to house an entire city within. The thematic focus was on humanity's efforts as a whole instead of individual accomplishments.

A show about the adventures of a battleship-full of civilians who got caught in an impossible war? Sure. That's Mecha for you.

The animation was very good at the start, and I particularly liked the explosions and destruction. I liked the romantic representation of flying fighter jets, and their cool, slick maneuvers. The large-scale battles created an atmosphere like the military put on a show while fighting. However, the first few episodes always get a lot more attention than anything else in a series, and after they were over, the quality of animation took a huge nosedive. I began to hate sitting through the show, and it became a chore to continue. Yet, perhaps consequentially, this is also where the show began it's invasion of my imagination.

This show had some of the worst, most inconsistent animation I've seen. Apparently, because the show was a surprise hit, and there were many delays, animation for some episodes was outsourced to inferior studios, AnimeFriend and Star Pro.

"Why spend so much time on relationship drama, and silly squabbling between characters?" "Why is Focker so concerned with Hikaru having a woman?" It was these questions that consumed my attention and kept me from focusing on the horrendous animation. These questions brought me to the first theme I spotted within the show: How culture is just as important to the human condition as any war. It was these moments of teenage romance, love triangles, and the rise of a pop idol that were the important parts, where it seems the battles are just there to keep the enemy at bay long enough to hear another of Miss Minmay's songs.
This idea fascinated me, and I began to really enjoy what I was watching. The time spent on the doubts and worries of the main characters was completely justified with it. Soon, the anime's enemy alien race that threatens mankind is revealed. They are the Zentradi, a race of giants with no concept of culture, who dedicate their lives to war. Here, a theme seems to lie within the concepts of war and culture.
In the beginning, I really had only cared for the war, but while this theme was emerging, the civilians caught onboard the Macross began to live their lives, creating their own city within the giant ship. Desperate for reconnection to Earth's culture in times of war and suffering, they decided to pull together the Miss Macross event, the first big instance of culture on the ship after people had become a little accustomed to living there. It was a simple popularity contest like Miss America, and a young girl with dreams of being a singer won. She was Lynn Minmay, close friend to Hikaru, and here she began her carreer as a pop idol.
Hikaru, the main protagonist, had an aversion to joining the military. He was content with his civilian life and wanted nothing to do with wars. His only abnormality was a passion for flight and jets. It was this passion, and an admiration for Focker that eventually pushed him into the life of a soldier and the hardships of becoming a man. With the immediate danger to the Macross, and the advice of Focker, Hikaru reluctantly agrees to join the military and fight, for the sole reason of protecting Minmay, whom he grew to love.
Hikaru, a genius pilot, began to prove his skill in battle, winning many acknowledgements from his superiors. Soon, he became leader of his own squad, and he altogether excelled in his military life. However, as an unwilling warrior, drafted from the Earth into an inter-stellar war, his aversion to being in the military stayed with Hikaru throughout the beginning of his career. Coupled with his attraction to Minmay and his military life stripping the time spent with her away, this division of Hikaru's life became the center of the character's struggles.
I consider Kaifun, second cousin to Lynn Minmay and love rival to Hikaru, as more as a character foil and a source of conflict than anything else. He's introduced to deepen the thematic division between war and culture. To Hikaru, he represents the life of a man who has abandoned war; Kaifun is Hikaru's foil. He hates violence and war, and blames all problems on the military, while preaching the abolishment of it. While Hikaru is having his doubts about his military life, Kaifun boards the Macross to stay with Minmay, whom he was childhood friends with.

It seems he is not disinclined to date his second cousin.

His life, not being chained with a soldier's duty, is spent alongside his cousin. Soon, they become a celebrity couple, Kaifun the boyfriend who helps with her career, and escorts her to all her performances and appearances. Together with Hikaru's military service tearing him away from his time with Minmay, this creates a bigger gap between Hikaru and Minmay's separate lives. 
When Macross becomes lively with talk of a film starring Minmay and Kaifun, Hikaru is excited to watch the premiere for Minmay, who he hasn't seen in a long while. However, a stage kiss the celebrity couple shares in the film cripples Hikaru's hope, and finally erodes any future relations between the two. Having now discarded his dream of a peaceful life with Minmay, Hikaru resolves to continue to remain in the military to protect her. In episode 27, this resolution takes the form of a confession of love and a salute goodbye.

Hikaru separates from his dream of being a civilian pilot and boyfriend to Lynn Minmay.

Since the Miss Macross contest, Minmay had become a celebrity. She was the idol who gave people comfort, and gave their culture motion. The civilians began to feel as if they were almost native to the ship, and Minmay was the voice and face that gave them that sense of home. To the enemy Zentradi who had never known culture, Minmay became an idol, too, and eventually, a figurehead of culture in general.
In episode 27, when she stood on the bridge and sang to the war effort, she became an icon of culture for which both the Macross and some Zentradi could unite. They banded together for her song, and destroyed almost an entire species together; culture had become more powerful and much more important than any war.

This scene is the culmination of everything in the series prior to it.

After the time-skip between episodes 27 and 28, Global discovers that humans and Zentradi may have decended from the same origin: an ancient now-dead species called Protoculture. This ancient civilization became so technologically powerful with genetic manipulation to be able to create the giant warriors to do battle for them. These giants were the Zentradi, a manufactured species who were denied culture, leaving them with only the desire for war. Eventually, they became so zealous in their warfare that they destroyed the entirety of the Protoculture civilization. If Man came from the same origin, this indicates that we have the same potential to become, or create a savage, warlike species like the Zentradi, and ultimately destroy ourselves.
With this realization, episode 27's war and culture collaboration becomes increasingly more pivotal. It wasn't only the last ditch effort of the military of humanity, it was also the battlecry of culture. Lynn Minmay sang the powerful, "Love Drifts Away", a wartime ballad about separation and loss, for the soldiers who war to protect mankind. As they fought the death of our species, Minmay, as the voice of humanity, cried against the death of our culture. She fought on stage alongside Hikaru, and together they battled the threats of non-existence.
In the period after the time-skip, humans and cultured Zentradi had the entire planet as a tabula rasa. War, however, still could not be avoided, as if it were simply part of our nature. Quamzin (pronounced Ka-mu-ji-n), an old Zentradi commander, is unable to accept a culture-based society in place of his previous life of a soldier. He launches an assault against Macross City, which has been built around the ruins of the Macross since the events of episode 27, and he fires his main cannon at the war-battered ship. In a blaze of anger at their sudden attack, Hikaru and his fighters take the enemy down rapidly. Quamzin, in the last moments of the battle, rams his ship into the Macross, as if a bold statement to humanity, reminding us of our own inherent warlike nature: Not only is he causing war in a world of post-war peace, but he is willing die for it.

It was a very effective use of this hot-headed type of character. He died characteristically, unable to slow his warlike impulses long enough for culture.

In hopes of defending mankind against any more threats, Global captures a leftover Zentradi automated battleship factory. Afraid of humanity's future, though, he elects to not use this factory for warfare, but to protect culture. He creates another ship as large as Macross, the SDF-2 Megaroad and suggests that Misa captain it, tasked with protecting it's civilians and spreading their culture among the stars.

Through heavy loss, mankind gained wisdom enough to finally unite and reach for the stars.

I've heard people claim the theme of the show lies in Kaifun's words. That what he preached was ultimately right; peace could be found through culture, and the military is thoroughly unnecessary. I disagree. For one thing, if it weren't for the military effort, Man could've been destroyed by the Zentradi several times over. It was the combined effort of Minmay and the military that destroyed the main fleet. However, because it was military interest that brought the danger to Earth in the first place, Kaifun might have been right regardless, that is, until you consider the material after the time-skip. The first 27 episodes described how culture is just as important for mankind as war and survival, and peace could be had with the Zentradi because of culture. The remaining nine developed the theme in broader directions by introducing war as the foreign element in a newly-made society built on peace and culture.
I elect, then, that the true theme of Macross, and the projected totality of humanity's condition is not Kaifun's "War is evil  and violence is never the solution", but rather a much more optimistic message: That to avoid the death of mankind, the military must protect culture, and culture must exist to subvert humanity's warlike militarism. Like Hikaru and Minmay, this system pushes people apart, and it causes all the ailments of war. However this system is unavoidable in order to ensure the safety, peace, and prosperity of all of mankind as a whole.

Soaring through the Macro Sky, the spirit of humanity and cooperation, SDF-1 Macross

Aldnoah Zero Season 1: Thoughts on Urobuchi's Mecha

It's been a few weeks since I saw the end of the first season of Aldnoah Zero, and I decided that it's an anime worth talking about. At least, it's an anime people should be talking about, regardless of how they feel about it. Personally, I find it's characters bland and altogether non-unique. The romance is not cared for, there are story elements that fall flat, and the characters even make uncharacteristic choices. The mechs are 3DCGI, something that is happening more and more frequently much to the disdain of many, and it falls apart toward the end into a silly, obvious set-up for season 2. However, at the same time, I feel like Aldnoah Zero is almost everything a modern mecha anime should be.
The setup is simple. It's classic, and fits perfectly in the genre it represents. Martian seperatists who feel as if they are a class above normal Earthlings start to war with Earth. It really feels like Zeon vs Federation a la Gundam all over again - and the similarities don't stop there, of course. We have two main heroes to this story, which the show divides a majority of it's time between: The teenage Earthling student, Inaho Kaizuka, who is a genius at piloting mechs at a level far above anyone else, including all of Earth's military, for no explicable reason. And the blonde short-haired teenager from Earth, Slaine "Not Char" Troyard, who resides with the Martians. Both are the main focus in the midst of opposite sides, and they both fawn over the same girl. However, these are all things that have been presented in uninspiring ways in most mecha anime made after Yoshiyuki Tomino's original masterpiece; This is all nothing new. What elevates what should be just another amorphous blob of everything that has been done several times before is the work of Gen Urobuchi added to the Mecha formula.
Some call Urobuchi a hack, others praise him. Personally, I hold that he is a talented writer who unfortunately holds tightly to his own tired cliches and stylizations. Play Butcher Bingo sometime to see what I mean, it's a hoot.

Though, in all honesty, I find his Mecha to be a fascinating remodel of the genre that feels like it was made to work. You see, in most Mecha, our heroes fight overwhelming odds with the super-secret Mech project weapon that is, for one reason or another, extremely powerful. However, in true Urobuchi fashion, Aldnoah Zero cranks the "suffering" lever to maximum and portrays the invading Martian faction as supremely powerful beings, able to wipe out the entirety of Earth's population without losing a single unit. Earth has no reserved alien technology, no super robot project of any kind, and simply no hope of survival. Yet, a select ragtag group of civilian earthlings fight back (Another hearken back to Mobile Suit Gundam) - with logical deduction and tactics.
Every Martian robot has it's invulnerability and destructive capabilities far beyond anything present in Earth's arsenal, and the teenager hero's mech is only his school's training robot. The thrill of watching the battles between these two opposing forces is amazing, and I'd recommend the show for only that - and still there is more to it: Politics, death, betrayal, conspiracy, peacemongering, warmongering, tragedy, and all things to which a Mecha fan is no stranger fills the stage, and in ways any Urobuchi fan would be proud of.
This is the first time since the acclaimed Fate/Zero that Gen Urobuchi worked with director Ei Aoki, and although I have yet to experience their first collaboration, I wasn't disappointed with the pairing. Urobuchi stated in an interview that he likes working with Aoki on storyboard because with him, "The vision of these animations will be perfect." and I've got to agree with the sentiment.  They really put together an engaging show that holds tight to it's vision, until the aforementioned set-up at the end.
Aldnoah Zero is far from the best of anything, however. Urobuchi is, of course, exempted from my gripe with the characters, as he didn't write them, but that doesn't excuse anything: Inaho is a Gary Stu. Yuki "Not Misato" Kaizuka, Inaho's onee-chan, is a boring mush of a cliche, and does nothing of use except to draw attention to Inaho's character - something that he is thoroughly incapable of showing himself. Inaho's school friends are completely useless, unless you think taking space and drawing contrast to Inaho's Gary Stu powers is a a major part of storytelling. There are only a few characters written with any amount of intrigue, but they are given comparatively little screen time, and their arcs go nowhere by the end of the season with the exception of Rayet's and Slaine's.
But I'm done complaining: Aldnoah Zero was a fun ride, and it proves that there is still more left to tap in the genre. I'm glad it exists, and we even got a Season 2 out of it, airing next year, which will hopefully bring satisfaction to the character arcs left unfinished, or at least make use of some people. In any case, I'd like to end this article with the aside: Kalafina always works great with Urobuchi anime. Keep it up.