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hardworkandguts · 3 months ago

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Macross Frontier

マクロスF

(Anime)

Musical mecha romance by Shoji Kawamori

Era: 2000s

Rating: S

Plot: It is now 2059, 13 years after the events of 7 and almost 50 years since Space War 1, and Frontier, the 25th expedition to find habitable planets, is underway. Aboard the ships are Alto "Hime" Saotome, at the flight school of a top academy and from a long line of Kabuki performers, Ranka Lee, a quarter-zentradi aspiring idol working at a Chinese restaurant, and recent arrival Sheryl Nome, one of the largest music stars in the galaxy. During her show, with Ranka on attendance and Alto hired to do air stunts, a new enemy attacks the Frontier convoy.

Length: 25 episodes, 3 movies.

Thoughts: After the extravagant excess of Macross 7, the series returned with their new main show and it's certainly more subdued but playing the hits: a air stuntman commandeering a VF and seeing the horrors of war, the girl working at a Chinese restaurant who becomes a huge idol with her songs saving humanity, Zentradi rebellions or the power of pineapples on human fate, it's certainly nudging you in the ribs asking "do you remember love this?", and while the first episodes are a bit slow, establishing the setting (with some neat ideas, like the Zentradi shopping mall), characters and the threat they're dealing with. The turning point comes after the unusually very suspicious light episode, and it's absolutely brutal on both Sheryl and Ranka. One of the biggest themes is being a pawn in a game you don't even know it's being played, and after no longer being of any use to the protagonist, Sheryl is discarded, but manages to rebuild her own confidence, and Ranka, who step by step built her road to fame ends up being used as tool twice to her desperation, until she also finds what is she singing for. Being a 25 episode show probably helped trim a lot of fat, and the story runs along pretty nicely at a good pace.

Being Macross, have to talk about the love triangle, and it's maybe the one better executed in the series. Is Alto kind of a jerk? Yes. Could be a problem, if Sheryl wasn't to be constantly picking on him and give him shit as she feels comfortable enough to do it because he isn't the least intimidated by her being a huge star. The final part of the love triangle is Ranka, the neverending source of adorable energy, pretty much doing the Lynn Minmei arc, entering the Miss Macross contest after being nudged in that direction by Sheryl and Alto, but finding a different path to stardom. Their relationships are kind of stretched and tested over the shit thrown at them particularly during the second half, and arguably it's one that feels well planned and executed, which is probably more that can be said of the previous main entries. Other thing to be talked about is the music, and being a Yoko Kanno job, with two duelling idols, the results are nothing short of impressive. No surprise it pretty much wiped the floor historically in terms of album sales.

How it looks? Well. I'm on record on not being a big fan of this mid to late 2000s style where after of years of very plain digipaint work, we got these weird soft shades and overuse of bloom that look a bit messy, or going back to what I've said on Zero, the ultra detailed and very well shaded 3D technical elements of which there's a lot of it here, but however, for what it's worth, it allows from great action, certainly better than Zero (which had to deal with some narrative limitations) and 7 (who has better looking character design, but is lighter on action). It's pretty far away from being a "mixed bag" or anything, but there are moments I do think to myself "it probably could look a bit better".

As the story wraps up, there's little in terms of continuity, but two movies telling an alternative version the story not unlike Do You Remember Love? with The False Songstress (2009), which reuses some bits of animation from the TV show and follows some of the storylines, although much compressed, and a lot of new action packed spectacle (A), and Wings of Goodbye (2011), which given the much different path the story took at the end has to reinvent most of the second act. It has a Macross class ship surfboarding a piece of debris Dark Star style, so, you know, spectacle, and provides a resolution to the love triangle (A). The weirdest of all is the previously mentioned FB7: Ore No Uta Wo Kike (2012), a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the franchise, which takes place at around any point in the first half of the show, with Ozma and Bobby discussing the legend of Fire Bomber and what happened with the Macross 7, as a strange bird attacks them and drops a VHS tape with the recap of the first episodes of Macross 7, and as more of the cast gathers around, more tapes appear. Not unlike what our beauty-obsessed Protodevlin is doing, it's just a way to get people to remember Macross 7 and Fire Bomber, ending with Ranka and Sheryl doing some rooftop covers of the music (B). Keeping things alive is the Labyrinth of Time short, released in 2021 along the second Macross Delta movie, Zettai Live. It tells the story of an older Ranka and the SMS trying to track where Alto disappeared to in some ruins. I feel it's setting up something (along the appearance of Megaroad-01 on Zettai Live) so it might not be the last we hear from everyone (B).

Recommended to: look, it's Macross.

Plus:

Probably the best love triangle in the series

Have to respect driving a Lancia Delta in 2059

Great action

Minus:

It riffs a bit too much on previous entries in the series

Visually there's times it *could* look better

#anime #macross #macross frontier #macross f #2008 Spring #2008 Summer #rating-s

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miamaimania · 5 months ago

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