The Geekdom Challenge

It's been a month since my last entry, and nobody else has
had anything to contribute in the world of geekdom. So I
figured I'll go ahead and take my turn again, and we'll see
if it inspires anything.

No true geek would be worth the title if he (or she) hadn't
had at least some contact with anime. There's plenty of it
out there, and it's become less and less 'out there'. Some
titles are even cult classics outside the anime
world...Akira comes to mind.

But in this case, I'm reducing myself to being a geek in
the world of geeks, because I'm not going to be writing
about any new, remarkable, awesome, or really cool anime
products. Nope, I'm going back to one of the oldest, most
widely-known anime series ever released--Robotech.

The second Robotech series, specifically--Southern Cross.
I just watched it over the weekend (yeah, the whole
series)...and I was struck on several occasions by what an
incredibly poor job of translating must have been done. I
had, at one time, the first episode of each of the Robotech
series, in the original Japanese with English
subtitles...and let me tell you, Carl Macek (the mad
scientist who decided to turn a late-adolescent adventure
series into a childrens' sci-fi cartoon) REALLY botched the
job in a lot of ways.

One big hint--if you ever take occasion to watch Southern
Cross, keep track of how often some characters' ranks
shift. The lead character, Dana Sterling, starts out as a
second lieutenant...but gets promoted within a few
episodes. However, throughout the series, she's often
referred to as a 2nd lieutenant again...and, if I recall
correctly, at one point she's also called a captain. Her
sergeant, Angelo Dante, regularly goes from Sergeant to
Corporal and back, sometimes even in the same episode.

There's also 'Supreme Commander' Leonard (that's really the
title by which he's called...) There's hints at a whole
subtext written into the story, about him trying to
maintain his position, but just when they start to get
intriguing, they're swept aside. That makes me think that
the subtext was something that got half-lost in
translation...or half-created. I say 'half-created'
because Leonard insists on carrying out an attack, at one
point, claiming it was the choice of the government.
Several other suicidal attacks later, he's still as
insistent, but there's no longer any mention of the
government. There's also never mention made from any of
his subordinates of complaining to the government about his
orders and how wasteful they are. I don't remember
(because we didn't meet Commander Leonard in the first
episode), but I wouldn't be surprised if, originally, he
was actually some kind of military governor. It would make
the blind acceptance of suicidal orders a lot easier to
understand--if he's the top authority, there's no one to
complain to. And if there's someone to complain to, you
can bet people would do it.

I still enjoyed the story--it's very simplistic, and a
little disjointed (the original series, all three, were
NOT, originally, intended to follow one after the other,
from what I've gathered...that's another Carl Macek present
to his American audience--so there are scenes which refer
to the earlier series, but don't make much sense in the
context). But I still enjoyed it. Sometime, I'm going to
start in on the third series...it's the only one I haven't
seen completely. It's been years since I watched the
others. But, hey...thank goodness for the Internet, eh?
Great way to chase down stuff like this.



Curtis Kidd
"Remember, the light at the end of the tunnel could be you!"