Search - Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles [Blu-ray] on Blu-ray

Love and Hate

Kevin O'Connor | VA. United States | 03/06/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I love the Original series and purchased this item to finish my collection. This add on is not very good it lacks the feel and draw in appeal of the original. I'm sure others will like it but the computer slap on art work just didn't mix well for me and it didn't appeal to my artistic side. Would I want it anyway? of course - it completes a great series."

Peter Chung + Robotech= Supermediocre

T. LaRue | Rokotsugakure, Sol 3 | 12/11/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"First and foremost, the source material for Shadow Chronicles is the Jack McKinney novel "End of the Circle."
To even begin to appreciate Shadow Chronicles for what it is, you MUST MUST MUST read the Sentinel novelizations by McKinney...

That being said... I liked the CGI/ traditional animation blend. It reminds me of the animation style of Macross Zero... although, with Peter Chung's traditional (ugly) style of animation.

I'm not particularly a fan of Peter Chung's writing or storytelling, but he DOES give Robotech the political intrigue to put it on par with contemporary Macross equivalents.

My biggest problem is that this tries to do too much too soon, and there are severe character development issues in the film.
For the pre-established characters from previous RT series, its not a problem as it is assumed, however with new characters (not including those in the Sentinel's novels) they are not given adequate time for them to be redshirt fodder.

In that sense at its worst, Shadow Chronicles is like the horrendous HK English dub of "Clash of the Bionoids" that was released in the 80s... but when at its best (the last 2/3s of it) it is an amazing film that actually serves to separate itself from its Macross source material, and thrive as its own universe.

"

Meh

Mike the Cat | 10/02/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This seemed to be a good opp to clean up all the continuity issues, false starts and other stuff.

If anything I am more confused. Retcon seems to be the word of the day for this offering. Retcon is fine if clearing up previous continuity issues but uh it seems lke the retcon stuff made more to me.

The music was great. The animation of the characters was pretty lame - they look like manga toons, the CGI stuff was lame.

Why is it so hard to explain what happened to the 99% of the other original characters we wanted to see? Where are they all? Why are some around and how did they get there (Louie for instance) but not the others? Okay the rest of the third generation stayed on earth and left behind for good prolly but it would have been nice if you could have thrown us a bone and they made cameos at least.

Where is the rest of the first and second generation? I understand there is a comic that preceedes this that has some of them in it.

Why do new characters need to be introduced when there are so many you could have chosen from? I was hoping there would be mixing and matching from the three different generations. I understand if there is some matter of copyright or what not but just spread the word about that if so and there would be a little more understanding maybe.

Good to hear the old voices. All this did for me was explain nothing and raise more questions.

Overall the production was flat, everyone seems in slow motion talking and walking around (for instance character A asks Character B a questions...5 seconds later character B drones out a monotone answer), new characters are sort of weak, too much purple hair. One character with purple hair is fine but mix it up a little more.

This is like Sentinals all over again.

"