MACROSS 7
FIRE BOMBER
NEKKI BASARA
"Power to the music!"
Position: Guitar, Lead Vocal
Age: 21
Birthdate: 15 August, 2024
Eyes: Amber
Hair: Dark brown
Bloodtype: B
Nationality/Race: Japanese
Seiyuu: Hayashi Nobutoushi
Singing Voice: Fukuyama Yoshiki
First appearance: episode 1
Perhaps the galaxy's most famous hero, Nekki Basara's origins were nowhere near legend. Born in a small mountainous village on Earth, Basara was orphaned at an early age. He was known only as the "boy who sang to mountains," referring to his daily pasttime of trudging out to the highest peak surrounding the village, playing his guitar, and singing to it, trying to "make it move." It was on one of these daily trips to the mountain that he met a grizzled drunk staggering up the hillside.
Unfortunately, no one in his village recognized his gift for music until one day when Basara was in his early teens. Coming across a group of construction workers, he recognized one of them as the drunk who had seen him play to the mountain years before. It was on this day that his life changed, as Ray Lovelock invited him to join him and "make music." And thus, Fire Bomber was born.
PERSONALITY
Basara is known for his quick temper, as well as his penchant for saying exactly what he thinks, which most of the time is not complimentary. As with all great musicians, he also has somewhat of an ego and believes himself to be always right. But under the caustic personality lies a man who truly cares for those close to him and who has a great love for the human soul. Basara's vision isn't limited to humanity alone, however; his great dream is to make the whole universe realize the power of music. His strongest belief is that music is more powerful than war.
APPEARANCE
Basara has fierce golden eyes, heavy black eyebrows, and brown hair that sticks up every which way, giving him a unique appearance. He also wears a pair of small, round eyeglasses. He has different types of dress for different occasions:
Civilian attire: A green tank top, jeans with holes in the knees, a red scarf tied around his right thigh, and tennis shoes.
Concert attire: A fishnet shirt with a multicolored zip-up jacket over it, white and blue pants, red wristguards, and boots
Dynamite OVA: In the OVA, Basara wears a yellow zip up shirt with black pants. In the later part he wears a Zolan multi-colored drape garment after his accident.
VALKYRIE
Basara's acquisition of his Fire Valkyrie was through extraordinary luck and again, his talent for music. As a former military ace pilot, Ray Lovelock still held ties to the military, which was interested in starting a project to see if what Lynn Minmay had done could be harnessed and expanded. This project, codenamed Operation M, was headed aboard Macross 7 by Maximillian Jenius. Hearing of Basara through Ray, the UN Spacy decided to give the Fire Valkyrie to Basara as a test case. The project was kept under tight classification, and not even many of the military's top leaders knew why the rock singer had a state-of-the-art Veritech Fighter in his possession.
MYLENE
Basara's relationship with the bassist Mylene Jenius is a strange one. Throughout the series, it is obvious that though they quarrel constantly, he does have feelings for her. Are these feelings platonic or romantic? This is never revealed by the creators of Macross 7...but there is the obligatory Macross love triangle to be considered.
MUSIC
Basara is known to the Macross fleet as the primary emitter of Sound Energy and to the Protodeviln as the Abnormal Chord-C, or Anima Spiritia. Learn more about spirita here.
As a singer, Basara's first goal was to make everyone around him understand and appreciate music and why he sang. His belief that he could do that simply by singing louder and better than anyone else was a rather naive and idealistic point of view. As the war progressed, Basara began to realize that perhaps that simply singing with that goal in mind wasn't the answer. After taking off into the desert of Planet Lux to find out why exactly he sang, he found that the answer lay not in lofty universal goals of musical power but in the hearts of people. Basara had been trying so hard to make people listen to his song that he had forgotten how to simply let go and let them hear it.
In his song "Power to the Dream," the lyrics reflect his changing way of thinking. Gepernitch's Spiritia Dreaming and Basara's dream of music are both dreams, but Gepernitch forces his dream on others. Basara gradually learns to simply sing, to pour his soul into the words, and to have faith that people's souls will be touched by his music.
Basara sings the following songs in the series:
Holy Lonely Light
Light the Light
My Soul For You
Planet Dance
Power to the Dream
Remember 16
Seventh Moon
Submarine Street
Totsugeki Love Heart
Try Again
Basara sings the following with Mylene:
Holy Lonely Light
Light the Light
Planet Dance
Totsugeki Love Heart
Try Again
Songs sung by Basara that never appear directly in the series are:
1.2.3.4.5.6.7 Nights
Diamond Calling
I Call Your Name
On the Wind
Spiral Answer
Basara sings the following in Dynamite 7:
Angel Voice
Dynamite Explosion
New Frontier
Parade
Wild Life
OVA songs sung by Basara that never appear directly in the series are:
Feel Universe
Hello
Na mo naki Hate de no Michi de
Never Say Die
Rock n' Roll Fire
Starlight Dream
Yume no Michi ~on the Zola Road~