Robotech III: Not Necessarily the Sentinels

Tiny Liner Notes by Peter

A worthy production from the start, Robotech III was our answer to the Sentinels

What I consider my crowning achievement as a "fan-dubber," Robotech III: Not Necessarily the Sentinels was the most worthy production I did -- if the other members of SS agree, I would say, that Seishun Shitemasu did, although they probably won't.

Again, this production can trace its roots back to a simple conversation had while watching anime. We were at a SCAN meeting (this is the monthly anime club that met at SDSU, back when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth), sometime in 1988, enjoying the excellent Gainax production Aim for the Top, Gunbuster and I started postulating that Amano could be Minmei, Noriko could be Annie, etc. The generation reaction was, "Shut up, Pete, we're trying to enjoy the anime," and so I said no more, for a year or so. But after Seishun Shitemasu was formed, I eventually decided to make the "ultimate sequel to Robotech" a reality.

The core joke of the production, that Noriko is Annie from the Mospeda universe

In a way, Josh and I were just making an anime version of a fan-fiction we had written back in the late 80's called Robosmut. Written on several local San Diego BBS's back in those days when there was no Internet in its present form, Josh and I amused ourselves by co-writing (with several others, with dorky names like Bumblebee, Robin Hood, Werewolf, Captain Goodvibes), in which we detailed the adventures of the famous Robotech characters after the end of the series. Remember, this was back when Robotech was red-hot, and we were all on the fringe of a great wave of anime fandom, and needed to express ourselves in some way -- but we couldn't draw doujinshi, so we wrote fanfic. This was also back when we thought Harmony Gold's "The Sentinels" sequel to Robotech would actually be produced (I remember watching the daily reruns so I'd be able to catch it when it started, bwa ha ha), so our anticipation for the continuation of Robotech was also fueling our fan-fiction. Since we were undersexed teenagers, we naturally wrote about sex. Many of the story element that made it into R3:NNTS (Rick's divorcing of Lisa and going to Minmei, Lancer's homosexuality, Annie and Lunk's sexual relationship), came from Robosmut.

Lancer's homosexuality wasn't a very interesting sub-plot, but I liked the joke about coffee killing off the Invid Simulagents

Editing of footage began. We based R3:NNTS on Aim for the Top, and throwing in a healthy dose of Mospeda, going out of our way to dig around for footage that didn't make it into Robotech, so it would seem "new" to fans who didn't know as much as we did (all the new footage was taken from a Mospeda special that has got to be rarer than fuck these days, unless they've released it with the boxed DVD sets). It had a "high" story in that it took the Robotech characters in bold new places and allowed us to experiment, so it appealed endlessly to all of us. After one false start (a flaky crackwhore voice actress spaced on us, so we had to go back from the beginning a few months later), dubbing commenced. We were fortunate to find a former radio DJ from Arizona who provided some of the most professional voice acting we'd known up to that point (even if she mis-pronounced "ganbatte ne, Annie").

The bath scene -- they have these yellow Karorin buckets in Japan by the way

R3:NNTS was the first thing we did that had a "post production" phase. Basically, we laid the voice track down, then went back later and mixed it with music and sound effects later. We made certain small mistakes, however, which caused an annoying "buzz" sound to creep into the production (which is almost totally gone now, thanks to the efforts of Max). Also, because we used the original tape for the voice dubbing, the tape became stretched, causing some video glitches. Well, excuuuuse us.

Robotech III premiered at Anime Con, the predecessor to Anime Expo, back in 1991. This history-making convention was attended by the likes of Haruhiko Mikimoto and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, who had created the characters for Nadia and Wings of Honneamise and would go on to do the same for Evangelion. (I accidentally hit on his wife during the show.) The response from fans was incredible, and we got more requests for tapes than we knew what to do with. We got an incredible "ego stroke" (to use a Pam Buck-ism) and were thrilled with the production. We even gave a copy to Toshio Okada of Gainax, who didn't seem to care. He was later arrested for tax evasion.

Deep plot twists, heavy with Twin Peaks BGM

After I'd gone to Japan, the tape started to self-destruct, so Max had to re-master it all from scratch. He laid down the audio, got his hands on the original video sources, and put them down in the same order as my original. Two of the music videos were removed due to the inability of getting footage again (which Josh called "rather 'Jetsons the Movie' of me"), and taking out at least one joke that I loved (the original Giant Robo theme song playing at the Gunbuster rises out of the Excelion) due to the lack of the music anymore. However, it was an improvement, with new sound effects, much better video quality, and much less of the annoying buzzing.

A musical flashback scene, and Annie's labia

Robotech III: Not Necessarily the Sentinels was one of the most successful and satisfying productions we ever did. It earned many laughs, provided many with inventive humor, and even got a pretty girl to talk to me at a con once. It received kudos from many fans, and even caused one of the two writers that made up the Robotech novelist Jack McKinney (the "Jack" one, also known as James Luceno, who now writes hack novels in the Star Wars universe) gush "Wow, full frontal nudity in anime, how did you manage that?"

Never has so much fun been gotten out of a Transformers the Movie soundtrack