Miss Macross

A while back, I wrote about Mari Iijima, the Japanese singer/songwriter/actress who played Lyn Minmay on the Japanese animated series Space Fortress Macross 24 years ago, returning to the role -- this time, for a new English dub of the series. I've received a sampler DVD that contains an episode of the new dub. Hearing a 40-something Iijima playing Minmay in English is certainly a different experience than hearing the teenage Iijima play her in Japanese; and is also quite different from hearing Reba West, the American actress who voiced Minmay for the 1985 US version of the show, Robotech. Plus, I'm not used to hearing a voice on an American dub of a Japanese show who actually sounds Japanese. (And the character is Chinese. I suppose it all works out somewhere.)

I have the complete series, in non-dubbed subtitled form, from Animeigo, who previously had the Macross license; so I'm not about to buy the whole series again just to have a good dubbed version. But it's nice to know it exists.

Here's an interview of Iijima about the experience of revisiting her character a couple of decades later.