Reviews

Ultimately, this is a good movie. You need to dial back your expectations a bit, because remember. Robotech in 1985 never existed, it was through Carl Macek's vision that he was able to edit and interweave the story into a "western format" as they say. But since the original Japanese product values had lots of depth (violence, sensuality, characters being terminated, etc) he had a lot to work with.

Shadow Chronicles goes a bit extreme on the Western format, because its made exclusively from the ground up for the North America/Europe audience. and I do agree that if Carl Macek was actively involved here, there might have been a bit more "bite" to the movie, but give it a chance! POSITIVE: - Good animation value, although its not true to the original. Its much cleaner, and loses a bit of its grittiness both in terms of story line ( and animation. However its still good none the less.

• Sound is fantastic, the audio quality is superb. Voice acting is superb (regardless of what others say). Even with a limited amount of voice staffing, they are able to stretch it well and make it sound like there are many more actors.

• Animation is far more fluid than the typical Japanese 10-15 frames per second. Thus its much smoother and fluid. There IS some shortcuts I feel in the CGI aspect where they make the transformations rather quick and the "wow" in transformation is lost, i hope they slow it down just a little bit. however, in war, they NEED to transform quickly, or else you're toast.

• Picture Quality on DVD is very good, its very clean, not much noise. Good compression scheme, but then again the movie isn't very long so high bit-rate on this DVD should be no problem.

• ROBOTECH is back, with more episodes and adventures! YAH!! - Again, regardless of is said here on IMDb, the CGI textures are good, (on par to a decent video game production), its not ILM/LucasFilm quality but come on, it's a animation! Its good enough.

The unfortunate - story is a little predictable, its a bit too "americanized" taking ideas you've seen on other sci-fi flicks. The twists are not as mind bending as the Robotech from 1985, but there are still some good twists, but I hope they will 'crank it up' on the follow up sequels - long trailer included on the DVD gives almost too much of the story away. The one on www.Robotech.com (short trailer) is better, it wets your appetite and makes you want more.

• the battles are a bit flat, compared to the original series. its very predictable here and feels a little 'slow' - Robotech fans are being EXTREMELY critical here. if you folks don't support it, they won't make any more! come on, this movie is not bad.

the bottom line - watch it at least two or three times, and i think you'll appreciate its production values more.

enjoy it, its a good movie.

not perfect, but if they can keep a new movie 1 per a year, i think Harmony Gold will make good money to reinvest into Robotech for many years to come.

worth buying most definitely.