Robotech - Criticism of Adaptation

Criticism of Adaptation

Robotech is often an extremely polarizing subject amongst anime fans. Some critics look down upon the show for its extensive edits to the source material (Westernizing character names, editing for content and chiefly, forging a connection between previously unrelated series), while supporters of the adaptation have pointed out that the weaving of three unrelated series into a contiguous whole necessarily required reworking, and that it helped to maintain a slow but continuous rise in the consumption of anime in the US.

Series writer/actor Greg Snegoff said in an interview on the now-defunct Shadow Chronicles News fansite that, "afterward, we received compliments from the Japanese who thought our dialogue and stories were better than the original". However, Animag magazine (issue 11) and Animerica magazine (issue 9, volume 4) reports that the staff of Macross at Studio Nue and Artland, such as the original story creator and mecha designer Shoji Kawamori and chief director Noboru Ishiguro, expressed their concern over the Robotech adaptation, and surprise at its differences.

In an effort to combine the storylines of three different Japanese series, certain characters underwent drastic role changes, with little explicit character development or plot exposition.

In addition, detractors of the show argue that the need for 65 episodes did not necessarily require a combined storyline, citing adaptations like Voltron which coupled two unrelated Japanese series without directly combining the storylines. However a year after this show ended, 20 additional Voltron episodes and a crossover special were created for American audiences by Toei Animation, after the first daily run of 104 episodes.

Shortly after completing Robotech, Macek would make the less-well-known Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years in a similar fashion by combining two Leiji Matsumoto series, Captain Harlock and Queen Millennia, together and altering the storyline significantly. In this case, however, the two anime series were spliced together in a manner where the stories of the characters occurred simultaneously, not one after the other.

In 2009, IGN ranked Robotech as the 34th greatest animated show of all time in their Top 100 list.