The "it could have been worse... it could have been that last one", comment is referring to our last Robotech podcast where we reviewed Codename Robotech.

-Jeremy

Aha. Well, I liked the Sentinels for what it was, especially when it came out way back when...Just seeing the characters I loved moving on was a nice treat, though, of course, seeing nothing beyond that was sad, too. I'm actually watching through the whole Robotech series again, and I found that The Sentinels put a new light on the Southern Cross segment, and in my mind made it all the more tragic and relevant, and thus, enjoyable in the Robotech whole.

As a side note, I'm well aware of the mish-mash that Robotech is, but I kinda view it in the same light I would one of the Super Robot Wars games or the A.C.E. games that Bandai produce. They take even more disparate shows and work them together for something different. In a way, Robotech was ahead of it's time in this...?

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"Hey, uh...let's volt in."

I found the Shadow Chronicles movie lame and generic.

I wish they had just gone ahead and animated the Sentinels and finished the damn saga...instead of sorta skipping much of Sentinels to introduce a whole new "threat".

Of course, that's the fanboy in me talking. I was raised on the original cartoon, then the Eternity Comics (Sentinels), then finally, the Jack McKinney books later in high school.

For better or for worse, I think the McKinney books were great. They're what I consider the "canon" of Robotech, start to finish. I see absolutely no need to continue ad nauseam a perfectly good story, with a beginning, middle, and end. That's just so artificial and unnecessary.

Obviously, the McKinney books aren't without their problems, but I think they just animated what was in those, I'd be a much happier camper. Sure, the Sentinels animation didn't get off the ground, but that was then. The Robotech "fad" was fading, just as Transformers took a dive after the '86 movie. But just like the TF franchise, the current nostalgia boom can breathe new life into the Sentinels. In my opinion, Shadow Chronicles was not the right move.

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Sanjeev

Uh, what? We weren't talking about Shadow Chronicles at all. Maybe we will review that eventually. Maybe. But as much as I am in love with the characters from Macross, Sentinels is like a watered down copy of them.

This is like your favorite band 20 years after their prime, when more than half the original members are dead, and they can't even play their old songs properly and the new ones are mediocre.

-Jeremy

Well, I tend to agree, Andrew: I would probably prefer that Robotech stay dead...though perhaps for different reasons. Again, love it or hate it, End of the Circle was a fine enough ending for me. The McKinney interpretation of the saga as a whole is as "definitive" as it gets for me.

The reason I brought up Shadow Chronicles was that it's sorta tough to discuss the future of the franchise (or how we would like to see it end) without discussing SC...or even the live-action movie.

Anyway, your point about the Macross characters in Sentinels is interesting, Jeremy. I guess for me, the characters were just never *that* important to me. Since I was little, the thing about Robotech was the over-arching plot and how each generation worked into the whole saga. Trying to understand every little piece is what intrigued me...and it's probably why I like the overall Sentinels plot (because it brings so much together in the end...though the whole thing with Haydon is a bit weird...perhaps a little too Babylon 5-ish...).

The individual characters were never all that important to me. I mean, there were so many characters just to keep track of and where they fit in with the whole timeline, I was too busy keeping all that stuff straight to worry about Rick being a weeny in the beginning of the Sentinels! [Although, to be fair, he does "man-up" towards the end when he demotes himself from admiral to skull leader when he realizes that command is neither his strength nor his passion.]

But I feel what you're saying: if you're in it for individual characterization, Sentinels will probably leave you wanting.

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Sanjeev

That is super weird to me. The appeal in Macross to me (and most people) is the compelling characters, the love triangle, the pretty girls, and the robo-jets. Considering that Robotech always had a huge drop off in viewership when the Macross portion ended, I don't think the vast majority of people are super intrigued by the puzzle that is how three shows were forced together.

Now, I LIKE the other shows, and I've read most of the zillion Robotech comics, all of the books, and seen all of the animation including Shadow Chronicles, but the appeal is totally not how many times Scott Bernard can name drop Admiral Hunter.

Haydon can't be Babylon 5-ish, because it came out way before Babylon 5 did. Say Babylon 5 is Haydon-ish, I guess.

Also, it must have been a long time since you read the Sentinels novels or comics, because Rick does not demote himself to Skull Leader and give up on being a commander. One time he flies as one of Max's junior wingmen, and Max almost dies saving his ass, Rick still gets shot down, and he spends the rest of Sentinels as an infantry commander, walking around on foot on alien planets, occasionally riding on Southern Cross hoverbikes. He's still a commander, and still not a pilot.

This is one of the things that really irks me about Sentinels. A big point at the end of the original Macross was that Hikaru could not be with Minmay because they lived in such different worlds. He was a pilot, period, and he would not quit to play house with her. She couldn't understand that, and Misa did; it was his life, just as being on the bridge of a ship was hers.

And then what does Lisa do in Sentinels? Spend most of the series yelling at him every time he thinks about flying a plane. Somehow he comes to terms with this and gets into running around on foot and occasionally standing in the war room of a spaceship ordering people around. I don't get it. It's a betrayal of his character.

-Jeremy

Eh, just wait for our review of Robotech The Movie, coming soon. And I'm pretty sure you don't see Streets of Fire mentioned.

Jeremy

I actually relistened to this show because I had no idea you were talking about. I called Sentinels "a crushing disappointment" and "an abortion". It's not as bad as as Robotech The Movie or Codename Robotech, but that's like saying getting breast cancer is not as bad as getting AIDS.

-Jeremy