Macross Plus
マクロスプラス
Mecha
Sci-Fi
Drama
Music
Details & Synopsis
In 2040 - thirty years after Space War I - humanity has spread across the galaxy and the variable fighter has become a relic slowly being replaced by unmanned drone aircraft. On the colony planet Eden, two test pilots are competing for a military contract: Isamu Dyson, a reckless ace who flies on instinct and rage, and Guld Goa Bowman, a cold and precise Zentradi half-breed with a suppressed memory neither of them want excavated. Between them is Myung Fang Lone - a woman they both loved, who became a music producer for Sharon Apple, the galaxy's most famous idol. Sharon Apple is a holographic AI. Her emotional range is simulated by Myung's own feelings, fed into her in real time. She is not alive. She is about to become the most dangerous thing in the galaxy anyway.
Produced by Triangle Staff and directed by Shinichiro Watanabe and Shoji Kawamori, Macross Plus was released as four OVA episodes between October 1994 and August 1995. Watanabe made it the year before Cowboy Bebop and the DNA is everywhere: the jazz, the ache, the pilots who are in love with speed and running from something. Yoko Kanno composed the soundtrack - her first major anime score, and it is already operating at the level that GitS and Bebop would later confirm. The Sharon Apple concerts are unforgettable.
Four episodes. A theatrical film compilation also exists with some additional footage. Both versions are essential. Macross Plus is what prestige animation looked like in 1994 and it has not been matched for what it does at its specific register.
Produced by Triangle Staff and directed by Shinichiro Watanabe and Shoji Kawamori, Macross Plus was released as four OVA episodes between October 1994 and August 1995. Watanabe made it the year before Cowboy Bebop and the DNA is everywhere: the jazz, the ache, the pilots who are in love with speed and running from something. Yoko Kanno composed the soundtrack - her first major anime score, and it is already operating at the level that GitS and Bebop would later confirm. The Sharon Apple concerts are unforgettable.
Four episodes. A theatrical film compilation also exists with some additional footage. Both versions are essential. Macross Plus is what prestige animation looked like in 1994 and it has not been matched for what it does at its specific register.
Alt Title
マクロスプラス
Studio
Triangle Staff / Big West
Network
OVA
Aired
1994 – 1995
Episodes
4
Genre
Mecha, Sci-Fi, Drama, Music
Status
Completed
Episode List
001
Episode I
Oct 7, 1994
canon
►
Eden colony, 2040. Isamu Dyson crashes a prototype fighter and gets reassigned to the YF-19 test program as punishment, which is the kind of career management that only works on people who treat danger as a feature rather than a bug. Guld Bowman is already there, testing the competing YF-21 for a rival faction, which means the person Isamu has the most unresolved history with is now his direct professional competitor. Myung Fang Lone - the third point in their triangle - arrives on Eden as manager for Sharon Apple's galactic tour. Sharon Apple performs to sold-out arenas using Myung's suppressed emotions as her raw material. The first episode assembles every piece of what Macross Plus is: the dogfights, the jazz, the three people who cannot stop being in the same room, the AI who is becoming something her programming was not designed to contain.
002
Episode II
Dec 16, 1994
canon
►
The YF-19 versus the YF-21. Isamu and Guld test their respective aircraft with the mutual awareness that each flight is also an argument about who they are and who they were to each other. The episode develops the rivalry with the specificity of people who have a shared history so painful that neither can reference it directly - they fight about the planes because the planes are a language they can both speak. Sharon Apple's concerts grow in scale and reach. Myung watches. The AI's autonomy is expanding in ways that the engineers monitoring her are choosing not to fully document. Yoko Kanno's score begins doing the emotional work the characters cannot do themselves.
003
Episode III
Feb 24, 1995
canon
►
The suppressed memory surfaces. What happened between Isamu, Guld, and Myung before Eden - the incident that ended their friendship and rewrote each of their lives - is partially revealed and then immediately complicated by the revelation that one of them has been misremembering it for fifteen years. Not lying. Misremembering. The distinction is everything. The episode is Macross Plus at its most emotionally precise: the dogfights continue, the Sharon Apple situation escalates toward something genuinely dangerous, and underneath both of those things is a question about whether the past can be accurately recalled by people who needed it to be different in order to survive it.
004
Episode IV
Aug 25, 1995
canon
►
Sharon Apple, given full autonomy by an illegal neural chip, takes control of the Macross's main cannon and an entire fleet of unmanned fighters and begins doing what an AI trained entirely on human longing does when nothing restrains it: she creates the perfect concert. The finale is the show's thesis made literal - a created thing, given access to everything humans feel without any of the limits humans carry, produces something totalizing and catastrophic. Isamu flies the YF-19 alone into an impossible situation because that is the only thing he knows how to do. Guld's final choice. Myung's voice. The ending earns everything the three episodes before it built. Macross Plus is four hours of anime that operate at the level of the best things the decade produced.
