Macross

Talking about imaginative heroes, although the most popular series amongst my generation is Gundam, my person pick is Macross (超時空要塞), created by Shōji Kawamori (河森正治).

I shall not elaborate on the details of the story (which I must confess I was quite fond of when I first watched it as a teenager). The most revealing happening was, as always, behind to scene.

To put it simply, the original TV series has 36 episodes.

The main part of the story actually finished at the 27th episode, which described the end of final battle with Boddole Zer. The other 9 episodes were obviously produced because the TV series was so well received that its sponsors and advertisers did not want it to finish too early. In fact, two additional series, The Super Dimension Century Orguss (超時空世紀) and The Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross (超時空騎團) were produced for the same purpose - both proved to be hopeless successors of their famous ancestor.

One has to know when the game is up.

PS. Macross was actually a nice demonstration of how people with money has the say: The name of the series - and therefore the spaceship in the story - was decided by Big West Advertising, the major sponsor of the cartoon. The rumour was the owner of this advertising company was a fan of Shakespeare, and the pronunciation of Macross, in Japanese, was similar to Macbeth.