Macross II: The Movie Manga 140 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 11/28/2000

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The first time I watched Macross II it didn't make a lot of sense to me. See, I didn't have a lot of background in this area so I'm figuring that it is a "movie" you know, as it's stated on the box and such. However, it was to come as a big shock to me that this was indeed NOT a movie and Manga had pulled a big fast one on us. Anyway, I suppose that should've been readily evident all things considered. I mean, besides my much vaunted Lawrence of Arabia, how many movies do you see that are over two hours long? Disturbingly many in my opinion. Too many recent movies are clocking in at just under three hours and they're not the kind of movies that really deserve that much screen time. I mean, I'm sure I enjoyed Bad Boys 2, but I would've enjoyed it more if it were an hour shorter. Then again, another clue that it wasn't exactly a movie might've come from the fact that it has EYECATCHES. I mean, Lawrence of Arabia was a hell of a lot longer than this and it just had one.

So yeah. Macross II is long, really long. And nothing happens (except a few encounters with an 80s glam guy. It's the story of Hibiki Kanzaki, news reporter with SNN who runs into (effectively captures) a female alien whose sole purpose in life is to sing angry songs so that the enslaved Zentradi warriors get all psyched up and destroy lots of shit. It's kind of like a bunch of hicks tailgating before a heavy metal concert, only with less beer and flatulence. Anyway, does that sound like a stupid idea to you? Because it is. It seriously is. If you're a fan of Macross, maybe you used to watch Robotech when you were younger, you're probably saying "Well, the Macross style is usually to draw you in with the giant robots and sort of trick you into enjoying this rich character drama," and you'd certainly find no argument from me. The only problem is the characters in this movie are stupid and annoying and the robot battles are almost nonexistent. I don't know who made this, and I don't particularly care to... I just pray it was by some offshoot group.

So Hibiki rescues this alien girl from her oppressors, but then sometime later the classic "bitchy high ranking female military officer" decides that she doesn't really dislike him, even though he tried to ruin her career at the very beginning of the movie just to get a scoop! So what does that mean? It means we've got a good old fashioned anime-style love triangle going on! Wow, I so totally don't care about this story, or its characters, in the slightest. I think I'd rather jam a large bore drill into the side of my head than watch this thing for a third time. The invading Marduk have a song that makes all their warriors slam their ships into the enemy. What the hell kind of battle strategy is that? Yes. Nothing makes sense in this "movie", and to top it off the dub sucks. You know, I don't want to act like I'm some sort of paragon of voice acting or anything, but -I- could time a dub better than this one. Not only that, I bet if I re-recorded a dub, doing all the voices (including the women) it would find more acceptance in the dub community. It'd certainly be better than Schwartzenegger-style bartenders and drunken newsreporters that talk like they just received their very first tracheotomy. The technical quality of Macross II ranks only slightly above stuff like M.D. Geist. Really you'd thing that the Macross name would me more than enough to carry pretty much anything. Such is not the case.

Plus I hate hardsubs. I don't know if this was necessarily Manga's fault, but it really seems like I'm playing the blame game so much anyway that it probably doesn't matter. Somewhere in the story Hibiki takes his alien ladylove all around the globe to see the sites of good old earth and then the invading Marduk decide they hate the Tower of Pisa. Well, something like that anyway. I will admit that at this point in the movie I was folding my laundry, because it was sure as hell more interesting than the stegosaurus pace this show was taking. You know what I hate most of all though? They introduce this robot called "Metal Siren" who's supposed to be their "savior" or something and then never mention it again for like forty five minutes. Then when the thing DOES come back, it's got two minutes of screen time before going off on a mission to save one of the main characters. Of course, he disappears for the rest of the movie and we never hear word two from him. Man, I wish I had Metal Siren's super power. "What power is that?" I hear you ask. The power to be absent for the majority of this DVD.