Title: Macross Plus
Episodes: 4
Released: 1994
Director: Shinichirō Watanabe
Studio: Studio Nue
We begin our discussion of Shinichirō Watanabe with a bit of an exception to the rule this part of the challenge has followed thus far. This is the first work where the creator we’re discussing wasn’t the plain old director of the series. For Macross Plus, Watanabe was the co-director to Shōji Kawamori, the creator of the Macross series. It is also the first official sequel to The Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Macross II was released two years earlier, but Kawamori retconned Macross II as having occurred in a parallel world.
I included Macross Plus despite this diversion from the norm, because it is a crystal clear harbinger for much of Watanabe’s filmography. Whether the similarities between Watanabe’s later works and Macross Plus are an influence on Watanabe or the influence of Watanabe is hard to say at this distance, but the DNA is shared.
Macross Plus was first released as an OVA and then as a 115 minute movie in 1995. As an entry in the Macross franchise this is ostensibly a mecha show, but the giant robots are little more than exciting window dressing. Like most of Watanabe’s filmography, action here is used as a convenient serving dish for character studies.
Our protagonists are a trio consisting of a woman and two men, a Watanabe staple. Their trajectory as characters is determined by a past that seems to be fully realized in the minds of the creators but is only obliquely referenced with occasional flashbacks that offer limited context but plenty of emotion. This is another Watanabe staple. The two men are a red and blue oni pair. While both are temperamental in their ways, one is more physically inclined while the other is more mentally inclined, and the mentally inclined one is actually the bigger, rougher looking one. Yet again we’re looking at a Watanabe staple.
The score was handled by Yoko Kanno, marking Watanabe’s first collaboration with the composer. There are bits of music in Kanno’s score that would be perfectly at home in Cowboy Bebop, and like everything that Watanabe has directed so far, the music is a central part of the experience. The designs for just about everything except the mechs screams Watanabe.
Set in the far flung future of 2040, the series follows Isamu Dyson and Guld Goa Bowman, two test pilots at New Edwards Air Force Base on planet Eden. The two are immediately shown to have a long-held grudge, which goes from cold to hot when their former high school classmate Myung Fang Lone turns up promoting an AI concert. There’s a lot of sci-fi background and plotting in the series, but most of it feels like it’s really just there to show three former friends growing past teenage trauma.
Macross Plus does manage to balance its sci-fi plot with its character-centered storytelling with surprising finesse for a show with only four episodes of roughly 45 minutes each. There are aspects of the big battle at the end of the show that feel tacked on to give the plot an unnaturally clean resolution, but even the principle side characters get some character building or at least reveal nuance that helps keep them from feeling like tools of the plot.
New Edwards takes its name from Edwards Air Force Base where members of the production staff spent some time studying flight to be able to realistically depict dogfights in the OVAs. While the team clearly did their research, the flight animation still doesn’t feel fluid, the jets seem to lack speed and weight at points.
Tomorrow we take a leap forward in Watanabe’s career and discuss Samurai Champloo. That’s right. We’re skipping that other anime for now. Until then!
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