Robotech over the years has gotten about equal amounts support and derision from anime fans. It introduced viewers to permanent character deaths and a dramatic serial space opera, but also obscured parts of the message of the original Macross and had a few edits here and there, though not nearly as much as what had come before it.

One of the bigger criticisms of the whole franchise is that in order for it to remain cohesive it requires a “god of the gaps,” or something to explain why these disparate parts of the story and universe actually fit together. I’ve made fun of Robotech for that reason before as well. But then I thought about this idea of just filling in blank after blank with whatever you could find, and it reminded me a whole lot of another giant robot franchise: Gundam.

Question: Have you ever heard of Johnny Ridden?

If your answer is “no,” that is perfectly normal. But if your answer is “yes,” then you are a fairly hardcore Gundam fan, or you’ve just seen the name appear on Gundam models and scratched your head wondering just who this person is.

To make a long story short, Johnny Ridden is a character who, like Char Aznable, was a Zeon ace in the original Mobile Suit Gundam. He got his own custom colors, his own nickname (Crimson Lightning), and he fought at many crucial points in the war. The only thing is, he never appears on-screen in any of the episodes or movies. You are just supposed to assume he’s around. Also, he loves Kycilia Zabi. I don’t think even her own father can say that!

Basically Johnny Ridden was designed after the series was over to help promote the line of Mobile Suit Variations, or robot designs which take existing models and recolor them in order to sell them off as “new.” If you’re into video games, it’s pretty much the same thing as a “palette swap.”  It’s just like how a Wizard is stronger than a Magician in Dragon Warrior because it’s yellow. And the big thing is, Mobile Suit Variations worked. They sold, they made Bandai money. And now? Johnny Ridden makes appearances in games and has comics in which he actually appears, and it all has to do with how much people want to explore the gaps in the world of Gundam and how easy it was for Bandai to make this all possible.

When you look at what Robotech did, it almost pales in comparison.