Fake! Copy! Stupid! (Coda)
We had nothing in those days. We just had whatever the TV channels felt it valuable enough to air. And we had the movies. There was no way for us to collect the material on DVD because all everybody had was VHS. We used to have a Beta player, but that format was discontinued. Everything relied on scheduling, and one day, they stopped airing Robotech. It was sad, but then again, we had our memories, and we’d talk about the various exploits from the thirty-something episodes of the first storyline. We had it all memorized. But you could never own Robotech. At least with comics, you owned the story and were able to experience it again whenever you liked. Cartoons were not possible to own.
One day, at the comic book store, I found a book titled Robotech Art 2 and was thrilled that I could own something from my favorite cartoon of all time. For me, however, it was a novelty thing because the art book exhibited was merely interpretations of the show by industry professionals. There was very little art from the video stills of the cartoon itself, and I would have preferred art from the actual animation. I don’t remember if I bought it or if I asked my mom for it as a gift for birthday or Christmas. I must have bought it because in the back of the book, there was an ad for Robotech Art 1, which did appear to have art from the episodes, and I remember getting that one for Christmas. This, for me, was the far better book, because I could reminisce about the cartoon through stills decorating every page. There was some action on display, enough to remind us of the killing involved. In addition, half of the pages were devoted to an episode-by-episode summary of the entire series. They were nothing more than a paragraph each. delineating only the essentials of a particular episode. Yet I could relive the hallmarks of the story and try to dig into my brain for the positions of those details in the main storyline in these short summaries. If my brother and I ever had a question about when something happened, here was the official source of reference. I treasured both of these books and considered them high points in my comic book and book collection.
With time, I would end up reversing my tastes in both books, appreciating the Robotech Art 2 book over the first one because the art actually looked better. Though I originally felt it was inferior because I had little interest in seeing how other artists with all types of styles interpreted the characters, I now found it more creative. Some of the images were silly, and some had very little hint of Robotech in them. I never really showed that second book to my brother because at first, the two of us could only talk about the first book, which had the official art. But when I finally changed my interests to favor the second, I wanted even less to show it to him. I knew he was going to shoot it down with what he thought was fake or just plain stupid.