The Robotech Perfect Soundtrack Album was a two-disc CD set released in 1996 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Robotech. The initial pressing of the set had a printing error; the label for disc two was put on disc one, and the label for disc one was put on disc two.
The first disc of the set contains “The Complete Background Music Collection.” There are forty-two instrumental pieces in all on the disc. The opening and end titles, the eyecatch (the music played in the background for the commercial break segments), as well as the instrumental pieces for all three sections of Robotech are included.
The second disc is labeled as “The Complete Vocal Song Collection”; technically, this isn’t accurate, because two of the songs with vocals that appeared in the Southern Cross section of Robotech aren’t included on this disc: Musica’s song about the Flowers of Life (although the music for it appears on the instrumental disc as “Invid Theme”), and George Sullivan’s rendition of Minmei’s song, “It’s You.” Outside of that, the disc includes all of the Minmei songs, six songs from Robotech: The Movie, one song from Robotech II: The Sentinels, and all of Yellow Dancer’s songs (this comes out to seventeen songs with vocals). The second disc closes with seven background music tracks from Robotech II: The Sentinels.
I really like the first disc in this set. All of the background music is recognizable from the series. There are times when I listen to that disc that when I hear some of the songs, I can see some of the scenes from the series that use a particular piece of music.
There are some good songs on disc two, but the listening experience is rather uneven. I can’t even begin to figure out how exactly they determined the order for the vocal songs. The first five songs are all Minmei songs, and they are all recognizable from the show. And then you hit a stretch of six songs from the rarely seen Robotech: The Movie. This section of the disc is hard for me to listen to, since I’m not that familiar with these songs. It didn’t help that two very slow songs from the movie were sequenced on the disc to be back to back; it really drags down that portion of the CD. And then it goes into more familiar territory with Rick and Lisa’s wedding song from Robotech II: The Sentinels, and wraps up with the Yellow Dancer songs.
Overall, the Robotech Perfect Soundtrack Album is a decent release. However, when it comes to disc two, I personally would have sequenced the vocal songs a little differently. But if you ever come across a used copy of this set, I would recommend picking it up, especially if it turned out to be one of the mispressed original sets.
I wrote this review after listening to a copy of this CD that I received as a gift from my sister.
