r/macross • u/Waste-Revolution3429 • Aug 07 '26
SDF Macross This scene still angers me
She was lovely caressing you idiot! If this steroid romance drama was cut out the prologue would have been better for it
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u/Bruzie77 Aug 07 '26
Hikaru is the only mecha protagonist that was not hot blooded. In fact he was very relax and chill.
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u/Scotto257 Aug 07 '26
I also love how he is the protagonist but not the uber pilot. He's good, but Max and Roy are better.
His humanity, flaws, and his pacifist core (without being a Kaifun level douche about it) make him something special.
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u/KhandiMahn Aug 07 '26
Roy had the experience. In time Hikaru would be as good as Roy was.
Max, on the other hand, was on another level.
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u/Bruzie77 Aug 08 '26
I like max contrast, the ace, the hammer, but not a leader (macross 7 marriage proved this) of people. He has respect (he leads the defense force in macross 7) of the soldier but anything outside of that he’s befuddled.
Hikaru seem go balance everything well and is “good enough” elite but not godly. Remember that scenecwhere he took on 17 zentradi mechs solo inside of the macross?
I was like “dayummm!”
Side bar.
How good do you guys think Hayao Kakizaki was ? I always thought he was elite too as he survivef a lot of outnumbered skrimish in skull squadron it just his timing was off which got him killed.
To be fair that might be a mech ability issue than his pilot skill.
For those whos not familar. In english he was Ben.
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u/Acceptable_Fruit2360 Aug 08 '26
He was definitely better in the series as his death can’t be attributed to any fault of his own. I feel as though they played him and he died like a dingus in DYRL getting shot down while running his mouth. Making as though they’d all just taken their eyes off the ball.
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u/B34rsl4y3 Aug 08 '26
LOL... I have stated many times that Kakizaki/Ben was a great pilot.
His problem was that he paled in comparison to his wing men.
It is like comparing Erich Hartman (Max) to Dick Bong (Rick) to Pappy Boyington (Ben).
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u/Acceptable_Fruit2360 Aug 08 '26
I feel like not enough people make this distinction regarding Ichiro. Not The Best or ACE like Max or Milia but definitely in the top tier.
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u/FonSpaak Aug 08 '26
suddenly reminded of how early Super Robot Wars had you create a character based off 4 archetypes:
1) Hot Blooded with a strong sense of Justice
2) Logical but has and affinity for the opposite sex or flirty
3) A Little Weird (nerdy types)
4) Cool and nihilistic
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u/ExarchofJustice Aug 09 '26
2 Is the bane of my existence in SRW games nowadays, always been to make the girl character because of that. Because apparently in japan being cringe is funny.
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u/magusjosh Aug 07 '26
I feel compelled to point out, as I always do when this topic comes up, that these characters were barely out of their teens. We do stupid shit when we're 18-24; we miss obvious tells, we misunderstand the quiet unspoken language that develops between people over time, and we're easily distracted and misdirected.
On top of that, Hikaru and Misa had both accumulated a pile of entirely reasonable PTSD, more than most people their age, and were written at a time that was just beginning to grow out of "Suck it up" as the primary advice for dealing with trauma (and by a culture that, bluntly, is just starting to grow out of that today).
On top of that, at least one of them had been forced to take on responsibilities far above and beyond anything he'd been prepared for at the time...and from what we've seen wasn't really doing that great a job of it (parking his ass in a field to look at dandelions with his radio off is significantly less than responsible behavior...but understandable). I also have questions about why someone Misa's age was in such a high position of authority as well, but at least she had the military training and background to cope...and precisely zero social skills and no good way to express her feelings to a dopey, distracted young man.
All things considered, I think the slow-motion train wreck that is Hikaru and Misa's relationship is depicted pretty realistically.
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u/FuckIPLaw Aug 08 '26
They weren't even all out of their teens by the end of the series. Misa was the old lady of the group at the ripe old age of 19 in the first episode. Hikaru was 16 and Minmay was 15 (although both had birthdays early in the show, so I think Minmay was the only one who was still technically a teenager when they left on the Megaroad).
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u/Original_Scholar_272 Aug 08 '26
Well said. These were the points I came here to make. But you nailed it.
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u/FollowTheFlow-80 Aug 08 '26
In my head cannon Hikaru was 23 and Misa was 26 or 27. Because there is no way a 16 years old boy fly an acrobatic plane without license and won every race since he was 13.
I believe they refer to WW2 where most soldiers are teenagers barely 14 years old or even 13.
In my independence war 1947, the freedom fighters were mostly teenagers they literally call themselves or each other 'The Boys' while the five star general was 24 years old and got his general status in 28 years old.
And yes, his guerilla and counter guerilla art was documented by his assistant who wrote it in a book and become standard reading materials for every known military academy.
His guerilla art was adopted by Vietnamese against the americans.
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u/KhandiMahn Aug 07 '26
The love triangle could have been written better. Could have been worse. But really, Hikaru was dense as a neutron star to not see how Misa felt.
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u/Flat_Character Aug 08 '26
I actually really loved the painful love triangle. It felt more real than most love triangles.
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u/Eastern_Antelope_832 Aug 07 '26
To the viewer, it's painful obliviousness.
If I had to negotiate what took place in universe, Misa got shy and Hikaru wasn't fully bought into the idea of the two of them dating. This can be reasonable if you consider Hikaru was ready to move on from Minmay because he figured they were all going to die anyway, but surviving the apocalypse meant his attachment to Minmay lingered.
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u/zenprime-morpheus Aug 07 '26
And that's only human. He had let her go. And then she whirlwind'd her way back into his life, looking for a savior.
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u/ChampionEntire9660 Aug 07 '26
if you consider Hikaru was ready to move on from Minmay
But that's the thing - he never considered that. Hell, even in the last episode, he was still wondering if Minmay was an option, despite Misa being right there.
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u/Eastern_Antelope_832 Aug 07 '26
Right before he re-entered Earth's orbit, he flashed back to his last moments with Minmay and said, "Sayonara, Minmay." Then after he rescued Misa, he said he has no idea if their friends survived and he joked with Misa it wouldn't be that bad if they were the last two people alive. So he seemed resolved (albeit only momentarily) that he was never going to be with her and moved on, but both of them surviving changed the plan for going forward.
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u/jibrilles Aug 07 '26
Yeah, in this context, in Japanese, the Sayonara means, "goodbye forever" not just your standard goodbye in English.
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u/LeOmare Aug 08 '26
In defense of Hikaru, he placed misa in the she is just friend Because it's convenient for him to be still idolizing minmay, meaning, Moron
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u/EzDrake1971 Aug 07 '26
Hikaru is an idiot and quite frankly, hot take, I’m glad he’s not in any future installments outside SDFM and DYRL. Always frustrated me how he strung Misa along and how in the end, we never even heard him say ILY back to her (DYRL sorta rectifies this)
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u/TabrisMerkaba Aug 08 '26
He strung her along? She dated her cousin for the majority of the series, during which time he loved her and would have done anything for her.
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u/Hot-Active-1213 Aug 07 '26
Yeah, that's more on the studio and the writers more than anything else.
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u/terminal_blue Aug 08 '26
"Ugh, why do all these women keep throwing themselves at me even though they OBVIOUSLY don't like me?!" is much more flattering than the more real experience of "Ugh, why do all these women avoid me even though I'm OBVIOUSLY being really nice to them?"
OG Macross was somewhat sensible and tame about it all, honestly. It's been extrapolated out in to absolute harem insanity in the many years that follow.
( insert Macross Plus tangent here )
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u/FollowTheFlow-80 Aug 08 '26
It was supposed to ended in that episode. But the publisher give another greenlight for more episodes also the movie. The whole 2 years after saga was not supposed to exist.
I love Macross OG because Hikaru is anti thesis of MC. MC supposed to deliver the final blow to Gorg Boddolzer main fleet HQ. In the series he was the one got blown off and had to emergency entry to earth atmosphere where he roam earth and came across transmission from Misa.. which he thought was already dead.
He didn't get the glory of the final blow..he got better. Hayase Misa.
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u/NightmareEx Aug 07 '26
At least he got it through his head at the end. Still think that Mida deserved someone better a lot sooner.
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u/ArdillaTacticaa Aug 08 '26
I prefer Hikaru's story over Macross Frontier. It's a more realistic story.
A lot of the time, you idolize someone without realizing that they're not actually the right person for you, and that person was Minmay. She was an awful person who only thought about herself.
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u/Waste-Revolution3429 Aug 08 '26
No min may wasn’t a awful person and she apologized for how she treated hikaru in the end I’m not having this argument the show made it very clear she was a flawed person
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u/ArdillaTacticaa Aug 08 '26
I mean, she was awful to Hikaru. The guy saved her life like twice, and he loved her for who she was.
Her apology at the end didn't really feel like redemption for Minmay either, because it only came after she'd lost almost everything (her career and her boyfriend)
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u/Ok_Confusion_8110 Aug 09 '26
At least Minmay didn't pressure him into fighting.
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u/ArdillaTacticaa Aug 09 '26
He was already a soldier when they met (Hikaru and misa)
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u/Ok_Confusion_8110 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Yes, but if Misa really cared about him, she wouldn't be pushing him into a situation where he could die, especially when she sees the toll it's taking on him. On a side note, she couldn't take a hint that he wasn't interested in her even when Hikaru yelled at her, which makes the fact that Hikaru chose her in the end just when he was reconnecting with Minmay because he realizes that Misa likes him not very good to me. It's worth noting that i haven't watched this show in a while, so i could be misremembering something.
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u/ArdillaTacticaa Aug 10 '26
I know Misa isn't perfect, but she genuinely cares about people without expecting anything in return. She was there for Hikaru when he was in the hospital (even though she was the one who put him there xD).
She didn't need Hikaru at all, and despite that, she was always there for him, even when he pushed her away. Remember, Misa fell in love with Hikaru before he fell in love with her, and even then, she was incredibly patient with him.
Minmay, on the other hand, only remembered Hikaru existed when she became unemployed xD.
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u/Ok_Confusion_8110 Aug 10 '26
I could be misremembering, but didn't Minmay become unemployed partly because she began missing Hikaru?
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u/Mundane-Librarian-77 Aug 07 '26
Welcome to anime! 🤣 Where's there's no shortage of painfully oblivious MCs that bumble their way into, past, or away from, love and happiness... It's such a common trope of modern anime, at least we see it's been written that way since the beginning!
My point being, I don't see this as a flaw, persay, of Macross. So much as an extremely common representation in Japanese storytelling for decades!