Three Kids on Planet Eden
What Actually Happened Is Never Confirmed
Macross Plus
マクロスプラス
Mecha
Sci-Fi
Drama
Music
Details & Synopsis
In 2040, thirty years after Space War I, humanity has spread across the galaxy and the variable fighter has become a relic slowly being replaced by unmanned drone aircraft. On the colony planet Eden, two test pilots are competing for a military contract: Isamu Dyson, a reckless ace who flies on instinct and rage, and Guld Goa Bowman, a cold and precise Zentradi half-breed with a suppressed memory neither of them want excavated. Between them is Myung Fang Lone, a woman they both loved, who became a music producer for Sharon Apple, the galaxy's most famous idol. Sharon Apple is a holographic AI. Her emotional range is simulated by Myung's own feelings, fed into her in real time. She is not alive. She is about to become the most dangerous thing in the galaxy anyway.
Produced by Triangle Staff and directed by Shinichiro Watanabe and Shoji Kawamori, Macross Plus was released as four OVA episodes between October 1994 and August 1995. Watanabe made it the year before Cowboy Bebop and the DNA is everywhere: the jazz, the ache, the pilots who are in love with speed and running from something. Yoko Kanno composed the soundtrack, her first major anime score, and it is already operating at the level that GitS and Bebop would later confirm. The Sharon Apple concerts are unforgettable.
Four episodes. A theatrical film compilation also exists with some additional footage. Both versions are essential. Macross Plus is what prestige animation looked like in 1994 and it has not been matched for what it does at its specific register.
Produced by Triangle Staff and directed by Shinichiro Watanabe and Shoji Kawamori, Macross Plus was released as four OVA episodes between October 1994 and August 1995. Watanabe made it the year before Cowboy Bebop and the DNA is everywhere: the jazz, the ache, the pilots who are in love with speed and running from something. Yoko Kanno composed the soundtrack, her first major anime score, and it is already operating at the level that GitS and Bebop would later confirm. The Sharon Apple concerts are unforgettable.
Four episodes. A theatrical film compilation also exists with some additional footage. Both versions are essential. Macross Plus is what prestige animation looked like in 1994 and it has not been matched for what it does at its specific register.
Alt Title
マクロスプラス
Studio
Triangle Staff / Big West
Network
OVA
Aired
1994 - 1995
Episodes
4
Genre
Mecha, Sci-Fi, Drama, Music
Status
Completed
Isamu, Guld & Myung
Seven Years Ago
Childhood on Eden
Before the rivalry
Isamu, Guld, and Myung grew up together on Eden. Isamu and Guld shared a love of flying, chasing the planet's giant native birds just to watch them move. All three were close enough that whatever came apart later broke something real, not just a crush gone sideways.
The Incident
SPOILER!Deliberately unresolved
Something happened between the three of them that ended the friendship outright. The show never states plainly what it was, and it stays that way even through the finale's flashback. Fan reads of the scene range from a reckless accident between Isamu and Guld's planes to something far more serious involving Guld and Myung directly, and close frame-by-frame breakdowns of the flashback still don't settle it one way or the other. This is not a gap in the archive's research. It's a gap the writers built on purpose.
Seven Years of Silence
Everyone scatters
Myung abandons her own singing career and leaves Eden. Isamu channels whatever happened into becoming U.N. Spacy's most gifted, least manageable pilot. Guld stays behind and goes to work for General Galaxy, the anger from that year apparently never actually processed, just aimed at Isamu specifically for reasons even Guld doesn't fully understand yet.
Why Sharon Apple Targets This Specifically
SPOILER!Sharon doesn't invent the tension between these three. She amplifies whatever Myung is already carrying and hasn't dealt with, which is exactly why the AI crisis and the human backstory resolve in the same scene. The virtual idol plot isn't separate from the love triangle. It's the love triangle with a loudspeaker.
