I’ve always enjoyed anime about big robots, I haven’t watched as many as some people *cough* (sideswipe) but I was very limited in what I could find before I had the Internet (yes there was a time before the Internet).
One of the first series I watched on VHS…yes VHS was “Kishin Heidan” a alternative timeline based story about Germans and giant robots, it was very good and had some great steampunk style giant robots who fought aliens who fell from the sky in weird egg shapes (sounds a bit crazy but was well done).
I then watched “Gundam Wing” one of the many iterations of the massively popular Gundam series. I could devote a whole post to Gundam but I need to get to the point of the post and that’s Macross.
I’d somehow missed Macross in all its forms, I knew it existed but for some reason had ignored/missed it which was probably down to not having any way to buy copies of it and the seasons tended to be quite long.
Macross like Gundam re-appears every now and again in a new updated form but unlike Gundam which reinvents and changes the universe in which its set Macross sets all its series within one universe and each series just takes a different time period to be set in.
Now if you completely new to Macross and want to watch the amazing new series “Macross Frontier” I’d recommend you watch the below in the order shown, I’ve marked which series are required (you’d be better off watching these as your enjoyment of later series would be effected without them) and which are optional. Feel free to disagree but this is the order I watched them in and is only my opinion.
To start off I’d highly recommend watching
Macross: Do you remember love? – A film version of the main events from the original TV series (called “Super Dimension Fortress Macross” which was later badly edited into Robotech). You could watch the entire series but it is quite long and I think the film is enough. The film itself is really nice and surprisingly holds up very well despite its age (was made in 1984). Without watching this or the series as a whole you’d find allot of future events a bit confusing (you’d be like “why is that farmer a giant?” etc).
Macross Plus – The next series is a spin off so not required but is highly recommended in either series form (four episodes) or movie version. Some people prefer series some the film, I’d watch both if you have time.
Macross 7 – A true sequel to the first series, time moves ahead and shows the lives of people on one of the Macross seeding ships heading out around the galaxy. I really enjoyed the music in this series but did find the story to be quite repetative with many of the same battles repeated over and over the series is over 50 episodes long but could have easily been trimmed down to 20. I’d say its not really required but if you can watch at least part of the series it would give you a nice link between the old and new.
Macross Zero – A prequel to all the series, set on Earth during the time of the early robot/plane developments when humans were still mainly fighting humans. Isn’t required but a few episodes of Frontier nicely reference the events of the series and its only a very short season (can probably watch it in one night).
Macross Frontier – The most recent series in the Macross Saga, a glorious HD anime with amazing special effects and some truly great music. A good reason to watch the above series is so you can enjoy this one even more but if you really can’t watch any of them then watch this. Nicely balances the Macross saga’s themes of music, space battle, day to day life and relationships and the only thing I can say bad about it is towards the end it gets a bit grim (but never Gundam 00 grim…thats a whole new level of grim).