u/Mona-Doll

In Macross, the Zentradi are portrayed as a race that didn't occur naturally, but was deliberately developed by the Protoculture as its proxy warriors. To them, life without war is unthinkable. Furthermore, we learn from the original series and from later canonical works that the Zentradi destroyed their own creators and became essentially a rogue force that destroys everything in its path in its campaign against the Supervision Army. Has anyone ever raised the question of how Kawamori came up with this concept? Contemporary and later interviews I've read (translated) tended to focus on the original love triangle, the mecha, and on the contrast between culture and war. I'm not sure if anyone has asked him if there's any inspiration behind the Zentradi, or if this has ever been discussed among fans.

Six years ago, Matteo Watzky published an analysis of gender roles in Gundam and Macross, but I'm going to focus mostly on his take on the latter, and especially on how he analyses Misa Hayase.

Watzky argues that Macross tries to "teach" its main female characters, Minmay and Misa, how to be feminine, and reading it gave me the "oh nice, another guy speaking for women without them and instead of them." He may be well-intentioned, thinking his take on Macross is a feminist ally’s takedown of a “patriarchal” show, but how feminist is his post, really?

Methodologically, he's already been called out - he ignored already existing and available extended canon material that provides context on how Misa became the person we see in SDFM ep. 1 – and I mean Misa Hayase: White Reminiscences, which has been translated by Gubaba and became widely available to fans and scholars through his blog four years before he wrote this essay, as well as the audio drama Distantly Fading Memories, shere she laments her trauma- and grief-induced emotional restraint and struggles with the gendered expectations she has to put up with. He misinterpreted many scenes from SDFM and ignored others, then conflated the canonical TV series with DYRL?, which is an in-universe UN Spacy propaganda film like Pearl Harbor or Saving Private Ryan.

Worse still, for someone who postures as a huge feminist ally, he did something very patriarchal: he erased Misa's voice. In his diatribe, we don't see him quoting or paraphrasing Misa's words and thoughts. He didn't let her speak; instead, he spoke over her and instead of her.

He pretended that Misa's true character is the lonely workaholic we see in episodes 1-6, while her whole presence in Macross (White Reminiscences, SDFM, Distantly Fading Memories, FB2012) shows a young woman who had to throw herself into her work and duty because that was all she was left with - everything else was stolen from her before the series started. He ignored her double grief from the losses or Riber and her mother, the trauma of losing trust and confidence in her father because of his absence during these losses and because of his machinations to put her at the illegally low age of 14 in the military academy, exposing her to allegations of nepotism (and nepotism-related bullying, in fact). He also ignored that the show didn't reward others' bad behaviour towards her - especially Hikaru's.

His greatest indictment, though, at least in my eyes, is how he pretended episode 36 of SDFM never existed. This particular episode (among many others) demolishes his "Macross teaches Misa to be a stereotypical subservient wife in order to be validated." Misa never needed to be validated by anyone - she was a fan favourite already in 1983 because of her professional competence.

In fact, if anyone does any kind of validating of others, that’s Misa in episode 36 - the one I said Watzky chose to ignore. In this episode Global assigned Misa to be the Captain of humankind’s first ever long-range space emigration fleet. And why did Global do that? Because Misa, who’s always held serious command posts in SDFM, proved she’s competent and ethical. Unlike her father, who threw the Macross to the wolves, fabricated a hogwash story about the fate of the ship and South Ataria, and wouldn’t listen to her pleas for an effort at peaceful resolution with the Zentradi.

The scene at Hikaru's place is even more telling: Hikaru and Minmay were both lost - Hikaru was feeling suffocating, Minmay was emotionally and artistically drained. They were both about to abandon their dreams and who they were. And then came Misa, to announce she’d be leaving. In detailing the grand project of spreading humankind and culture, and protecting both from extinction, without killing, she shook them both to their cores - especially Hikaru, to whom she finally found the courage to confess, but only as a way of getting closure. In telling Minmay she loved her songs and urging her to take care of them, she validated Minmay, who was about to quit singing altogether. And Hikaru ran after her, because she gave him purpose and acceptance of his identity.

After the final battle, when Minmay walked up to Misa and Hikaru and asked Misa if she’d let her come on board her ship once she was able to sing her true songs, i.e. once she’d found her own voice, we saw another magnificent moment that Watzky conveniently ignored: Misa gladly accepted, delivering the legendary “together, we’ll let your songs echo through the galaxy” answer.

Misa didn’t “discover” some sort of femininity she didn’t have; she always had femininity, warmth, kindness, consideration for others in her. She suppressed her vulnerability to survive. The show has her regain contact with what she’d hidden under layers of armour, and it makes her the true emotional and moral driver. She pulled up both Hikaru and Minmay back up. The body language between the two women in FB2012 speaks volumes.

But no, Watzky had to cherry-pick, make a patchwork of canonical material and in-universe propaganda (again, DYRL? is to Macross what Pearl Harbor is to WW2 History), ignore or suppress a majority of scenes that don't fit his narrative, and put a gag in Misa's mouth so her own voice and thoughts, as we witnessed them in SDFM and other sources, won't be heard. Oh, and one last thing: he gave Gundam a wide berth by acknowledging sociopolitical norms of its time, but made no such concessions with Macross.