Macross: Do You Remember Love?

Did You Know?

• The film's huge marketing campaign led fans to camp outside cinemas the night before its premiere, events dramatized in the 1991 anime comedy Otaku no Video.
• An arcade game titled Super Spacefortress Macross was released in 1992, and a loose game sequel called The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie was released in 1993 for the Super Famicom.
• In the 1984 Anime Grand Prix, the film ranked second behind Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, while its theme song ranked first.

Plot

The story kicks off in the middle of the action, with the massive space fortress SDF-1 Macross fleeing from the all-male giant aliens called the Zentradi at the edge of our solar system. The Macross carries tens of thousands of civilians, completely isolated from Earth. During one attack, pilot Hikaru Ichijyo saves pop star Lynn Minmay, and the two end up stuck in a part of the fortress for several days. Once they are freed, they grow quite close. Meanwhile, the Zentradi notice that human music messes with them. Their leader, Gorg Boddole Zer, thinks human culture might be tied to an ancient music box he has kept for ages. Hikaru and Minmay take a joyride through Saturn's rings, but the Zentradi capture them along with Lieutenant Misa Hayase, Minmay's cousin and manager Lynn Kaifun, and Hikaru's boss Roy Föcker. On the Zentradi ship, the humans are being questioned about their culture when the all-female giant Meltrandi attack the vessel, giving the prisoners a chance to flee. Hikaru and Misa get away, but Föcker is killed, and Minmay and Kaifun stay behind. Hikaru and Misa land on a barren world that turns out to be Earth, which was destroyed by an earlier Zentradi assault. The two officers bond and find an ancient Protoculture city, where they learn the true origins of the giant aliens. In that city, Misa uncovers an artifact holding the lyrics to an old love song. Days later, the Macross reaches Earth. Just as Hikaru and Misa report to Captain Bruno J. Global, the Meltrandi attack. The Zentradi show up and use Minmay's singing as a weapon, forcing the Meltrandi to retreat. Captain Global declares a truce and military alliance between the Macross and the Zentradi. Hikaru and Minmay meet again, but she sees he is now with Misa. Misa finishes translating the song. When the Meltrandi return and Boddole Zer betrays the truce, Hikaru convinces Minmay to sing the translated song. As the Macross flies through the battle, Minmay's voice unites the Zentradi and Meltrandi against Boddole Zer, who is defeated. The film closes with Minmay performing a concert in front of the rebuilt Macross.

Production

The mecha and character designs for this film were handled by Shoji Kawamori, Kazutaka Miyatake, and Haruhiko Mikimoto. Narumi Kakinouchi, a co-creator of Vampire Princess Miyu, served as assistant animation director. In a late action scene, two missiles fired by Hikaru toward Boddole Zer were drawn to resemble cans of Budweiser and Tako Hai, a drink called "Octopus Highball," as a private joke among the animators. With a budget that made it the second most expensive anime film of its time, behind only Hayao Miyazaki's Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, the production faced issues that forced cuts from the original storyboards. One cut scene, a concert ending with Minmay, was later animated for the 1987 OVA Flash Back 2012 and added to later releases of the film's credits, marketed as the Complete Edition. Another storyboarded scene, the marriage of Max and Milia, was never animated but appeared as a flashback in Macross 7. Kentaro Haneda composed the soundtrack, blending new orchestral pieces with music from the TV series. The title theme "Do You Remember Love" was written by Kazuhiko Katō and sung by Mari Iijima, who also wrote and performed the Complete Edition's ending theme, "An Angel's Paints."

Relation to the TV series

Do You Remember Love? is a reinterpretation of The Super Dimension Fortress Macross in feature film format, with almost all TV series characters appearing and most voice actors reprising their roles. The love triangle and relationships are intact. Macross 7 describes a film called Do You Remember Love? within its fictional world. Series creator Shoji Kawamori explained differences in depictions of Space War I as depending on story length. Many ships, mecha, and characters were redesigned for the film, with these designs appearing in later Macross entries. The Zentradi were given their own language, with most of their dialogue in that language; males and females are named Zentran and Meltran, placed on opposite sides of the Protoculture conflict, with no mention of the Supervision Army. The Meltrandi have distinctive ship and mecha designs. In the TV series, Zentradi dialogue was automatically translated into Japanese; in this film, they speak a fictional extraterrestrial language with subtitles, similar to Klingon in Star Trek. The SDF-1 is designed differently, with two ARMD carriers instead of Daedalus and Prometheus, becoming the design in later series. The SDF-1's origin differs: in the film it was originally a Meltlandi Gun Destroyer that crashed on Earth, rather than a Supervision Army Gun Destroyer.

International versions

Carl Macek mentioned interest in dubbing and localizing Do You Remember Love? with the Robotech voice cast for Cannon Films, but Harmony Gold USA could not license the film for unknown political reasons, and Megazone 23 Part 1 was used instead. Two versions of a Toho International-commissioned dub were released in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Toho dub, titled Super Spacefortress Macross, was created for export sales in Hong Kong by Matthew Oram and his wife Elizabeth's dubbing company. A better-known edited-for-television version, Clash of the Bionoids, was prepared by Peregrine Film Distribution for its Dynamagic syndication package in 1986 and released by Celebrity Home Entertainment's Just for Kids label in 1988; its ending was modified to suggest Hikaru died. A subtitled version was briefly released before being suppressed due to legal battles between Big West/Studio Nue, Tatsunoko, and Harmony Gold. Clash of the Bionoids aired on local TV stations from 1989 to 1997 and on Showtime 2 in 2004. AnimEigo's Robert Woodhead expressed desire to release the film but believed it would likely never get a proper US DVD release due to legal disputes. Kiseki Films released it in widescreen in the UK on video in the 1990s but not on DVD. A full 90-minute Swedish dub based on the Toho version was released in the 1980s by Wendros. As of 2023, the official Robotech account stated the film remains prohibited despite a 2021 agreement to release Macross sequels outside Japan.