A to Z Challenge: Yellow Dancer

Yellow Dancer

Since the Robotech shows were originally made in Japan, it shouldn't be a surprise they were a lot more grown up than the typical American cartoon.  There were a lot of adult relationships, though there wasn't explicit sex or anything.  Still, a lot of what we'd call "adult situations" these days.

Perhaps the most adult situation was Yellow Dancer.  In the third series Yellow Dancer was the biggest human star around since Lynn-Minmei.  She performed mostly in South America, where the Invid presence wasn't quite so heavy.

The thing is, Yellow Dancer isn't a woman!  In reality "she" is a man in drag named Lancer.  Yellow Dancer was just a way for Lancer to stay under the radar with the Invid and their human sympathizers.  The idea came after Lancer was shot down during the Invid invasion and a woman named Carla found him wounded and dressed him as a woman to avoid capture.  (Because there were no female Veritech pilots?  Marie Crystal would beg to disagree.)

When Scott Bernard and Rand show up in a club where she's performing, she eventually helps them escape some bad guys and as Lancer joins with them.

Yellow Dancer's popularity comes in handy a few times as Scott Bernard and company head north to Reflex Point.  One time she puts on a concert to distract a city's police so the team can steal some Protoculture.  Yellow Dancer can open some doors that wouldn't open otherwise and get undercover for valuable information.  And it also helps to pay the bills a little too.

In the episode where Lancer runs into Carla again we find out they had sort of a Casablanca-type romance, complete with him jumping off a train instead of riding off into the sunset with his lover.

When they meet again Carla is marrying a scumbag businessman/mayor named Donald who makes money by selling people fake maps over a mountain range guarded by the Invid.  The people who buy these maps never come back alive to tell anyone they're fake--at least until Carla tells Lancer about it.

In a weird twist, Carla decides to stick with Donald because he sacrificed his daddy's old fighter planes to help the team escape the Invid.  So even though he killed dozens of people indirectly with phony maps she's going to stick with him because he helped to save a few lives?  I don't think one really balances the other but there's really no discussion of the ethics of this.  In the book it says she took a gun with her so that maybe she could shoot him later if she decides he hasn't changed.

After the Invid Regess creates two human "children," the female one called Sera spies Lancer bathing and singing and is smitten with him.  Several times she avoids killing him and even saves his life during the battle at Reflex Point.

When they go to New York to find Protoculture, Lancer meets up with a flaming director named Simon and agrees to put on a show for people.  But when the Invid start trashing the place, Lancer has to help get people to safety.  Again Sera helps to keep him alive.

In a victory concert after the Invid leave, Yellow Dancer reveals her real identity--and mass not giving a shit ensues as Al Sirois would say.  At the moment who would really care that a "female" singer is really a dude in drag?  At least that's the book version.  In the TV version people boo at first.  Except for Sera, who remains with him on Earth after the rest of the Invid leave.

Lancer stays on Earth in the last book while Scott Bernard goes off to find the SDF-3.  He goes back to New York to rejoin the troupe of actors there.  Sera stays with him but she starts fading away until like a Jedi she just vanishes.

Lancer stays in New York but later it says that he dies flying a relief mission to a disaster area.  Kind of sucks for him then.

In 2013 there was a new "movie" packaged on DVD with The Shadow Chronicles called Live Love Alive.  It's basically a clip show as before his big final concert Lancer is talking with a female reporter and recounting the team's adventures.  It's kind of goofy as a lot of what he recounts in clips he wasn't even there for, like the encounter with Jonathan Wolfe.

It also muddies the continuity a bit further as it says Lancer was a member of the REF who came to Earth with Wolfe--who has a full fleet instead of a single ship--to attack the Invid before Scott Bernard's group arrived.

Lancer doesn't recount most of his relationship with Sera--like when she spared him in the Rockies and New York--because he's hiding the fact that she's alive.  In the end after saying goodbye to the team he rides off to a cabin by a lake where Sera is waiting for him.  And she's pregnant!

I guess that was a better ending for both of them than in the books at least.