Megazone 23

Megazone 23 (メガゾーン23 Megazōn Tsū Surī) is a three-part original video animation created by AIC and written by Hiroyuki Hoshiyama. The series debuted in 1985.

Megazone 23 - Part I
Megazone 23 - Part I (メガゾーン23 Megazōn Tsū Surī) is the first part of the Megazone 23 series, and was directed by Noboru Ishiguro. It was originally released in Japan on March 9, 1985.

Robotech: The Movie
The film was first adapted as Robotech: The Movie by Carl Macek and Harmony Gold after Macek failed to negotiate the rights to adapt Macross: Do You Remember Love? as the subject for the film. The storyline of Megazone 23 was altered as a sidestory to the second season of Robotech, splicing footage from its source anime Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. Macek's choice of Megazone 23 mostly stemmed from it sharing similar character designs as Macross, due to them sharing character designers.

According to interviews with Macek, the project had originally been intended to be more of a straight dub of Megazone 23 with dialogue and music changes to reflect the Robotech universe. As originally conceived, it would have been set during the events of the First Robotech War (while the SDF-1 was in the process of flying back to Earth from Pluto) with the protagonist Mark Landry, a relative of Rick Hunter, finding out about the government's coverup of the SDF-1's fate, and Landry fighting to make the information known.

However, distributor Cannon Films felt there were "too many girls and not enough robots and guns," and did not like Megazone 's downer ending, either. Thus, Macek rewrote the story to take place shortly before the Second Robotech War, cut segments of Southern Cross footage into it, and commissioned animation studio The Idol Company to animate a new ending (which was later included on the laserdisc of Megazone 23, Part II). The new version involved the Robotech Masters kidnapping and replicating veteran officer B.D. Andrews to steal the memory core of the SDF-1. This new version of the film, however, left some glaring inconsistencies with the original series. In addition, this new story required bits of the Southern Cross series to be spliced in to the original Megazone 23 material. Megazone 23 was filmed on 35mm film while Southern Cross was on 16mm ... the visual inconsistency was very noticeable on the big screen.

The movie disappeared from the United States after a failed test-run in Texas that lasted only a few weeks. One cause for its poor performance was believed to be because Cannon saw Robotech: the Movie as a "kids' film". And when the demographics came back about a month after the test run, they saw that most of the audience was adults. This posed a problem, as Cannon had purchased advertising time only during child oriented programming. It was at this time that Cannon decided to pull the film until it could be properly retooled yet again. Unfortunately, before any further work could be done on the film, the bottom dropped out of Cannon Films and Robotech: the Movie only saw wide release in foreign (non-American) markets.

Streamline / ADV Dubs
Later, Carl Macek would return to Megazone 23 under Streamline Pictures, giving the film a straight dub. The Streamline dub featured many of the same voice actors utilized in Robotech: The Movie and the International dub of Part II. Only 3 voice actors retained the same roles from Robotech: the Movie (Edie Mirman as Tomomi, Gregory Snegoff as B.D. and Daniel Woren as Shinji) and 2 from Part II (Barbara Goodson as Yui and Michael Forest as Eigen).

Streamline's dub of Part I was released on VHS on July 25, 1995. Macek and Streamline intended on doing Parts 2 and 3 as well, but Orion Pictures' corporate problems resulted in all Streamline releases being halted. There's a rumor that a Streamline dub for Part 2 was produced and screened at a convention, but this has yet to be proven.

Like many items in Streamline's catalogue, the Megazone series was picked up by ADV Films, which dubbed the entire trilogy to completion with a consistent cast. Part I was released on DVD on June 1, 2004. The series has since gone out of print with ADV's collapse in 2009.

Video Releases
Robotech: The Movie

Megazone 23 Part I * Complete Collection

Megazone 23 - Part II
Megazone 23 - Part II (メガゾーン23 PART II Megazōn Tsū Surī) is the second part of the Megazone 23 series, and was directed by Ichiro Itano. It was originally released in Japan on May 30, 1986.

Dubbing History
An English dub of Part II was provided by Harmony Gold in 1987 for International markets as a "teaching tool" to assist Japanese speakers learn English, and was included with the Japanese laserdisc release. It was directed by Tom Wyner and utilized some of the same cast members used for the Robotech: The Movie dub of Part I (Kerrigan Mahan as Shogo and Diane Michelle as Eve). Certain casting choices would later be retained for Streamline's dub of Part I (Barbara Goodson as Yui and Michael Forest as Eigen). This dub was edited so scenes of graphic violence and sex were cut out, and the opening scene splices in footage from the "retooled" ending of Robotech: The Movie as well.

Part II was later picked up and redubbed by ADV Films, using their same cast from Part I and was first released on DVD on July 13, 2004.

Video Releases
* Complete Collection

Megazone 23 - Part III
Megazone 23 - Part III (メガゾーン23 PART III Megazōn Tsū Surī) is the third part of the Megazone 23 series, and was directed by Shinji Aramaki and Kenichi Yatagai. It was originally released in Japan from September 28, 1989 to December 22, 1989.

Rather than being a movie OVA like the other two parts, it was released as a two-episode installment.

Dubbing History
The film was first dubbed by Manga Entertainment and released in the United Kingdom on VHS on June 5, 1995. As Part I and II were never released in the UK, Part III was retitled just to Megazone 23. It would later air on the British Sci-Fi Channel.

Part III was later picked up and redubbed by ADV Films and first released to DVD on August 24, 2004.

Video Releases
* Complete Collection