....:::: Robotech Universe - Information - Robotech

Robotech is a popular science fiction and anime franchise that was launched by an 85-episode animated television series about three successive extraterrestrial invasions of Earth. Within the context of the show, "Robotech" refers to Robotechnology, the advances in cience and technology that came about from studying an alien starship that crashed on a South Pacific island. Robotechnology made possible the creation of giant robotic mecha, or fighting machines, many of which were capable of transforming into vehicles (especially fighter planes) for greater battlefield mobility.

Robotech was one of the first anime released in the United States that largely managed to preserve the complexity and drama of its original Japanese source material. Produced by Harmony Gold USA, Inc. in association with Tatsunoko Prod. Co., Ltd., Robotech is a story adapted with edited content and revised dialogue from the animation of three different mecha anime series: The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada. Harmony Gold's cited reasoning for combining these unrelated series was its decision to market Macross for American weekday syndication television, which required a minimum of 65 episodes at the time (thirteen weeks at five episodes per week). Macross and the two other series each had fewer episodes than required since they originally aired in Japan as weekly series.
This combination resulted in a storyline that spans three generations as mankind must fight three destructive Robotech Wars in succession over a powerful energy source called "Protoculture": The First Robotech War (The Macross Saga) concerns humanity's battle against the giant Zentraedi warriors who are sent to earth to retrieve the wrecked starship that contains the last known source of Protoculture in the universe. In the Second Robotech War (The Robotech Masters), their rulers, the Robotech Masters, attempt to take up where the Zentraedi left off. In the Third Robotech War (The New Generation), the alien Invid have been attracted to earth by events that transpired at the end of the Second Robotech War, and it is up to returning elements of the Robotech Expeditionary Force to fight them off.

This movie also called Robotech: The Untold Story, this theatrical film was the first new Robotech adventure created after the premiere of the original series. It used footage from the Megazone 23 Part 1 OVA (Original Video Animation, or made-for-video animated feature) spliced with Southern Cross, and had only a tenuous link to the television series. According to interviews with Macek, it had originally been intended to be more of a straight dub of Megazone 23 with dialogue and music changes to reflect the Robotech universe. As originally conceived, it was set during the SDF-1's return from Pluto with the protagonist, a relation of Rick Hunter, finding out about the government's coverup of the SDF-1's fate and fighting to make the information known.
However, at the time Tatsunoko was involved in promoting their own Macross movie, Do You Remember Love, and insisted that Macek not use elements of the Macross story so as to avoid possible confusion. Also, the distributor, Cannon Films, felt there were "too many girls and not enough robots and guns" and didn't like Megazone's downer ending either. Thus, under duress, Macek rewrote the story to take place shortly before the Robotech Masters segment, cut segments of Southern Cross footage into it, and commissioned the animation studio Idol Co. to animate a new ending (which was later included on the laserdisc of Megazone 23 Part II). The new version involved the Robotech Masters sending an advance spy to steal the memory core of the SDF-1.
The movie disappeared in United States after a failed test run in Texas. In some foreign countries like Argentina however, it made a successful run in cinemas and it got a Spanish dub and a VHS release. Harmony Gold relinquished their license to Megazone 23 after director Carl Macek washed his hands of the project, so any home video release is unlikely except for a few VHS tapes that had been in limited circulation in Europe. Some animatics and other supplemental material were released as extras with ADV Films' Robotech DVD release. Academy released a comic adaptation of the movie in 1995 that bore scant resemblance to the actual movie. Additionally, elements from the movie were used in the plot of the Robotech novel The Masters' Gambit.

This aborted American-produced series would have followed the continuing adventures of Rick & Lisa Hunter and the rest of the Robotech Expedition during the events of The Robotech Masters and The New Generation. The animation studio Tatsunoko assigned the first script drafts to writers Sukehiro Tomita (Macross, Mospeada) and Hiroshi Oonogi (Macross), who focused on new characters instead of Rick and the other characters derived from the original Japanese Macross series. Director Carl Macek re-assigned the scriptwriting to American writers headed by script supervisor Kent Butterworth to refocus the project.
The title refers to an alien resistance movement the Expedition encounters, consisting of races subjugated by the Robotech Masters or Invid. The feature-length pilot is comprised of the first three (and only) episodes that were produced for the series. It introduces the SDF-3 along with its crew and gives an overview of their new mission. The most significant event is the wedding of Admiral Rick Hunter to Admiral Lisa Hayes. Being a sequel/spinoff to the combined series, The Sentinels featured characters from all three Robotech sagas, including the Hunters and the Sterlings from The Macross Saga, Dana Sterling and Bowie Grant from The Robotech Masters, and Jonathan Wolfe of The New Generation. Among the newly created characters were young cadet rivals Jack Baker and Karen Penn, whose early love-hate relationship mirrored Rick and Lisa's; Vince Grant, brother of Claudia and father of Bowie Grant; and the Regent, the villainous leader of the Invid. Dr. Emil Lang, a supporting character in the Macross Saga, would return as a main character. This series would notably feature a human villain in the form of T.R. Edwards who was introduced in Comico's Robotech: The Graphic Novel. According to director Carl Macek in Robotech Art 3: The Sentinels, the proposed series was canceled after the crash of the Dollar/Yen exchange rate and lack of support by toy partner Matchbox. Subsequent efforts to petition the completion of this series have gone nowhere, but the pilot was released on VHS by Robotech RPG publisher Palladium. The Sentinels is currently available on one of the Robotech Legacy Collection extras discs, now part of the Protoculture Collection, from ADV Films.
Subsequent to its cancellation, Harmony Gold provided the incomplete Sentinels source material for adaptation by several different parties, resulting in several slightly different versions of the same continuity. Author Jack McKinney completed a novelized version of the Sentinels storyline in paperback; the Waltrip brothers adapted these novels into comic books (though diverged from the novels as the storyline progressed) and are currently adapting some of the events covered in the last McKinney Sentinels novel into the Prelude to Shadow Chronicles miniseries. Macek's original outline and notes for the series that appeared in Robotech Art Three differed from these versions, sometimes substantially. Palladium Books also adapted the Sentinels material into its Robotech RPG II: The Sentinels roleplaying game.

Producer Carl Macek revealed ideas for another proposed series, Robotech III: The Odyssey, which would have created a circular storyline that would end where the original Robotech began in a giant 260-episode cycle to fill up all the weekdays in a year. After the failure of Sentinels, Odyssey never went into development, though its ideas were worked into the Jack McKinney novel The End of the Circle.

Fan publication Macross Life interviewed Harmony Gold executive Richard Firth in 1986, where he revealed that Robotech creator Carl Macek had "plans through ROBOTECH 5 which would give us an episode for each day of the year for a year and a half." He also said that these two intallments would have brought the series to 285 episodes. Regarding the plot, Firth mentioned a "retired Commodore Hunter, whom ever that may be, could very well be speaking at the graduation of the later day cadets or whatever, and they ask him to tell them the story all over again: it comes back [to the first episode of the series]."
It should be noted that Carl Macek himself has never mentioned Robotech IV or V in any interviews or writings.

Main article: Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles
In 2002, Tommy Yune announced development on a new sequel which was not named until 2004 as Robotech: Shadow Force. The storyline is supposedly a direct continuation of the unresolved ending of the original series. The overall title of the story arc was soon changed to Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. From late 2004, Harmony Gold representatives have held panels at anime conventions, showing production art and CG animatic previews. The first trailers with finished animation were finally shown at Anime Expo and Comic-Con 2005. While originally announced as having a 2005 release date, it was February 2006 before Kevin McKeever, Operations Coordinator at Robotech.com/Harmony Gold, was able to confirm that the 90-minute pilot movie had been completed. No distributor for any medium, including DVD or television, has yet been announced by Harmony Gold; according to a report from the February 2005 New York Comic-Con, McKeever stated in a panel that earlier discussions with a potential distributor had failed due to contract terms that Harmony Gold considered unfavorable.
A thirty-second public service announcement for the United Nations, featuring Scott Bernard and Marlene, was animated during the production of The Shadow Chronicles. Although it did not use the original voice actors and the dialogue was somewhat out-of-character, it nonetheless marked the first fully-completed Robotech footage in twenty years.