Just hours after a special New Year’s Eve airing of the first episode of the upcoming anime Macross Delta, Harmony Gold tweeted that they had acquired the western broadcasting rights to the anime and would re-purpose it as part of their sprawling Robotech franchise under the title Robotech Delta: Songstress Squad. The announcement was met with confusion from both anime industry insiders and fans alike, as both camps had simply assumed that Harmony Gold had gone out of business years ago.

“Wow, those guys are still going?” wrote one anime fan on a popular Macross website. “And here I thought it was just the sheer spite of the universe keeping the rest of Macross from getting an American release at this point. But hey, you learn something new and incredibly depressing, every day.”

According to insider sources, the adaption will run for 26 episodes in the summer of 2016, one season after its spring 2016 Japanese release, and will have its script rewritten to include references to the existing Robotech universe, which consists of similar adaptions of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Calvary Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada. Though firm details are sparse on the level of changes that will be made to Macross Delta, rumors persist that it will be set some time after the 2007 Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles film and will take place in an era where a horrible virus mutated from corrupt Protoculture and spread by the remnants of the ancient Robotech Masters has plunged the galaxy into chaos, with only young men and women raised on the legends of such heroes as the idol Lynn Minmay and ace pilot Rick Hunter able to save humans and Zentraedi alike from destroying themselves.

“Robotech helped bring anime to thousands of fans for the first time in the 1980s, and we hope to repeat that success with a new generation starting with Macross Delta,” a Harmony Gold representative related in a statement to Anime Maru. “And while we understand many purists would rather have Macross Delta broadcast in its unedited Japanese, by connecting it to the existing Robotech universe we’ll be able to please both fans of our original adaption from the 80’s and those who enjoyed Macross in its various forms over the years. Although, as for those who still want to watch Macross Delta in the original Japanese… I can’t speak on the subject at the moment, so let’s just say that our legal department is working on that problem as we speak.”

Harmony Gold would go on to announce earlier today that they had also acquired the rights to Macross Zero and Macross Frontier, which they will release as Robotech Zero: The Beginning, a prequel to the Robotech saga, and Robotech: New Frontiers, a sequel to the series’ third story arc, in American markets respectively.

When asked about the news, our staff’s resident Macross expert merely muttered, “Yack Deculture…” under his breath and then stumbled off, presumably in search of a stiff drink.

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