ESSAYS
Refutation 3000
By Khyron_Prime...22 May 2004
When most fans look at Robotech 3000, they see a failure--a creation gone horribly wrong that they gleefully view as a project that never came to fruition. There have been many arguements on their parts, and there are some that I agree with, and others that I simply cannot understand.
Arguement Number One:
"The series is set too far in the future."
When the people involved with Robotech 3000 first announced that the setting would be around the year 3000, most fans immediately cried foul: The series, that far into the future, could not possibly relate to the original serieses and characters that they knew and loved. Nine-hundred years in the future IS quite a jump, but with the storyline proposed, it may have not otherwise worked.
Consideration leads to one fact: That Carl Macek, the show's designer, DID NOT want to directly connect a series with the original character or story--he wanted a fresh start, and if it meant a quantum leap in time to bring the story some space, then so be it. Whether or not this is fact has not been confirmed by Mr. Macek, but one cannot help but consider the similar events that surrounded the development of the series "Macross II: Lovers Again," in which the basics of the original series were maintained, but a distance in time allowed the writers and designers a greater range of creative control, uninhibited by grasping into the original series. With this, totally new characters, mecha, planets, and alien races, etc. can be introduced without need for elaborate explanation as to relativity to previous events...long ago previous events.
And so, Robotech 3000's chronological setting should be seen as a strength, rather than a weakness, as it would be free to develop new stories, new characters--a whole new world that, though necessarily related to the events of the past, is able to function without fear of compromises made in order to suit the needs of an aged fandom, thereby creating a story with potential to attract all-new fans.
A well-known example of this technique is of Shoji Kawamori's masterpiece series, "Macross Plus." Well-known for his work on previous Macross serieses, Kawamori created an entirely-new story that held no outstanding bonds to past works while maintaining a distinct level of relationship through the designs used in the series. As a result of his choice to distance the new series as completely separate from the original, Macross Plus garnered the hearts of many who were not previously fans of Macross, while offering a world which was relative to the original and excitingly-advanced for long-time fans to enjoy.
At its heart, Robotech 3000 is pure Robotech. However, its distance into the future makes it also an excellent stand-alone platform. In the end, 3000's jump into the future of tme and space is something that makes it unique--a completely new, exciting, original entry into the Robotech universe.
Arguement Two:
"Robotech 3000 is poor because it is made of computer-generated artwork."
Judging a book by its cover is a deadly pitfall to step into, and yet, it is one that most fans have used to build a dislike for Robotech 3000 before even paying it any attention. The design models and production footage relative to the series was produced using computer-generated (CG) animation, which is in direct conflict with the presentation of the original Robotech series, which was created using traditional hand-drawn cel animation. As a result, those who loved Robotech (and subsequently, all things about it) were immediately displeased with the decision for a new Robotech series to be produced using CG animation.
However, it should be obvious that this kind of denouncement of a series based, in whole or in part, upon its visual presentation is an exercise of a very personal opinion. Also, to distance Robotech 3000 as a whole from the original series based upon the animation style alone is a ludicrous idea, as the serieses are intertwined by their contents, and nothing else. To place this into perspective: The Robotech novels are not separated from their respective animation due to the fact that they are in printed word format, but are separated based upon their internal content. And so, only a consideration of Robotech 3000's content should be valid basis for the level of relativity to the original series.
It must be noted that a widespread opinion almost-automatically pits opponents against 3000's animation, and that is animation fans' general dislike for computer generated artwork. Again, this is, of course, a matter of opinion and personal choice rather than a judgement of the series as a whole, and should provide enough reason to ignore this arguement altogether, as it forms no logical arguement of quality. Because of the animation-type, Robotech 3000 can be said to be different from the original series, but if this method were the ultimate judgement, then not a single novel or comic book of Robotech should have ever been opened under the pretenses of relativity to the original series due to the fact that their formats invalidated all relationships with the name "Robotech." However, this is not the case, and Robotech 3000 is only that: A different way to present Robotech.
Arguement Three:
"Robotech 3000 was never completed because it was so bad."
Indeed, Robotech 3000 stands as a series that was never completed and presented on television as was intended. Early in the production process, the project was halted due to a number of reasons, including poor response from test viewers, a tentatively-funding production source, and the dissolving of the company in charge of animation. As a result of these factors (as well as others) the series was never completed for television viewing.
Opponents of the Robotech 3000 project act today as the test viewers before them: The video given to their viewing presents but a small clip from the finished animation footage, and they find that they dislike what this three-minute video presents in terms of their Robotech fandom. After viewing, many concur with those sentiments: That what Robotech 3000 has shown as an offer is not of an acceptable quality story-wise. From there, the series as a whole is insulted and denounced on the basis of that brief set of footage.
As a comparison, let us take a look at a three-minute clip taken from the middle of the original Robotech series: Scott Bernard is a spaceman who crash-landed on planet Earth. A boy named Rand is searching through the ruins of a spaceship when he is attacked by some giant robots with a single red eye in the middle of each of their foreheads. They swipe using weird single-taloned claws, but Bernard comes to the rescue in his motorcycle (which can also turn into a space-suit! huh?). The robots are scared away, and Bernard struggles to ask Rand if he knows about the soldiers on Planet Earth.--And that's the end of the clip; that's all that a viewer could know about the series: A spaceman and his flying motorcycle.
Is it any wonder, then, that people do not like Robotech 3000 if their only knowledge of the series is of the limited information that has been given to them? Like 3000, opinions of the aforementioned clip from Robotech would most-likely be poor--a flying motorcycle and such weird-looking enemy robots? Why are the robots attacking that boy?--It should be seen as idiotic to believe that a three-minute video, taken from the middle of the plot, should be representative of the entire saga.
Thus, the notion that Robotech 3000 did not reach completion due to its poor reports should be reconsidered. The failure of the series to reach airwaves was not due to a lack of plot, poor development planning, animation, or any other aspect which could be considered "poor," as the entire story of the characters within the series was already written as a fully-developed plot within the given time multiplied over the hundreds. For the series to fail due to this is not a dead-end in which television shows are always destroyed upon; there were factors that led to the collapse of Robotech 3000's production that were beyond the control of those involved in development, and due majorly to these cases of mishappenings, the show was never completed.
