sakurakitsune

I wanted to like this movie... I really did. It had everything down right. The SFX, The actors, the over the top acting, the beautiful ship sets. It had so much going for it... Then you get the actual story....

The story is not bad per say... It's just not interesting. It's meant to encompass and cover 26 episodes (of the 1974 first season of the SBY series, I know because I'm a fan of it.) in a 2 hour time frame, which anyone knows is a pain and a real struggle to make a good movie from.

The film however tries to throw everything in along with the kitchen sink. And 2 hours is not enough time to cover the story from earth to Iskandar and back to Earth, and try to cover other minor character sub plots.

This is what hurts the film. Because they are trying to cram in as many characters and sub plots from the anime as we can. And it takes away from the film making it drag and be sorta boring. I do understand and realize that Space Battleship Yamato was a character driven series. and you had more moments on the bridge rather than in battles at times. But in 2 hours you can't really have everything from the series.

If the film had been cut down to a sorta trinity... Susumu Kodai, Okiti, and Yuki Mori, And focused on the 3 of them and the trip to Iscandar and back to earth, I think the film would have been tighter and pulled together better.

Because the way the film goes right now... It should have been broken up into either a trilogy or a quadriology. So you could tell more story and focus on more of the characters from the series.

As a Space Battleship Yamato fan... I couldn't recommend this to fans or people wanting just a fun film to watch. Look into the original series or even the remake "Space Battleship Yamato 2199. You'll enjoy those more than this.

I rate this one pretty high even though it's not official Macross Canon. It was made without Shoji Kawamori for Macross's 10th anniversary. When they finally were able to get Kawamori back to work on Macross Plus and 7, He was kind enough not to dismiss this thing's Canon and instead place the Canon in that of an alternate universe that takes place after the events in Macross: Do You Remember Love? Now quite literally this OVA is an almost carbon copy of "Macross: Do you Remember Love?" with the way it's story goes. Just without any of the characters we known and love (other than the Macross Ship.) Instead it gives us 3 new characters and a new Love Triangle to deal with ,and a new Race of Zentraedi controlled by Aliens known as the Marduk.

Are main characters consist of Hibiki, a reporter for SNN and wants to bypass the military to make ratings and get the truth out to people.

Silvie, An Ace pilot for UN Spacy and already caught up in the SNN news with a scandal.

Lastly Ishtar, an emulator for the Marduk who sings to control the Zentraedi soldiers.

The story is fun and quite detailed to it even without Shoji Kawamori's involvement but without going into to much detail, to say it is a carbon copy of "Do You Remember Love?" holds true to it.

Animation wise though it is quite nice and the animation style is that of early Ninties OVA's which have well detailed characters, backgrounds and sharp lines. And the Mecha's used in it are rather nice Though the UN Spacy mecha's are not a Kawamori design so design wise it's different and has a few flaws in it. But you get over it after you continue watching the OVA.

Music, while the music is a good complement to the OVA, it's nothing really that memorable like Macross Plus.

The voice acting in Japanese is quite good like most Japanese audio tracks are. Where as the English Track coming from the movie version... It's more meh than anything else.

Overall? Macross II Lovers again (OVA and film) is a fun anime. It is a carbon copy and not official Macross Canon. However If you look away from these and more consider it a parody of Macross, it's pretty fun and enjoyable.

Not everyone will like it, not even die hard Macross enthusiasts are happy about it. (because in the states, it gives the very bad impression that it look like the end of the Macross Franchise which isn't true at all since it continued on with Macross 7, Zero, and Frontier.)

I give the original OVA a lot of praise because it's a beautiful series and has a grand story. The movie version however...

I couldn't recommend this to anyone, even Macross fans like myself. The major problem with it is that it's a retelling of the events in Macross Plus.

And sadly it's not like Macross: Do You Remember Love?. This one still uses the exact same academy standard 4:3 aspect ratio like the OVA.

It has the same graphics, it has the same music. It's story should be relatively the same shouldn't it? It is but it's been altered a bit to retell the story in a different way. This wouldn't be a problem either... However they took the typical Quick method and just cut and spliced parts of the OVA together. This wouldn't be a big deal. However the problem with this is that it ruins the pacing and some scenes seem forced or to short, and then there are some scenes that are just randomly spliced in for god knows what reason to tell the story.

The story in this one is also relatively weaker compared to the OVA because the retelling just wasn't as good since it's a cut and splice job. And it literally feels like that. Not a full fledged movie. So because of this sadly... I have to give this movie a lower rating compared to the OVA.