Macross: Do You Remember Love? is a movie remake of the first arc of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross. DYRL starts off in the middle of the action with the Macross already fighting the Zentradi in space; Hiraku is already a pilot; Minmay is already a star. This is mostly a condensed retelling of the original Macross series. All the major scenes, deaths, defeats, and triumphs are revisited but now they play out a little differently than they did before. Canonically DYRL is supposed to be a movie made in the Macross universe based on the events in the TV series.
In fact, we start off in the middle of a Minmay concert. However, Hikaru and Minmay haven’t met yet. When they do meet it is much the same as the original though in the original the situation seems much more dire. All of the other relationships are already established, like Roy and Hikaru’s brotherly bond and Misa and Hikaru grating on each other. Oh and Kaifun is there too, though if you hadn’t seen the TV series you would be clueless of who the heck he is. They seriously don’t even say his name in the movie. Not that we care.
It’s rather odd they never even try to explain who Kaifun is because if you did not watch the TV series you would have no idea who this strange guy who is oddly familiar with Minmay is. They just assume you already know who he is or don’t need to know. He does not appear a lot but he is present for some pivotal scenes. Oh well it’s Kaifun. The less Kaifun the better
So while we jump in with a lot of action, a lot of the relationships are not fleshed out to their necessity. It does rely on your knowing at least a little about all of these people already. But as popular as it was, that isn’t a bad assumption. Though I do feel if you were just going to watch DYRL without the benefit of the TV series you wouldn’t be lost. I just felt this was sometimes difficult to understand Misa’s point of view without knowing her backstory and family history. Also her friendship with Claudia gave many insights in the TV series which we miss here...
