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.
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.
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.
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…?
SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS EPISODE 13: TRIPLE MIRROR
ICONIC SCENE: See? I TOLD you that orchid a few episodes ago was foreshadowing!
BROADCAST DATE: July 15, 1984
1. Well, the Glorie military is preparing for its attack, and Leon announces that they’ve got a new variable fighter: the Auroran. When we finally see it, well… it looks better than the Logan, I guess. And unlike the Logan, it’s got a three-mode transformation, of a type I’ve never seen, before or since. It’s got a fighter mode, a robot mode, and… a helicopter mode.
This has led to some people making fun of it as a “space helicopter,” although it’s worth pointing out that, as far as I can recall, we never see the helicopter mode being used in the series. So whenever it’s in space, it’s in fighter mode.
Whatever. It’s a strange choice for transformation, and, like most of the Southern Cross variable mecha, I don’t think it looks all that great, although there are definitely Southern Cross fans who adore it.
It also bucks trends by being a mid-series upgrade (which admittedly wasn’t as common in 1984 as it would later become) that is given to a secondary character (Marie) rather than the lead character.
2. Marie passes Jeanne and gloats about being in the first wave of the attack, even though it’s transparently a suicide mission. Then Lana approaches Jeanne, requesting to take over Seifriet’s therapy. Jeanne, clearly feeling that Lana is moving in on her man, won’t hear of it and rides off in a huff… and nearly gets hit by a bizarrely huge truck.
3. When she returns to barracks, Jeanne’s extra-clingy with Seifriet, and invites him in to choose one of three outfits, which she has arranged on a three-part mirror. Well, this causes Seifriet to freak out again, and he tells Jeanne that all the Zor are triplets who act in concert.
4. Oh hey, it’s Paul Nordhoff! When I was a kid, I had the model kit of him, although I didn’t remember him from the show itself.
And then Charles shows up to see Marie off. It’s a sweet and sincere moment between them, and I have to say that of the three (possibly four) love stories in Southern Cross, theirs is the only one that I feel invested in.
5. So Task Force One is launched, and they start getting slaughtered pretty quickly (including some semi-gruesome scenes if you’re watching with a finger on the pause button). I understand that Leon doesn’t learn, and tries the same strategy over and over again, but… it’s not very engaging to watch…?
6. And now, I’m confused. Andrzej said earlier that (as you might expect during the biggest offensive in this war so far) that all military personnel, including the 15th, are on high alert… but then in the next scene, Jeanne is taking Seifriet on a pastoral hike. Breaking regulations YET AGAIN…
And then she suggests that they invite Bowie along with them for further hiking, and soon they’re flying over meadows on their Flash Clapper hoverbikes. Her idea is to take Seifriet to the three mounds that the Zor mothership was investigating when he was still the red Bioroid pilot, in the hopes that it’ll trigger his memories.
I can see her rationale… she presumably knows that the assault is going to be a bloodbath for Glorie, but if Seifriet can unlock his memories, he might be able to figure out a weakness in the Zor that Task Force One can exploit. But… it still seems irresponsible (even by Jeanne’s loose standards) just to drive off like that…
7. After losing two-thirds of the fleet, Nordhoff contacts Leon and Emerson, requesting a change of strategy, and Leon’s answer is to just keep shooting. My guess is that this is meant to be frustrating for the viewer, and it is, but I think that the writers want the viewer’s frustration directed at Leon, but instead, I’m finding myself frustrated with the series itself.
Marie’s Auroran squadron launches, and most of them are immediately wiped out.
8. Jeanne finds an entrance into one of the mounds, and the three of them go in. Inside, it’s obvious immediately that this is no natural cave: there are carvings on the walls and arches. Although it looks like it hasn’t been touched in centuries.
Inside, they find some creepy flowers (that sting Jeanne where she tries to touch them) that grow in clusters of three. Seifriet thinks this has something to do with the Zor working in threes, but he’s not sure how, exactly.
9. Marie breaks into one of the Zor landing frigates, and sees that the soldiers all act in three, and reports back that it’s “just as Lt. Jeanne stated.” Jeanne then contacts Emerson, and she’s off the hook, since her rule-breaking yielded some results. As usual. And the survivors of Task Force One go to Moon Base Aluce to await the attack on the Zor by Task Force Two.
10. So that’s the end of the first cour (again, a group of twelve or thirteen episodes that make up a literal “season” of programming, and which often end on some kind of climax or cliffhanger), and I usually use that as a time to write a summing-up so far.
And yeah, I’m not particularly enjoying this show, and I’m not sure why. As I said before, this is all stuff of high drama; the main characters (except Seifriet) are likable and interesting; the animation is fine for a TV show; the music is pretty great. And yet, something just isn’t clicking for me.
Part of it, I’m sure, is the mecha design, which doesn’t grab me at all. The background art isn’t terribly inspired, except for the occasional funny or incongruous sign. But I think a deeper problem might be the character interactions, or lack of them. The characters aren’t especially deep, but each cast member has their own quirk, and when they TALK to each other, the show comes alive. Charles and Marie are great together, but so are Charles and Jeanne, or Jeanne and Lana. And we don’t see them hang out with other enough. Jeanne is most often paired with Bowie, who just mopes all the time, and now Seifriet, who’s incredibly dull.
I don’t know. That might be it, or it might be something else. It may just be that I’m not in the mood for an ‘80s robot anime right now. But whatever the reason, I’m find this rewatch to be a chore.
Which, again, is not to say that I think the show is bad at all. The staff and cast are putting in a lot of effort, and it shows. But I’m just not diggin’ it.
NUMBER OF SHOWER SCENES IN THE SHOW SO FAR: Still 5. I think that’ll remain the number for rest of the series…? If I recall correctly…?
SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS EPISODE 12: LOST MEMORY
ICONIC SCENE: What a hunk!
BROADCAST DATE: July 8, 1984
1. Okay, so I said a few episodes ago that Southern Cross’s fate was sealed when Takatoku Toys when out of business, in late May of 1984. So yeah, the show was already down for the count, so what happened the day before this episode’s airing, on July 7, feels like kicking it needlessly. You see, the day before, the highly-anticipated Macross movie, Do You Remember Love? opened in Osaka and Nagoya, and two weeks later, would start playing everywhere else in Japan. Now, as we all know, Do You Remember Love was a huge deal in early “otaku” circles, and took up most of the conversation.
2. But you don’t have to take my word for it, just check out the covers and contents of “Monthly OUT Magazine,” one of the biggest of the anime magazines in the ‘80s. You can easily do it, since all the relevant issues have been scanned by Japanese blogger Demedeku.
The May 1984 issue (which was published, like all Out issues, two months before the date on the cover, so a few weeks before Southern Cross started airing) there’s nothing about the show on the cover…
…although there is a preview of the show inside (first half of the issue HERE, second half HERE).
The June issue (which would’ve come out when the series debuted) has nothing about it, although there is a page devoted to the end of Orguss, and a preview of the Macross Movie.
The July issue has the first mention of the show on the cover, along with Macross, in the “Color Special” section. There’s a decent amount of coverage given to it, an article about what the hell was going on at the end of Orguss, and then another two-page preview of the Macross movie. Some Southern Cross characters also (in this issue and the next) make an appearance in the “On the Battlefield” manga.
And then, in the September issue, which again, came out in July, around the time this episode aired, the focus is almost entirely on Macross, and there’s nothing about Southern Cross at all.
After just a handful of mentions, Southern Cross seemed to be doomed to be little-seen and mostly-forgotten.
But, I stress again, this isn’t Southern Cross’s fault, really. Just bad timing and bad luck.
3. Anyway, on the episode! Jeanne is interrupted from doing sit-ups by a call to meet with Emerson. He’s decided that in order to Seifriet to regain his memories, it would be best if he joined the 15th, in active combat duty.
Now… let’s face it. This is a very stupid and unrealistic decision that would never happen in real life. I would venture to say that it wouldn’t even happen in most anime series. But… the rest of the plot hinges on this event, so I guess it had to happen somehow. But yeah… everyone has a point where credulity can break, and mine breaks here.
4. The 15th grumbles a bit, but they’re surprisingly okay with having Seifriet join their team, except for one guy who glares silently at him for just a little bit too long.
5. Seifriet does some target practice and shows that he’s basically better than anyone else in the platoon. Eddie, the glaring guy, confronts him and asks if that skill is to kill Bioroids, or to kill humans. Jeanne acts like he’s out of line, but… he’s really not? I mean, it seems like they all know that Seifriet was the red Bioroid pilot. Yes, he’s human, yes he was working on Aluce Base and got abducted by the Zor, who brainwashed him, but they don’t know how deep their mind control goes, and so he’s a complete wild card right now. Not someone you’d trust in a life-or-death situation.
And I can see that if I don’t shut up about this now, it’s going to dominate the rest of these posts…
6. Charles and Jeanne run into each other while both are dressed up. Charles is delivering flowers to Marie since she’s being released from the hospital today, while Jeanne is going on a date with Seifriet. Which SHOULD be a surprising turn of events, but… c’mon. We’re twelve episodes into this series now, and we know what Jeanne is like.
She takes him to a theme park and then seems to ride a lot of attractions by herself while he watches from a distance. Which, honestly, doesn’t sound like that fun of a date. And at one point, she says she wants to ride “the Super-Space Sensation, Triple Regulus.” “Regulus,” of course, being the show’s title before they settled on “Southern Cross” (which reminds me of the scene in Orguss where they’re trying to choose a name for the mecha. Oops, I mean “device”…).
Anyway, they go on a ride, and Seifriet’s memories sure come back… some of them, anyway. Jeanne falls out of the car they’re in, and he has flashbacks to the same thing happening with a girl who is pretty obviously the one Bowie’s got a crush on. More about this in a bit…
7. After Lana shows him some slides of the red Bioroid and the three plateaus, Seifriet collapses and feverishly starts moaning that Glorie is the Zors’ homeworld. Later, they report to Supreme Commander Leon that Seifriet says that the Zor won’t attempt an all-out attack because they don’t want to damage their own planet. Leon, again very stupidly, decides that this means they ARE planning an all-out attack, and so the humans have to attack first.
(Oh, and we also see another great sign: “JEAN-BILLIE.” HEE-hee…)
8. After being attacked by Eddie (whose kid brother, it’s revealed, was killed in battle by Seifriet), Seifriet runs off. Jeanne pesters him some more (and it really does feel like “pestering”), but he regains another memory: after first being brought aboard the Zor ship, he escapes his captors and starts running. Much like Bowie, he meets the same girl with the laser harp (which we discover is called a leve ficelle). He asks her name, and she says “Musica.”
At this point, I’d like to note that Musica is the debut performance of idol singer Noriko Hidaka, who would later become an EXTREMELY famous voice actress and singer, best known as Akane in Ranma 1/2, Satsuki in My Neighbor Totoro, and Noriko in Gunbuster.
Anyway, guards enter, and Seifriet grabs her as a hostage. The guards don’t really care, and shoot her anyway, apparently killing her. Then they shoot him.
9. He goes to see Emerson, and overhears Emerson talking about the upcoming all-out attack… which of course gets transmitted to the old Zor dudes. Oops.
10. So yeah… it’s hard for me to get past the dumbness of Seifriet joining the 15th. But there’s another problem in this episode. Because unless I’m forgetting stuff about the end of the series (always possible — I haven’t watched it in nearly a decade), the stuff about Musica in this episode a thread left dangling, never to be picked up again. I suppose she might have just been injured, not killed, but it certainly LOOKED like she got shot a fair number of times.
I don’t blame the staff. The show got cut down from 39 episodes (I believe… I’ve also heard 52, though) to 23, and while I think they do a great job of wrapping up the series as best they can, some stuff simply falls by the wayside.
NUMBER OF SHOWER SCENES IN THE SHOW SO FAR: Still 5.
SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS EPISODE 11: DÉJÀ VU
ICONIC SCENE: JEANNE KICK!
BROADCAST DATE: July 1, 1984
1. Emerson and the GMP are trying to access Seifriet’s memories, but are finding it difficult, so Lana suggests putting him under her care and placing him in “a more human environment,” which in this case is the military hospital.
2. And we segue effortlessly there, with Charles trying to visit Marie again. She gives him a hard time, but it’s pretty clear there’s an attraction between them. The dynamic here, of course, is that both Charles and Marie are a little… shall we say… promiscuous…? The problem is that they’ve shown that with Charles a lot (heck, the first time we met him in Episode 1, he was being thrown in the brig for sleeping with a General’s wife), but we haven’t seen that side of Marie much, except for a single line of dialogue back in Episode 5. So the situation doesn’t quite have the “We’re no strangers to love, you know the rules and so do I” vibe that I think the writers wanted to reach.
3. In the hallway, Charles runs into Jeanne and comically tries to dissuade her from visiting Marie, before noting that the ninth floor of the hospital is suddenly under heavy guard. And the wheels in Jeanne’s mind start turning…
4. Back with Leon and Emerson, Leon (predictably) wants to execute Seifriet immediately. Which, in this case, probably would be a good idea. Overall, Leon is clearly portrayed as a stubborn bad guy who wants to wipe the Zor out and forever fails to realize that he lacks the resources to do so, BUT in this case, Seifriet is an unwitting spy for the Zor, and the less he sees of Glorie’s military, the better. Even a stopped clock and all that…
5. Lana tries to talk to Seifriet, and there’s a definite memory block. He remembers working on Aluce Base, he remembers it being attacked… and then nothing until he woke up in the hospital. And he has excruciating pain if he tries to remember anything in-between.
6. The next scene is pretty weird: we see Jeanne’s Spartas fighting the red Bioroid, and she gets defeated… but it’s just a dream! So she runs to the holo-simulation room and has a mock-battle in which she defeats it. Then she has a shower. I’m mystified… did the staff think there wasn’t enough action in this episode, so they needed to throw in some combat scenes? Did they have some unused cuts of Spartas versus Bioroid action that they needed to fit in SOMEwhere? Was the episode just running a little short? I don’t know…
7. In the 15th’s rec room, Bowie is playing the Zor’s music on the piano, when Charles runs in with news. He seduced a nurse, who told him that the “biohuman” who piloted the red Bioroid is the patient who’s so heavily guarded on the hospital’s ninth floor. So Jeanne, naturally, wants to get in and talk to him.
8. What follows is one of the silliest sequences in this entire anime. The 15th organize a break-in at the hospital, with Bowie on the phone, holding his nose to make his voice sound difference, Louis shutting down communications, Andrzej distracting the guards by acting like a belligerent patient, and Jeanne dressed as a nurse (with a short skirt that affords the viewer a panty shot at one point) climbing up a wall to get into Seifriet’s room (conveniently located right above Marie’s, who Charles gets out of the way). The whole scene is “wacky,” not to mention “zany,” and perhaps even “madcap.” It feels like it was written for a different type of show, and then got shoved into this one. It absolutely doesn’t fit.
And it’s pretty wonderful. Easily the most memorable scene since Episode 7.
9. Bowie alerts Jeanne that time is up by whistling the Zor’s music, which awakens some memories in Seifriet, who recalls that Glorie is actually the homeworld of the Zor. So THAT’S a huge bombshell to drop.
10. Again, as ridiculous as it is, I flat-out adore the heist-style infiltration of the hospital. The Southern Cross series as a whole has a lot of extremely interesting ideas (especially about the Zor themselves) but they don’t reveal those for a quite a while (although this episode, really, is the beginning off that reveal).
NUMBER OF SHOWER SCENES IN THE SHOW SO FAR: Now 5. Plus a couple of panty shots.
SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS EPISODE 10: OUTSIDER
ICONIC SCENE: The big plunge
BROADCAST DATE: June 24, 1984
1. We start off with an artfully-done montage. It’s late at night (and both of Glorie’s moons are full), and Jeanne is playing the piano, still lost in thoughts about Georges Sullivan from last episode, while Lana discovers the red Bioroid pilot, injured, and takes him to the military hospital.
There, Emerson says he wants the pilot examined secretly, without letting the higher-ups (especially Supreme Commander Leon, I’m guessing) know, since he doesn’t want this pilot to end up suspiciously dead like the last one they captured. And it flies in the face of his own lecture to Jeanne regarding that pilot.
2. On the Zor mothership, now back in space, the old men discuss with some of the other Zor (who all look like they’re in an ‘80s new wave band) about the transmitter in Seifreit’s head (Seifriet being of course the red Bioroid pilot).
3. Then we see a spaceship discovering the Zor motherships… but that’s a mystery for now…
4. Bowie’s moping about, still stuck on the girl he saw on the ship, and everyone teases him about it (or, in Adrzej’s case, tries to give him some “hard truths”), and he ends up running off.
Later on, Jeanne visits him in his room while he’s listening to a vinyl record, a detail that would’ve seemed somewhat dated even in 1984, but which feels markedly LESS dated here in 2021. She strums on his guitar a bit and tries to cheer him up, without much luck.
Charles, for his part, goes off to visit Marie in the hospital, but the nurse says she can’t have visitors yet… so he give HER the flowers he’d gotten for Marie, flirts with her a bit, and leaves. Marie, of course, hears all of this happening.
5. Speaking of people overhearing things, Leon has heard that Emerson’s keeping the captured Bioroid pilot. Emerson of course wants to find out all they can about the Zor from him, but in this case, Leon is probably right to be against that, since Seifriet is rigged with that transmitter. They should’ve kept the other pilot and killed Seifriet instead.
6. Back with the spaceship approaching Glorie, we discover that it’s from the Glorie colonists’ home world of Liberté, and they launch an attack on the Zor fleet from behind. They also contact Emerson, and the mood is clearly that now that reinforcements have come, Glorie is saved.
7. However, the Liberté ship’s opening space fighter attack seems to do no damage at all to the Zor, and then the Zor motherships fire back at the Liberté starship. It gets damaged enough that the crew has to evacuate. The empty ship rams into one of the Zor craft and (I think…? It’s unclear…) destroys it.
8. The captain of the Liberté ship, Captain George Lombar, talks to Leon and Emerson, and gives a statement from General Rinehart, Supreme Commander of the Liberté armed forces which in very polite and indirect language states unequivocally that Liberté will not send any more reinforcements to Glorie. They live or die on their own.
9. In his hospital bed, Seifriet has nightmare recollections of fire all around him. Shockingly (perhaps), in the flashback he’s wearing a Southern Cross Army uniform. Then he shouts something about “Aluce Base,” which was the station destroyed by the Zor right before Episode 1 started. Hmm…
10. Perhaps I was a little too pessimistic after the last episode, since this one was pretty good. The battle between the Liberté ship and the Zor is at least something NEW, not just for Southern Cross but for the Super Dimension Series as a whole. We never saw capital ships slug it out against each other in either Macross or Orguss. But again, with no reinforcements coming, there is no military solution against the Zor. The Southern Cross Army simply isn’t strong enough to counter them.
NUMBER OF SHOWER SCENES IN THE SHOW SO FAR: Still 4.
SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS EPISODE 9: STARDUST
ICONIC SCENE: How romantic!
BROADCAST DATE: June 17, 1984
1. As we open, we find out the Zors’ plan, which is to turn all humans into “bio humans” without emotion to that they can coexist. And the trio of Zor elders are being just as self-righteous as they can be about it, saying that they’ve reached the pinnacle of evolution and so it’s their duty to drag other species up from the mud.
2. On Leon’s order (and despite Jeanne objections), the corpse of the captured Bioroid pilot is incinerated by lasers (don’t they have a normal cremation facility on Glorie?). Emerson is clearly chafing against Leon’s “shoot first, ask questions never” philosophy, but still lectures Jeanne against disregarding the chain of command.
3. Jeanne, pissed off, takes Bowie with her on a joyride (since, as she says, the brass doesn’t care about what she says or does anyway) and they end up at a place that says “PIANO & BAR” on the sign, but seems much more like a dance club. And this is apparently the “jazz café” where Bowie’s been playing… Anyway, Jeanne’s plan appears to be, simply, “get very drunk.”
4. A good-looking guy comes out to sing (Bowie will accompany him on piano), and a very tipsy Jeanne falls head over heels for him. Anyway, his name is Georges Sullivan, and he’s voiced by Banjo Ginga and sung by (in his first of many anime songs) Hironobu Kageyama, later of Dragon Ball Z’s “CHA-LA HEAD CHA-LA” and Jam Project fame. He ends up asking Jeanne out for a breakfast date the next day.
5. The Zor reach out and deliver a broadcast to the humans. We don’t hear Leon’s answer, but it’s obvious that he rejected their terms (which, admittedly, he was right to do — “We’re going to modify all of you to remove your emotions and then we can coexist together” isn’t the most inviting of options). The Zor decide to call another mothership down to rescue them.
6. We have a new commercial-break eyecatch with this episode: the previous one showed Jeanne, Marie, and Lana, this one shows some of the “Arming Doublet” armor suits, including Lana’s, which (if I recall correctly) she never wears with the helmet in the show itself.
The old eyecatch
The new eyecatch
7. Jeanne sneaks backstage to say goodbye to Georges, and discovers that he’s actually a technical specialist in the military, who’s planning on using her to get close to the Zor mothership. However, she also sees that he’s done a pretty thorough analysis of the energy grid of the Zor ship, and so (after a shower), she realizes that she might be able to use him to stop the mothership once and for all.
8. She meets with Georges and hears the whole story: his girlfriend was critically injured in a Bioroid attack and died soon afterwards, so he’s devoted himself to finding the weak point of the Zor mothership in order to get revenge. Jeanne takes all this in stride and invites him to go along with her into battle.
9. Quite a lot happens in the last few minutes of this episode. Georges falls out of Jeanne’s Spartas and is captured by a Bioroid, which then blows up, killing him. In that dogfight, Marie’s Logan is shot down, but Charles catches her plummeting craft, saving her life. Jeanne shoots the Zor motherships as they dock, but it fails to do much of anything. And as the motherships leave, they shoot a disabling beam at the red Bioroid, deciding they want to leave the pilot there to observe the humans. Why they’d want to leave behind their best pilot, though, is anyone’s guess.
10. I have to admit, it’s kind of daring for a show like this to build up a solution to the big problem (here, taking out the power source of the grounded Zor mothership), and then at the end of the episode, have it be used… only to be entirely ineffective. I mean, really, Georges died for nothing.
Theoretically, a battle against a seemingly invincible opponent SHOULD be the stuff of high drama, but both when I was watching it as a kid and as I’m watching it now, I find it more exhausting than engaging. And I’m not entirely sure why, but I think a lot of is that since the Episode 2 attack on the spaceport, it’s been glaringly obvious that the humans are not going to win through firepower, but all they seem to do is launch assault after assault at the Zor, losing dozens (AT LEAST) of soldiers with each one. And yes, Jeanne and her platoon are getting smarter about how to effectively fight the Zor, but it all seems to be moving much too slowly, and (thanks to Supreme Commander Leon) doesn’t have any effect on the overall military strategy. It’s like watching someone making the same mistake over and over again… eventually you lose patience.
NUMBER OF SHOWER SCENES IN THE SHOW SO FAR: Now 4, and this one features all-new art and animation!
SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS EPISODE 8: METAL FIRE
ICONIC SCENE: Alien abduction!
BROADCAST DATE: June 10, 1984
1.Jeanne is having trouble coming to terms with what she saw inside the ship last time, unable to believe that the Zor are really aliens. And Bowie has fallen in love with the green-haired girl.
2. We actually get our first scene where the Zor talk to each other, and they make it clear that their intentions aren’t (or at least WEREN’T hostile), although there’s some ominous talk as they wonder if the humans “have discovered the truth about the Bioroids”…
3. We then go to the analysis of the captured Bioroid, and Louis figures out that the Bioroids are not controlled like usual robots, but rather have an artificial nervous system that connects to the pilot, making it essentially an extension of the pilot’s own body.
4. As they analyze the data further, Louis realize that high-impact weapons work best against the Bioroids, especially when aimed at the cockpit. Jeanne objects, saying that the pilots aren’t Zor, but are human. I’m not sure how she knows this, since she’s only seen one pilot, and the Zor that she has seen are identical to humans.
5. Emerson asks about the Bioroid pilot, who apparently was wounded when Jeanne captured him, and is undergoing medical treatment. Or at least, he WAS… because an officer comes in and informs everyone that the pilot died.
6. Emerson and Jeanne meet with Leon (who doesn’t recognize Jeanne, even though you’d think he would. She’s been at the forefront of every successful mission so far). The doctor who checked out the pilot says in so many words that he was a cyborg, modified to live in environments that normal humans couldn’t. Leon thinks that the “aliens” are just the descendants of space pirates, but Jeanne insists that there ARE aliens, and the pilots are humans modified by them. She gets removed from the meeting for her outburst.
7. As Jeanne meets up with the others, Louis has discovered something else: the Bioroid pilots are themselves being controlled in some way by Zor aboard the mothership. So they REALLY have no control over their own actions.
8. Emerson wants to negotiate, but Leon says that they must attack them all out. His reasoning is really dumb: because the Zor are technologically so superior, if they negotiate, the humans will be at a disadvantage. But he doesn’t seem to see that if they’re so technologically superior, the humans have no chance of beating them in a war.
9. Back with the Zor, they decide they need more Bioroid pilots, so, in another nightmarish scene, they send some Bioroids into the city to kidnap civilians to be modified into pilots. Jeanne’s instincts to not destroy the Bioroids seems somewhat misplaced here, as she prevents her team from rescuing some of the abducted citizens. You’d think even she would decide it’s better to kill the pilots then to let them swipe people right off the street. Anyway, a lot of people get taken, and the Bioroids escape back to the mothership.
10. All in all, a pretty disturbing episode in its implications, although I always find it endearing in these space war anime shows when humans show utter revulsion at the idea of killing other humans. It’s a really optimistic outlook for the future. Although Leon doesn’t really seem to care whether they’re human or not, he wants them all dead.
NUMBER OF SHOWER SCENES IN THE SHOW SO FAR: Still 3.
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