Abstract

This writing is an attempt to identify the desire of Japanese society of the time in the storytelling of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, a Japanese TV animation series first aired in 1982. It can be said that Super Dimension Fortress Macross has not achieved proper attention in academic research despite its commercial success. However, Super Dimension Fortress Macross is highly valuable even from its external aspects. First, as the Dankai generation who had been an important part of the previous SF Japanimation fandom participated in the manufacturing process, the series shows its distinct characteristic as an object of mania ― actually made by the huge fans themselves. Also, from the perspective of the generation theory, the series can be called a transitional work with a message heading to the echo-boom generation. From the aspects of pacifism, sentimentality, and culturalism, the most important keywords in the storytelling of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, we can sense the uncomfortable unconsciousness borne by the members of Japanese society of the time. It means that some problematic urge to narrate is still detected in the work even though the series has a rather diluted characteristic of national animation compared with the existing SF Japanimation. This writing is going to summarize those points into "impossible pacifism," "perversive sentimentality," and "culturalism as a tool of a jump in logic," and then explain the inside story.