New ROBOTECH Series Being Kickstarted
Harmony Gold announced over the weekend at Anime Con that they have plans to bring back the classic 1980s animated series Robotech. Back in 2008, Robotech creator Carl Macek had a new idea for a Robotech animated series called Robotech Academy. After working on the project in secret for two years, Macek unfortunately passed away before finishing it.
Harmony Gold is now looking to bring the unfinished project to life, and they are going to do it will all of the notes, outlines, and scripts that Macek put together when he was working on it. They are funding the project through Kickstarter, and they are asking for $500,000 to produce a 22-minute pilot episode.
$500,000 sounds like a lot of money for a 22-minute pilot episode, but it will cover the complete design and production costs. Any funds that are raised beyond the original goal will go directly into developing more episodes. Those future episodes will cost less to produce because they will already have all of the setting art, mecha models, and character designs that can be reused to create other episodes.
Kotaku had a chance to interview the director of the series, Tommy Yune, and he had some information on the series.
"Robotech Academy takes place near the end of the second generation of Robotech—in the time and setting of the aborted TV series Robotech II: The Sentinels. However, as Yune was quick to explain, the series won't be following the Sentinels storyline nor the first-generation characters. “Carl's idea—because the story [of the Sentinels] had already been played out in novels and comic books—was to explore this 'universe' but with a new set of characters.
"Thus, Robotech Academy follows the children of the original generation of heroes—the best and brightest humanity has to offer—as they attend the Robotech Academy, located far from the front. But with the future of the Robotech Expeditionary Force all gathered in one place (both in personnel and technology), the Academy turns out to be an inviting target—especially once the Academy ends up trapped in deep space, far from where it's supposed to be."
Yune goes on to explain that we will see some familiar faces in the show as well:
“We'll have cross generational characters; but because it's in a different timeframe within the Robotech universe, some of them will look different—some will be significantly older and some of them will be younger.”
As for the villains in the story, they are described as "a mysterious splinter group of the second generation's Robotech Masters known as the 'Children of Zor.'" They are also planning on using brand new mecha designs that will "act as a sort of missing link to connect the franchise's three distinct transforming robot designs."
This series sounds like it could be freakin' awesome, and I hope that they can raise the money they need to make it happen. I grew up watching Robotech, and the fact that there's a chance we could see a new series is amazing! For more information click here, and you can go to their Kickstarter page here.