Shadow Chronicles Review and Commentary Part III

This part of the commentary will be broken down a bit more. I may over analyze some of the anime and franchises I really love, especially if it is being redone or reborn after a long absence. As for TSC, this was a nice reboot to Robotech. I personally did like it and gave it a good overall review.

Yet, there were a few things that I didn’t like. First the little things:

Why not bring Melanie MacQueen back to reprise her role as Marlene II/Ariel? I was very happy to see she voiced Marlene Rushe but it was odd hearing another voice on Ariel. It lost some of the magic. I know that may be a nit picky thing, but I would have preferred Melanie as both characters.

Was it me or was “Doctor” Louie Nichols a bit immature? Yeah, that was his character type 15 years prior during the second Robotech war yet he didn’t mature any in the harsh years afterward? I thought he would be a bit more calculating and intense since he was like the new Dr. Lang. Usually, intelligent individuals are very eccentric and sometimes cold. Also, he just doesn’t look like a character who would be wearing a cape. His uniform was very elaborate and seemed to over power even higher ranking officers. Now I may have to research this and I could be wrong (not to mention a lot has been taken out of canon lately), but I thought Louie had taken a Protoculture boost similar to Lang and Zand. Thus, I thought he would have changed. Instead, we were left with lines like, “it’s all numbers, there’s no letters in it.” This is so forced and contrived. Louie from Southern Cross was better.

The recap of the final moments of Symphony of Light was also well done but a waste of screen time. We didn’t need it. I know Tommy Yune wanted to allow this movie to be a stand alone flick and that he felt he needed to give the audience a recap but I don’t see too many anime fans watching this without seeing the original source material. Everyone that bought this thing was already a Robotech fan. Even if one hadn’t seen Robotech before, then having a bit of confusion and intrigue would only get them to go out and buy the 80s version. Simply put, we lost 20 minutes of film time on something I have already seen and the strange disappearance of all of the other New Generation characters just irritated me. ( I have an alternate opening that would have worked better—I will discuss that one soon.)

How did Marcus know Ariel was an Invid? He sees her glowing like an angel and bam! she’s an Invid. Only Scott’s team and Sue Graham knew that the Invid had adapted to human form so thus Marcus would have no way of knowing her origins. As far as he was concerned Invids were green slugs and protoplasmic creatures.

Why doesn’t Vince Grant know who Janice is? Now, as I recall, he was at the Hunter wedding where Janice did sing and later in the Sentinels books he would have learned she was an android. Did I miss something? Or did canon change again? Thus, that brings me to the bigger things….

Next time, the changes to continuity and canon that I just didn’t like….