Cool South Korea?

In my previous post, I asked, "What Happened to Cool Japan?"  My general answer was drawn from personal experiences and observations and somewhat informed by the articles and blogs I've read.  Basically, Cool Japan was smothered by the shrinking economy and the increasing insularity of a society that feels awfully beleaguered.  Although the likes of Murakami Haruki and Miyazaki Hayao have seniority and are somewhat insulated from any backlash against their art and the critical dissection of Japanese society via their well-refined crafts, there's no room for any successors to Murakami Haruki or Miyazaki Hayao.

The side-effect of this is that most of the forms of expression and entertainment have taken on an assembly-line quality, formulaic, derivative, and uninspired.  Occasional flashes to break through the fog, like Attack on Titan, but the overwhelming majority of Japanese intellectual property and immaterial culture is very repetitive and reeks with the pungent hospital-scent of corporate boardroom sterility.

In my last post, I described the process through which a close-knit American anime-fan* subculture evolved--specifically my personal experience of that process.  What I want to emphasize as I write this tonight is how the North American demand for Japanese anime was not matched by Japanese interest in its supply.  The activity was all on our side of the Pacific.  This is one of the reasons why Carl Macek is such a controversial figure--on the one hand, he butchered many of the shows he brought over to the United States; on the other hand, he was instrumental in Japanese anime getting airtime on American television and thereby increasing awareness of anime as a medium for entertainment and storytelling.

*NOTE:  I dislike the word otaku being applied to non-Japanese.  I'm somewhat of a language purist and I don't believe that the word has entered English parlance enough to be allowed a degree of definition shift.  I don't like to refer to non-Japanese anime-fans as otaku because the weight of meaning is not there in the American anime-fan use of the word, primarily all of the social and cultural baggage the term carries with in in Japan.

Throughout much of these developments, the Japanese were utterly passive.  Though the Japanese government and businesses were very concerned with exporting cars and electronics to the United States, they were much less interested in the exercise of soft power when it came to intangible aspects of their culture, such as intellectual properties, narratives, cinema, television, and music.  Although incredibly proud of those novelists and filmmakers that received worldwide recognition, they were much more concerned with the performance of artists and craftsmen domestically and very disinterested in the demands and appetites of North American markets.

That is why I wrote in my last post that we non-Japanese must come to grips with the reality that the Japanese are not concerned with the world beyond their shores.  Streamline Pictures (defunct, 2002), Central Park Media (defunct, 2009), AnimEigo (still around, barely), Manga Entertainment (also still around), AD Vision (defunct, 2009), and Funimation (still around) were all North American companies licensing and distributing anime and Japanese films.  The only two Japanese companies I am aware of that were involved in exporting anime to the United States are Bandai Entertainment and NBCUniversal (which started out as Pioneer, then Geneon, before North America's Universal bought it).  When AnimEigo started letting licenses lapse and most of their translated films and television programs dropped off of Netflix, I knew something was up.  When I started sniffing around, I discovered that after the crash of '08, a huge number of distributors dissolved.  Some of these companies were founded in whole or in part by Japanese individuals who came to the United States, but all of them were headquartered in North America.  When VHS and then DVD/BluRay distribution dried up and people could get their fix via Crunchyroll and Netflix, the licensing and distributing of the anime was no longer profitable.  Granted, things weren't handled as best as they could but the Japanese weren't coming down on fansubbers and non-profit online translator/distributor rackets.  There wasn't enough potential money being lost and the Japanese corporations that owned the IPs were not concerned with what went on in the white spaces on the edges of the map where barbarians and dragons roamed.

We've Come A Long Way Since Madame Butterfly
The fascination began when Europeans and Americans traveled to Japan and were moved to write about the culture and society they experienced.  In a way, however, they inadvertently did violence to Japan in the way that Edward Said describes European scholars did to the Near East in his Orientalism.  In the 1980s, however, Japanese imports into North American markets and Japanese investment in North American infrastructure and the U.S. economy brought about a huge paradigm shift.  This was the first time the Japanese were truly on equal footing with Americans and the American exposure to Japanese culture was no longer through a sort of racist filter the likes of which Orientalism described and decried.

Thus, as a young man, Japan wasn't the land of geisha and samurai, strange tea ceremonies and martial arts, but of brilliant manga artists and talented animators and storytellers.  It was the land that revitalized video game culture after the 1983 video game crash.  There was a mystique about Japan that fascinated us.  The JET program was started by a few Japanese visionaries in order to bring Americans over there and develop cross-cultural communication, not just to teach English to Japanese children.  Nevertheless, the JET program was somewhat of a fluke (albeit one with a lot of staying power) and one of those rare occasions when Japanese leaders realized how important the expression of soft power was in international politics.

The American view of Japan, as seen in World War II movies and films like Gung Ho, Mr. Baseball, You Only Live Twice, The Karate Kid, and Rising Sun, and even recent films such as Memoirs of a Geisha and The Last Samurai, are nowhere near as influential to the Japanophile as actual Japanese films and television programs.  We weren't getting our own interpretation of Japan by itself anymore, we were receiving Japan's own self-expression.  We were demanding it.  University courses studying Japanese anime and manga, Japanese language programs, Japanese literature courses, Japanese film studies programs, all began springing up across North America.

Japan was exporting its culture not just to North America but to the entire world.  There was a vast demand for it and countries all over the planet translated and aired television shows like Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z on every single habitable continent.  And yet the Japanese were simply content to ride this wave.  Their insularity made them wholly inattentive to the tremendous political weight these cultural exports gave them in projecting soft power.

The Great Queen Seondeok on Netflix
I lived in South Korea for three years and the South Koreans are, in many ways, just as insular and xenophobic as the Japanese (perhaps moreso).  However, the impact the Hallyu has had on Korean self-esteem and self-image on the international stage has been extremely profound.  A country divided, jockeyed between rival superpowers, and the psychological damage of the Japanese occupation still in living memory, the South Koreans have a very pronounced insecurity complex with regards to their role in international affairs and the strength of their culture.  They're tremendously fragile, which means small victories mean a great deal to them, especially when those victories are against former oppressors like Japan.

So, the Korean Wave is inundated much of the Western Pacific with Korean culture in the form of television drama, K-Pop, and cinema.  Where once the major player was Japan, now Korea is emerging as an exporter of cultural IPs.  Korea was once a blank space on the map for the U.S., a very nondescript culture that was entirely uninteresting and little understood when compared to the gigantic mythological stature of China and Japan in the Western mindset.  Thus, Korea's breakout success with the Hallyu has stunned everyone and opened their eyes to a treasure trove of creativity the likes of which many haven't seen since the bursting of the Japanese bubble and the increasing insularity of Japanese society.

South Korea is determined not to let this opportunity slip away from them.  The South Korean government has been investing in the arts and entertainment industries with a keen awareness that their cultural products are just as important as their cars and electronics.  Although there is a powerful desire to quell dissent within Korean society, the tremendous success of Korean cinema both at home and abroad has given Korean intellectual insurgents a place to go to express their criticisms creatively through art and craft.  Some of the most powerful Korean films I've seen, such as Oldboy, The Chaser, 200 lbs. Beauty, and Secret Sunshine, are powerful commentaries on some of the darker aspects of Korean culture and the Korean psyche.

Is it possible that Korean arts will stagnate as they have in Japan?  Absolutely.  Is it likely that the Koreans are interested in what foreign audiences want?  Nope.  Not a chance.  They're as culturally and socially locked to domestic appetites and tastes as the Japanese are and also just as uninterested in outside input.

So what is the difference?  Money.  The Koreans are making sure they support their projection of soft power financially.  This will slow down the inevitable cycle of artistic vitality--artistic stagnation and give the South Koreans more staying power than the Japanese ever had.

アキラ (Akira) Volume 1

Almost a full decade ago, I attended Otakon. It was there that I discovered the serialized 単行本 (tankobon) of the Japanese 漫画 (manga), アキラ (Akira). Now, I had seen the 1988 film for the first time in 1997 (I was a freshman in college at the time), and was just developing an interest in アニメ (anime). The film had received mixed reviews. It's painstakingly detailed animation was a phenomenal labor of love, but the script suffered from trying to cram several years and over two-thousand pages of manga into a 125-minute feature.

However, I had been so impressed by some of the themes explored in the film that I wanted to read the manga and see how the story differed. That's why it was fortunate that I had stumbled across the first volume, translated into English by Dark Horse comics.

Akira, a 2,150-page epic manga written by 大友克洋 (Otomo Katsuhiro), is a landmark in science-fiction and an incredible visual essay on fear, jealousy, and betrayal, alienation, and societal collapse all in comic-book form. On the surface, it appears to be just another cyberpunk story of ultra-violence, superhuman powers, and petty gang warfare against a backdrop of political unrest. However, Otomo's story is much deeper than that.

The central characters, 金田 (Kaneda) and 鉄雄 (Tetsuo) are two delinquent teens in a motorcycle-riding street-gang in a futuristic Tokyo that is constructed on a landfill dominating Tokyo Bay. The story introduces them immediately, racing along abandoned highways toward the enormous crater where the first bomb that had touched-off World War III had fallen. Otomo sets the stage for the tensions between the two friends that will come to dominate the rest of the story.

Tetsuo narrowly avoids crashing into a pale, wizened child with the number "26" stamped upon his hand. There is an explosion, and Tetsuo is injured. His fellow gang members surround him, but Kaneda notices the strange, unnatural child, who fades away. Moments later, the military arrives. Tetsuo is taken to a hospital, but the boys do not know which one. Kaneda's desire to find his friend, his anger at the child for hurting Tetsuo, and his interest in a young girl attached to a revolutionary movement, entangle him with the insurrectionists and attract the attention of the military.

Meanwhile, Tetsuo emerges from the hospital suffering from headaches and desperate for narcotics in order to relieve the pain. Tetsuo's character suffers a deep transformation, as his friends recognize and understand him less and less. Simultaneously, deep veins of jealousy and insecurity begin to surface in Tetsuo's personality, especially toward Kaneda. Tetsuo gradually becomes more and more narcissistic and detached from the world around him.

Kaneda is much smarter than he appears, but his brains are completely subsumed by his own primal urges. Brash, cocky, and certain that he'll live forever as only a fifteen-year-old can be, Kaneda always seems to get through his situations with more luck than smarts. However, this isn't entirely the case. Kaneda's selfishness and arrogance conceal a deep concern for the well-being of his friends. He is, at core, a character that possesses a certain degree of honor, despite his unscrupulous, roguish exterior. His cockiness and disrespect for authority would seem quite shocking to a Japanese reader of the 1980s, although to an American, he'd seem quite typical of a youthful hoodlum.

Kaneda's behavior is driven by base motivations. His pursuit of Kei is simply a product of sexual attraction, although he gradually begins to genuinely care for her. He is never lured by her political ideals, nor is he really driven by curiosity. Kaneda's primary drives are mundane and simplistic. Indeed, he is naïve. His bravery is largely a product of his ignorance and his youthful certainty in himself. By the end of the first volume, however, much of his naïveté and self-assurance is challenged by forces that are, quite obviously, beyond his control, and Kaneda experiences true loss.

The transformation of Kaneda's relationship with Tetsuo is incredibly important. Tetsuo's own arc is rapid--having always been weak and small, Tetsuo is tyrannical when he discovers his power. Also youthful and naïve, Tetsuo cares little for the suffering of others, possibly because he believes no one has ever cared for his own suffering. When Tetsuo discovers his own powers, all roles are reversed. Kaneda is resentful, Tetsuo is indignant and desires to forcibly subdue his former friend. This betrayal fuels Kaneda, gives him purpose and a desire to see Tetsuo neutralized. Indeed, what angers and pains Kaneda the most is that Tetsuo forces Kaneda to choose to kill him. This seems to come off as the most bitter and painful betrayal of all.

Otomo's story is one of a society divided against itself. The government is lazy and corrupt, with the military secretly accumulating incredible amounts of power in order to prevent another holocaust such as that which sparked the Third World War. The art depicts the relatively new city as dilapidated, covered in graffiti, and very much unlike the Tokyo that emerged from the reconstruction after the Second World War. This is a complete reversal of reconstruction--Japan is trying to resurrect itself a second time, and is failing.

Alienated from society at large, the youth descend into anarchic tribalism, owing allegiance not to ideologies but to one another. This makes Tetsuo's betrayal of Kaneda and his motorcycle gang so bitter--Tetsuo's betraying his personal friends, his tribe, and his first, greatest allegiance. As their world begins to break down, the characters reach out and attempt to forge new connections with others. Tetsuo seeks to control all of his new relationships from a position of power, while Kaneda's grasping for Kei is much more simple, innocent, and childlike, reflecting his adolescence.

Otomo's first volume of Akira is a complex work, with equally complex artistry. Otomo's skillful use of angles in many of his frames suggests power or weakness of a character, as well as enhances the relationships between the characters themselves. A great deal is communicated without dialogue, and the reader must be willing to pay attention to each frame of the comic, and not simply skip through. There is a lot that may be missed due to lack of narration common in Western comic books. The violence is pronounced but brief and Otomo doesn't dwell upon the bloodshed. The world he depicts is dirty and decaying, and the visual decay that the pictures show reflect the spiritual and political decay within society.

My only complaint is that, in order to facilitate easy reading for non-Japanese audiences, all of the pages have been reversed. It's actually quite obvious to see--drivers sit on the wrong side of the vehicle, and everyone seems to shoot left-handed. But this was a decision by Dark Horse, and has little bearing on the writing and art itself, except that I don't get to see Otomo's original vision undistorted.

Altogether, this is a fantastic book. One should not be fooled by the fact that it is a comic book. Otomo's first volume of Akira is much, much more than that. Through the cyberpunk genre, Otomo is exploring themes of power in relationships, both between individuals and within groups. He is also delving into the human psyche and what he digs up isn't necessarily comforting to the reader, but perhaps that challenge is what makes this such an important story. As a comic book, Akira excels far more than it does on film or it would as a novel. Without the visualization provided by film or comics, Otomo's story would have been weaker, but the film version's time constraints forced the writer to truncate far too much, so that a lot of these relationships and themes are lost and undeveloped. Thus far, the manga version is far, far superior.

Transforming Robots, Space-War, and Love: The Importance of 超時空要塞マクロス as a Science-Fiction Epic

When I was eight years old, I watched Robotech a syndicated animated series that ran somewhere before Transformers and G.I. Joe in the after-school time slots. It was never incredibly popular with the other kids at school, who were far in favor of the other two programs. However, as a first- and second-grader, I was enthralled by the lack of formulaic plot lines, the focus on character development, and the advancing story-arcs. Except for a few double-episodes of the to-be-continued variety, Transformers and G.I. Joe generally refrained from story-arcs and plot developments that spanned more than a single episode during the early-to-mid 1980s.

I had never known Robotech was actually a Japanese animated program until perhaps late middle-school or early high school. I had watched shows like Tranzor Z, Star Blazers, and Voltron with my Dad (who had been in his very early 20s) before I was of school-age, and had developed an affinity for the animation style (probably because I associated it with quality time spent with my father). Thus, when I finally encountered Robotech, the combination of animation style with dynamic, sympathetic characters and an evolving story forever endeared me to Japanese animation long before I even knew what it was. I would go on to discover novelizations and comic prints of the franchise, but I never truly recaptured that feeling of love for a story that I had felt as a kid. That changed once I had reached college and started collecting アニメ (anime) as a young adult.

It was in late high school that I discovered that the Robotech series was actually three distinct Japanese anime, licensed to Harmony Gold and produced by Carl Macek as a single storyline. The dialogue had been edited in order to tie the three stories together and to soften some of the more mature themes for an audience that would undoubtedly be primarily comprised of young children (as I had been at the time). The need for the three separate (but similar) shows was simply due to syndication regulations in the United States requiring a minimum number of episodes for a series. While some refer to Macek's adaptation as a massacre of the original (hence the term "Macekre" to refer to a butchered anime dub), the work done wasn't all that bad. The voice acting was actually of a higher standard than what was common in cartoons of the era, but later anime fans would pillory him for his plot deviations/inventions and "dumbing-down" of the storyline and dialogue.

This is all peripheral, however, to what I actually wish to discuss, which is, essentially the first "season" of Robotech, or rather, the original Japanese science-fiction anime series, 超時空要塞マクロス (Chōjikū Yōsai Makurosu), English title: Super Dimension Fortress Macross.

Macross is one of the finest science-fiction television programs ever broadcast, and I say this with absolute, utter confidence. It combines all of the best elements of science-fiction--advanced technology, space travel, interplanetary conflict, and the human response. It is futuristic fable, a parable for a beleaguered world on the brink of nuclear holocaust (it was originally aired 1982-3 in Japan, during the height of the Cold War) written by people with a memory of atomic disaster brought about by warmongering, bearing a message of love and understanding.

And it's not cheesy about it. In fact, despite how dated the music sounds and how poorly certain episodes were animated (more on that later), Macross still holds up, over a quarter-century later. Indeed, it holds up so well that it has spawned numerous spin-offs, sequels, and prequels; while each is good, all are inferior in some manner to the original series in that all fail to combine the threads of science-fiction parable that the original had done so well.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
--tagline for Warhammer 40,000

The series opens with the crashing of an alien spaceship on a remote west Pacific island. Over the course of the next decade, the united Earth government reconstructs the ship into the SDF-1 (Super Dimension Fortress-1), or Macross. On the day it is scheduled to be launched, a race of aliens called Zentraedi discover the ship and identify it as belonging to an enemy force, known only as the Supervision Army. They launch an attack, localized on the fortress, forcing it to launch in order to draw the enemy away from the Earth.

This is all handled surprisingly well over the course of several episodes. The pacing is not frenetic, but measured. The Zentraedi are admirable villains because they do not blindly attack. Instead they engage calculatingly. The vast distances in space are taken into account as the Zentraedi first bombard the orbital defense platforms of the Earth, then target South Ataria Island and the Macross. This serves to establish them as both a cunning, intelligent foe, and a foe that possesses technology and space-combat experience far superior to that of the Earth.

The opening is a complete reversal of most standard post-Gundam mech-anime tropes. The main character, 一条 輝 (Ichijyo Hikaru), is an experienced air-show pilot, but is unready to deal with the realities of air-combat. Nor is he prepared to pilot a transforming mech. This all occurs minutes after his fateful first encounter with 鈴明美 (Lynn Minmei/Minmay), a young Chinese teenager who wants to become a singing star.

Hikaru provides a sympathetic character with whom the audience can relate. Compare this to Amro from Mobile Suit Gundam, who simply "knows" how to pilot his mech instinctively, or indeed, even Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace, who destroys a massive Trade Federation battleship single-handedly. Hikaru is not blessed with some psychic "sixth sense" or spiritual power. The ability to become a hero is simply a matter of his willpower. Your average American viewer can easily bridge the gap between his and Japanese cultures to understand and connect with Hikaru far more easily than he could with Anakin Skywalker or Amro.

The long sequence of events reflects a more realistic pacing. The Zentraedi think strategically about their attacks against the Earth defenses. For example, they begin their attack on the island by bombarding the city surrounding the Macross. Then, they launch an aerial assault that is actually a diversion--the actual assault on the island is carried out by a series of amphibious landing-craft tasked to capture the vessel on the ground. The writers of the series establish the variable mechs as capable of street warfare as well as aerial combat, and introduce the viewer to the variety of weapons both forces have at their disposal. The characters are defined prior to the opening of hostilities--each with his own personal conflicts and issues.

For example, we find that Hikaru feels tension with his former role-model Roy Fokker for the latter's role as a combat pilot during the U.N. unification wars. Captain Gloval (I prefer the Robotech spelling to the "official" spelling, "Global") is introduced as frustrated with politicians and eager to get his ship into space. 早瀬 未沙 (Hayase Misa) and Claudia LaSalle are depicted as having a tight friendship despite different attitudes toward romantic involvements. These characters' lives are literally derailed by the sudden Zentraedi attack on Earth. The military characters perform their duties, shunting aside their personal feelings. Hikaru and Minmei have much more difficulty, seeing as they are civilians.

As the show develops, it closely follows the difficulties Hikaru experiences with his relationship to Minmei. Eventually, he joins the military, which gives him much more direction and purpose. However, as Minmei's career as a pop star begins to take off, Hikaru's path and hers begin to diverge, and he gradually finds himself drawn to Misa, despite their original dislike of one another.

It is the character interaction that keeps the show moving and infuses every single combat sequence with meaning. Unlike Transformers or G.I. Joe, whose characters are static from episode-to-episode, the characters of Super Dimension Fortress Macross change over time. They are not constant, they grow. They have (and had) lives outside of the war against the Zentraedi. This endears them to the viewer, and also heightens the tension during combat sequences. We care whether they die or survive. Indeed, as the series progresses, we even begin to understand the Zentraedi mindset and start to sympathize with them as well. A number of brilliant combat-sequences have definitive character impact, such as Hikaru's rescue of Misa on Mars, or the climactic battle against Boddole Zer's fleet above the Earth.

The entire premise of the show is not simply the Misa-Hikaru-Minmei romance triangle set against the backdrop of an interplanetary war. The very theme of love being one of the most powerful forces that a human (or Zentraedi) can possibly experience is central to the story. Many may make the mistake that music is what bridges the gap between the species--music is simply the vehicle. What strikes the Zentraedi first, before music even begins to do its work on Breetai's fleet, is a simple kiss. This is important--it is the first thing that shocks them. Before this they are simply puzzled by their human adversaries. However, upon witnessing the kiss, they are irrevocably changed. They are made aware that there are things buried deep down inside of them of which they are unaware. Music is simply the agency by which these emotions are drawn out. The Zentraedi are obviously confused and upset by these unfamiliar longings that the chain of command and corps camaraderie cannot fulfill.

To understand what 河森 正治 (Shōji Kawamori), the series creator, is trying to say with this series, one must pay careful attention to the pivotal battle against Boddole Zer's fleet--a battle precipitated by a full-scale bombardment of the planet Earth.

Now, I love orbital bombardments. I have never seen one done on the scale I've always desired. But this came close. Millions of capital ships open up and blast the entire surface of the Earth in a glorious scene of devastation and holocaust.

This scene was written and designed by the Japanese with a distinct message in mind. It essentially shows over 90% of the Earth's inhabitants destroyed and the ecosystem severely damaged by the assault. You would be wrong to think lingering memories of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't in the minds of the writers when the series was being developed. And this orbital bombardment scene gets to the heart of what Kawamori is expressing through this series. But this is not an allegory to the Second World War. Kawamori draws upon the Japanese experience of the Second World War to inform and shape the tragedy and loss that the characters experience throughout Macross.

The Zentraedi who wantonly obliterate much of the Earth's surface are fighting from blind ignorance, but when they begin to understand their own emotions, they begin to understand their enemies, the humans, and gradually lose their desire to fight. The show is not blatantly pacifist, either. The characters who fight do so because surrender is not an option--they fight because they may be threatened with extinction. The stakes are too high to simply roll over. There is a deep distrust of military brass and politicians alike throughout the series. But all of this is eclipsed by the core message that Macross is struggling to convey to its audience.

From the technical standpoint, the show was plagued with inconsistent animation styles. This is because a number of different animation studios were contracted to work on the series, and at some points episodes had to be produced on a very tight schedule, resulting in low quality animation for some of the (tragically) best-scripted and pivotal episodes in the story (such as most of Episode 11, "First Contact", and the ridiculous "fencing" knife-fight of Episode 25, "Virgin Road"). This would clash with superbly animated combat sequences in other episodes (such as Episode 18, "Pineapple Salad", or Episode 27, "Love Drifts Away").

In some cases, this cheapens the overall realism of the series, whose story appeared to take great pains to present itself as believable and not simply a laser-blasting rampage with giant-robots riding rockets (I'm thinking of specific scenes from Mobile Suit Gundam that were just so ridiculous they were downright stupid). But these instances are few and far-between, and in some cases they aren't devastating to the storyline.

The message isn't so trite as "war is bad." No kidding, war is bad. But Macross juxtaposes love and war against one-another. They are part of the same continuum. What makes Macross so beautiful is that the flaws of the characters, their mistakes, shortsightedness, and misunderstandings do get in the way of love sometimes. And although Minmei can be said to get her just desserts in the end, we can't help but feel sorry for her regardless.

The viewer will not easily find many of the later common anime archetypes and character tropes--aside from Minmei, none of the characters are teenagers, and Minmei certainly does not pilot a giant mech. The show is largely bereft of angst--the characters suffer, certainly, and have inner turmoil, but it rarely descends to melodrama. Instead, the story is mature, sophisticated, and moves forward.

I've seen and read a great many science-fiction stories. Very few of them manage to capture the human dimension as well as Super Dimension Fortress Macross does. Science-fiction has always been an exploration of human interaction with technological advancement and the new and heretofore impossible situations such advancement makes possible. However, most are much stronger on the technology and impossible situations and much weaker on the human element. Like much of the very best science fiction (Babylon 5 and Firefly in particular spring to mind) Super Dimension Fortress Macross is strong on the human element. Thus, such themes as love and war are powerfully portrayed.