“Super Dimensional Fortress Macross II: Lovers Again” is a six-volume OVA from 1992, featuring character designs by Haruhiko Mikimoto ( “Macross”, “Mega Zone 23”, “Salamander”, “Hi-Speed Jecy”) and mechanical designs by Koichi Ohata (“MD Geist”, “Genocyber”, “Cybernetics Guardian”). In 1993, it was cut together to form a 150-minute movie that never reached the show’s original conclusion.

Eighty years have past since the end of the events presented in “Macross: Do You Remember Love.” --
2092 A.D.:
Mankind is living in peace, and its space military, the UN Spacy, last used its famed, chorographically limited, 1980s J-Pop “Minmei Attack” ten years ago. Without a war, the new generation of military fighter (valkyrie) pilots are merely fancy, pop-icon show boaters; the News is now relegated to gossipy entertainment spectacles; and the war-heroes of yesteryear have become forgotten, lecturing drunks.

Enter the Marduk, a race of warlike humanoid (“Micronian”) aliens, who’ve traveled across the universe enslaving planets with their song-controlled Zentradi military, under the rule of their leader, Emperor Ingues. Female Marduk Emulators sing their war song, which incites giant male humanoid Zentradi to violence, rendering the lovey-dovey effects of Earth’s Minmei Attack meaningless.

During humanity’s first defeat, Entertainment Journalist cum newbie War Correspondent, Hibiki Kanzaki, accidentally captures the Marduk Emulator, Ishtar. As the U.N. Spacey attempts to dupe the populous and hide all signs of their defeat by controlling the media, Hibiki decides to keep Ishtar with him, and attempt to teach her “peacenik” earth culture. Ishtar seeks to find the Macross, which she believes to be the legendary spaceship “Alus”, prophesied to lead the Marduk into a new era. As Ishtar learns of love and peace, she yearns to bring a love song to the Marduk and end the violence. But Marduk culture considers love to be a form of contamination that must be destroyed at all cost!

“Macross II” has beautiful visually rendered characters, and awesome mechanical designs that trump the OVA’s limited animation. However, it’s difficult believing that weak, insipid, proto-Moe Ishtar comes from an alien race of badasses that know only war and conquest. Still, the show is enjoyable to look at, even though it seems to exist more to sell Ishtar’s design than to tell a story, and doesn‘t make a better sequel to “Macross” than Macek’s “Robotech: Masters”.

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