There’s an uncanny mirror between Macross Plus and Top Gun: Maverick that becomes obvious once you place them side-by-side:
Macross Plus was probably chugging from the same cultural brew that produced the original 1986 Top Gun — and then, decades later, Top Gun: Maverick swung back around and ended up exploring ideas that Macross Plus had already gone weird, stylish, and cybernetic with in the mid-90s.
Whether anyone at Studio Nue had Tom Cruise posters on the wall is beside the point. Both stories were birthed from humanity’s primal dreams of flight:
that fighter pilots are rock stars, and jets are power fantasies.
But the real heart of this comparison is this:
Both works are obsessed with the same fear — that the machine might not need us anymore.
One handles that fear by doubling down on human instinct.
The other plugs a pilot’s brain into a warplane and asks, “What if the problem is the human?”
You know, light topic to discuss amongst human friends.
Why These Two Even Belong in the Same Hangar
Maverick is the Hollywood sequel machine doing what it does best:
Remind us that humans are awesome, irreplaceable, and extremely photogenic at sunset.
(How many litres of virgin blood is this man sipping, and is it sold in family-size?)
Macross Plus, meanwhile, sneaks in from the anime side of the fence and says:
“What if the future of flight is part dogfight, part therapy pugilism, and part AI-powered fever dream?”
They take different routes, but both orbit around the same existential aviation headache:
- What does mastery mean when machines can outperform us?
- Where is the line between pilot and system?
- Is flying a craft of skill, identity, or ego-management?
- And what happens when a prototype understands you a little too well?
Maverick: Humans Are Still the Sunset Aces
In Top Gun: Maverick, the tension is laid out right at the start:
The future is unmanned.
Cue Maverick, who responds (paraphrasing):
“Not on my watch, buddy. I’ve got one last mission in me, and I’ll fly it even if I’m powered by sheer old-man-on-yard energy.”
The film’s politics about drones aren’t subtle — but subtlety was never its mission profile.
This is a movie that treats instinct, experience, and pure human grit as sacred.
It’s the cinematic equivalent of yelling, “We don’t need no stinking gadgets!” over afterburner noise.
Earnest? Yes.
Bombastic? Yes.
Sincere in believing humans have an intangible edge? Absolutely.
Macross Plus: The Human Edge Isn’t a Guarantee
Meanwhile, Macross Plus looks at that same fear of automation and goes:
“Okay, but what if the pilot is the weakest link?”
Enter Guld, the hottest head in the hottest fighter, the YF-21 — a machine so advanced it literally melds with his nervous system. It becomes an extension of his body, a shimmering blue exoskeleton built for speed and fury.
Until… it isn’t.
His “mind-meld” with the 21 amplifies everything inside him — including the unresolved trauma he thought he’d buried. When he loses control, it isn’t because the aircraft malfunctions.
It’s because he does.
Macross Plus’ thesis is sharper, more chaotic, and more honest:
Technology doesn’t just replace us.
It reveals what’s broken inside us, and where our biology — psyche and flesh alike — betrays us.
It’s an unusually grown-up idea for a franchise with transforming space jets.
(I love Valkyries. Still do. I’m not sorry.)
Two Cultures, One Anxiety
This is where the comparison gets delightful:
- Maverick says the pilot matters because of that mythic “human element” — intuition, improvisation, the ability to do insane things under pressure.
- Macross Plus says the pilot matters, but mostly because humans bring baggage, trauma, ego, and passion — things machines can’t predict or contain.
Both stories defend human relevance…
but for very different reasons.
One story clings to the past.
The other warns that the future may expose us more than we’d like.
And somehow, they both stick the emotional landing.
The Machines Aren’t the Villains
Neither film is anti-technology.
Neither hates drones, automation, or AI.
What they actually fear — and dramatize beautifully — is loss of identity.
In Maverick, flying is who the pilots are.
In Macross Plus, flying exposes who the pilots are.
And in both, the machines only become “the enemy” when the humans start losing faith in themselves.
Why This Comparison Works (Beyond the “I LOVE PLANES!” Factor)
Because it highlights something timeless in aviation storytelling:
- The cockpit is a mirror for the self.
- Every jet is a metaphor.
- And flight, in fiction, is always about more than physics.
They’re about who we become when we’re pushed to the limits of our craft —
and about the uneasy certainty that our creations will one day outgrow us.
Turns out, the real aviation fantasy is relevance.