[As usual,](https://np.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/18hkiri/ranimes_favorite_mecha_anime_poll_results/) r/anime’s [favorite mecha shows](https://i.redd.it/50xb50om836c1.png) are *Evangelion*, *Code Geass*, and *Gurren Lagann* in that order. *86 -EIGHTY-SIX-* rose to number four in a real case of recency bias (not that I disapprove — the light novel is good, and the adaptation is stellar). The Gundam franchise dominates the polling, with seven of the 25 coming from that franchise, while Macross could only secure two representatives.
Setting aside any hot takes in taste or discourse about voting demographics for that poll, what I find astounding is the fact that Gundam can lay claim to stories that can be palatable to weebs at this level while still retaining reverence; Macross could only muster a few projects per decade so their pool of back-catalog options is smaller. This is despite both franchises being about the same age and, on average, equal in writing quality and influence on sci-fi.
Why is Gundam, [currently in its 45th anniversary](https://www.gundamkitscollection.com/2024/04/gundams-45th-anniversary-live-stream.html), totemic enough today to have full-size statues of its units in Japan while Macross (really the Super Dimension line in general) is just now starting to wake up again thanks to [the Disney+ announcement?](https://twitter.com/MACROSS_BIGWEST/status/1769639006856437941)
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#INTRODUCTION
Short answer: because of Robotech and Harmony Gold. But that’s too simple.
Long answer: Because I reckon Bandai managed the Gundam franchise competently enough compared to how Harmony Gold managed Macross that its longevity was assured. And yes, I know the release of Gundam was one of the sparks that accelerated anime culture in Japan, but Bandai also made some baffling decisions through the decades and nearly missed its first big chance in the West back in the ’90s when they couldn’t capitalize on the ratings successes of G Gundam and Gundam Wing. Macross had every chance to fill that gap because it was the bigger hit anime at the time, and Robotech was supposed to help with that in the US. Why did it not? I may or may not be able to attribute this to three factors:
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##Factor 1: Identity
For 45 years, Gundam has generally retained a consistent “sense of self” as a franchise, with a singular vision that is only spread and stratified through the prism of the many writers, directors, and animators who have worked on it for decades. And for all the variation between timelines and sub-franchises (some of which may confuse the average fan who wants to dive deep), the internal consistency of Gundam as a brand is solid relative to its peers like Transformers, borrowing minimally yet smartly from other sources.
Macross, on the other hand, was mired in Robotech’s complications, not the least because Harmony Gold decided to haphazardly use the original Super Dimension franchise to forcibly create a singular story that eventually didn’t work for the syndication standards of its time. It’s damning that its initial success never got a follow-through, even if it did help propel anime’s then-nascent rise to prominence in the US market. Worse, unlike Gundam, Macross can’t hide behind a “many timelines, one idea” wall, and Robotech is the one string that seems to hold it back.
I know that Macross has long ascended its past life as a component of Robotech and that the franchise itself is arguably more solid than Gundam is, despite having comparable variations in tone (from the grounded Macross Zero to the poppier Macross Delta). Unless you’re a pirate, however, it’s difficult to see and appreciate that. Gundam is out here putting up episodes of their catalog on their official YouTube channel (with a rotating schedule, which is a weird model, but it’s miles easier than the effort expended to watch Macross). It’s such a weird case that Gundam, supposedly the more confusing franchise, got away with turning that aspect of their brand into an asset while Macross, a more contiguous story, has the shadow of Harmony Gold and Robotech still hovering over it, limiting its expansion and creative options.
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##Factor 2: Aggressive Merchandising
This is weird because, at one point, Macross was every bit of a force in merchandise sales as Gundam.
It took some talking and lots of forum-diving but I learned that Macross matched Gundam as a merch mover, with its license enabling many different toys from different toymakers in Japan — including Bandai. It wasn’t until the introduction of the chibi-sized Super Deformed (SD) Gundam line that the franchise became a smash hit for kids, and even that line was what carried the franchise back then, not the mainline show.
Bandai eventually took full advantage of its burgeoning industrial leadership in toymaking in Japan to make the brand as endlessly merchandisable as much as possible. From action figures and SD toys, to buildable plastic model kits that are (admittedly a distant) second to LEGO as one of the top choices for plastic buildable toys, to say nothing of DVD sales, games, and other licensed products.
Despite not being nearly as big a deal in the West as Transformers, it’s enough of a titanic franchise that you can show up to a big box store and see a dedicated space for model kits, which is more than what Macross gets these days. It helps that the vehicles for these merch, the stories, are made with reasonably good overall quality that they can compel a buyer to watch or read. And even at its worst, there’s enough good in some bad Gundam shows that it’s okay to buy merch on the cool factor or fanshipping value alone. The result? [As of 2023, 131 billion yen.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj3BZnj_fus) That’s [870 million US dollars](https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=131000000000&From=JPY&To=USD).
What does Harmony Gold have to show for it today? Not much.
Some DX Chogokin figures (which are still a Bandai product by the way) and toys through the years, but with nowhere near the market penetration of before. It’s even being left behind in music sales despite having some absolute classics of its own, and the singing is half of what makes Macross cool. Again, the licensing is what holds this franchise back — because it doesn’t enjoy the same solidity in vision that Bandai can enforce, Macross isn’t allowed to spread its wings and grow its audience. They could’ve easily partnered with Hasbro regardless of whether or not Macross outgrew Robotech and it’d still be a worthy toy line. So much of Macross’ potential as a money-maker and trendsetter has been left to rot, all because some of its best material can’t seem to escape containment.
And it’s not like Bandai’s immune to mistakes. It squandered its potential as a US anime mainstay in the early 2000s when it couldn’t follow through with the success of *Gundam Wing*. The *F91* movie turned out to be the start of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s darker, more brutal years where his frustrations at Bandai’s decisions came to a head (and resulted in *Victory Gundam*, an astoundingly frustrating series to watch). The games have been middling at best and maddening at worst. If not for *Gundam SEED* being an early-2000s phenomenon and *Gundam 00* cashing that check, Gundam likely wouldn’t be where it is today. Now, its most recent serialization (*The Witch from Mercury*) and movie (*SEED Freedom*) have bought Bandai at least another decade of relevance despite the inherent flaws in both.
(It helped that *Build Fighters*, an anime that functioned exactly like *The LEGO Movie*, still worked as a story all on its own, which made the amazing designs feel even more meaningful.)
Meanwhile, Macross has a recent concert, some continuation movies, new kits and figures, and little else. We’re on the 40th anniversary of Macross and the only thing fans are looking forward to is the new series…that Sunrise is producing. It’s still unclear if it’ll be opened up for wider international audiences. And I wonder if Bandai and BigWest will give that series the same level of marketing effort that G-Witch and SEED enjoyed in this decade. I reckon the franchise deserves it, but will it be enough?
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##Factor 3: Timing
The last factor is timing. Simply put: Gundam is, more often than not, at the right place at the right time.
In hindsight, there should be no surprise. After all, Gundam and Tomino were the center of the anime universe in 1981 with the [Anime New Century Declaration](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1364012808631848960.html), an impromptu fair that was originally meant to simply promote the first of three movie compilations for the 0079 show. Yet it eventually became clear that something massive was happening: a cultural shift and the birth of an all-encompassing new culture. In the process, Gundam carried the momentum generated by the reception for Space Battleship Yamato and would become a contributing force for anime’s normalization and growth in Japan.
But you know who else managed to follow through on that promise? *Macross*. Shoji Kawamori and Noboru Ishiguro created a wonderful pop-rock alternative to Gundam without losing much of the grit that will make the burgeoning Real Robot subgenre compelling to watch. It’s well-written, tightly-paced, and is an audiovisual feast even for the standards of the time. After its first airing run, Macross kickstarted concepts we still enjoy today. Vtubers owe their careers to Lynn Minmay, and we wouldn’t have Jetfire or Starscream if not for the VF-1 Valkyrie. Its legacy in Japan can be reasonably compared to Star Trek in America, and modern iterations of Macross’ idols are national stars.
For a time, it looked like both franchises would be building on each other in lockstep competition, and it seemed like it when the *Zeta Gundam* anime (featuring many dual-mode war machines) came out. But Zeta proved to be an even bigger hit than anticipated, and Bandai rode that wave up to *Char’s Counterattack* in 1988. Within the same timeframe, Robotech was released in the US, proving to be a smash-hit and laying the groundwork for Americans to enjoy cartoons made in Japan for more mature audiences.
Only Gundam would manage to retain the momentum, however.
Bandai, despite pissing off the creator of its golden goose for a time, retained the power to keep Gundam going as a franchise through sheer force of will, backed by a captive audience that had already fully bought into the franchise that anything silly or outside of Tomino’s original vision is fair game. And that’s what happened. There always seemed to be a Gundam show lined up for any period of anime, and most of the major media released since Victory managed to speak about its time for a certain group of people, which gave the franchise mass appeal. And it was all because Gundam itself is a trendsetter by volume — knowing that it set the ball rolling, this franchise can hop on or off that ball and feed its momentum without feeling out of place or homogeneous to other shows — even if it copies other shows.
Macross didn’t have as many opportunities to show over a wider audience that it could do the same.
Look no further than 2016. Compare the reception of *Macross Delta* just on r/anime against *Iron-Blooded Orphans*’s second cour. Delta aired in the same season as *My Hero Academia* and *Re:Zero* and eventually got lost in the sauce even back then despite being THE tentpole TV release for the franchise that decade; IBO’s second half aired the same season as *Haikyuu S3*, *Yuri!!! on Ice* and *Bungou Stray Dogs* to nail-biting anticipation on when the other shoe drops after the events of the first half, which itself aired on a torrid Fall 2015 that featured MADhouse’s *One Punch Man*. The difference in what Bandai could do against what BigWest could muster is almost Atlantic in scope.
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#CONCLUSION
Well, I suppose it is not a complicated answer. It’s easy to see how Gundam can find itself being consistently relevant worldwide. They make themselves relevant because they have the resources and mind-share to execute marketing goals to constantly feed the cycle. Meanwhile, Harmony Gold couldn’t even be bothered to do the bare minimum, and if it wasn’t for more recent news, Macross likely would still be unable to ramp up enough to make a splash in this decade.
That’s the difference. Still, I wrote this anyway because I didn’t want to stop at the easy answer of “HarGo bad” or something equally reductive. There had to be something intrinsic to both franchises that’d make one or the other more readily-marketable. But because Gundam and Macross have good claims to fame, there had to be another factor. Right?
Maybe this is just me wanting to be proven wrong a second time. I never once imagined that *The Witch from Mercury* would surpass IBO’s feat in 2015 by airing — and thriving — in the same season as *Chainsaw Man*, *Blue Lock*, the closer for *Mob Psycho 100*, *MHA* S6, *The Eminence in Shadow* and a revitalized *Bleach*. *Gundam SEED Freedom* painted Tokyo red and is now the highest-grossing film in the franchise. I look at the marketing for both and wish Macross enjoyed the same phenomenal push. I want the new Macross project from Sunrise to get as much sakuga as it can to package in a good story and want it to be promoted everywhere with the same verve.
I want Macross to succeed so hard in this decade that it washes away any vestige of Robotech in the overall mindshare of most weebs, and that I can recommend it without worrying much about continuity or version differences. Because Macross more than deserves to be up there in the skies and there shouldn’t be an asshole licensing firm stopping that.
(Special thanks to Graham Parkes and members of the [MacrossWorld forum](https://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/) for the treasure trove of content and takes, as well as Ollie Barder, aka u/Cacophanus, for his help in refining this story and sending me to people who can explain things to me better.)
by IC2Flier