good back-story, and good acting

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles is the long awaited sequel to the Robotech franchise that started in the 80s. Its release was met with very mixed fan reaction and reviews ranging from amazingly awesome to downright terrible.I am a "late comer" to Robotech, having only discovered the classic series recently thanks to dvds and youtube. My first impression was not a good one and only season 3 of the original series made me not dismiss it as overly dramatic, hyped up anime trash. Robotech the Shadow Chronicles was entertaining but inconsistent. It is very obvious that there were different directors and writers working on different parts of the movie. Story - The good points of the story was that it was easy to follow. It lent itself well to the setting of the movie. However, the creators make the assumption that the viewer already has a level of knowledge concerning Robotech since little time is devoted to flesh out the backstory, and this would tend to alienate new viewers.Characters - A very varied bunch of characters with well defined personalities. Only the main cast gets any significant development though. Most of the characters are likable and the dialogue interplay between them fits very nicely. Their character redesigns are very attractive and still keep the essence of the originals. On the other hand, once again the creators assume that the viewer should have prior Robotech knowledge and thus character back stories are just glossed over.Animation - Inconsistent in both the 2D and 3D. For the most part, the 2D art is a good balance between detail and animation fluidity. Vibrant colours complement the attractive character designs and smooth character movements. However the few animation short cuts used can be quite obvious and jarring and the "zoom in to face close up" shot is slightly over used. In the 3D department, there are scenes of amazing quality, like The shot where Scott Bernard is flying is Alpha Fighter toward the invid Hive to look for Ariel. Another well done 3D scene was the Haydonite mecha invading Space Station Liberty. The quality in those is equal to that of high production value anime movies like Sky Crawlers. However, at the same time, you get really shoddy 3D work like the invid mecha and the human space cruisers.Choreography - I do not know if it was just inexperience, or that the directors were trying to be true to the original.......but the fight choreography of the space battles looked like they came straight out of the original 80s anime. This is not really a good thing since this is a 2007 production. In the original anime, to save on budget, mecha would zip across screen locked in a set pose, enemies would disappear in gaudy balls of flame and space cruisers exchange volleys of fire while making no attempts at evasive maneuvers, basically on screen movement of mecha and spaceships were kept to a minimum. Robotech the Shadow Chronicles continues that tradition. Mecha are locked in a set pose as they zip about screen, there is minimal mecha part movement, spaceships do disappear in gaudy out-of-place looking balls of flame. All in all, Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles is a good effort by the creators. Especially since for most of them, especially the directors, this is their debut production. Perhaps their only mistake was continuing the mistakes of the original series. The sometimes campy dialogue, derivative music(the original robotech theme seemed ripped from Superman), limited mecha animation and inconsistent production standards were all carried over from the original series. Of course, this would spark the "keeping true to the original" debate again among fans.I look forward to seeing the next installment of the Robotech saga but I do hope that the creators learn from the mistakes of the original series and Shadow Chronicles.

I will keep it short. Honestly this is not even worthy of sitting in a chair for the whole 88 minutes....If there has been any possibility of rating it as a -(minus)10 i would do so without thinking. ]The not "low end" but "amateurish" CGI leaves a sore taste in an artists mouth.... This is a shamefull moment for Robotech. And after this as some people say.... It is on its way to the bottom of the well...When one succeeds to get over the awful "CGI" what one gets is :shalow character work, incoherent story, and "Ripped off" ( they say inspired)... soundtrack( this is a case of Star wars rip). Not a single glimp of originality egsists within this movie. It is a clishe after clishe.......Overall...Do yourself a favor...SKIP THIS......

Despite what the other reviewer has commented about "The Shadow Chronicles", this movie was made with the fans at heart. Yes there are loose ends with missing characters like Minmei, Lisa, Max and others, but you need to realize that this is being made to reintroduce people to the legacy that is ROBOTECH. The fact that they used Rick's, Scott's, the Regent's, Vince's and many other cast members voices from the series, shows the dedication the production team spent to make it as authentic as possible. For Christ's sake, they use lines lifted from the last 3 episodes of Robotech in the movie. For any TRUE ROBOTECH FAN, they close a lot of open questions, they use Minmei's songs, and try to keep the style as close to the original style... And to top it all off the use the original designs for the ships and mecha.Please watch this movie with one thing in mind. This is a modern reworking of the series in an attempt to stay true to what Robotech represented. They do a very good job to keep as much continuity as possible without making it too confusing for those who have not seen the series or remember much of what happened at the end of the series. Don't's nit pick all the issues, enjoy it for what it is, Robotech for a new generation of fans.Below are my responses to the other reviewers comments made about the movie..."In all honesty, the Sentinels OVA was MUCH better." All Sentinels did was tie the the first and second series together. It was not as good as it could have been. Yes it had the animation and character style of the series, but you cant expect them to use such an old style in a modern rendition of the series. But seriously, Lisa's Hair? The use of the stock footage from the series? Very Bad dialog? Should I continue?"Who is to blame for this mishap? Definitely Tommy Yune. By the way, who the hell is this Korean guy? They should have gotten Carl Macek on the project. What were they thinking? I mean without Macek you can't have Robotech. He made the bloody thing." Tommy Did a great job reworking the movie. Frank Agrama was part of the movie screenplay (he helped with Sentinals too so =P ) and Macek did advise on the screenplay. LRN2Research before you make comments like this.

Ultimately, this is a good movie. You need to dial back your expectations a bit, because remember. Robotech in 1985 never existed, it was through Carl Macek's vision that he was able to edit and interweave the story into a "western format" as they say. But since the original Japanese product values had lots of depth (violence, sensuality, characters being terminated, etc) he had a lot to work with.Shadow Chronicles goes a bit extreme on the Western format, because its made exclusively from the ground up for the North America/Europe audience. and I do agree that if Carl Macek was actively involved here, there might have been a bit more "bite" to the movie, but give it a chance! POSITIVE: - Good animation value, although its not true to the original. Its much cleaner, and loses a bit of its grittiness both in terms of story line ( and animation. However its still good none the less.Sound is fantastic, the audio quality is superb. Voice acting is superb (regardless of what others say). Even with a limited amount of voice staffing, they are able to stretch it well and make it sound like there are many more actors.Animation is far more fluid than the typical Japanese 10-15 frames per second. Thus its much smoother and fluid. There IS some shortcuts I feel in the CGI aspect where they make the transformations rather quick and the "wow" in transformation is lost, i hope they slow it down just a little bit. however, in war, they NEED to transform quickly, or else you're toast.Picture Quality on DVD is very good, its very clean, not much noise. Good compression scheme, but then again the movie isn't very long so high bit-rate on this DVD should be no problem.ROBOTECH is back, with more episodes and adventures! YAH!! - Again, regardless of is said here on IMDb, the CGI textures are good, (on par to a decent video game production), its not ILM/LucasFilm quality but come on, it's a animation! Its good enough.The unfortunate - story is a little predictable, its a bit too "americanized" taking ideas you've seen on other sci-fi flicks. The twists are not as mind bending as the Robotech from 1985, but there are still some good twists, but I hope they will 'crank it up' on the follow up sequels - long trailer included on the DVD gives almost too much of the story away. The one on www.Robotech.com (short trailer) is better, it wets your appetite and makes you want more.the battles are a bit flat, compared to the original series. its very predictable here and feels a little 'slow' - Robotech fans are being EXTREMELY critical here. if you folks don't support it, they won't make any more! come on, this movie is not bad.the bottom line - watch it at least two or three times, and i think you'll appreciate its production values more.enjoy it, its a good movie.not perfect, but if they can keep a new movie 1 per a year, i think Harmony Gold will make good money to reinvest into Robotech for many years to come.worth buying most definitely.