Click here for the press release from ADV Films about Robotech Remastered: Extended Edition!

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At AnimeExpo 2000, Robotech fans were overjoyed to discover that ADV Films moved quickly to reach an agreement with Harmony Gold to release Robotech on the new DVD format. They had even secured the services of Carl Macek, Robotech's original producer, to supervise the creation of the first DVDs. With 85 episodes of footage and other scattered materials, this would not be an easy task.

For more background, let's dive into Robotech's production history:

In 1984, Harmony Gold acquired the rights to distribute Macross outside of Japan from reknowned anime studio Tatsunoko Productions. English-language home videos and comics began to hit the market, but hit a snag when prospective broadcasters insisted that the 36-episode series is too short to go on the air. Industry syndication guidelines at the time called for a minimum of 65 episodes. Carl Macek's familiarity with anime is put to use as he is recruited by Harmony Gold to create Robotech. Southern Cross and Mospeada, two other similarly-themed anime series from Tatsunoko, are adapted into the 85-episode Robotech series.

Cutting Edge ... in 1985

The post-production of Robotech was handled by Intersound, a modern Hollywood post-production facility that boasted the latest in video editing equipment and mastering. After the initial film-to-tape transfer, a gargantuan task was initiated to edit each episode to fit into television time slots and broadcast standards in 1985. (no butts & no guts) English-language vocals, sound effects, and new music were recorded onto discrete audio tracks with fully editable "stems" on 8-track magnetic tapes. Data for edit decision lists were stored on cutting-edge floppy disks. The rest is history ... well literally.

Did Anyone Back Up the Data!?

In less than a decade after Robotech's production, a massive rainstorm in Hollywood touched off a remarkable sequence of events, flooding the storage facility harboring Robotech's source materials. Countless reels, tapes, and other recordings were irretrievably lost.

A set of broadcast masters, which were stored off-site and regularly sent out for syndicated broadcasts, had luckily escaped destruction. Along with these masters, a set of audio tapes containing merged effects and music tracks without vocals, had also survived, making continued dubbing of Robotech into foreign languages possible.

Starved for Source Materials

However, this posed a minor problem in 1995, during the production of the Robotech Perfect Soundtrack CD. The master tapes for some of Robotech's music tracks had been lost. These tracks could not be lifted from the broadcast masters because the music had been merged with the sound effects and ambient audio of the broadcast soundtrack. With some sleuthing, Tom Bateman had managed to retrieve some of these otherwise lost tracks from the personal tapes of Robotech's original composers Arlon Ober and Ulpio Minucci.

Finally in 2000, as ADV was working towards a DVD release in the following year, the surviving broadcast masters were thought to be the last and best source material available. Despite efforts to enhance picture quality, perceptive Robotech fans correctly speculated that the 1985 master footage was used as the source of the Robotech DVDs.

Then in 2001, Robotech.com leaked the first split-screen images from the digital restoration of the original Japanese Macross series, causing an uproar among Robotech fans!

NEXT: An incredible discovery, and the race is on for Super-Dimensional restoration!