Takashi Hayase is Misa’s father. His wife and Misa’s mother is Sakiko Hayase. He’s a career officer of the United Nations Navy, who later becomes a member of the UN Forces’ High Command. In the TV series, he appears in five episodes (15 and 24–27). He also has an extensive presence in Misa Hayase: White Reminiscences and The Plundering Fleet. The only works in which he’s shown to interact with his daughter are the TV series and White Reminiscences. For decades, he’s been viewed by fandom as a very minor character, and this becomes apparent by the lack of discussions on what he does as an officer and a parent. This has led to his role in the formation of Misa’s personality being severely understated.

Canonical ancillary material makes heavy-handed attempts to portray him in a positive light, often contradicting what the viewer sees in the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series (SDFM for short) and White Reminiscences. As we’ll see in Takashi’s actions in White Reminiscences, author Hiroshi Ōnogi frequently attempts to frame various scenes in a manner that is at odds with what the reader sees on the page. This looks like he’s anxious to protect the perception of the characters involved – and especially Takashi – from being marred by their actual words and actions.

Years later, the Macross Chronicle’s Character Sheet does the same. The authors attempt to frame him as a “born soldier” whose paternal failure towards Misa is a result of military pride rather than indifference. Even though its entry on Takashi is a mere two pages, it editorializes just as heavily: it relies on a great deal of modal hedging (“surely,” “probably,” “may have been”) and tries to overstate the significance of a family photograph on his desk (DeAgostini Japan 2013). Someone who’s read White Reminiscences and watched SDFM critically would easily perceive this as a desperate attempt to portray him as privately harboring a fatherly love and to grant him a tender interiority which, as we’ll see in due course, is not demonstrated in his conduct. As I explained in the introduction to this multi-part analysis, this constitutes emotional and perceptual manipulation of the reader through coercive writing.

Macross Chronicle (Chronicle for short) also introduces a chronological inconsistency: it portrays Takashi as having raised Misa by himself after her mother’s death (DeAgostini Japan 2013). This, however, means we’ll have to ignore White Reminiscences, as it places Sakiko’s death in December 2005 (when Misa is fifteen years old or, more precisely, four months shy of sixteen). Instead, we’re instructed to adopt the Macross Compendium’s timeline (1 and 2), which makes a factually unsupported extrapolation from Macross Graffiti and places Sakiko’s death in late May 1997 – or sometime in the summer of that year as the vague “later” reference implies; this is the only timeline that allows Takashi to serve as a single parent to Misa. White Reminiscences, on the other hand, paints an entirely different picture of Misa’s upbringing.

In my analysis, I’m not going to entertain this. As I’ve already explained, White Reminiscences, a canonical source, provides a detailed account of the two tragedies that afflict Misa, while the “Takashi raised Misa alone after his wife’s death” narrative isn’t backed by any canonical material. I’ll continue considering December 2005 as the canonical time of Sakiko’s death. Regarding whether Takashi raised Misa by himself afterwards, there’s nothing in White Reminiscences or in SDFM to support this. Therefore, the claim made in Chronicle will be rejected outright.

The heavy-handed editorializing in Chronicle mirrors the narrative of the fan-run Macross Compendium and Macross Wiki (archived here and here, respectively), which adopt Ōnogi’s coercive and unsupported framing of Takashi’s conduct and describe him as “protective” (Compendium) and “loving and protective” (Wiki). As I’ve stated before, I don’t take editorializing, even if comes from an official source, at face value. If a behavior doesn’t fit the official description, I’ll go with what I see and read, not with “Word of God” instructions on how to perceive what I see and read.

In White Reminiscences

I’ll start with the novel, which narrates a series of formative events from Misa’s adolescence, skipping – for now – the “prologue” set between SDFM episodes 24 and 27. The novel takes the reader to a party held by Takashi, when Misa is twelve years old, and ends when she’s seventeen. Putting the “prologue” aside, the novel highlights ten events that either reveal important aspects of his character or show him influencing Misa’s path. The events are as follows – listed in order of occurrence:

1. Misa’s acquaintance with a young cadet named Riber Fruhling at her father’s party;
2. The childhood crush she develops for Riber and their subsequent platonic romance that is never consummated;
3. Misa’s correspondence with Riber while he’s already in the military;
4. Her frighteningly premature entry into the military;
5. Riber’s death;
6. The death of Misa’s mother;
7. An incident in Junior Military Academy where Misa is bullied for her grief and accused of being basically an ungrateful nepobrat;
8. Her decision to reboot her military education without Takashi’s “help”;
9. His absence during her demobilization at the end of the Unification Wars and its emotional toll;
10. Her decision to re-enlist and depart to South Ataria Island in order to become part of the crew of the SDF-1 Macross, the spaceship that gave its name to the entire franchise.

Over the course of the book’s narration of Misa’s adolescence, I identified ten red flags in Takashi’s behavior and personality, which reveal an uncomfortable truth about him and the Hayase family. Despite its “old money” status implied by its three-story house in the upper-class Aoyama, the Hayase household emerges as a contributing factor to the emotional restraint and attachment issues Misa struggles with during her early adulthood.

Ten Red Flags

Here, I’ll briefly mention the aforementioned ten red flags, which reveal much about Takashi Hayase and the dynamics in the family he led. Please note that, although certain events are described in almost overindulgent detail and with unnecessarily florid language, the novel tends to skip other events and periods of Misa’s life that are just as important.

The first of these red flags is that Takashi Hayase comes across as a career- and family legacy-obsessed man. He’s single-minded to the point where he can discuss nothing outside his job – in fact, he actively hijacks every discussion and veers it into his professional field.

Second, he doesn’t voice any objection to extremely problematic behaviors. In his own garden party, we see his friend, Herbert (von) Fruhling, make a display of parental abuse: when Misa stumbles into Riber while playing tag, causing him to spill his drink on his shirt, Herbert not only scolds Riber unfairly, but proceeds to physically, verbally, and emotionally abuse him in front of everyone present: he says he’s “unworthy of the family name” and even shoulder-slaps him so hard he loses his footing. Unless I need new glasses, I don’t see Takashi objecting to this behavior – not even when the guests were gone and he could discuss their behavior with his wife in private. As a matter of fact, Herbert’s behavior towards his son begs to be considered as one of the factors that defined Riber’s demeanor. To be completely fair, I’ll credit him for treating Riber as an equal interlocutor, although the way he chose to defuse that scene is problematic.

Third, the Hayases’ relationship isn’t really equal. Takashi is the paterfamilias, the undisputed head of the household, and his wife, Sakiko, exists to support him in every imaginable way, from providing him with a child to domestic logistics – keeping the house clean and functional, keeping him fed and comfortable, and so on – to validating his position in the family. The novel gives us several examples of the Takashi-Sakiko dynamic that deserve proper analysis.

Fourth, neither he nor Sakiko equipped Misa with a vision for her future. She doesn’t aspire to become a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, a pilot – or anything, for that matter; she only wishes to remain “daddy’s little girl” forever, a dream she knows can’t come true. In my view, this is not neglect, but a sign of deliberate – at least on Takashi’s part – stance, informed by gender norms, roles, and expectations he espouses: his main concern, as seen in the novel and the TV series, is to see her married – preferably to a “splendid military man.”

Fifth, despite his initial misgivings, which, as will be explained in this analysis, have more to do with his deeply ingrained ideas of gender roles than anything else, Takashi enrolls his only daughter, his “beloved” daughter, in the UN Forces’ Far East Officers’ Academy at the illegally young age of fourteen, exposing her to the risk of becoming a child soldier. His wife, despite her initial anguish over Misa’s romantically-driven wish to join the military, eventually acquiesces and isn’t portrayed as voicing any further protest or concern.

Sixth, when Misa loses Riber, whom Takashi himself believed would be her future husband, he’s absent – the novel makes no mention of any correspondence between father and daughter discussing his tragic death; there’s zero evidence in White Reminiscences that Takashi offers her any words of consolation or does anything to ease her pain. The closest thing Misa gets to any kind of consolation is a speech from Bruno J. Global that pretty much amounts to “I know what you’re going through; you’re not the only one who’s gone, so be strong and move on.”

Seventh, during Sakiko’s hospitalization, Takashi is nowhere to support his wife and daughter, while Sakiko gives Misa a speech about her personal approach to love. Ōnogi crafts an utterly implausible story to frame Takashi’s absence as a tragic dilemma between his duty to the military, his brothers in arms, and the world at large, and his duty to his family, but it makes less than zero operational and procedural sense. Any reader with a working knowledge of how actual militaries work would find Ōnogi’s narrative risible.

Eighth, when he finally shows up, weeks after the funeral, his presence at home is less than useless. He doesn’t apologize to his twice-bereaved and emotionally devastated daughter for not being there in any way – physical, emotional, or symbolic. To me, his lack of response to the letter Misa had sent him while her mother was gravely ill reads as a lack of acknowledgment of the situation and its impact on his family. His reaction to Misa’s perfectly justified lashing out at him only reads as cowardice and selfishness, and I’m being very generous here.

Ninth, Takashi is absent once again when Misa, overcome by the back-to-back losses of Riber and her mother, contemplates leaving the military and laments her father’s absence and his emotional coldness, finds herself being bullied by her roommate Melissa, who essentially calls her an ungrateful nepobrat. We see no correspondence or phone call between Misa and him to discuss this incident – or anything, for that matter.

Tenth, when Misa tells him she decided to essentially reboot her military career without his “help” (which only got her bullied and accused of nepotism and ingratitude, as mentioned before), all he seems to care about is that she won’t be able to come and serve under him in Alaska, at the headquarters of the UN Forces High Command.

These ten red flags will inform my examination of Misa’s adolescence, as Ōnogi narrates it in White Reminiscences. Read without the influence of his “instructions” to the reader, they contradict both Ōnogi’s and Chronicle’s framing of him and his actions. Beyond that, they also contradict Watzky’s reading of Misa’s initial state in the beginning of SDFM episode and her arc throughout the series.

Bibliography

1. Akita Shoten (1983). Chōjikū Yōsai Makurosu Besuto Hitto Shirīzu: Makurosu Gurafiti [超時空要塞マクロス ベストヒットシリーズ; Super Dimension Fortress Macross Best Hit Series: Macross Graffiti]. Tokyo: Akita Shoten, pp. 71–77. (In Japanese.)
2. DeAgostini Japan (2013). ‘Hayase Takashi’ [早瀬隆司], in Weekly Macross Chronicle [週刊マクロス・クロニクル] / New Edition, Character Sheet M-Sheet 09A: ‘People of the United Nations Military’ [地球統合軍の人々]. Tokyo: DeAgostini Japan (In Japanese.)
3. Minori Shobo (1984). Macross Perfect Memory. Tokyo: Minori Shobo, pp. 60–68. (In Japanese.)
4. Ōnogi, H. (1984). Hayase Misa: Shiroi Tsuioku [早瀬未沙 白い追憶; Misa Hayase: White Reminiscences]. Animage Bunko. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten. (In Japanese.)
5. Tomita, S. (prose) and Akane, A. (lyrics) (1983). Chōjikū Yōsai Makurosu Vol. IV: Harukanaru Omoi [超時空要塞マクロス Vol. IV 遥かなる想い; The Super Dimension Fortress Macross Vol. IV: Distantly Fading Memories] (audio drama). Tokyo: Victor Musical Industries. (In Japanese.)