The Fall of a Titan: Dissecting Breetai's Death Scene in the Sentinels Novels

I wrote this a few months ago:

The Fall of a Titan: Dissecting Breetai's Death Scene in the Sentinels Novels

I have to admit it: I’ve grown to like Breetai as an individual character and not just part of the Zentraedi-philosophical-ideal machine, which naturally leads to a closer look at his portrayal in the various continuities.

Breetai’s (and Britai’s) various treatments are a lot more of a mixed bag than Exedore’s (and Exsedol’s) various polarizing fates, which is pretty strongly apparent in Breetai’s death scene in the Robotech novels. I’ve always read that scene with a slightly uncomfortable mix of heartstring-tugging and the sense that something was not right

And once I actually sat down and looked at that death scene in more depth, my interest, if not crumbled, began to feel a lot more hollow. And it was so easy to understand why I wonder why it took me this long to sit down and look at it, when I never had any illusions about the perfection of the novels in the first place.

I’ll post Breetai’s entire death scene, because my issues can’t really be understood without it.

Breetai could almost appreciate Edwards's use of Minmei against them. Almost. But he was too busy defending himself against Inorganics to dwell for long on the irony of the situation.

Battlepods were stumbling and going down all around him; Hellcats leaping in to claw away at plastron shields or gnaw at the war machines' armored limbs. Ahead of him, squads of Scrim and Crann were moving into flanking positions, hoping to sweep the stragglers up into their kill zone. Breetai had ordered the nets shut down, but that did nothing to mitigate the effect of Edwards's subtle stroke. Minmei's song seemed to be attacking them from all sides from the hive complex and its surrounding broadcast antennae, from the etiolated high ground of the planet itself.

Breetai's flagship had been spared the paralyzing effects of the voice during Dolza's attack on Earth. Exedore had cut them a deal. Breetai and his crew, like sailors saved from the sirens' call; and traitors, too, to their commander¬in-chief, to the Masters and the Imperative. But even though the voice had missed Breetai's Zentraedi on that occasion, it had infiltrated and traumatized their collective psych as sure as any archetype. And the effect of hearing it now reawakened memories of their genocide, just as Fantoma's mines had reawakened memories of their bio¬genetically engineered birth. Breetai experienced what it must have been like to be on any one of those five million doomed ships. To hear those sounds for the first time and experience the tumult they stirred; to find oneself suddenly stripped of meaning and purpose, set adrift in a black tide of indifference. To recognize that the truths one had pledged to honor and die for were no more than the engrammed fears of a demented circle of madmen.

Breetai remembered the first time he had seen Minmei Miss Macross, then-and her movie role he would take to heart. He tried to convince himself that he wasn't the being who had succumbed to those transvid images; that he had outgrown his conditioning. Hadn't he found himself on Fantoma? Found love there, a sense of new beginnings? But the voice made it clear that the Zentraedi had played host to the Masters' Imperative for far too long to simply outgrow it; and Breetai understood that death was at hand...

He opened all the Power Suit's communications frequencies and boosted the gain to maximum volume, reveling in the sheer insanity of the moment. Back thrusters engaged, he shook two lockjawed Hellcats from his legs and hopped himself over-a skirmish line of Odeons, twisting around as he landed to bring the suit's chest-mounted impact cannon into play. He ruined the line, then jumped again, flattening a Hellcat and its huntmate, grinding them to grit under the suit's massive, metalshod feet. Some of the Pods nearby caught the maneuver and commenced a fire-breathing rally of their own, plastron cannons blazing as they moved in to reengage the hive's. Inorganic defenders. But the rally came too late. Shock Troopers and Enforcer Ships were already in the skies, streams of blinding annihilation disks launched against the Zentraedi advance. Breetai saw the Regent among them and went after him. The Invid was suited up in Power Armor-a bulky, bipedal affair of component-intensification pods and articulated guards, propelled by triple-ported foot thrusters and a single rear thruster located in the center of the suit's flare¬shoulder torso cape. The Regent's thick neck and tubercle-ridge were protected by a transparent sheath; but the helmet left his face and sensor antennae exposed. His black eyes seemed to find Breetai and summon him into personal combat.

Breetai shut down his weapons and diverted full power to the suit's propulsion systems. Two elongated leaps brought him within striking range; he was bounding into a third when the Regent launched. They met in midair with a riotous clang of body parts, head-to-head, arms and legs flailing. They sprung back and went at it again, attacking each other like wrestling-ring gorillas. The Regent was less than half Breetai's size, but with Minmei's faltering voice still screaming into his helmet-just sound now without discernible words, an agonized cry-the Zentraedi had to use all his strength to keep from collapsing.

And the Regent was quick and powerful besides; he came up under Breetai's arms, lifted, and slammed him to the ground. He fought to get to his feet, but the Regent had moved in for an arm and leg and was hoisting him up into a centrifugal spin. Released, Breetai struck the ground like a skipping stone, skittering over the scabrous land the Zentraedis' own ships had bleached of life. He rolled and bounced, plowing up a mound of dirt before he came to a stop; then the Regent was all over him again, slamming away at him with shoulders and forearms, a tackle at a practice sled.

A well-aimed kick sent the Power Suit's helmet winging from Breetai's head; but he managed to skip out from under the Invid's suddenly engaged foot thrusters.

"You're mine, Zentraedi!" the Regent seethed, in a stomping sumo advance now. "I'll have the pleasure of tearing you to pieces with my bare hands. For what your Zor did to my wife! For what your Masters ordered you to do to my world!"

Breetai saw the inevitability of it. And the rightness. But in that same instant of revelation, he had a glimpse of something else as well-a look at the full circle he and his defeated hundredfold had come to close. There was a point at which the Zentraedi and Invid were meant to achieve a kind of karmic balance. Breetai couldn't really make sense of it, but he did understand that the two races had been moving toward a common end from the moment Zor unleashed Protoculture on the Quadrant. And perhaps even before that, although he could scarcely contemplate by what agency or design. And the Humans entered into the equation as well; all three-Optera, Tirol, Earth-wedded to a supreme event still in the making. An event that would not only redress the wrong done Optera, but one that would have a transcendent impact on the fabric of the universe they shared.

The Regent seemed aware of the serene look on Breetai's face, and showed a puzzled one in return. Breetai lunged forward into that momentary lapse and shoved his fists deep into the recesses of the Invid's torso armor. Clamping his arms around the Regent's waist and deploying all the Power Suit's waldos and grappling devices, he locked him in a power-assisted embrace.

The Regent's black eyes went wide, Breetai's cowled visage reflected there. "We go to death together, Invid," Breetai told him.

The Regent struggled to free himself, arching his neck and using his snout to pound away at Breetai's face. But the die was cast. Breetai launched the two of them up, oddly-sized lovers in a vertical pas de deux, and armed the Power Suit's self-destruct system.

Alert lights flashed across the Suit's pectoral displays. The Regent let out a strangled cry and tried again to twist free, breaking both of Breetai's arms in the process. "Breetai-no!" he screamed. "It is not the Zentraedi way! Accept your defeat! Let me live!"

Breetai glanced down at the embattled figures below him, dwindling now as the thrusters carried them high into Optera's war-torn sky. "It will never be over until you and I are dead, Invid. You have known this all along."

The Regent attempted to answer him, but could not. The Zentraedi's words were more binding than his hold. Thoughts streaked through his mind like storm-tossed leaves. A vision of his wife in the midst of her journey to the stars' other side. A transformation so intense it burned away all doubt...

The two faced each other with a look beyond words, waiting for the world to end.

Optera shuddered when it came; a manger star above the hive. (Sentinels: Rubicon, 94-98)

Okay.

It’s a long passage, but I wanted to get it all down out there.

Picture it: the Zentraedi are moving in on Optera, and a brainwashed, drugged, terrorized, and deluded Minmei is forced to sing, and her song is turned as a weapon onto the Zentraedi by the corrupt General Edwards who has sided with the Invid.

What’s wrong with this picture is that it completely misunderstands the reason Minmei’s songs made the Zentraedi freak out in the original series, misunderstands it in such a way that if I didn’t know better, I’d seriously question whether or not the two writers even watched the original Macross series, even the Robotech dub of it.

For even the dub makes clear that it was the shock of hearing music, the contact with “culture” that made the Zentraedi act wonky. Any physical pain the Zentraedi might have felt came from the psychological shock to their systems, not that Minmei’s song was a kind of sonic weapon that would create debilitation and weakness in Zentraedi regardless of context.

But it’s not. There is no need to protect and shield Zentraedi from Minmei’s song once they’d gotten accustomed to it, as Exedore and Breetai surely must have by the time of the final battle with Dolza, yet this passage from the novels explicitly makes mention of the human-friendly Zentraedi needing to be shielded from Minmei’s song in the events of “Force of Arms”.

And there is also no way that her song could have any adverse effect on Zentraedi who’d been living in the human world for over a decade, as the novel also dictates.

It’s a heavy and sudden retcon to make Minmei’s song into this kind of weapon, and so there’s no poignancy in Breetai struggling against a physical weakness and winning to continue fighting, because said weakness is impossible by the rules of the established universe, unless a reader was willing to disbelieve one of the key themes of the original Macross Saga. Normally I’d like the extra struggling...but here it doesn’t work because of the reason for that weakness.

It might be argued that evidence points to Minmei’s song acquiring more literal, universal power as the novels’ narrative goes on, cumulating in the almost mystical treatment of them at the climax of End of the Circle, but Breetai’s memories, as seen above, point to her song having always had some weapon-like effect on Zentraedi who should have been used to it.

This apparent misunderstanding of Minmei also means that if the writers were going for any sense of ironic reversal, of the songs which saved the Zentraedi now becoming their doom, it falls completely flat.

I have an equally major problem with Breetai suddenly feeling that his battle with the Regent is some kind of karmic thing, and in that moment apparently deciding that they both must die because of it.

The later Robotech novels like to play up various cyclical imagery, so in that way, Breetai’s sense that the circle of battle between Zentraedi and Invid must be closed by his and the Regent’s simultaneous death, fits. But it doesn’t fit with Breetai’s character. If Breetai knew about these cycles, he wouldn’t care. He would concentrate on the here and now, the world that only he knows, for it is the only one that would matter to him. He would know that killing himself and the Regent changes nothing about the past.

Of course Breetai, being Breetai, doesn’t go gently into that good night, and what amounts to an elaborate suicide is played out as the action of a powerful warrior, fighting to the end despite his weakness. But no matter how badass his physical actions are, there is still a sense of submission following his revelation, submission to a destiny that Breetai never even had a say in to begin with, because Breetai wasn’t the one who ordered Optera’s destruction. He merely helped carry it out, and at the time, might not have even had the ability to question his actions.

What, exactly, would be wrong with Breetai’s killing the Regent simply on the grounds that it gets a major enemy out of the way? It’s not like there wouldn’t be plenty more “circular” themes in the novels left if that aspect was eliminated from the battle between Breetai and the Regent.

It would still leave open the question as to why Breetai would be downed by a creature so much smaller than he (though one still large in comparison to humans), an issue to which Breetai’s “submission” might be seen as a way to overlook it: Breetai dies against a creature half his size because he “must”. But of course it doesn’t work on those terms.

Also, when Kazianna Hesh reflects on Breetai’s death:

When death took him from her in combat, she was nearby and saw him sacrifice his life to slay the Regent, end the war. There were fools who looked at the relative size of the combatants-Breetai nearly three times the Regent's height-and marveled that Breetai had not won outright. They understood nothing of the astounding power the Invid monarch had by then, the strength beyond mere size-or of the debilitating effects of Minmei's voice, transmitting her torment, forced on Breetai by the malevolent Edwards.

Kazianna dismissed all fools. What Breetai had done with his dying breath, no one else who ever lived could have done. He died in victorious combat, the highest Zentraedi fulfill¬ment. (End of the Circle, 203)


But does this passage, despite the conviction behind it, really explain anything? Minmei’s song is even attributed again, ensuring that Breetai didn’t even face the Invid leader on his own terms, again undercutting the glorious death that it supposedly was, because of the wholesale rewriting of the nature of Mimei’s song.

And in addition to being a lot smaller than Breetai, the Invid Regent just isn’t the threatening villain that the text wants us to think he is. His position is certainly powerful and his armada is certainly a great physical threat to Our Heroes, but as an individual character, he often come off as petulant, petty, stupid, and a little bit insane, though not in an interesting way.

If the Regent were truly on par with the established characters, if he lived up to his reputation, and his battle with Breetai was one where both combatants put up a good fight and were in obvious danger of death, and all that karmic crap was removed, then perhaps we could take Breetai’s death scene the way it was meant to be taken.

But as it is, anything related to Breetai’s death has a veneer of very earnest emotion (some passages actually approach eloquence and powerful sadness), but it covers a series of misused ideas, lost potential, and what were either misunderstandings or deliberate alterations.

I’ll always enjoy Breetai’s role in the novels prior to his death, and his physical prowess in battle is never in doubt, but...it could have been better. Could have been a lot better, even if this is the least objectionable version of Breetai’s death in the Robotech continuations.

Actually, some of Breetai’s other major scenes in the novels are sort of like this. Breetai’s return to his quarters on Fantoma, to his memories of the simple mining civilization the Zentraedi once had. Though such scenes develop the character, showing his original life as more of a loner, I don’t like the notion of Zentraedi being “reprogrammed” miners with that civilization to go back to, because it needlessly overcomplicates things, and means the Zentraedi don’t have to work as hard to continue remaking themselves. But on the surface, it’s obviously a meant to be an affecting treatment of Breetai.

I still like a lot of what the novels did with Breetai, but sometimes....you get this. It looks good, but only on the surface, which is sad, because...it still looks good. It’s still played with earnestness, like someone does love the character despite how poorly it turns out.

Meh... I take it with a grain of salt.

They plan out the book and said, "ok at this point Breetai dies. Now how and why does this happen?"

Then they make shit up to justify it.

(almost as bad as throwing darts at a wall full of pics to choose the new "Cylon of the week".)

They wrote Minmay almost like a friggen BASARA.

Like you said if these were fresh mooks, bam they'd be floored.

But Breetai is a FAN, he probably has all her albums and wacks off to the singing doll once a week! (FFS!)

While I did like the general FLOW of the novels (to a point) much of them I admit was crap. and unfortunately Breetai's death scene was full of it.

(EPIC FAIL)



Now in my fic I might touch on Minamy BECOMING like Basara but only because she's in the M7/MII verse now.

I have to admit, there's still the part of me, unmovable, that wants to take this scene in the spirit it was intended instead of yelling at it a lot. I just like Breetai too much, I guess, that seeing others mourn for him, or him doing something important, gets me every time.

Just see that it took me over a year to realize, "Hey, this is pretty stupid."

On an unrelated note, good lord did I hate Macross 7. And Basara...sooooo much. I don't think poor, abused novels!Minmei deserves the comparison.

while that whole scenario is just weird and lacks common sense, I still say killing off Breetai was a bad move, legal issues or not.

And the whole Edwards using minmeis music as a weapon against the zentraedi was just plain dumb.

When it comes to the 80s/90s Robotech stuff, I don't think killing off Breetai was due to any kind of legal mandate. It was just planned, for some reason, as far back as the original Sentinels ideas.

Now, if we're talking Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles, where Breetai's death is much, much crappier...THEN I believe it was because the Robotech productions could no longer use the Macross characters and had to get rid of a bunch of them as soon as possible.

Basically, in PTSC, Breetai shows up again in just a slightly better revamp of his Buckethead design (augh!), pilots a Bioroid (!) in battle against the Regent and both of the combatants are blown up when T.R. Edwards fires on the place where they're fighting.

....

T.R. [fudgebutter] Edwards! That awful, ridiculous cliche excuse for a new villain. Talk about insult to injury. And then Breetai is just totally forgotten.

Weak.

incisivis wrote:

When it comes to the 80s/90s Robotech stuff, I don't think killing off Breetai was due to any kind of legal mandate. It was just planned, for some reason, as far back as the original Sentinels ideas.

Now, if we're talking Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles, where Breetai's death is much, much crappier...THEN I believe it was because the Robotech productions could no longer use the Macross characters and had to get rid of a bunch of them as soon as possible.

Basically, in PTSC, Breetai shows up again in just a slightly better revamp of his Buckethead design (augh!), pilots a Bioroid (!) in battle against the Regent and both of the combatants are blown up when T.R. Edwards fires on the place where they're fighting.

....

T.R. [fudgebutter] Edwards! That awful, ridiculous cliche excuse for a new villain. Talk about insult to injury. And then Breetai is just totally forgotten.

Weak.

Was even worse when Edwards turned into some kind of monster thing

That emoticon always reminds me of Exedore when I see it. Always. I can imagine him tutting his disapproval in Ted Layman's voice.

PTTSC was such a misfire. Okay, there's no way to reconcile any Sentinels adpatations with the TV series, so start afresh...at the END of some other unknown version of the Sentinels, and try to bring viewers up to speed and put them into a present-day adventure at the same time, and cram it into about five comics.

I almost want to say, "I'm glad my favourite characters are dead so I don't have to put up with any of this crap".

Hey, I use Basara as a handle, and even I don't like him - how's that for irony?

I ended up with it because all the other Macross and Robotech related names were already registered with the nickserv, on the old Robotech IRC channel that was sponsored by The Robotech Echo and others.

The Minmei bit makes a little more sense if you factor in the Protoculture-made clone / Muse link from Southern Cross - but frankly, the Sentinels novels as a whole were weak, as were TEotC and #19-21 (ESPECIALLY #20 - oh my God, how they raped the Eternity comcs miniseries), and it can be laid almost completely at the feet of James Luceno, as Brian Daley was already fighting cancer by the time the Sentinels books were being written, and while the first 12 books were joint ventures of the two, while Sentinels and later books were effectively Luceno almost solo, with Daley as a consultant (Brian being busy, trying (successfully) to finish the three Star Wars Radio drama scripts before he passed away).

A lot of the camp of the novels was completely different camp in the scripts for the series, but at least stuff that was a lot more in character. Heck, remember that One of the NG novels had a quote from Breetai about Bernard, that post-dated Breetai's death in the novels....