Super Dimension Fortress Macross

The seminal series that introduced the whole trope of Transforming Mecha, Super Dimension Fortress Macross originally started as a parody of Humongous Mecha series (notably Mobile Suit Gundam) but evolved into a "serious" series of its own. The name was originally to have been Super Dimension City Megaroad; one producer, a Shakespeare fan, wanted to name the fortress Macbeth. Macross was the compromise.

The show was originally scheduled to run for 48 episodes, but budget cuts due to a sponsor dropping out then forced a projected cut to 26. However, with a last-second infusion of money from Tatsunoko Productions (which inadvertently spawned a never-ending legal headache for all involved) and the realization that the show had become a huge hit, nine more episodes were produced.

In North America, it was prevented from being released properly for a very long time due to Harmony Gold combining the series with with two other series to form Robotech, finally allowed on DVD only. To this day,[when?] Harmony Gold continues to block efforts to bring anything Macross-related to North America and is happy to file lawsuits against anything that even looks like it such as BattleTech. This directly contradicts decisions made in Japanese legal courts.

Spawned a number of sequels and spinoffs: Macross: Flashback 2012 (an extended music video for Minmay, which also acts as an epilogue for the series) Macross Plus, Macross 7, Macross Dynamite 7 (OAV), Macross Zero (OAV) and Macross Frontier. There's also an OVA and manga series named Macross II that was made without the original creators' authorization, and has since been placed as an Alternate Continuity. In 2009, a manga adaptation of the original series was started, drawn and written by Haruhiko Mikimoto, that kept the original designs (though often favoring those used in the movie) while jettisoning some of the more Zeerust aspects (everyone finally has cellphones in that far-off year of 2009, for instance) One trope that is seen across all of the Macross series is the Love Triangle. In fact, it has been described by Shoji Kawamori, mechanical designer and co-creator of the series as a "love story set amongst the backdrop of great battles."

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Tropes used in Super Dimension Fortress Macross include:

A-E

  • The Ace: Max.
  • After the End: However this version has a major modern city, complete with all the personnel you need to reestablish a technological civilization, surviving and working to rebuild.
  • Aliens Made Them Do It: "I demand you show me how this 'kiss' process works!"
    • Parodied to hell in an SRW 4koma where a bunch of ugly guys (Boss, Dr. Hell, etc.) get caught and are commanded to demonstrate.
  • All Just a Dream[context?]
  • Alternate Continuity: Macross II: Lovers Again.
    • One story behind this is that Lovers Again was envisioned for some time by people to be a sequel to The Movie. However, Macross: Do You Remember Love? was later retconned as a fictional film released in cinemas within the official Macross universe.
    • So that would make Macross II a sequel of a fictional film released in cinemas within the official (canon) Macross universe? Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached critical mass.
  • Apocalypse Day Planner: This 1982 series had shown much of Earth's surface being destroyed sometime in early 2010.
  • Armor Is Useless: Multiple ways. The giant Zentradi soldiers wear suits of armor that really should have armor thickness comparable to tanks, yet it offers them no survivability. Similarly, Destroids are much more heavily built than the slender Variable fighters in Mech mode, so logically should be more armored, yet they're routinely finished off in one shot.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Zentraedi and Meltrandi.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Most of the Zentradi and Meltrandi leaders are more skilled at combat than the rank and file. However it's blatantly played up with Breetai, who was able to survive getting spaced, and able to pulverize two Valkyries piloted by main characters with a metal club and his bare hands, and surviving a point blank explosion of one of the mechs exploding right in his face. That last instance is interestingly contrasted with a regular Zentradi soldier a further distance away from an exploding Valkyrie and wearing armor that was killed instantly.
  • Battle-Interrupting Song: The pop-music strategem effects this.
  • Badass Pacifist: Minmay's cousin Lynn Kaifun hates fighting, but is a highly proficient Kung Fu practitioner.
  • The Battlestar[context?]
  • Big Brother Mentor: Roy
  • Bilingual Bonus: The three Zentradi spies are named Warera, Loli, and Conda, which put together reads as, "We have a Lolita Complex" in Japanese...whether or not they actually do is never said, though they DO wind up being avid fans of Lynn Minmay.
  • Bishonen: Max; arguably, Lynn Kaifun and Conda Blomco.
  • Bitter Wedding Speech: Averted by Captain Global.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The series came to its conclusion with Hikaru and Misa getting their fairytale ending. Minmay decides to accept this and moves on with her life, even so, the couple remains on good terms with her until they all mysteriously disappear in 2016 with the Megaroad-01.
  • Break the Cutie: Minmay starts out quite innocent and loveable, but her cousin puts her through so much grief that she would probably wind up an old maid, since Hikaru Ichijo, the man she really loves, winds up marrying Misa instead.
  • Bridge Bunnies: The original ones! Shammy, Kim, Vanessa, Claudia, and at first Misa.
  • Broken Bird: Misa.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: Roy Focker is an open pervert and an alcoholist, and by far the best Human pilot before Max joins the Spacy, and it's mentioned he once shot down five enemy aircrafts with a raging hangover. Kamjin, in spite of his many quirks, is a capable commander, and the Macross barely escaped the first encounter with him due one of his underlings ruining the surprise effect and an improvised Deus Ex Nukina.
  • The Captain: Global.
  • Captain Crash: Hikaru gets his Valkyrie trashed a lot.
  • Capulet Counterpart: Millia, for Max.
  • Character Development[context?]
  • Chekhov's Gun: a big planet-sized one, in fact: The Grand Cannon.
  • Christmas Episode: With exploding Santas
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Kamjin/Quamzin, known as "The Ally Killer" by the Zentradi themselves.
  • Clip Show: At least two.[context?]
  • Cool Big Sis: Claudia.
  • Cool Plane: The reason for the franchise's existence.[context?]
  • Couldn't Find a Lighter: A Zenradi has his cigarette lit by a Valkyrie's main gun.
  • Culture Clash: The Zentradi have no culture to speak of, being a race whose express purpose is for military combat, and are often baffled by some of the stunts the Crew of the Macross pull in order to protect the civilians on board.
  • Cute Monster Girl: Zentradi are Human Aliens, but the males range in appearance from ugly to average to handsome, with the occasional odd skin tone and/or cybernetic aspect, while the female Zentradi are always depicted as beautiful. Do You Remember Love? is probably where this trope is the strongest for Zentradi design.
  • Dark-Skinned Redhead: Exsedol's original design, though his personality is very much not the usual kind.
  • Deconstruction: The show was originally intended as a parody of Mobile Suit Gundam (but this was abandoned early in production). Still, the show was radically different from the typical militaristic children's anime of the time, showing a conflict that is largely settled with culture - proving to the enemy that you're Not So Different and that both sides deserve to live - is what really leads to proper conflict resolution as opposed to the total annihilation of the enemy that was so prevalent in the show's day. The message resonated deeply with the Japanese public and the industry and the show's effects are felt to this very day.
    • For that matter, the show deconstructs itself in its final arc, showing that despite one's best intentions you still can't solve all problems between two warring peoples just by saying they're Not So Different.
  • Deflector Shields: Two kinds: the trackball-controlled pinpoint shields that were controlled by the Bridge Bunnies, and the full-on shield that blew up a Canadian city.
  • Dogfighting Furballs: Lots of planes zooming around and blasting each other was a major point of the action scenes.
  • Dragon Ascendant: Quamzin
  • Dressing as the Enemy by way of Mugged for Disguise: Max conceals himself in bathroom after boarding Breetai's ship and knocks out the first Zentraedi to walk in. And somehow manages to get his Valkyrie to dress itself.
  • During the War: Technically, the war doesn't begin until episode 2 and ends before the series does, but close enough.
  • Green-Skinned Space Babe: Or better said, Green Haired Space Babe.
  • The End of the World as We Know It: Subversion: our heroes actually fail to save the world from destruction, although they make the destroyers pay immediately afterward.
  • Eva Fins: The SDF-1 Macross, who has shoulder spikes that double as a Wave Motion Gun.
  • Evil Is Visceral: This visual element is added onto many Zentraedi things in Do You Remember Love?, especially their intelligent/command personnel. Boddole Zer / Bodolza provides one of that trope's page images.
  • Expy: Roy Focker of Sleggar Law from Mobile Suit Gundam.
    • Also, all the planes used in the various series are based on actual fighters. Here, the VF-1 is based on the F-14 Tomcat with the whole variable-sweeping wings design.

F-J

  • Fan Service: The 2009 manga upped the level of sexuality to a PG-13 status. There's more focus to breasts and legs then there was in the '80s anime.
  • Fighter Launching Sequence[context?]
  • First Episode Spoiler: Although it's not included on any of the DVD releases, the original television run of the first episode had a cobbled-together opening designed to hide the fact that the fighter planes are, in fact, Transforming Mecha.
  • First Girl Wins: In an unexpected way.
  • Five-Man Band:
  • Four-Star Badass: Breetai
  • Glass Cannon: Destroids. They're the conventional ground mech's used by the UN Spacey, and carry significantly more armaments than Variable fighters, yet seem just as vulnerable to hits. Their lack of agility combined with this bassically renders them mostly ineffectual in most combat engagements against faster Zentradi vehicles.
  • Handsome Lech: To a degree, Roy. He did become very loyal to Claudia once they hooked up, though.
  • Hand Wave[context?]
  • Heel Face Turn: (Millia)
    • Also, most of the Zentradi that had been pursuing the Macross for much of the show join forces with the Macross when the entire Zentradi force arrives to wipe out humanity.
  • Hong Kong Dub: The Movie got one of these
  • Human Aliens: Completely Justified. Humans and Zentradi are products of the Protoculture.
  • Humongous Mecha: Macross itself after jump problems
    • This is also something of a Seinfeld Is Unfunny; back then, the idea of a ship over 1000 meters long transforming, compared to the 120 meter tall Daitarn 3, was incredible.
  • Idol Singer: Minmay - Kyun, Kyun! Kyun, Kyun! My boyfriend is a pilot!
  • I Know Mortal Kombat: Lampshaded and played with hilariously when Milia fights Max at an arcade game. The arcade owner laments his poor decision of opening an arcade that has games similar to variable fighter controls next to the base that trains pilots.
  • Improvised Weapon: Hikaru using his Valkyrie's gatling gun as a club after expending all the ammo.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: A visual version: In 'Romanesque' the three Zentradi spies are shown manning a toy booth that isn't exactly successful. Just before one of them explicitly points this out, he is shown holding a box featuring a Valkyrie in fighter mode on the front. Except it isn't called "Valkyrie" on the box, but "Harakiry".
  • Is This Thing Still On?: Kamjin's introductory scene includes this.
  • Jerkass: Minmay's cousin, local Soapbox Sadie Lynn Kaifun, to the point where he berates Misa for rescuing him and Minmay from rogue Zentradi through force despite the fact that nobody was hurt and the alternative was giving them a warship that would have let them hurt innocent people.

K-O

  • Killed Off for Real: Roy Focker and Hayao Kakizaki. The former's death scene is a tear jerker capable of forcing Manly Tears from even the most macho of men.
  • Kissing Cousins: Kaifun and Minmay, to a degree.
  • Last Episode Theme Reprise
  • Lohengrin and Mendelssohn: Mendelssohn's wedding march is played during Max and Milia's wedding.
  • Loud of War: The singing of Lynn Minmei was a psychological weapon of mass destruction to the Zentradi. In a meta-subversion, the voicework for Minmei's singing in the English adaptation Robotech, however, is considered by some to be so god-awfully grating that they accept the Zentradi view.
  • Love Triangle: Misa/Hikaru/Minmay, this was the main story, an unusual concept for the time, with the SDF-1 being the setup rather than the primary focus.
  • Loving a Shadow: Misa almost falls for Minmay's cousin Kaifun because he looks a lot like Riber, the fiancĂ© she tragically lost
  • Macross Missile Massacre: The very first one.
  • Meet Cute: Hikaru's first response to Misa is to call her an "old lady", however by the end of the series they've proposed. Millia wants to kill Max pretty much right off the bat for being a better pilot than her, and they later get married as well.
  • Meganekko: Vanessa from the Bridge Bunnies team.
  • Mobile Factory: A number of examples.[context?]
  • Moral Dissonance: In the backstory, the UN Forces, whom most of the protagonists work for, used the Zentradi's coming as a pretext to usurp the sovereignty of all the world's nations and violently put down any who didn't willingly go along with it. It mostly worked out for the best in the end, but still...
  • Mundane Utility: At one point, a Valkyrie's gunpod is used to light a cigarette for a nearby Zentraedi.
  • My Brain Is Big: Exsedol's retconned form.
  • Myth Arc[context?]
  • Naive Everygirl: Minmay.
  • Nuclear Weapons Taboo: The series, up until Macross Zero, always refers to nuclear weapons as "Reaction Warheads."
  • Obi-Wan Moment Roy responds to getting fatally wounded by playing his guitar.
  • Off-Model: Due to outsourcing for budgetary reasons, some episodes are wildly, wildly off model and look absolutely terrible. Most infamous is the knife fight between Max and Milia, which should have been awesome but ended up being embarrasing.
  • The Other Darrin: Inverted across languages: Minmay's voice actress is the same in the original Japanese version and the ADV Films (Macross) dub.

P-T

  • Phlebotinum Overload: In an episode, this happened when the omni-directional barrier were overloaded.
  • Photo Montage: The ending sequence, a live-action segment which shows a hand turning the pages of an album of Minmay pictures. Uniquely, it turns out the hand belongs to Misa and the same thing happens in episode 28.
  • Pimped-Out Dress: Many of Minmay's stage outfits.
  • Poor Communication Kills[context?]
  • Possession Implies Mastery: Averted in that the crew of Macross barely understand a portion of what the ship can or can't do, making each major move with a different function a dangerous shot in the dark that works just often enough to make it seem to their enemies that they could be tactical geniuses.
  • Post Script Season[context?]
  • Pretty in Mink: Some of Minmay's stage outfits.
  • Princess Curls: Minmay is one of the earliest examples to have this.
  • Ramming Always Works: The Daedalus Maneuver; ARMD ("Armed") Attack in The Movie
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Milia/Max's color-coded mecha.
  • Red Shirt: All the 'Brown' coloured aircraft that fill up the ranks of the UN Spacey. Also the ground units who all take a pasting.
  • Retcon: Most of the character and mecha redesigns from Do You Remember Love? were eventually incorporated into the main continuity, replacing the original designs.
  • Roboteching: The Trope Codifier since it was one of the shows used to create the Trope Namer
  • Role Reprisal: A very unusual variation: ADV somehow got Mari Iijima to play Minmay in their English dub of the series -- more than 20 years after she originally voiced the character in Japanese!
  • Science Fiction
  • Sensor Suspense: In Do You Remember Love?, the scene where Hikaru watches the radar blips representing his squadron's missiles approaching the radar blips representing enemies while his heart is pounding loudly.
  • Shape Shifter[context?]
  • Shipper on Deck: Claudia, Vanessa, Kim, Shammy, Kakizaki and Max ship Hikaru/Misa. Vanessa even confronts Hikaru on how Misa's feelings are affecting her.
  • Shout-Out: To the original Mobile Suit Gundam, Captain Harlock, Lupin III, and others.
    • Roy's (later Hikaru's) Valkyrie fighter and Skull Squadron, with the black tails and skull and crossbones, honor the real life VF-84 fighter planes and their iconic color schemes.
    • The whole concept of the "Pinpoint Barrier" system (the Macross first shield system) is remarkably similar to the 1980 arcade game Missile Command. That game played with a trackball and three buttons.
    • In some scenes one can see the Orguss Valkyrie, an Orguss Ogroid in Macross colors.
    • Episode 35 features a toy shop window that shows the Dynarobo in somewhat different colors sitting next to a rather awful toy version of the VF-1.
  • Show Within a Show: Shao Pai Lon, a movie starring Lynn Minmay.
    • Which has its own Title Theme Tune sung by Minmay, which is used in-show (but not in-in-show) against the Zentradi, bringing everything full-circle.
  • Snap Back: The city inside the Macross is shown to be seriously damaged in many space battles, and in the first time the ship transforms. It's always fine in the next episode (there is significant time passage between some of the battles, though). The city was rebuilt to take transformation into account after the first catastrophe.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil[context?]
  • Soapbox Sadie: Kaifun is one of the rare male examples
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Many Zentradi names are designed to be completely impossible to reproduce in Japanese so as to sound more alien. This has led to some... interesting attempts to romanize them. Closer to home are the many arguments over "Ichijou" versus "Ichijyo", "Focker" versus "Fokker", and "Lynn Minmay" versus "Lin Minmei".
    • The character that makes up Minmei's surname got changed in the Chinese dub of the series? Why? Because the character for "Bell" (The original) and the character for "Grove" (The dub) have the EXACT SAME pronunciation in some Chinese dialects.
    • For that matter, is it "Zentradi", "Zentraedi" or "Zjentlauedy"?
  • Spanner in the Works: Zentradi plans to capture the SDF-1 Macross would have succeeded without a hitch were it not for the unpredictable fighting methods of the defenders, as well as the singer Lynn Minmay.
  • The Spock: Exsedol
  • The Squad[context?]
  • Stripperific: Both averted and played straight. In the original TV series, female Zentradi soldiers wore uniforms essentially identical to the male ones, which were loose-fitting and covered the entire body except for the head and hands. However, the females' pilot suits for their Powered Armor were originally skintight, though fairly non-Stripperiffic otherwise...but the retconned female suits emphasize their sexiness and femininity much more. However, in all incarnations the Zentradi female powered armour itself is very bulky and only roughly humanoid.
  • Super Robot Wars: Alpha Alpha Gaiden, and Alpha 3.
  • Super Toughness: Bretai.
  • They Look Like Us Now[context?]
  • Throwaway Country: The province of Ontario, Canada. All 917,741 square kilometers of it.
  • Title Theme Tune: MAA-KU-ROS! MAA-KU-ROS!
  • The Tokyo Fireball[context?]
  • Too Dumb to Live: Roy Focker: "Medical treatment? Since when do injured pilots need medical treatment? Let's go eat some salad!"
    • And anyone whom he came in contact with on his final trip to Claudia's... "Gee, that man's dripping blood from three big ragged holes in his back. Oh, well, time to get on with my business..."
    • You know, the implication is supposed to be that he knew he was going to die and decided to keep his date with his girlfriend anyway...
  • The Power of Rock: Usually J-Pop in the main series, but music is the key to winning any conflict for good in the universe. Macross 7 takes it up a notch.
  • Transforming Mecha: From Jet to jet with arms and legs, to humanoid.
    • The toy of the VF-1 Valkyrie was re-purposed as Jet/Skyfire.
    • To both a lesser and greater extent, the Macross itself is a transforming mecha.
  • Translation Convention: There are indications everywhere in the metaseries that everyone is canonically speaking English, which makes sense considering that the Macross restoration and launch was an international project.
  • Tyke Bomb: Komilia Maria Fallyna Jenius. Sort of. Mainly in that she is used as a means to get the crew of a Zentraedi factory ship to surrender peacefully (if running away in pants-on-head-crazy terror counts as peaceful).

U-Z

  • Uncanceled: Originally slated for 48 or so episodes, the series was cut (due to the loss of the original sponsor) to around 23, meaning the series would have ended with the climactic battle against Bodolzaa, as seen in "Ai Wa Nagareru." Tatsunoko deciding to come on board at the last minute (though that caused other still ongoing[when?] headaches), as well as a very positive viewer reaction, allowed for a reprieve, and the show was at the very last minute extended to 36 episodes, permitting the "two years later" epilogue arc, which resolved the love triangle, as well as other hanging plot threads.
  • Unlucky Childhood Friend: ( Riber and Misa knew each other since childhood and were engaged to marry. Then, some time before the events of the series started, he disappeared... and later, Misa finds out he's been Dead All Along.
  • Wagon Train to the Stars: The SDF-1 and the subsequent colonial ships, especially the Megaroad-01. The New UN took these as precautions in case of future Zentradi or Supervision Army attacks and to ensure humanity's survival.
  • Wartime Wedding: Max and Milia.
  • Wave Motion Gun: The Macross cannon.
  • Wham! Episode: Roy's death. Followed by Kakizaki's death and the almost destruction of the Earth.
  • What Is This Thing You Call Love?: The Zentradi suffer from this and it proves the key to "Victory".
  • Weasel Mascot: Minmay's young cousin, Yocchan, seems to be jettisoned in favor of one of these, a rabbity-weasely... thing named Koge, in the new manga adaptation.
  • You Can See the Explosion from Orbit: When the main Zentradi fleet arrives. Further discussion would reveal major spoilers.
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Minmay and Max actually do have blue hair. Curiously enough, they are the only major human characters who fit this trope, though many Zentradi are true to it.
  • Zeerust: We will still have LP records in the future, and no cellphones or Internet (though we do get cool self-propelled payphones and vending machines...) Avoided in the new manga adaptation, which, handily, was drawn and written the exact year the events in the show were supposed to take place.
    • Actually, we STILL have LP records now (in 2012). Moreover, normal daily life wasn't depicted enough in the original to say one way or another (and inside the SDF-1 is another matter; Hikaru's handling of the payphone/visiophone actually lampshades this trope). A ten year global civil war could also have caused problems. Last, South Ataria Island being a military base in its entirety, it could have caused a ban on non-military radio communication.
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