Mad about Macross

One of the biggest news in classic anime that came about at the end of last year was ADV's new licensing of Super Dimension Fortress Macross. I'm not ashamed to admit it, I bought AnimEigo's release of the TV series, released for the first time in North America in its entirety without the name Robotech attached to it. The company went through tremendous legal struggles to bring the set here and I applaud them for that. However, if there is anything that I believe was wrong with AnimEigo's release, it had to be the lack of extras.

ADV's release makes up for that with plenty of extras. However, they're not all the extras I normally look forward to. There were two things I was looking forward to about this release - one of the special features was the original Macross dub by Harmony Gold (where the animation caught Carl Macek's attention as a means to finance Robotech) and the new dub cast. Typically, the dub cast doesn't excite me - it's very rare I'll even check out a dub track; however this dub has one thing many other dubs do not. Lynn Minmei, one of the most notable characters not only of the time period but probably in all of anime's history, has a returning role - Iijima Mari who did a wonderful job in the original Japanese version is making her appearance in the English dub as well. What amazing possibilities for bilingual seiyuu.

Iijima's portrayal of Minmei in English is as I expected it to be - accented but not beyond comprehension. Her English is absolutely amazing. With her being the third English voice actress for this character (an unknown girl in HG's dub and Reba West's infamous portrayal in Robotech counted before), I think it is safe to say that there is only one Lynn Minmei; though, this may be all to Iijima-san's chagrin. What's best about this dub is that Iijima-san is able to make Minmei sound just as young and innocent as she did in the original Macross back in 1982.

So, the verdict is this: If you do not already own a Macross DVD set, I highly suggest buying ADV's release. It has extras, dual audio tracks, and the magnificently remastered video and audio that was present in AnimEigo's release. If you do already own an AnimEigo release, then this is a hard buy to push. Unless you're hard pressed and driven to own absolutely every Macross release in North America, then there are probably many other things one would choose to spend their money on. I was excited about it and planned on buying a complete set of ADV's releases, and I will be keeping an eye out for the extras on the subsequent discs, but at this point right now, I cannot see myself rushing out for another complete DVD set.