Robotech IV: Khyron's Counterattack

Tiny Liner Notes by Peter

Look, black and white anime -- it's art!

Intended to be the Ultimate Production, the bold, ambitious Robotech IV turned into a bit of an albatross around our necks. Based on the excellent final chapter of Gunbuster (the one in black and white), Robotech IV details the return of the evil Zentraedi Khyron, played by the stupid evil alien from Macross II. It turns out that he somehow managed to survive the last battle above Macross City at the end of the Macross saga in Robotech, escape out into space, and rally the last of the Zentraedi around him, all while conveniently not letting anyone know of his existence for the past 50 years (contrived, we know).

Pay no attention to the radically different character designs behind the curtain!

Again the themes laid down in the fanfiction that Josh and I co-wrote return -- the Lisa/Minmei/Rick and Lisa's revenge themes, the Lunk/Annie having sex themes. The challenge to turn something completely unrelated into Robotech was thrown down before us, and we accepted the task.

Khyron and, er, Koazonia, a circular reference to Miriya having a daughter named Komiriya and, er, nevermind...

I conceived of Robotech IV after I'd come to Japan, and we organized and started dubbing on one of my first trips back. This was before I started running J-List, back when I had excess brain cells available for "creative" stuff like this, and for a time I was effused with Seishun Shitemasu energy. I think, too, it was the nagging desire not to be totally cut off from all that'd I'd known, all the fun times we'd shared making these silly things -- when gaijin to go live in Japan, they usually plan on going back right away to go to graduate school (why I have no idea), but in my case, I wanted to keep dubbing.

Annie battles Khyron, putting peppermint against Protoculture!

From the start, this was going to be an ambitious production. Having had quite a bit of experience dubbing in the past, we were careful to avoid doing what we'd done wrong in KOR:TAS (i.e., being too high-brow in our concept) while keeping true to the Robotech III-model that had been so successful in the past. Because the last episode of Gunbuster is black and white, we had to make the other footage black and white; because Gunbuster is letterboxed, we had to do the same for all the other footage. The result was something that was pretty cool, although not exactly ingeneous. But, working on consumer VHS equipment in the early 90s, it was certainly a lot of work.

The Lisa sub-plot. Lisa arranged for the Gunbuster afterburners to "malfunction" with BD's help

Because we had to have the characters fighting a villain with a face and a personality, Khyron, we had to some fancy stepping to make the footage come off. It was hard, but I think, IMHO, that the basic footage-side of things worked. Since Macross II sucks so totally, I am glad we were able to rip out some useful parts. The "climax" between Annie destroying the large, not-very-Zentraedi-looking ship with Khyron came out rather well, IMHO, considering they were completely unrelated.

We bought the Mospeda LD box set for $500 just to show our fans this scene of Annie flashing her panties to Scott

We dubbed it once, and had it almost finished, in time for a sneak-preview at the San Diego Comicon Seishun Shitemasu party in 1995 (there are a few "world premiere" T-shirts out there, too -- if you've got one, maybe you can get $200 for it on eBay). The music and sound effects weren't finalized, but things seemed on track to get this sucker out the door one of these months. Except that during production, the Amiga soundboard we used for all the mixing and post had been fried, and in its crippled state making something worthy of Robotech III was impossible. So we tried to find a solution.

More great scenes that helped our sub-plot along

However, many years would pass before we ever got the production off the ground. I have memories of emailing Max (the post-production guy) and Josh (the director) saying, hey, is R4:KC going to be ready for previewing at this year's Con, or what? and getting a negative answer. Then the production was re-started, and Josh, writing about himself in the third person to spare us a full rewrite of these liner notes, overhauled the script while leaving the plot more or less intact, polishing Peter's original dialogue and taking out his incessant Wrath of Khan quoting. Dubbing quietly, without fuss, principal photography on R4 wrapped sometime around 1999. Post production was still slow, but progressed nevertheless. During the 2004 con season, Max surprised me by showing me the 99% completed production on his Powerbook, which he'd been working on in secret. Finally the Albatross was gone!

Can Annie and Minmei take the Matrix of Leadership into the Core in time?

Taking nine years to do a production is an awful long time. While I'm glad we got it done, and I'm pleased with it overall, the bummer is that in that time, several other worthy dubbing groups have gone ahead with productions that are beyond anything we could have done back then. Still, we hope that this, the final chapter in our long love affair with Robotech, which consumed thousands of hours across two decades, is enjoyed by fans out there.