THE GREAT SOUTHERN CROSS REWATCH 23 – GENESIS

SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 23: GENESIS

ICONIC SCENE: Who is she? It’s a mystery.

BROADCAST DATE: September 30, 1984

1. Well, here we are, the final episode. Instead of doing a straight summary, I’d rather just try to puzzle out the questions left unresolved in the plot. First off, I’m still wondering where they were going with that whole part about Seifriet using Musica as human shield and her apparently getting killed. And yet, Musica has never brought it up at all. It doesn’t seem like the Zor have the ability to resurrect people, so maybe the current Musica is a clone of a previous one? I have no idea.

The other big one is what happens at the end of the episode, but I’ll get to that later on.

2. The Zor talk about casting off everyone with a “bio-index” lower than 70%. The role of bio-energy has been somewhat ambiguous throughout the series. Do the Zor need it to survive, or does it just keep their emotions suppressed? There’s been evidence for both purposes throughout the show. My guess is that they can live without it, or else Musica and her sister, as well as all the other surviving Zor, are doomed.

3. Leon is planning to fight back against the Zor (and there are many nice, well-drawn shots of armored soldiers standing at attention), and it seems clear that he knows that the Southern Cross forces will lose, and presumably get wiped out. But… dude… you’re not even evacuating the civilians? At this point, it almost seems like he WANTS everyone to die. I mean, yeah, the Zor only gave him 48 hours, but that’s enough time to get A LOT of people off-world. And their space fleet is still pretty large. They could’ve made it, most likely.

4. The Zor lords talk about the flower less as something they need for survival, and more as their key to eternal life. When Seifriet and Jeanne question them, they say that they have a symbiotic relationship with the flower, seemingly, as long as the flower exists, they exist, and vice-versa. Or something. We don’t get much more than that, because Seifriet shoots one of the Zor lords and Jeanne grabs a hydroponic capsule of the flowers and has a psychedelic trip. First, she finds herself in a field of the Protozor flowers, and sees a vision of herself as a trio. She throws away the flowers, which causes the triplets to vanish. Then a little girl, alone, but dressed like a Zor, runs up and hands her some flowers, and then runs back to her parents, without saying a word.

So what does this mean? The first part is easy to interpret: the flowers are inviting her to become like the Zor, and she rejects them. But who’s the little girl? My best guess is that since, as I said, she’s dressed like a Zor but isn’t a triplet, she represents the way forward for the Zor and humanity — unified, but as individuals.

5. SO SATISFYING! (I mean, seeing Leon get blown away, not the whole city. Wish we got to see his face as the explosion hit him, though…)

6. Musica’s sister Muselle gets shot and killed, as I suppose had to happen. The upshot at the end is that only the “Unfettered” have chosen to live on their own. If all three of the sisters survived, then they wouldn’t be Unfettered, right?

7. And then Seifriet throws Jeanne into an escape capsule and blows up the Zor mothership over the three mounds, which are now open. He talks to himself about how he wanted to hear Jeanne laugh just one more time, and… uh… it’s a little late to decide that you DO care about her.

Also… what happened to the other motherships? Weren’t there at least a half-dozen of them…?

8. But yeah, as the ship blows up, we see wreckage from it hit the fields of flowers, blowing them up. Shredded petals float through the sky, looking (I’m sure deliberately) a lot like cherry blossoms.

Now, I first watched Southern Cross properly about ten years ago. In the ten years before that, I’d seen people talk about the ending on various message boards, saying that it was a dark ending, where everyone on Glorie is turned into Zor. The first time I watched the show, that wasn’t the impression I got, and it still isn’t.

First, it’s not clear HOW the flowers turn people into Zor. All of the times we see the Zor use the flowers, they’re in glass capsules, and it looks like the “essence” or something gets extracted from them. It isn’t at all clear that the flowers could change people just on their own. Second, we know what the spores from the flowers look like: a breeze full of yellow specks. We don’t see any spores in the final scenes of this episode. Third, the spores on their own OBVIOUSLY don’t turn humans into Zor, since pretty much the entire main cast inhaled them a couple of episodes ago, and it didn’t do anything to them except make them choke a little. So no, I think the flowers are destroyed, the petals are just meant to look like cherry blossoms, and any talk of the spores spreading and turning everyone into Zor is just a reading too influenced by Robotech.

And they don’t look terribly alarmed, do they?

Even the flower at the end seems like a symbol of “beauty growing out of the wreckage.”

9. And THEN there’s the part that never even got brought up in the show, but got revealed in English for the first time when the AD Vision DVD box set of the series came out. In the booklet, there’s a section entitled “Southern Cross Keywords,” and there, in the section about the Zor, it says, “They are, in truth, the mutant descendants of Earthlings, who were transported to Gloire [sic] due to a distortion in space-time and merged with the sentient life form, The Zor, in the Eridanus System, adapting to that land due to this mixture of blood.” That’s a pretty intriguing concept, isn’t it? And presumably would’ve been the final twist if the show hadn’t been cut off early. As it is, there really isn’t any foreshadowing of it in the series itself.

10. Still, this is a good final episode. If I didn’t know that the show had been canceled, I might not have realized it just by watching it, especially if I’d forgotten about the Seifriet/Musica stuff. But really, most of the loose ends are wrapped up in a pretty satisfying way.

As for the show as a whole, though… Well, it’s got some great ideas (mostly concerning Zor society, and especially the design of the interior of their ships), but I’m not sure the show got far enough to reveal them terribly well. Also it’s got a lot of fun, interesting characters, but they seem better served in the more lighthearted moments of the series (like the hospital caper). The moments of grim drama generally seem less convincing and DEFINITELY (for me, at least) less engaging.

So is it an undiscovered gem? For some people perhaps, but not for me. I like it fine, but it never really wowed me.

However, it IS better than L-Gaim.

FINAL. And with this episode, the Super Dimension Series, which started nearly two years earlier trying to carve out a Sunday Afternoon “Anime Hour” limped to a close, and anime was never seen on broadcast TV at 2:00 PM on Sundays ever again. The following week, October 4th, in Southern Cross’s spot, a game show (“Nihon Rettou Juudan Quiz,” that is, “Traveling Across the Islands of Japan Quiz,” a show where guests had to answer trivia questions about all the different Japanese prefectures) debuted.

(Southern Cross, of course, went on to bigger fame outside of Japan than it’s ever had inside, but that’s a whole other story. It’s still not especially well-loved, though, except by a fervent few.)

And that’s officially the end of the “Super Dimension Series.”

UNOFFICIALLY, however, there’s still a little ways to go, so I’ll be turning there soon…

THE GREAT SOUTHERN CROSS REWATCH 22 – CATASTROPHE

SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 22: CATASTROPHE

ICONIC SCENE: Sweat, baldy, sweat.

BROADCAST DATE: September 23, 1984

1. Lana is finally won over by the sight of Bowie and Musica’s love for each other, and decides not to arrest Musica. Seifriet says that this may be their only chance to figure out the flowers’ connection to the Zor… even though Bowie kinda figured it out at the end of the previous episode…

2. Among the Zor, things are bad. They announce that the “Unfettered” are increasing by 50%, which seems like an antiseptic way to say that lots of Zor are dying, and leaving behind their “twins.” They also plan to send the Unfettered down to Glorie, although it’s not exactly clear why yet.

3. Emerson’s Aluce fleet is getting wiped out (again), and he contacts Leon for reinforcements. Leon’s not terribly sympathetic, saying that he was waiting for Emerson’s fleet to make an opening for the Glorie forces to come in. And then, just to be a REAL dick, he informs Emerson that Bowie’s gone AWOL with a Zor girl.

4. Then the Zor frigates land in the city on Glorie, and the Unfettered, hopped up on painkillers, come out as suicide foot soldiers.

Weirdly, the city already seems quite devastated (with LOTS of fleeing refugees), although it really shouldn’t, unless the battle’s been going on a LOT longer than it seems.

5. As they start blowing up whole towns with incredibly powerful beams (that seem to act like nuclear bombs), the Zor contact Leon with an ultimatum: leave the planet in 38 hours, or get annihilated.

Leon says (for the VERY FIRST TIME) that he wants to negotiate, but dude… ya gotta know that it’s way too late for that. The Zor aren’t putting up with this shit anymore.

6. Emerson plans to go down with his ship, but Marie and Brown rescue him… although they get captured by the Zor immediately afterward.

7. A Zor frigate approaches the three mounds, and Seifriet wards them off by saying he’ll destroy all the flowers if they don’t leave. After they go, Jeanne asks him why he did that, and he says it was all for Musica, but he’s obviously lying.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate Seifriet? What started as a mild antipathy early on has swelled into full-blown contempt.

8. The Zor tell Emerson to recommend a total surrender… odd, since they already gave their ultimatum to Leon and there really wasn’t much he could do against it.

It also appears that, far from being a big secret, virtually everyone, Emerson, even Brown and Marie, knows about the Protozor flowers.

So the Zor set up a hostage exchange with Seifriet, but neither side really intends to keep their word. The Zor plan to kill everyone who knows about the flowers, and Seifriet plans to kill the Zor.

9. And sure enough, the hostage deal turns sour, and Emerson is shot protecting Bowie. Honestly, I’m kind of surprised he lasted this long.

Also, we get to see Lana in her GMP armor for the first time. It’s rather infamous among fans because of the model kit, which featured, for some reason, a “topless” version underneath the chest plate.

And, at the very end, Seifriet is back in his red Bioroid. Why do they keep leaving it places where he can easily find and access it…?

10. Lots of stuff happens in this episode, but there are precious few answers. If I were watching this for the first time, this would be one of those penultimate anime episodes that would leave me wondering, “Can they really wrap up everything in just one more episode?” Well, I guess we’ll see…

It is nice (although maybe “nice” is the wrong word…) to see Jeanne realize that her love story with Seifriet was nothing of the sort to him, and he’s completely obsessed with getting revenge on the Zor. Poor Jeanne… none of the guys she likes are ever that into her.

THE GREAT SOUTHERN CROSS REWATCH 21 – NIGHTMARE

SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 21: NIGHTMARE

ICONIC SCENE: “Being happy is such a wonderful feeling!”

BROADCAST DATE: September 16, 1984

1. Jeanne confronts Seifriet for ratting out Musica, and calls him a coward. He agrees, since he shouldn’t even have survived. This is enough, puzzlingly, to get Andrzej on his side, and he chides Jeanne for saying such mean things to Seifriet in his current state. So weird… I mean, at the end of last episode, Andrzej punched Seifriet in the face…

2. Bowie’s kind of inept at getting Musica to safety. First off, it’s raining pretty hard, and they’re on foot. She falls down, so he finds a conveniently-placed warehouse and steals a Flash Clapper hoverbike. However, the soldiers see him and give chase. He almost immediately accidentally crashes the bike (which at least causes the soldiers to drive right past them).

3. There’s a very nicely-animated sequence as Musica’s song is playing and the sun comes up and the rain stops. It’s not Miyazaki-level, but it’s great for a TV series like this.

4. The 15th go out to search for Bowie and Musica, although Jeanne says they’ll take the “slow-and-slow” approach and not try too hard to find them. However, Seifriet is watching from the barracks with a dark look on his face, and Lana is covertly following them.

5. The Zor suddenly realized that their supply of bio-energy is about to run out, so they immediately decide on an all-out attack on Glorie. Meanwhile, Leon decides that the Southern Cross Army will also launch an all-out attack on the Zor. This all, by the way, is one of the clearest indications that this episode was written AFTER the staff knew the show would be canceled prematurely. This is all very obviously setting up the finale of the series.

6. Rushing to a conclusion they show may be, but I appreciate that they still throw in some artful touches. Along with the sunrise mentioned above, I really like the scene of Bowie and Musica riding on the (now repaired) Flash Clapper while pretty piano music plays, contrasting that with the military getting ready to attack the Zor.

7. Bowie takes Musica to the three mounds, and as they enter, Bowie gets affected by spores from the flowers (Musica, however, isn’t). Bowie remembers a fragment of the Zor song, talking about “flowers of light,” and he and Musica realize that (SHOCKER) these flowers are the flowers in the song.

8. The rest of the 15th arrives soon after, with Lana and Seifriet not far behind them. Seifriet breaks downs and remembers that the flowers were what the Zor used to turn him into a biohuman, and Bowie speculates that they might be the “source of life” for the Zor… and he may be more right than he realizes.

9. As Lana prepares to arrest Musica, Emerson launches his attack from Aluce Base. It’s very obvious that he expects to die in this assault.

10. You’d think, given that the staff at this point must have known that they have to wrap things up more quickly than they’d planned, that this episode would feel rushed. And yes, the plot developments of the sudden massive attacks launched certainly do, but as I’ve pointed out, there are still a few nice touches here and there, and it doesn’t feel much different than the previous episodes, except in that the show makes sure we know that the story is drawing to a close.

THE GREAT SOUTHERN CROSS REWATCH 20 – DAYDREAM

SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 20: DAYDREAM

ICONIC SCENE: “Private Jack”

BROADCAST DATE: September 9, 1984

1. As we approach the end of the series, my question is, when did the staff know that the show was going to be canceled and start rewriting the episodes to bring it to a conclusion? If we take the 39-episode figure as fact, then this episode would’ve been halfway through the series, not four episodes from the end.

2. Before the 15th arrives back to Glorie, they talk about how they need to slip Musica past the troops, so that she won’t be captured and interrogated. Which seems like a pretty damn big violation of duty. But even Andrzej goes along with the idea. He wouldn’t have done that ten episodes ago.

3. The plan is more hijinx. There’s a soldier in full armor, with helmet, on a stretcher that they’re carrying. Lana sees the soldier, gets suspicious, and demands that the helmet be removed. Turns out it’s Charles, who says he sprained his ankle. But one of the soldiers carrying the stretcher is Musica, wearing armor and a comically huge pair of sunglasses.

Later, Lana checks, and discovers that the REAL Jack was killed at Aluce Base.

4. Musica tries on some human clothes, and wonders what her sisters would think. As we switch to them, it’s pretty clear they’re not thinking about clothes at all, since they’re being taken to the place where the people who’ve lost one of their triplets go, now identified as the center for the “Unfettered.”

To those of us who speak English, the meaning of “Unfettered” in this context is pretty clear, but since they use the actual English word “unfettered,” I wonder if Japanese viewers were confused at all.

5. Significantly, this growth in self-awareness among the Zor is described as something especially affecting the young. Which brings back a theme that I talked about a bit in the Macross Rewatch, that of the early ‘80s being the real flowering of the “Anime Generation,” the people in their teens and twenties who had grown up with anime and were taking over production, trying to steer it into a new, more artistic, and more sophisticated direction (and also more graphically violent and sexual, but that came slightly later). But my point is that anime, throughout the ‘80s, was a youth movement, made by young people for young people, and a sense of youthful rebellion against the status quo is always present in the best anime of the era (and, I’d argue, before and afterwards, even today).

(And of course, anime is still made for young people, which is why I find complaints by middle-aged men about how all the main characters in anime are always teenagers to be kind of funny and kind of second-hand embarrassing. I might write more about this later…)

6. The Zor leaders also mention something for the first time: the Protozor. It’s fairly clear that they’re talking about the flowers that stung Jeanne back in Episode 13. Did the staff crib the name from Macross’s “Protoculture”? I have to believe they did. It seems like an unbelievable coincidence otherwise, unless “proto” was just a fashionable term in Japan at the time.

7. The 15th goes to see Bowie play piano, and Charles tells Musica not to worry about her sisters… as if he’s one to talk about caring about anyone else.

Then Lana arrives, pretending to be friendly, but deeply suspicious once she’s introduced to Musica (as “a musician friend of Bowie’s from Hartsville City”… which I think is the first indication we’ve had that there’s more than one city on Glorie). Her probing questions are interrupted when Bowie gets a standing ovation, and Jeanne and Charles shout for an encore. Bowie starts playing a piano version of Musica’s harp song. Which makes Musica panic, and Seifriet get really aggro and defensive.

They make a quick exit, but Andrzej and Seifriet get into an argument/punch-up, and I can’t really figure out what Seifriet’s problem is. He says he should’ve been left to die, and Andrzej (while socking him in the jaw) disagrees. Seifriet finally runs off, saying he’ll do things his own way, and that he won’t be manipulated again.

So he immediately calls Lana and tells her about Musica.

THIS GUY. THIS FUCKING GUY.

Also, what a strange inscription to have in a piano bar…

8. Musica sings a song about “flowers of light” on Glorie, and Jeanne, overhearing, realizes that the flowers in the three mounds are probably what her lyrics are about. Then Lana and her men show up. Jeanne distracts them long enough for Bowie and Musica to escape.

Seifriet, the whole time, stands in the hallway with a smug smile on his face. If there’s a reason for his actions, I don’t understand it.

9. Finally, we see Bowie and Musica, on foot, running to the three mounds…

10. I asked at the outset when the writers realized they had to wrap up the story far earlier than they’d planned. The last time I watched this show, about ten years ago, I thought it was Episode 21. This time, I think it’s this episode, since the mystery of the Protozor is front and center here, and is obviously set up to be resolved as soon as Musica sees the flowers. Also, Seifriet’s inexplicable actions hasten this development. So yeah, this was probably the one that set the final act in motion.

THE GREAT SOUTHERN CROSS REWATCH 19 – CRISIS

SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 19: CRISIS

ICONIC SCENE: Looks like he’s having a crisis, all right…

BROADCAST DATE: September 2, 1984

1. We start off seeing the hull of the mothership being repaired by Bioroids, which seems strange, since before, the motherships always repaired themselves pretty well. Maybe running low on bioenergy is affecting the ship as well…?

2. And Seifriet’s apparently gone missing. Ominous news for the Zor, since the last time we saw him, he was trying to fight off their mind control. Based on how Seifriet acts, the Zor will decide what to do with Jeanne and the others: if he reverts to the mind control, the Zor will use them as Bioroid pilots. If he fights off the mind control, they’ll execute them.

3. Meanwhile, Musica can’t get Bowie off her mind, and her sisters are worried. I can’t blame them, since, as we saw last episode, if one of a trio gets erratic, then the others must suffer as well.

4. Then we see Seifriet himself, looking the worse for wear, wandering around and having hallucinations of Glorie and Jeanne. Musica briefly rescues him and it’s clear that his memory has been messed with even more, but as she starts to get through to him, he’s shot from behind with a stun bolt, and is taken away to be executed, along with Jeanne and her team.

5. I love Jeanne’s response when the Zor come to execute them: “It’s unfashionable these days to execute compliant POWs.”

They don’t get taken very far, though, when Musica rescues them, as well. This episode, she’s quite the busiest that we’ve ever seen her.

6. Before executing Seifriet, they extract his memories, and Jeanne times the rescue to when all of his memories as a bio human have been taken out, so theoretically, he should be back to normal and free of the Zors’ mind control.

There’s another chase on a hovercar through the mothership’s corridors, and although it doesn’t get brought up again, it’s easy to see why the amusement park right from Episode 12 would trigger memories of the Zor.

7. They get to the control center, and then an alarm sounds: Emerson is attacking. The 15th is shocked that Emerson would attack the mothership when his son is still inside, but couldn’t he be trying to create a commotion that would allow them to escape…?

8. Musica tells Seifriet that he was used by the Zor as a spy, and he runs off and grabs his old Bioroid. Jeanne and the others escape (via Louis implausibly fixing up some scrapped Bioroid biovers) and escape while Seifriet stays behind to blow up the control center. For a moment, it looks like he sacrificed himself, but Andrzej has gone back and rescued him. Yay…?

9. The Zor citizens all managed to evacuate before the ship blew up, but we see Musica’s sisters, and we already KNOW that they’re in big trouble, because one of the trio is gone. Musica, with Bowie, doesn’t seem to care much.

10. The art and animation wasn’t quite as good as usual in this episode (except for one EXCELLENT scene in the hovercar), and there are a number of recycled scenes and still shots. But again, I like the look into the Zor society. A race of trios who act in concert with each other is, I think, a pretty original concept, and the show does its best to sell us on it.

THE GREAT SOUTHERN CROSS REWATCH 18 – WONDERLAND

SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 18: WONDERLAND

ICONIC SCENE: Weird trees…

BROADCAST DATE: August 26, 1984

1. Jeanne stands in front of the red Bioroid, saying, “Seifriet, it’s me, Jeanne!” and remarkably, it actually seems to have some effect, as Seifriet tries to fight the mind control. Finally the Zor cause him to retreat, and Jeanne and Andrzej meet up with the only survivors of the infiltration mission, who just happen to be Bowie, Charles, and Louis.

2. Andrzej says that there will be “zorozoro” Zor soldiers (in the subs as “Zillions of Zor”). That is, the place will be swarming with them. And Jeanne chastises him for making such a stupid pun.

Anyway, they decide to leave the Spartases behind and go on foot to try to find the command center.

3. And, unlike the previous infiltration, which was straight out of a horror movie, it’s clear that this one’s going to have a lot more humor in it. In order to try to blend in, Charles makes a pass at a trio of Zor girls. They think something’s wrong with him, and try to strip him and give him a massage as a stopgap before taking him to the medical center.

Jeanne tries to rescue him, but they’re quickly found out, and go on the run from the Zor soldiers, splitting up as they do so.

4. Charles and Andrzej hide, and then ambush the soldiers chasing them. It’s a strange scene. Charles and Andrzej are drawn quite comically, but when they shoot the soldiers, it’s brief but surprisingly brutal.

5. Jeanne goes ahead of Louis and Bowie, and walks into a pink room with three beds. Completely nonsensically, she decides it’s time for a nap. Upon lying down, sensors beep, and she gets surrounded by some kind of energy field. Bowie turns it off quickly enough, but even for Jeanne, this is really irresponsible.

They have to hide while some Zor women come in, and take off all their clothes in order to go “get sterilized,” which I have to assume is like the Zor version of a shower. So when they leave, Jeanne, Bowie, and Louis take their clothes and run.

6. In trying to escape some guards, they end up in what looks like a restaurant, but turns out to be a “stabilization center.” They have to drink some mysterious liquid, then get put in one sealed container and scanned, and then have to drink another mysterious liquid and then put in another sealed container. The three of them are worried, but go along with it.

In other words, they seem to be putting themselves into a lot of situations where they could get trapped extremely easily, without a shred of plausibility.

7. Still, the manage to get away, and Jeanne ends up going on a fun-house ride on first a floating automated car, and then on a conveniently-placed slide, and crashes into a room where she meets a handsome and kind Zor dude, named Ratel.

He’s in the area where they keep the people who’ve lost one of their trio, with the implication that they’re kind of a drag on society.

8. This part’s important: she gets really angry that the Zor here have basically given up, and starts yelling at them, which draws the attention of the guards. Ratel tells her to run, and she does… but she grabs him as well.

9. Bowie gets reunited with Musica, and then everything kinda happens at once. First Bowie gets captured. The Louis finds a central computer and plans to destroy it, be it attacks him and he gets captured. Charles and Andrzej find the command center, but they get pinned down and captured. And Jeanne and Ratel find some rather dismal parts of the mothership (where those that show too much emotion are kept to have their organs harvested) and then Ratel distracts the guards so that Jeanne can get away. He’s killed, and she’s captured anyway. So he died for nothing, and it’s Jeanne’s fault for taking him with her.

(Oh, and the guards almost kill a baby, and don’t seem to care.)

10. So yes, everyone’s captured in a cell together. TO BE CONTINUED…Regardless how much I complain about Jeanne’s stupid decisions (whether or not they get people killed), this is still one of the best episodes of the series. It’s set entirely within the Zor mothership, and I find the designs for the Zor architecture and technology to be fascinating, and there’s always cool and creepy backgrounds to look at. I said before that one of the problems with the show is that the Glorie landscape is pretty bland and uninteresting, but this makes up for it by being really interesting to watch, start to finish.

NUMBER OF SHOWER SCENES IN THE SHOW SO FAR: Well, the three Zor girls in the first half are, as I said, probably going to take a shower of some kind, but we don’t actually see it, so I guess still 5.

THE GREAT SOUTHERN CROSS REWATCH 17 – BIOPSYCHERS

SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 17: BIOPSYCHERS

ICONIC SCENE: Space Spartas!

BROADCAST DATE: August 19, 1984

1. First we see Emerson giving a stirring speech to Task Force Three, launching from Aluce Base, and then we switch to the 15th, looking VERY bored while waiting to launch.

An announcement says that Task Force Three has already launched, and Seifriet hears it, so naturally, the Zor know, too.

2. Charles chides Jeanne for not QUITE realizing that the Zor are their enemy, and Bowie retorts that not ALL of them are the enemy. Gosh, Bowie, who could you be referring to…?

3. The Zor are talking about what a simple tactics the humans are bringing to bear against them, and oddly, one of them calls the humans “Earthlings” (“chikuujin”). They must have done their research if they know the humans’ lineage goes back further that Liberté…

4. The show puts Lana and Brown together as a potential couple. I wonder if Sekishima was among the survivors of Task Force Two, or did he die…?

5. There’s a long scene between Bowie and Jeanne, where Bowie worries that he’s going to die, and also says that he doesn’t want to kill. Jeanne suggests that he should just turn the SVTL system off, and he agrees. And then… he tells Jeanne that he loves her…?

That kinda came out of nowhere… and doesn’t really go anywhere, either.

6. The next few minutes are a long space battle, with lots of Itano Circus style missile launchings, and lots of Aurorans getting blown up.

7. Finally, they crack open the mothership’s hull. Every time this has happened before, a panel slides it to cover the damage almost immediately. Not this time, though. It stays wide open so the 15th can launch and approach it.

The Biopsychers attack, and Jeanne feels relieved to learn that the pilots are Zor, not brainwashed humans. So she turns the SVTL system back on, in order to kill them more effectively. She tells Bowie to do so, too, but he starts thinking about Musica, and doesn’t.

8. At one point Marie rescues Charles, so it looks like their relationship is back on again. And then Emerson skims his battlecruiser over the mothership to destroy some Bioroids and let the 15th enter the ship. They do, and…

9. …the Zor reactivate Seifriet’s mind control system, and he betrays the 15th.

Gee… it’s almost like putting him on active combat duty (and ESPECIALLY on a mission like this) was a HUGE MISTAKE. Too bad no one realized it!

10. So this episode had a lot of really well-done space battle scenes, but that’s really about it. Emerson’s near-sacrifice is good, but other than that, this episode tries to be gripping and to me it really isn’t. Or maybe I’m just grouchy because of the completely foreseeable reversal by Seifriet.

Again, I understand that they had to put him in the 15th to make the plot work, but this all feels so contrived and implausible.

THE GREAT SOUTHERN CROSS REWATCH 16 – HUNTER KILLER

SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 16: HUNTER KILLER

ICONIC SCENE: Space warp!

BROADCAST DATE: August 5, 1984

1. Louis has created a Bioroid attack simulator that’s highly reminiscent of a sit-down video game. It even uses the same sound effects from the video game and Max and Milia played back in Episode 24 of Macross.

And although Louis programmed the game, he’s not very good at it, and he loses a bet with Jeanne. He’s clearly upset about this.

2. Task Force Two, led by Emerson, manages to sneak past the Zor Fleet on their way to Aluce Base. On of Emerson’s subordinates suggests that this would be the perfect time to launch a surprise attack… don’t these people ever learn? All that would do would be to get the entire task force wiped out.

3. Now we get to one of the dumbest plotlines in the series. Not as dumb as Seifriet being put on active combat duty and not having his movements restricted at all, but close. Louis comes up with an AI that handles targeting on the Bioroid simulator, allowing him to rack up a massive high score. He calls it the “Sight Vision Tracking Link,” or SVTL.

He’s approached by a couple of Leon’s secret guys, working for the technical division, who ask him to install this system in every simulator, so that trainees can use it. During simulations only, of course.

I hope you can begin to see why this is a dumb subplot already. If not, it’ll be revealed in full later on.

4. Just as Task Force Two is approaching the moon, the Zor show up, surrounding the fleet. Emerson tries to slip through the net, but fails. Marie’s Auroran squadron launches, and there are some nice shots of them fighting and transforming. Again, I want to point out that while I might not be much of a fan of mecha designs, the mecha ANIMATION is pretty consistently top-notch.

5. Emerson comes up with a desperate plan to get away: his ship will warp to a different part of the solar system, which will cause a dimensional disturbance that will either destroy the Bioroids or suck them into another dimension. That is, if they’re close enough.

6. The Aurorans herd the Bioroids in close, and then Emerson’s ship warps away, destroying them. Marie realizes that the larger frigates are still there, but then Emerson warps back, which takes care of those. I think this is the Southern Cross’s first ACTUAL victory against the Zor. Every other time, they’ve only forced them to retreat, or retreated themselves.

7. Here’s where it gets dumb. You see, the technical guys were LYING to Louis when they told him his enhancement would only be used for the simulators. You see, they’re planning on using it in ACTUAL COMBAT…!

8. Also the 15th are assigned to the third part of the strategy, going up to occupy a Zor mothership, with help from the soldiers stationed on Aluce Base. Charles points out that the 15th is all ground troops, but Jeanne says that the Spartases have been fitted from space combat, which… doesn’t make a lot of sense…?

Anyway, Louis checks out his new Spartas, and sees that the SVTL system has been incorporated into it. He plans to destroy all of the Spartases, because he wanted this technology only to be used for simulations, not for actual combat against actual Bioroids piloted by actual humans.

But… what would be the point of that? “Here are your simulators, which are vastly superior to your actual mecha. You’ll train on them, but you won’t have these actual advantages in real combat, so don’t rely on them. Just use them now and forget them later.”

See? It’s REALLY DUMB.

9. Meanwhile, the Zor check out their new triple Bioroid, the Biopsycher. It doesn’t really look appreciably different from the other Bioroids, but I like the blood-red coloring.

10. So yeah, even when I was kid, this subplot made no sense to me. The fact that Louis would come up with such a vast improvement and then expect it to be used for training but not for combat… it’s really idiotic.

On the other hand, Emerson’s plan is smart, interesting, and well-done. So the episode isn’t a total loss.

THE GREAT SOUTHERN CROSS REWATCH 15 – LOVE STORY

SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 15: LOVE STORY

ICONIC SCENE: Lana and Sekishima, sittin’ in a tree…

BROADCAST DATE: July 29, 1984

1. The idea that Task Force Two is really a noose around Emerson’s neck is confirmed right away here, since the entire task force personnel will be drawn from his supporters. Does he know that his strategies are useless and will just lead to the extermination of his own army? Maybe… but even if Emerson as his supporters survive, they’ll be stuck on Aluce Base, far from any decision-making processes.

2. Andrzej accosts Seifriet while the latter is going to a meeting with Lana, and Seifriet’s carrying a report about developing Moon Base Aluce as a military installation. Boy… they sure are trusting Seifriet with a LOT of sensitive information… And once again, Jeanne jumps in to defend him. Sigh…

3. Jeanne then meets Captain Sekishima, who we haven’t seen since Episode 1. He was the guy who ordered the missile launch on the Zor that started this entire war in the first place. But NOW, we’re meant to feel sympathy with him. Not over that, but over the fact that he’s got a crush on Lana, and he wants to tell her before he leaves for near-certain death with Task Force Two.

Jeanne is more than willing to help out, since if it works, it’ll keep Lana away from Seifriet.

4. In a very sitcom-style plan, they leave flowers for Lana as though from a secret admirer. Lana immediately thinks they’re from Seifriet. Hijinx are sure to ensue, folks!

5. That said, she’s not really all that interested in Seifriet. But she’s preoccupied enough that she makes a mistake checking out people for inclusion in Task Force Two and accidentally rejects Lt. Brown, Emerson’s top supporter. Leon’s man tries to chastise her without giving away the game, and Brown himself is delighted that he can stay behind to keep an eye on Leon.

6. More hijinx! Marie buys a new dress for her hot date with Charles. He keeps her waiting a bit at the (EXTREMELY fancy-looking) restaurant they were meeting at. But, wouldn’t ya jus’ know it… as he’s walking up, and old fling of his sees him and she just won’t take no for an answer! The girl takes notice of Marie, and kisses Charles to make her jealous.

It works like a charm, and as Marie runs away, humiliated, her shoes fall on the stairs, just like Cinderella!

7. Jeanne and Sekishima send more flowers to Lana, with an invitation to meet. Lana goes, but honestly, the place that Jeanne picked looks like a badly-lit corner of a warehouse, so I’m amazed Lana sticks around. Anyway, she slugs Sekishima, thinking that he’s Seifriet (and they look NOTHING alike, so the place must be REALLY dark). Before they can resolve things, Lana gets called away because…

8. …Marie is so distraught by Charles’s apparent flakiness that she’s driving through town, drunk and reckless. They stop her, but before the police show up, Lt. Brown doesn’t want the honor of the heroine of Task Force One to be besmirched, so he takes the car, planning to say that he was too upset by being left out of Task Force Two. Lana is impressed.

9. The episode ends on a down note. The Zor have apparently created a new weapon that can take the place of Bioroids and won’t need emotional humans to control them, and Task Force Two (now joined by Marie, who volunteered at the last minute), leaves for almost-certain death. Bowie plays the piano, no longer mopey because of Musica, but now mopey because his father is most likely going to die.

10. Is it unfair to compare this series to Macross? I feel like it is, much like I felt it was unfair to compare Orguss to Macross. And yet… Macross had a mix of story tones. Sometimes it was very serious, other times it was comedic, and it could switch from one to the other at any time. And yet (to me, at least), it never felt forced or intrusive. Orguss tried to have a similar balance, but mostly ended up falling on the side of seriousness, because there was SO DAMN MANY exposition scenes in the show that they kept edging out any extraneous humor.

But Southern Cross, a few times now, has turned to screwball comedy plots, and (especially in this episode) the switch between the comedic scenes and the serious scenes feels extremely clumsy. I kind of admire the show’s daring in willingly putting a “mistaken identity secret admirer” plot into the same episode that features Emerson, sure that he’s going to die, parked outside of the 15th’s barracks so that he can hear Bowie play piano, possibly for the last time… but I’m not sure the show really pulls it off.

THE GREAT SOUTHERN CROSS REWATCH 14 – IRON LADY

SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 14: IRON LADY

ICONIC SCENE: an EXCELLENT pic of Andrzej, which was also Harmony Gold employee Kevin McKeever’s avatar on Robotech.com

BROADCAST DATE: July 22, 1984

1. Well, this was the first episode to air after the Macross movie, Do You Remember Love went into wide release. I don’t want to belabor the point more than I already have, but that really hammered the final nail into the coffin of Southern Cross (or would’ve, had it not been brought to the US the following year as the second “generation” of Robotech). The broadcasting experiment of airing an anime on Sunday afternoon (instead of the usual weekday afternoon or Sunday morning timeslots) was drawing to a close.

I do want to point out that apparently, Bandai picked up the Southern Cross toy license after Takatoku Toys went out of business, but never ended up producing anything. I have no idea if they picked it up specifically, or if it was part of some kind of licensing package that they bought. Certainly, when Harmony Gold bought the license to the show itself, it was in a package with other Tatsunoko series.

(Although, now that I think about it, ads for the Harmony Gold “Macross Vol. 1” videotape were already being published by July 1984. Did Harmony Gold get the license to Southern Cross before the series was even finished? Or did they buy more than one package of licenses from Tatsunoko, Macross being in the first one, and Southern Cross being in a later one? Or did they just make a deal for all shows under a certain release date window? I’m not sure.)

2. We join Marie on what’s left of Moon Base Aluce, and Leon talks about his plan to repair it and turn it into a military base from which to launch attacks on the Zor. Emerson objects, saying that rebuilding it could provoke the Zor, but doesn’t mention the REALLY OBVIOUS response: these assaults just don’t work. The Zor ships are simply too powerful.

Also, you’d think that by this point, the Glorie military has lost so many people, ships, and fighters that they’d be close to running out. Glorie is a colony, not a military stockpile planet.

3. Seifriet is wandering around with an apparent massive headache. Andrzej stops him and starts to question him about what he’s doing in a restricted part of the base, but Jeanne shows up, acting for all the world like Seifriet is her boyfriend, and tells Andrzej to mind his own business.

I know I said I’d put aside my incredulousness that Seifriet would be placed on active duty, but the issue JUST WON’T GO AWAY…

4. It turns out that Jeanne wants to see a movie with him, something called “Princess Kaiju’s Counterattack” (or “Revenge of the Monster Princess,” as the ADV subs have it, made several years before “Kaiju” became a fairly common word in English, at least in geek culture). Which… let’s be honest, doesn’t sound like a movie that Jeanne would be interested in seeing, especially not with a guy she is quite blatantly trying to seduce. Oh well, maybe the Glorie theater options are extremely limited.

(The ADV subs also quote Star Wars here, for some reason: when Seifriet says there are still so many things he can’t remember, Jeanne replies, “The more you tighten your grip, the more they’ll slip through your fingers,” which is close enough to the Japanese, I guess (closer would be, “the more you chase something, the harder it it is to catch”). So yeah, the AnimEigo Macross subtitles quote from Star Trek, I guess it’s okay if the ADV Southern Cross subs quote from Star Wars.)

Anyway, Seifriet ends up standing Jeanne up, so she orders Andrzej to go to the movie with her instead.

Looks great, doesn’t it? And Andrzej enjoys it immensely, though not in the way Jeanne had hoped.

5. There’s a lot going on with the Zor, much of it very “alien” and thus, difficult to understand. The easy part is that they’re running low on “bioenergy.” Some of the captured humans who pilot the Bioroids are seeing a resurgence in emotion, despite the mental conditioning. And we see an odd scene in which some Zor enter capsules and, I guess, sacrifice themselves so that their (gaseous-looking) energy can feed… some kind of core of the ship…? That looks like a planet…? It’s very weird and hard to explicate.

I’m not complaining, mind you. I like when aliens are appropriately alien, especially if it’s unexplained.

6. Also Musica is apparently also being infected by those pesky “emotions,” since she turns down the triplets who were paired with her and her “sisters.” Turns out she’s still thinking about Bowie, much as he’s still thinking about her.

7. Lana, on her date with Seifriet (and although they’re wearing their uniforms, it really DOES look a date) manages to spill all the beans about the when the next phase of the assault on the Zor will take place, which seems extremely out of character for her.

8. And sure enough, the ships sent to rendezvous with Marie’s team are attacked well before the Zor should know that they’re there. The Zor exact plenty of losses, but a few of the ships make it through to Aluce Base.

Marie is brought back to Glorie, where she has a tearful reunion with Charles. You’d think they’d hook up after this, but no, since Charles is seen in the 15th’s rec room later.

9. As a final cliffhanger, Louis runs in and tells everyone that the commander of Task Force Two has been decided… and it’s General Emerson. The implication is that Leon has had enough of his peacenik ways and wants him out of the way permanently, but I think that would require Leon to realize that these offensives of his are doomed to fail, and I’m not sure he realizes that.

10. Again, I can see that the decision to make Seifriet part of the 15th really has kinda broken the series for me, in that nearly every setback that happens over the rest of the show is completely due to that nonsensical decision. That said, I enjoyed this episode overall, which I was worried I wouldn’t.

NUMBER OF SHOWER SCENES IN THE SHOW SO FAR: Still 5, although she is seen wearing just a towel here. Does that count…?