A pretty picture of Max and Miriya from the cover of Malcontent Uprisings
issue 12.
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Depths of My Soul
Max Sterling is one of my best personal heroes, and has been for years
now. I consider him the epitome of the perfect man (if real men were like
him I might resent them less :-P ) and openly gush about how wonderful he
is to virtually anyone willing to listen. Okay, yes, I am obsessed with
him, I admit that. But what better man to obsess over? Max is the best mecha
pilot, human or alien, in the galaxy, yet he's humble enough not to brag
over it. He's got great blue hair, an impish face, and a really great voice
(voice of Jimmy Flinders, a.k.a. Cam Clarke, whom I wrote to and was fortunate
enough to get a reply from!!!). Max is very friendly,
polite, innocent, and shy. He has the good fortune to be married to the most
beautiful woman in Robotech (and among the most beautiful in all of anime),
Miriya Parino (Sterling). Though she tried to kill him on their first date,
the two have a loving relationship and two cute but annoying daughters to
show for it. Yes, I know that in Macross 7 Max and Miriya have seven daughters
and don't get along very well with one another, but I consider Macross and
Robotech to be completely separate universes and usually don't see the Jeniuses
and the Sterlings as being the same people unless I happen to slip and forget.
Even in his first real combat, when he was supposedly so inexperienced,
Max shot down more pods than Rick, which proves what a superior pilot he
is. Despite his unmatched skill in a Veritech, Max has never acted like a
typical flying ace, retaining his natural boyish charm and humility. Because
of his age, unthreatening appearance, and quiet demeanour, he was at first
teased by a lot of the other pilots and had to physically fight some of them
to prove his worth. But he quickly gained a reputation among the T'sentrati
as "the micronians' one superior fighter". After he defeated Miriya Parino,
the greatest T'sentrati ace, in combat she went aboard the fortress (micronised,
of course) to find and kill the great micronian ace. Max, who had been admiring
her from afar since she came aboard, met her for the first time in the video
arcade. There he challenged her to the arcade's most difficult game and beat
her at it twice (the level with the holographic projection is really,
really neat...), thus unknowingly revealing himself as the man she'd gone
there to kill. Desperate to get a date with her, he arranged to meet her
in the park that night. She showed up armed with knives and attacked him,
but at first he refused to fight her, dodging expertly as he tried to reason
with her. When that failed, they had a strange duel with the small knives
which he again won. Unable to take the humiliation of having been defeated
again by a mere human, she asked him to kill her, but he refused and proposed
to her instead. Their wedding was big and fancy, and broadcast on television
(obviously as a publicity stunt) for everyone to see. Their first child,
Dana, was born during those two lost years after The Rain that were largely
unaccounted for in the series. It was unknown at the time how they'd gotten
the baby with their interracial union, but since the genetic makeup of both
races is virtually identical, it doesn't seem that much of a stretch. As
a baby, Dana was a cute, squirmy little thing with blue-green hair who wore
a pink spacesuit (presumably the only baby-sized spacesuit in existence)
to the factory satellite and played an important part in its capture when
her parents managed to convince the soldiers that the baby was what resulted
from Protoculture. After the First Robotech War, Rick gave over command of
the famed Skull Squadron to Max. For the next couple of years Max spent a
lot of time hunting down Malcontents in the Southlands, a terrible but necessary
task, as those were the T'sentrati who had reverted to their old violent
ways and would probably never learn to function in human society. Max and
Miriya were also very vocal advocates of the T'sentrati people during that
same time, since even the "good" T'sentrati who had acclimated were often
badly-treated. When her parents left on the SDF-3, Dana was left behind on
Earth with the Sterlings' friend Rolf Emerson, a controversial decision at
least, irresponsible at worst, but one that they felt was necessary for the
child's protection. (How were they to know they would be gone so long,
or that Earth would be attacked in their absence?) What was originally supposed
to be a diplomatic mission turned into a full-scale war when it was found
out the Invid had conquered Tirol and many other planets of the local group.
The Sterlings participated in the Sentinels campaign to free the worlds of
the local group from Invid control, during which Miriya got pregnant with
their second child. 
Partly due to the child's mixed racial heritage and partly from Miriya's
exposure to the Garudan atmosphere, Aurora was born with telepathic abilities,
and she matured quite rapidly, even more quickly than her sister had. Aurora
sent telepathic messages to Dana across the vastness of space, eventually
compelling her to steal Jonathan Wolff's ship and use it to take herself,
her unit (except for Louie), and the surviving clones from the Masters'
ship to find out what had happened to the SDF-3. For a while the Sterlings
seemed perfectly content living simple, peaceful lives on the artificial
world Haydon IV, but the planet turned into a ship (er, sort of) and left
orbit, headed toward the hole in space created by the Invid transubstantiation.
They were picked up by the Ark Angel, which Aurora piloted by a form of thinking
cap into Newspace (a psychedelic place resembling that really cool "Shore
Leave Planet" from Star Trek), guided by the strange, glowing-eyed children
of the SDF-3. Through one of the strange manifestations of subconscious thought
that happens often in Newspace, Max was finally able to deal with his guilt
over having left Dana on Earth, and Dana was able to get over her feelings
of abandonment and jealousy over her sister. On the return trip from Newspace
the SDF-3 got caught up in "The Intersection", a place where they were able
to look in on all their dead friends. By the time they got back to Earth,
another weird Space Fold thing had occurred that they lost over ten years.
When they returned to Earth they found it suddenly a peaceful place, fully
recovered from war, with dinosaurs roaming about :-) . Max and Miriya settled
into new roles as ambassadors to Tirol/Fantoma, Aurora became the youngest-ever
member of the Interplanetary Council, and Dana was up to her old mischievous
ways again, heading up something called the Crazy Eights Exploration and
Development Company...*sigh*... sounds like a lot of lawsuits to me... Hopefully
having famous parents would get her out of a lot of it as it did in the ASC.
Though, regrettably, Max stuff is incredibly hard to find where I am,
I do have two Max action figures (One in the package and one that I've taken
out to play with. Unfortuntely, both are Harmony Gold reissues rather than
Matchbox, but I can't get Matchbox and besides, at least they weren't released
as Exosquad like those crappy mecha reissues a few years ago, which couldn't
even hold real Robotech figures because the crappy little pilot compartments
were too small :-( . Okay, so the destroids weren't that bad, and the large
alien mecha weren't too bad except for the pilot compartments, but pilot
compartment size is important to me! 
I also have a pretty little Max pewter figurine, which is very cute although
they got the body proportions wrong. I was lucky to find him, because that
shop never really stocked any RT pewters, but got in a couple by chance
somehow, and I was just lucky enough to peer into the display case on a day
they happened to have in the Max one :-) . *feeling fortunate* I'm not going
to paint him, of course, because I'd mess him up, and besides, he looks great
as he is. I have a Max milk cap, but I made that myself so I don't think
that counts as Max merchandise. I don't think anyone ever made any for sale.
I've put together a model kit of Max Jenius' movie Super-A Valkyrie battloid
1/170 scale (painted as sort of halfway between the series and movie styles),
a model of Max's series VF-1J battloid 1/100 scale, and a model of just a
generic VF-1A guardian I painted up as his anyway, all of which are too clumsy
to scan but they're sitting on top of my bureau with the other models I've
made. I also have a nifty model of Max's Super-J 1/100 scale that transforms
:-) . It turned out well for one of my models, and the transformations seem
to work okay. Once its right calf was falling apart for some reason, but
I reassembled that bit, so I guess it's okay now. I'm glad I didn't ruin
it too much with my incompetence :-P . 
And here is a kawaii tiny Max of the kind that comes with the Macross
anniversary toys, except this one was just tucked into an envelope with
a letter from Tim. Maybe he had an extra one or something. Anyway, he gives
my little Minmei one someone to talk to, and since I shaved a little plastic
off his heel to make his foot level, he stands up pretty well on his own
now, too. Sometimes I let him stand on my computer :-) . I've also by now
got a Max Super VF-1A Gerwalk of the anniversary type from Jason, which also
came with a little Max figurine, but I don't mind to have two of the same
tiny figurines because one of them can talk to Minmei and one of them can
talk to the little Miriya that came with her pretty Super VF-1J Battloid,
so it works out fine. I also have two nice M7 cels, one great one of Captain
Max and a nice Mayor Miriya one as well. They were my first-ever cels and
I'm very, very happy to have them :-) . *still wants to add
more to her cel collection sooner or later, since it's gone stagnant for
so long :-( * There is an okay drawing of Sentinels Max that I made and
have framed and hanging on my wall that's too big to scan (and some days
I don't like it much, so sometime I might re-draw it), but here is a pretty good drawing of Max that I did a few years
ago that you can see. It's been re-coloured and sprayed with fixative because
it was fading, but besides that the drawing looks basically the same.
Since Geocities is stingy with bandwidth now, I'm cutting this list down as much as possible, and leaving up just personal favourites. Hopefully this will cause fewer page shutdowns. Please try to understand.
Miriya in the arcade
Miriya tried to make coffee...
Max in the arcade
Max holding baby Dana, as Miriya looks on
Miriya through her helmet's green facebowl
An adorable pic of Max in his cockpit!
A great Movie Max close-up
Max trying to cheer up Rick
Max adjusting Miriya's wedding veil
Max, with his friend Wesley Crusher, ogling Miriya
on the street
Miriya pouting
A great Max Movie portrait
A nice Miriya Movie portrait
Sad Max and Miriya
Movie Max sees the wounded Miriya
Movie Max flipping his hair
Max looking surprised
Max looking cute
A cute pic of Max winking
Max and Miriya Movie wedding pic
A sweet Max pic on a blue background
A cute pic of Max with his tongue out :-)
Show Your Appreciation For Max
© 1997-2005 Naia Zifu This shrine is not intended to be
frightening in any way.
Don't worry, I'm not running a Max cult or anything. . .
Questions, comments, information, or pictures to contribute,
send them to: naia_zifu@birdangel.net
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