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.