MACROSS  is  no YAMATO, GUNDAM, or TENCHI MUYO! when it comes to convoluted chronologies and alternate timelines. After fifteen years though, who can keep track of continuity? Which is the "true" story of Space War I, the first MACROSS series or the film DO YOU REMEMBER LOVE? Is FLASHBACK 2012 a sequel to the first series, or the first film? And why is MACROSS II considered a "parallel world" story? All the different stories and retellings may leave some fans confused, so here is the story behind the storylines. A Good Story is Worth Retelling With the success of the first MACROSS series, a theatrical film adaptation was inevitable. The 1984 film DO YOU REMEMBER LOVE? followed the well-worn path from the small screen to the silver screen travelled by the MIGHTY ATOM, SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO, and MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM. Still, story creator and production supervisor Kawamori Shouji did not want to recite the same story, much less reuse television footage. (The MACROSS creators are the first to admit that their low budgets hampered production values in many television episodes.) Studio Nue (with the backing of sponsor Big West) decided to undertake an ambitious masterpiece involving thirty studios and an entirely new story. Naturally, the differences between the first series and the film raise questions of continuity among nitpickers. Which is the "real" story? For the MACROSS Chronology that provides the framework for all MACROSS projects by Studio Nue, Kawamori and Chiba Masahiro decided to rely on the television series's story. In the world of MACROSS, DO YOU REMEMBER LOVE? is a "historical" film made in 2031 to commemorate Space War I. (In real life, later MACROSS sequels do take inspiration from the designs originally created for the film.) As Kawamori notes though, "The real MACROSS is out there somewhere. If I tell the story in the length of a TV series, it looks one way, and if I tell it as a movie-length story, it's organized another way." [Indeed, there are still other retellings of Space War I. The DO YOU REMEMBER LOVE? Sega Saturn game shows a new take on what happened on South Ataria Island on the launch day of MACROSS. Before Nekki Basara and Mylene Jenius reenact their own "Linn Minmei Story" as a television special within the MACROSS 7 television series, the special's producers show clips of an earlier Space War I flick. The footage shows Max and Milia duking it out in space and then marrying in alien garb, two scenes that were not shown in either the first MACROSS series or the later film.] In addition to the multiple accounts of Space War I, there was the issue of unfinished endings. In the last episode of the first series, the creators had planned to unveil the SDF-2 colonization ship and Captain Ichijyo Misa (with designs by Miyatake Kazutaka and Mikimoto Haruhiko respectively), but ended up only hinting at these developments in the final episode. Likewise, Kawamori and Mikimoto wanted to animate a Minmay concert they designed for the movie's ending theme (Angel's Paints), but the production limitations prevailed. When the creators produced the Minmay music video collection FLASHBACK 2012 in 1987, the project gave them an opportunity to write the final chapter of the original MACROSS threesome. Hence, the video finally animates the Minmay's Sayonara Concert and the launch of the SDF-2 Megaroad-01 that the creators had plotted earlier. (Albeit, Miyatake and Mikimoto decided to redo their designs of the Megaroad-01, Misa, and Minmay rather than use their old designs.) As such, the video is a sequel to both projects as well as the last MACROSS anime made for the next five years.