Macross II The Movie Edition: Lover’s Again (1992)

Having seen the excellent Macross Plus before this film, I was disappointed with the story in Macross II.  Whereas Macross Plus was a fairly independent story based in the Macross universe, Macross II is a direct sequel to Super Dimensional Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?

Eighty years have passed since Do You Remember Love? and the inhabitants of Earth, both human and Zentran, have been living in complacent peace. When an unknown alien invader arrives to obliterate human civilization, U.N. Spacey launches Operation Minmay in the hopes that they will recognize human culture and agree to peace, as in the Earth-Zentradi war of Do You Remember Love?.

However, the music and images of Operation Minmay fail to convince the enemies.  The new aliens use their own song, sung by women known as "emulators" to control the U.N. Spacey Zentradi army against their will.  All of this is filmed by a young S.N.N. reporter, Hibiki, along with seasoned reporter Dennis.  While filming the battle, they rescue an unconscious emulator, Ishtar, and bring her back to Earth.  The U.N. Spacey censors Hibiki’s footage, however, in order to prevent panic among the population.  Only Hibiki and ace fighter pilot Gina, who are the only people who know of the alien’s immense power, to somehow save Earth from destruction.

The characters in this film are as thin as the story. More or less a rehash of Do You Remember Love?, the key to saving Earth lies in revealing human culture, especially the use of song for purposes other than war, to the Marduk alien invaders.  Ishtar serves as the medium for this transition, and throughout the film she stops to give preachy speeches about the power of love and the evils of a war-like existence.  Some poor English dubbing didn’t help either (why can’t rental stores carry subtitled versions??).

I can’t expect the animation to be as good as Macross Plus, since it is a considerably older film.  However, I felt that much of the animation was inferior to the original Macross and Do You Remember Love?.  This is especially noticable in the Valkyrie transformation animation.  In this film, the transformation is choppy, using only a few frames of animation.  The rest of the action suffers from similar shortcuts in animation, including mostly static backgrounds and multiplane scrolling.

I really enjoy the Macross universe (who doesn’t?) but this film just doesn’t deliver the goods.

Update:

I have been informed by a reader that Macross II is not a direct sequel to the events in Do You Remember Love?.  In fact, it appears that Macross II was not originally created with permission from the original creators.  Instead, the events in the story are considered yet another "alternate" timeline.  Sort of like Never Say Never Again not being an official Bond film?:-)

Updated: 2-26-1999

Copyright ©1997-1999 by Francis Li
http://www.francisli.com/