Definitely the best episode of Macross Frontier yet! While from the outside, this looked like a series with a huge story, the huge focus of Macross Frontier does remain its cast of characters, and of course this needs a bit of time to warm up. When such a character-focused series starts, you’ll also never know whether the creators will handle the character-development well, or fail to develop the series properly. It’s always a hit or miss with these kinds of series, but it seems like Macross Frontier is heading towards the hit.
Most episodes so far have been either mostly serious or mostly silly, but this is I think the first time that an attempt is made at a combination of both. The result works out really well. I think I’ve accepted by now that realism isn’t the strongest point of focus for this series, so the way Ranka eventually became famous is actually really well done. She saw her chance to play in a movie with some big names on it and grabbed it, cheered on by Alto who ended up playing the male lead due to his fame as a certain princess.
I do want to note, though, that the animation for this series is becoming a bit disappointing, considering its budget. And I don’t mean that this series doesn’t look gorgeous: the art is really pretty, but I keep having trouble taking screenshots, simply because the characters’ faces keep ending up distorted. Especially Ranka and Alto are guilty of this. Having a huge budget is okay, but that does not mean that the drawings are allowed to get sloppy. That’s the difference between the huge budget of Macross Frontier and Seirei no Moribito: Seirei no Moribito focused on solidness, while Macross Frontier is more aiming at creating a spectacle.
To be honest, weirdly drawn faces are hardly a problem if they’re “done right” (if that’s possible)
Gurren-Lagann had some shockingly poor background character art, but it seemed to blend in quite well. Something like Naruto Shippuuden almost always looks bad.
Besides, weirdly drawn faces are always good to snigger at.
“cheered on by Alto who ended up playing the male lead due to his fame as a certain princess.”
Sorry but that’s wrong. Please watch again from 12.25.
Alto only stepped in for one scene as “stuntman” because the male lead refused to do that scene because it wasn’t in his contract. This also leads to a humourous scene where Alto realized he didn’t sign up for a “stunt” scene but for a kiss scene.
I guess the best part of this episode was the homage of Zero, god I didn’t see this coming
yeah…and I also think Alto didn’t really do anything much except kissing
Ah, my mistake. I see it too, after watching the episode again.
Denizen: true, a messy art-style is great when done right. I just don’t feel that Macross Frontier is doing things right; in my eyes, it can’t seem to decide whether it wants to be accurate or messy. 😛
It kinda feels like Satelight can’t decide whether to just go all out messy like they did with Noein or try and keep it consistent. So they’re kinda doing half and half.. and the outsourced episodes don’t help too.
Phew! I am glad that I rewatched Macross Zero again to remind myself what happened in those five great episodes! Definitely one of the best Macross spin off except for the original Macross series, of course!
When I saw the preview for this episode, I thought Macross F’s storyline is related to Macross Zero’s. Boy, I was wrong! A pleasent surprise, really!
Didn’t notice the similarity between this episode’s fight and Noein’s general artstyle, psgels ?
A rather tastefully done episode. The character interaction and development was done with the touch of a great storyteller. The dialogue was sharp and the music perfectly punctuated the key moments.
The Hydra was a random event, but the Sterne guy’s proper intro was needed and shows further his symbiosis with Ranka. Good comedic value as well.
“Didn’t notice the similarity between this episode’s fight and Noein’s general artstyle, psgels ?”
I did, and i’m curious to know if there’s any connection? It also reminded me of a samurai champloo episode where they played around alot with the artstyle. Is it the same guy who directed that episode too? He seem to have a very unique style. Low on detail but very fluent and alot of movement and action.
Aegd: The thing that Noein and Macross Frontier share in common is that they’ve got the same production-company behind them (Satelight) so yeah, the action-scenes will have some similarities between them, just as how Gonzo likes to use CG for its action-scenes.
i find the hydra fight scene rather random while alto turn around and located where ranka and the hydra standing, where the hill suppose to block his view on ranka… and fight scene suddenly got onto a flat ground XD
then ranka’s brother(?) came out from stalking and saved ranka? /o\
other than that, its a pretty decent episode showing how ranka rise to her fame, cant wait to see how Zero story link with the frontier series =]
When comparing the animation style of the Hydra fight scene with the rest of the episode there are distinct differences in my eyes. It’s as if the fight scene itself was farmed out to a different animation team or group. Otherwise the rest of it seemed the same to me.
Also Alto is backing Ranka because he thought it would help Ranka get a better part. He didn’t know at the time that Ranka had already won a better part for herself through her singing on top of that cliff. So there was no way of Alto knowing that the kiss scene was with Ranka. He thought it was with some other actress who previously was going to play the part of Mao before her car was attacked by the Hydra.
Also this remembrance of Macross Zero is perfectly timed and comes right before the release of Macross Zero on Blueray. Nice promotional tie in and as always great music. The OST just came out and very good and another single coming out in a few days. They are pushing a huge media storm on this next step in the Macross Series.
Technically speaking there was no kiss scene with Mao. She was giving him air mouth to mouth. The actual actor refused because of the stunt scence not because of the kiss. Of course, in reality, you can’t dive that deep without instruments unless you’re suicidal. Why anime always has to talk about kissing when it comes to CPR, I don’t know. It’s borderline irresponsible.
One thing i think is important to mention is that I enjoy that this series has a throwback style to old school anime, lots of excessive tech (multiple sliding doors, clamps for no reasons), lots of innate detail on certain shots, etc. I think a lot of recent anime has gone the track of being more fluid, but at the same time losing out on the detail and creativity that was more prevalent in the past.