Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles is the long awaited sequel to the Robotech franchise that started in the 80s. Its release was met with very mixed fan reaction and reviews ranging from amazingly awesome to downright terrible.
I am a "late comer" to Robotech, having only discovered the classic series recently thanks to dvds and youtube. My first impression was not a good one and only season 3 of the original series made me not dismiss it as overly dramatic, hyped up anime trash.
Robotech the Shadow Chronicles was entertaining but inconsistent. It is very obvious that there were different directors and writers working on different parts of the movie.
Story - The good points of the story was that it was easy to follow. It lent itself well to the setting of the movie. However, the creators make the assumption that the viewer already has a level of knowledge concerning Robotech since little time is devoted to flesh out the backstory, and this would tend to alienate new viewers.
Characters - A very varied bunch of characters with well defined personalities. Only the main cast gets any significant development though. Most of the characters are likable and the dialogue interplay between them fits very nicely. Their character redesigns are very attractive and still keep the essence of the originals. On the other hand, once again the creators assume that the viewer should have prior Robotech knowledge and thus character back stories are just glossed over.
Animation - Inconsistent in both the 2D and 3D. For the most part, the 2D art is a good balance between detail and animation fluidity. Vibrant colours complement the attractive character designs and smooth character movements. However the few animation short cuts used can be quite obvious and jarring and the "zoom in to face close up" shot is slightly over used. In the 3D department, there are scenes of amazing quality, like The shot where Scott Bernard is flying is Alpha Fighter toward the invid Hive to look for Ariel. Another well done 3D scene was the Haydonite mecha invading Space Station Liberty. The quality in those is equal to that of high production value anime movies like Sky Crawlers. However, at the same time, you get really shoddy 3D work like the invid mecha and the human space cruisers.
Choreography - I do not know if it was just inexperience, or that the directors were trying to be true to the original.......but the fight choreography of the space battles looked like they came straight out of the original 80s anime. This is not really a good thing since this is a 2007 production. In the original anime, to save on budget, mecha would zip across screen locked in a set pose, enemies would disappear in gaudy balls of flame and space cruisers exchange volleys of fire while making no attempts at evasive maneuvers, basically on screen movement of mecha and spaceships were kept to a minimum. Robotech the Shadow Chronicles continues that tradition. Mecha are locked in a set pose as they zip about screen, there is minimal mecha part movement, spaceships do disappear in gaudy out-of-place looking balls of flame.
All in all, Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles is a good effort by the creators. Especially since for most of them, especially the directors, this is their debut production. Perhaps their only mistake was continuing the mistakes of the original series. The sometimes campy dialogue, derivative music(the original robotech theme seemed ripped from Superman), limited mecha animation and inconsistent production standards were all carried over from the original series. Of course, this would spark the "keeping true to the original" debate again among fans.
I look forward to seeing the next installment of the Robotech saga but I do hope that the creators learn from the mistakes of the original series and Shadow Chronicles.
