'Macross Frontier' is now available on Hulu.BIGWESTWhat with, almost, all of Macross now available on Hulu, its worth looking back at the sagas huge popularity and what that now means for Gundam internationally.Back in the early 80s, Macross came onto the scene and pretty much blew most of its competition out of the water. Gundam had only just managed to pick itself up off the floor after the TV series had tanked, and the one two punch of a movie trilogy and model kits had saved it.Macross, on the other hand, tackled the new real robot craze head-on, not only with its narrative but also with its more believable treatment of its mecha, designed by both Shoji Kawamori and Kazutaka Miyatake. This was then backed up by amazing transformable toys and model kits, along with something Gundam and the other mecha anime lacked: an enormous amount of music.Gundam and its ilk worked because its mecha design sat across the super robot and real robot tendencies. It channeled elements of the samurai in its mecha design, and the anime was mostly there to promote sales of mecha model kits.Macross was a very different beast by comparison. It not only had the right kind of military-leaning model kits, but it also abandoned all the samurai elements and treated the mecha as actual vehicles.MORE FOR YOUThe fact that the VF-1 Valkyrie was very clearly inspired by the F-14 Tomcat also helped to ground the setting and its mecha in the minds of the viewers. Macross was also tied into the transforming robot toy craze of the early 80s in Japan of Diaclone and Microman, of which many of the same mecha designers worked on.So why does this hasty history lesson have any relevance to todays global anime market?Gundam didnt really and properly come westward until 10-15 years ago. Yes, a few outlying series were released, but they werent from the main Universal Century timeline. Consequently, the cultural backbone of Gundam didn't come into being in the US until very recently.You also still have the problem that the Gundam mecha designs are still channeling elements of samurai armor even today, which is great for Asia but has less cultural overlap with the US.In fact, Gundam has covered a lot of ground in the last decade due to the uptake of its model kits, which the anime, now more prevalent outside of Japan, helps to promote.By contrast, Macross came Westward back in the mid-80s as Robotech, and many of the mecha also ended up in BattleTech and the later MechWarrior games. The mecha are also based on US military aircraft, for the most part, and there is far greater cultural alignment compared to Gundam and its vestigial samurai design motifs.That means Macross has been part of the cultural background in the US for far longer than Gundam and makes more cultural sense.This means that, after multiple decades, the Macross boom of the 1980s may once again occur in the US.However, much of this still depends on merchandising, and a large chunk of toys and model kits for Macross are handled by Bandai, who dont own the intellectual property for Macross and are thus less motivated to promote it over Gundam, which they do own. The other aspect to this is that the original Macross TV series and movie Do You Remember Love? are still landlocked to Japan.These points are by no means trivial obstacles, but the difference now is that almost all of Macross is available to stream on Hulu. There are also multiple other companies handling toy and model kit merchandising, and we havent even touched on the huge musical component to MacrossIn short, the next few years are going to be very interesting, and if people think Gundam has it locked in outside of Asia, they really dont know their mecha anime history at all.Follow me on X, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and am currently featured in the Giant Robots exhibition currently touring Japan.