Macross Frontier – The End, or Oh god, I'm in love, oh, I'm in love.
19 October 2008
I just finished Macross Frontier. It was damn amazing.
Honestly, in the beginning, I wasn’t too impressed with Macross. It was one of those things that I found myself begrudgingly watching simply because there was nothing else to watch. A series 25 years in the making, and all I could do was just shrug and watch and wonder, damn, that’s one hell of a love triangle they’ve got themselves going there. And even though I’ve been trying to concentrate as things that supposedly matter school, I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
So, long story, I popped back into the series the episode Michel dies. I cried like a baby. It was like everything went to complete and total hell. Nanase was in a coma, Michel’s dead, Ranka’s eloped with the Vajra and Sheryl was dying (though she’s been dying for a loooong time) and Alto, actually Alto’s only problem was just indecision, so he’s fine. And just so much STUFF happened, I don’t know where to start. Everything, everything, all the color and all the singing, it was like an explosion on my computer monitor of neon color and explosions and song. And then, and then! Grace O’Connor turns into massive naked creep and tries to take over the universe by merging with Vajra queen! It was just so crazy, but it was just so good! All I wanted to do was grab someone by the shoulders and shake them and point and tell them, look! Look! It’s one of the most amazing things you’ll ever see in your life! Just watch!
At some point, I found myself thinking back to the first few episodes of Frontier, before the shit hit the fan and Grace O’Connor got creepy, about Sheryl and Ranka and Alto, about the Nyan Nyan buns and the crazy stunts, about the underwear chase through the school. Looking back at all of it, at how everything, how everything became more epic as it went along, how everything turned from a silly love triangle into fate-of-the-world-oh-my-dear-god epic science fiction anime. I think this epiphany I just had is what most call plot and character development. There are only a couple words I think apt to describe my response to Macross Frontier: discombobulated explosions of joy.
Frontier was one of those happy ending type stories, and you can see it from a mile away, but they toss in enough twists and turns to keep you second guessing yourself. I watched the last couple episodes in a row, I’m sure Alto’s ‘death’ would’ve killed me more than it would’ve Sheryl, just from sheer exasperation a cliffhanger of such proportions was still being tossed my way that late in the series. And I was so sure, so sure that at some climactic point in the ‘holy’ battle (I hated Mishima, just the way he looked, that scheming look on his face!) that Sheryl was going to die. But, of course, she’s saved by Ranka.
At this point, I’m drifting down from what I like to call an epic sort of high, the sorta thing you get after watching something so mind blowing you have nothing to say so you just blab incoherently and pass it off as a blog post later, that sort of a high. At least, that’s what I get every once in a while. It’s the sort of feeling that drives me crazy, that makes me bash in the heads of friends and family when they interrupt me in the psuedo-sacred act of watching the very, very last episode, any episode at that.
I’ve got that Vajra love song stuck in my head. I’d describe Frontier as bittersweet, more sweet than bitter, but when you see Sheryl and Ranka standing atop the flower crested hill, and the camera pans and zooms out and fits the rest of the cast into the frame, you can’t help but notice all the people missing, Michel most of all.
It’s a feeling of immense satisifaction I’m holding onto right now, because right at the end, when Alto swoops down and the frame freezes with Ranka on the left and Sheryl on the right and Alto rising above both of them, all I could think to myself was, “Damn, that’s one hell of a love triangle they’ve got there.” Even the lens flares were triangular. Like a lot of other things, Frontier was about people, was about the relationships between people, about, as one of the characters mentioned at some point, it was about living, the everyday things people do. And, damn, it was just good.
So, I guess I can say I’m back from haitus? I’ll drop by every once in a while and produce a completely incoherent post because I know I can’t stay away from watch anime. With that said, next up on the backlog list: the ever so controversial Code Geass R2. Trainwreck, here I come!