The Macross community knows and understands that we owe this franchise to the love Kawamori et al had for Gundam – after all, what they originally set out to do was make a parody of Gundam, but it eventually became the groundbreaking original TV series we know and love, with its innovative plot, dramatic battles, and relatable characters.

For many years, though, I was toying with the idea of a more “hard sci-fi” story based on the core premises of Macross: the crash of a runaway alien starship on Earth; its subsequent reverse engineering and refit by the humans and a global bellum omnium contra omnes over ownership and control of it; its rediscovery by the aliens it was trying to evade; an existential space war between the Earth and these aliens; and, finally, the dipole between culture, love, and coexistence on one side and blind, blunt militarism on the other.

Many years ago, I’d started a fanfic inspired by the disappearance of the SDF-2 Megaroad-01, the super-long distance space colonization vessel captained by Misa Hayase, with Hikaru Ichijyo as leader of its Valkyrie contingent, and cultural icon Lynn Minmay by her side. To say certain extremely vocal and obnoxious gatekeepers on the Macross World forums were less than encouraging would be an understatement. Besides their blanket anti-fanfic stance (as if Macross hadn’t originally started as a Gundam fanfic), they were adamant that no one is allowed to feature Hikaru in any story after the tragic suicide of his voice actor – the criminally underrated Arihiro Hase.

Over the years, though, as new installments were added to the franchise and as I started viewing the whole mecha anime genre more critically, I decided that, for myself, I’d make different decisions as to many plot elements. Having been cut off (for political reasons) from Macross World for more than two decades was both a curse, as I lost touch with friends and creative collaborators, and a blessing in disguise: I can now do my thing, on my own terms, and without rabid gatekeepers or power-tripping, “the USA can do no wrong” moderators breathing down my spine.

My novel is titled Asterion, from the mythical king of Crete. As I mentioned earlier, it keeps the core plot elements, but emphasizes political and military intrigue, and I’m leveraging my own hands-on procedural knowledge. Of course, this doesn’t mean I’m going to neglect my ongoing analytical work on Super Dimension Fortress Macross.