Macross II

January 16, 2005

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 160 min Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

No, Virginia, the moon isn’t made of cheese. Why not, you say? Because all the cheese in the universe is in Japan, that’s why!

I own several anime titles and I’ve viewed tons more. Vampire Hunter D, in fact, is one of my favorite movies. I say this up front because you might otherwise think I have a hatred of the stuff. But I digress…

Macross II: Super Dimensional Fortress sucks. It reeks. It blows chunks. And I can’t believe that I made it through all of this nearly 3 hour hunk of stinky cheese.

The story is the first of its many bad aspects. Imagine that our planet regularly comes under attack from a group of aliens called the Zentraedi (who look remarkably human). It’s no big deal, however, because the people of earth know the secret to defeating the Zentraedi each time and that secret is pop music.

Yes, you read that right. You see, the aliens are naturally very aggressive and they need some kind of influence exerted upon them in order to channel their emotions and actions. Enter the “Emulators,” a group of sexpot Zentraedi females who ride in big spaceships and sing a “song of war” for the soldiers. The people of earth found out long ago, however, that all you have to do to defeat the dreaded song of war was to broadcast your own pop music video in order to drown it out. Faced with no leadership, the Zentraedi soldiers are then easy pickings even with their impressive powered battle armor.

Enter Ishtar, a Zentraedi Emulator that is brought to earth after her fleet is defeated. Here she is sheltered by a news reporter named Hibiki who discovers that song can be used for things other than war and that music can be beautiful and soothing. Afterwards, with the aid of Hibiki and a crack pilot named Silvie, she endeavors to teach these lessons of love and beauty to her own people.

I won’t mention any more from this point since it would be giving away too much and, as well, it isn’t worth writing about in the first place.

Posted by Alex | Filed Under 1 Stars, DVD, Hiroko Kasahara, Isshin Chiba, PG-13, SciFi, Yumi Tôma