Anime Impact. Chris Stuckmann

shell-shock looking like they had been at the epicenter of a bomb. Most of my generation still gets the shakes even hearing the words “Transformers: The Movie” (and with the way the live-action films have been written, I imagine that’s one thing our generations will have in common).

      But compared to Robotech, the Transformers movie was My Little Pony. Seeing robots die in a cartoon was bad. Seeing kids die in a cartoon in the 1980s? Kids? Blown to hell by an all-out alien assault? Oh no, sir. That did not happen on the regular.

      But at that point there was no turning back for me. I was already a deep Robotech fanatic. Are you kidding? Lisa Hayes was my first animated crush and Rick Hunter was … Rick Hunter. And who had a cooler airplane than Roy Fokker? Nobody. Ever. Robotech was already the bad boy. The rebel. The hard-ass who just didn’t care of the Saturday morning cartoon crew. This devastating bit of television history was just them cementing their reputation. My older brother who was much cooler than me (despite also listening to Duran-Duran) loved Robotech. He wouldn’t watch any other cartoon with me, but he sat down and watched every episode of Robotech.

      Because Robotech was cool.

      And it legitimately gave me nightmares.

      No hyperbole. No joke.

      You see, during the ’80s, our culture had this little thing going on called the Cold War. It’s hard to describe to people who never went through it, but I had an all-consuming fear that a nuclear war was going to happen between Russia and the United States. It seemed like it was all over the news, and the apocalyptic fall out of this inevitable war was talked about on television with the same kind of glib candor that modern day newscasters use to talk about Kanye West. You would see experts on television discussing with a smile about the effects of radiation and how, if the war happened, the chances of most people surviving was less than zero. If the blasts didn’t kill us, the clouds of cancer would do the trick.

      Or the entire devastation of our infrastructure.

      Or the mutants.

      Or the roaming gangs of Australian punk rockers.

      Take your pick.

      Now, it’s one thing listening to that stuff as an adult and facing the potential end of the world. When you face it as a kid, it’s some deeply horrible nightmare-fuel. You’re powerless enough as a child that facing things like school bullies and divorce can feel like a towering monolithic challenge. But facing the realities of nuclear war at that age, with my imagination? Oh no, sir. No thank you, very much.

      So Robotech took those very real, very big fears I had and made them the plot of a giant robot space opera.

      And it blew my freaking mind.

      For my money, there is no cartoon, no … television show (Stranger Things included) that ever has or ever will better address what it felt like to be an actual kid in the 1980s than Robotech.

      Everything in Robotech from the fashion and the hair styles to the pop music set against a futuristic science fiction story where fighter planes turn into flying robots. Every inch of it felt like it was honey-dipped in the cultural zeitgeist of the ’80s. It was Top Gun, it was Star Wars, it was arcades and video games, it was space opera and rock opera, and big hair and bigger weapons, and pop music versus aliens! All of these elements were orbiting this epic conflict between the forces of earth and the invading Zentradi.

      And at the very core of it all, there was hope. Always hope.

      Oh yeah, Robotech has dark moments and it can get down and dirty, but the overall themes and message in the show are ones of community and friendship. It’s not like Rambo, where the hero always wins no matter what. It’s about the realities of war. It’s about finding a way to survive day by day in an uncertain world. It’s about facing failure and death and growing from it. Finding victories in even the worst kinds of defeat. Where even in the bleakest of situations where oxygen is running low, where heroes are trapped in enemy prisons, there’s still honesty and strength and kindness.

      There’s still humanity.

      In fact, the ultimate weapon in Robotech is art. While the aliens have advanced technology and overwhelming numbers, they’re weak against our culture. They encounter our food and our relationships, our clothes and our music, and soon enough, they don’t just like it, they fall in love with it. So much so that, what were once our enemies turn into our allies. And our friends. And even lovers.

      Here is a show about apocalyptic battles that destroy worlds, whose message is what can bring an end to these conflicts isn’t some ultimate gun or giant laser beam, but art, music, friendship, community. That no matter what, we can survive, we can move on. And we will. Together. For me, as a kid, that was the message I needed to hear to deal with all the fear and insecurity of that age.

      I found out much later that Robotech was actually three shows from Japan (Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada). That made sense to me. Both in the huge dips in storytelling from the Macross era to Southern Cross eras of the show, and in the overall themes.

      After all, Japan is a country that had gone through a nuclear apocalypse. They knew what it meant to rebuild, to find hope and community and to survive in the face of that overwhelming disaster. While Robotech was adapted for North America, and some would say butchered, I think the big ideas, the big themes, the big messages in the story, were universal. And while I can’t speak for anybody else, they made an impact on at least one little Canadian kid who was scared and confused in the 1980s.

      Jeffery J. Timbrell is a writer, filmmaker, artist, and photographer with giant space worms in his brain. He lives in Canada with his two cats, a basement full of DVDs and a ton of regrets.

       1985 • Vampire Hunter D

      Banpaia Hantā Dī

      — John Rodriguez —

      As a trainer, I’m always looking for ways to engage with clients. Sports tends to be a go-to staple. The average Joe digs sports, and my job is to relate. So I make sure to remain conversant with the latest sporting world happenings. Now, sometimes that’s easy. I’m genuinely passionate about baseball anyway, and I really dig hockey. Other times, it’s a drag. I can really take or leave football. And basketball? Bleh.

      But my preferences don’t matter. My clients’ preferences matter, and there’s all kinds. Most folks like talking about the big team sports, of course, but there’s also devotees to cycling, track, or competitive weightlifting. I even had a Canadian client who adored curling. What’s that all a-boot?

      Not a single client wants to talk about boxing, however. And I never bring up boxing to clients. Which is odd, because let me let you in on my dirty little secret: I love boxing. Not just the big fights, mind you, but also the dinky little bouts hosted on Tuesday nights in Podunk, Iowa.

      “Ugh,” you say. “Boxing is barbaric.” Totally, and my inclination toward it shames me. Over and over, I admonish myself for engaging with a sport that can leave its practitioners crippled by the effects of repetitive head trauma. I remind myself I should be sophisticated enough to turn up my nose at such wanton savagery, sanctioned or not.

      And yet … I still love boxing. Something about it keeps bringing me back despite my misgivings. Maybe it’s my admiration for the rigorous discipline displayed by the men and women who partake in the sport’s highest levels. Or maybe it’s something less quantifiable and more primal: a vestigial impulse to tear off my shirt, beat my chest, and howl at the moon.

      Whatever it is, I know better than to share this passion. This is the Era of Enlightenment, and boxing is so très pas cool. It’s a guilty pleasure at best, an object of ridicule and scorn at worst. But damn if there’s isn’t something gripping about the sport all the same.

      Vampire Hunter D is the boxing of the anime world. It’s brutal. It’s bloody. It’s unsophisticated in the extreme. In short: it’s a throwback, and not necessarily a welcome one.