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Robotech

Robotech was one of the first Anime to be released in the United States. Robotech, dubbed into English and released by the Harmony Gold[?] corporation, fused the story lines of three different Japanese anime series (with some modifications): Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Century Southern Cross[?], and Genesis Climber Mospeada[?]. The reasoning for combining these unrelated series was that the American TV stations had a minimum number of episodes for weekday syndication, and none of the three series met that requirement alone. Moreover, there was pressure from the American toy manufacturer who had licensed these three series to present them all as a single packaged product.

This combination resulted in a storyline that spanned three generations: The characters in the Macross saga, their children in the Southern Cross saga, and their descendants in the New Generation saga. The result is a surprisingly coherent story that resolves plot threads left unresolved in the earlier series. In particular, Southern Cross was originally intended to be a massive, be-all-end-all space opera, but ran out of money before it could be completed. Its inclusion in Robotech actually increased fan respect for Southern Cross.

There was also a novelization series, written by "Jack McKinney", a pseudonym for Brian Daley[?] and James Luceno[?], which included extensive quotes from fictitious books and fleshed out the chronology in more detail.

Harmony Gold attempted to produce an original sequel series called the Sentinels, but only three episodes were made. The project fell through due to problems with the toy licensing and changes in the Japanese yen-US Dollar exchange rate, among other reasons.

Two different versions of the Sentinels saga were chronicled in the McKinney novels and a comic book series.

External Link

Episode List

wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump