Macross Frontier 12-14 – Confused and loving it!
13 July 2008
I realized after a while that you run out of insightful things to say about anime after a while. All I do nowadays is just rant and rave about how amazing a series with no real meat to back up what I’m saying except for my ephemeral feelings, the ones that you can’t hold on to, the ones that you want to last after seeing something that hit the right chords and sing the right songs to you.
Okay, very bluntly: Jesus Christ! Episode 14 was frickin’ awesome! I didn’t get a thing that happened, but they nuked everything and stuff exploded and it was awesome! And what in the name of god, after Sheryl took control of Skull 2, happen to Mikhail!?
I really hate how, sometimes, a perfect, perfect moment in ruined because of plot. Ranka and Alto’s solo flight on Gallia was perfect, the atmosphere of the scene and the actual atmosphere, the clouds in varying hues of pink and purple floating past as they giggled together, as he thanked her, a perfect, perfect moment ruined by…equipment jamming? I understand how there needs to be a running plot, but couldn’t you just let us get away with a few more seconds of one of the cutest things that’s happened so far?
And then, from there on, Macross Frontier went from, “Hm, I sort of get the story, the particularities of the Macross universe has yet to inhibit my understanding of it.” to “What just happened? What just happened?! What is that?! Who is that?! Oh my god, Grace just set off a thing that took a bite out of a planet! What the hell is Ranka!? What the hell is that bug thing? Someone explain to me what’s going on!!”
The whole deculture thing, yeah, it was confusing, deculture makes it sound like they’re loosing their culture or, uh, un-culturifying, but apparently it’s just a statement of shock or surprise in Zentradi. Confusing, I tell you, for a newbie like me to sit there and wonder why Ranka’s wonderful songs make them think they’re loosing their culture.
I saw a dubbed version of a Macross movie once, on HBO of all places, and the only thing, the only thing I remember from any of it was the fact that a pretty girl sang and the fighting stopped and everyone was happy. There are two pretty girls, they both sing, but stuff only happens when Ranka sings. Halfway through the battle, the Vajra get their asses kicked because Ranka started singing and then Alto comes in and blows them to hell. My question is, at this point, do humans know that her songs stop the Vajra?
More Ranka Lee questions: What do they mean by the Little Queen? Please don’t tell me that just because Ranka’s stomach happens to glow a faintly purple like the giant bug did that she’s like the new Vajra queen. Don’t tell me that Ranka was like some lab experiment and her parents made her in that first gen Macross thing. Don’t tell me that Ranka’s parents were Vajra, or, just don’t tell me something bad like that is going to happen!
More questions in general: And that guy in the red Valkyrie and Grace and that creepy guy with the bad hair that’s always talking to the president, just what is going on with that? What were the pills Grace was feeding Sheryl? What the hell did they eat half of Gallia 4 for? Just what the hell are Grace and that guy in the red Valkyrie? Who the hell is pulling their strings? Creepy thin man? And, most importantly, why?
Macross Frontier owes me a whole lot of answers and if the preview lives up to its name, all the answers are coming out way next episode.
In the meanwhile, someone needs to write a Macross Frontier Relationship Guide. In recent episodes, fortune has been favoring Ranka, tipping the scale of that particular love triangle to her side. (I wonder if they named that song Trianguler for a reason, besides bad Engrish.) After the Vajra kidnapped Ranka, all Alto’s been say was, “Ranka? Where is Ranka? I have to save Ranka! Ranka!” and it’s making the usually cool and controlled Sheryl look desperate, vying for Alto’s attention.
I still marvel at the fact that this much emphasis has been placed on a love triangle in a show like Macross, so much that I’m dying to see more of it. It was only in 14, when the shit hit the fan and the battle started, that I remembered that Macross was a mecha show. The chain of events that lead up to Alto and Ranka dropping out of the sky like flies was one of the most perfect set-ups for something indecently romantic to happen. She came to save him, using some crazy untested piece of technology and her song stopped an uprising. Ranka Lee’s first live concert was for him, Alto Saotome. It was so good. And when the creature in the forest startled them and Alto’s first reaction was to grab her by the waist and pull her towards him, that momentary scene looked so badass. He’s half naked, he has his arm around her and she’s in a skin tight suit, he has a gun and it’s pointed at you.
Almost every character in this show is involved in one way or another, romantically or not, with someone else. That scene on the bridge, where the girls were the talking about who liked who, seemed to fit the show, surprisingly. I still can’t believe someone (Captain Bobby) likes Captain Jeffrey (well, he is voiced by Toru Okhawa…) and that girl with the bento likes him, too, loves him even. When he told her she’d make a good wife, oh, how awkwardness makes everything cute. Speaking of cute, Luca and Nanase also seem to be developing, in lieu of the usual Alto-Sheryl-Ranka drama, a relationship of sorts, though it’s one sided for the time being. When Luca told her he’s come back to tell her something, I had the worst feeling that he’d die and I was so glad he didn’t. People who make that sort of a promise in war usually don’t come back. It breaks my heart every time.
Speaking of dying, what happened to Mikhail? His Valkyrie blows up, Sheryl is rescued, where did he go? Where did Mikhail go? Even he has a relationship thing, with that Zentradi giantess in the form of a cute little alien girl. What the heck happened to Mikhail? And since I started on the questions again, what does Brera have to do with anything? Ranka’s dream shows him and his harmonica. Brera himself asked a really good question, why does he care so much for this girl?
Brera’s untimely entrances and existence really begs the question, who ends up with who in the end? I have a feeling that somehow he’s in love with Ranka, but the future doesn’t look too bright for him, he’s in conjunction with creepy thing man and girl who pushed button to eat half of pretty planet with sky.
And I’m dying, dying, absolutely dying, after this trio of episodes, for a second OST. So many new songs! So many new songs I want to hear again! The way this shows uses music amazes me. Aimo, the song, the light melodic one that Ranka sings a lot, that Brera plays on the harmonic is such a simple, repetitive gesture in the series. You can almost call it Ranka’s theme, sounds like a maternal sort of love, of windy, green grasslands and open skies and calm, gentle clouds, of flying across the sky with the person you love, gently, floating like leaves, everything that’s detached from the reality, the war, the Vajra, Ranka’s potential role with the Vajra. It makes me want to forget everything and just listen.