>>14004
Harlock, Queen Millenia and the like weren't the first wave of mecha in either Japan or America. That'd be the likes of Tetsujin-28 and Mazinger Z in Japan, and America had Johnny Sokko and his Flying robot and Gigantor. Probably something earlier and a lot more shows too, but that's another topic really. Macross was the third or fourth "wave" in mecha in Japan, depending how you want to count the generations. Localising didn't kill these shows, just the opposite. These shows got a lot more exposure because they were dubbed and localised. Hell, you have a precedent with Godzilla and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Godzilla did come to the US before it's localised version, and it did bad. After it was localised, it found much larger audience and became a huge cultural phenomena. Taking a work and altering it to be larger success takes money and time, and while it has become a negative term to certain groups on the Internet, the fact still is that without localisation we would not enjoy anime or anything else from other cultures the way we do nowadays.
The exact same goes for Robotech. Yes, it was mashed with two other shows, and yet it was ground breaking at the time. It's easy to point and laugh at Robotech thirty years later as a purist, yet everybody forgets that Harmony Gold wanted to keep the level of sophistication found in Macross with their localisation, which they did in most cases, despite the alterations. There was a very small cult following for japanimation at the time, and Robotech kicked the fandom to high gear.
And no, Macross, Mospeada and Southern Cross didn't become a generational story in Robotech because of lack of episodes needed for a season. They became that because Harmony Gold didn't want to go the home release way and opted for syndication, and there is a needed amount of episodes needed for a show to be syndicated, which has nothing to do with episode count in a season if the show is not running in syndication.
Just like with Voltron that came year before Robotech, localised changes like this, especially at the time, were made out of appreciation for the original work and intention to have it the largPost too long. Click here to view the full text.