Postmortem: Harmony Gold Loses the Rights to Macross in 2021

Article Title: Megaton: Harmony Gold Loses the Rights to Macross in 2021 

Run Date: 9/14/2017

Over the past couple of years, few stories have made me smile as much as this one. I basically grew up with Macross. Well, Robotech, at first. I'd catch the real thing at an anime club when I was about eight or nine. But, anyway, I'm getting off-topic.

Macross has always been something incredibly special. It's a title many cling to as a treasured memory, part of the formative experience for so many fans, who can eagerly recount their favorite scenes and most excited battles. Names like Lynn Minmay, Ranka Lee, and now Walkure have become permanent parts of the collective fan consciousness, as have the stories that helped to bring them to life.

And, don't get me started on that time when I saw a room full of grown adults shedding tears during the "Do You Remember Love" movie's climax.

And, funny enough? We did see Manga release a few Macross titles in the '90s - specifically, Macross II, Macross Plus, and Macross 7. But, at some point, these titles slowly began to disappear from store shelves. 

By late '99, maybe early 2000, fans had acquired a tacit acceptance that, for as beloved as Macross was, it would *never* be released in the west again. 

And, while we did see releases of the original Macross from AnimEigo and ADV, these were fairly limited in scope, and disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared.

At the time, it was conventional wisdom that Harmony Gold had the rights locked up tight. And, well, there was always this scuttlebutt on why the license never seemed to expire. "They got a perpetual license," argued one person, while another would chime in to claim "Harmony Gold has no rights to the franchise! They've just never been challenged!"

Everybody seemed to have an answer, they all claimed to know the situation. But, somehow, we were all just grasping at straws, looking for a boogeyman that we could pin our frustrations onto.

Which brings us to the morning of September 14, 2017.

At first, the expected slate seemed, well... like any other's, to be honest. Under the Dog was getting a second Kickstarter, a new Code Geass trailer hit, and so on. At about 9:30AM, Otaku Review head L.B. Bryant tipped me off to a Reddit post, titled "Harmony Gold no longer own the US licence for Macross."

My first reaction? Sheer, unbridled joy. This felt like the megaton we've been waiting for since the '90s. But, at the same time, things seemed too good to be true.

The Reddit page linked to Pacer Monitor. This is basically a site that tracks and catalogs documents from federal court cases. And, well, it's a little expensive for an indie outlet, at $200 per month.

Thankfully, (dirty little secret) Google has their own catalog of case low documents, which are publicly accessible via Google Scholar. It took a bit of sleuthing, but I was able to find the core case documents, and get to work.

Finding the documents was the easy part, though. Honestly, working with court documents can be likened to pulling your own fingernails out with a pair of pliers. The documents are dry, often bogged down with legalese and jargon that make them tough to follow, and a straight-up chore to read.

This wasn't my first rodeo with court docs, though. I did some clerical work in a CPA's office in my teen years, and I had to go through a few cases for my employer at the time. I won't be talking about those due to legal reasons... and the fact that they're not exactly something you guys would want to read.

Moreover, I had done similar deep dives in the past, most notably when I was writing article "ADV v. ARM: A Tale of Two Anime Companies" - a court case that gave anime fans their first look at actual licensing costs during the bubble eras.

But, anyway, going through these documents became the subject of my free time. Between 9:40AM that morning and about 6:40PM that night, I read. I cataloged. I hunted and pulled every small quote that I could find, which would be relevant to the topic at hand, all the while wearing that mask of skepticism.

Still, it was hard to hide my glee when I read "Claimant [Harmony Gold] has no permanent, exclusive, and irrevocable copyright and trademark rights in the Programs [Macross] as same shall belong to Respondent [Tatsunoko Production, Ltd.] on expiration of the term in 2021."

Aniwho, the ream of documents told a fascinating story of licensing, of how this entire situation came to a head. And, really, the documents were complete as could be, highlighting the earliest meetings in the 1980s, to the Big West lawsuit, and so on.

More interesting, though, was that the document showed that there was basically a "rubber stamp" renewal in place. Every year the license was up for cancellation, it was renewed with little scrutiny, despite being a flat fee that included pretty all home video and TV rights. Heck, the 1998 license included provisions for "all media now existing or hereafter invented"!

The documents basically poked enough holes into the "conventional wisdom" to turn it into Swiss cheese, and really asserted how incredible this arrangement was over the past thirty years.

Shock of all shocks, I know.

Anyway, the files were pretty thoroughly scoured by about 6:30PM. So, after a short break for dinner, I began to piece everything together into a coherent, readable document. 

At this point, I kind of knew I had to give my A-Game. ANN went live with their piece at 6:20PM, and Crunchyroll wasn't too far behind, if I recall correctly. 

So, yeah... being last to market on something like this, you have to be comprehensive, you have to be readable, and you have to be engaging. You have to be the author of that article that people want to reach for first, because it's so damned compelling.

And, truth be told, that's what makes "the night beat" somewhat of a double-edged sword. 

On one hand, you get to really pick and choose your topics for the evening. You can take a little extra time to hone your words, and give a strong presentation for your readers. You can curate a bit, and focus on the big picture, more often than not.

On the flip side, though, even if you start at 5:00PM, you'll still be the last one on the scene 90% of the time. You have to go in there realizing that you won't be getting the Reddit cred. You won't be receiving those big traffic bumps when big stories hit if something shocks the world during the work day. 

Because of this, you have to constantly step your game up. You have to make sure that your content is just, well, the best it can be.

So I wrote... and I edited... and I wrote again. I believe this particular article went through four rewrites over the course of about three hours, just because I wasn't happy with presentation, language, or just some other factor. 

Honestly, though, I feel that the effort paid off. It became a piece I can look at five years from now and say "yeah, I did it right."

 This article was chosen by our Hera's Helpers tier members! Get your vote in for future posts and podcast topics by becoming a $5 patron.