Short Synopsis: The final episode: Save Ranka and destroy Grace.
Highlights: Pretty, but a bit too keen on creating a perfect ending.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10
Ugh, okay, so Alto didn’t die; I should have known. I’ve been too spoiled by series as Ultraviolet and especially Himitsu, where people actually DIE when they’re killed. This episode proved the fears I originally had for this series, by keeping the death-count embarrassingly low. If I recall correctly, the only one who dies is Grace, apart from that everyone survives. Yes, even Sheryl who was supposed to have a deadly illness.
Overall, it was a decent ending. It wasn’t the worst I’ve seen this season, but nowhere near the best. The graphics looked really nice as expected, but it didn’t help that some of Ranka’s songs were incredibly cheesy. Her voice worked great with those synthesizers, like in the previous episode, but in my opinion it sucks when she attempts to sing pop tunes on her own. Although her voice is a great one when she sings together with Sheryl.
In any case, Grace indeed turned into the final boss of this series, and the Vajra suddenly turned into the good guys because of this. I didn’t quite pick up why she suddenly turned herself against the Frontier-fleet if her goal was to eliminate all the Vajra. I also feel that Leon’s arrest could have been a bit more subtle. It’s over, just like that? It makes me wonder what his entire purpose in this series was. The purple-haired girl whose name I forgot at the moment also woke up a bit too conveniently.
My main problem with this episode was the way the creators decided to close off the love triangle between Alto, Ranka and Sheryl. After 25 episodes, we’re entirely back to square one: Ranka and Sheryl are friends again, they both still love Alto, and they both still have equal chances to get his love. I mean, PLEASE, bring some conclusion for these people! Let one of these girls get Alto and the other move on, for Christ’s sake. I guess that the creators would use the love-triangle for the movie, but something tells me that even THAT won’t have the guts to give this triangle a proper conclusion.
Overall, I pretty much blogged Macross Frontier on a whim, making use of the opportunity that I could blog a lot of different series for the past spring-season. The results were a great middle part, with a disappointing start and ending. This series lost a lot of its magic after it revealed all its mysteries about Sheryl, and never really made up for it. While it definitely had the biggest budget of the past half year, I just can’t label this series as the one with the best graphics. Birdy the Mighty had the best animated fights in terms of 2D, and Blassreiter had the best 3D fights, and the best insert song was from Kaiba. Macross Frontier really is a series that went for the quantity instead of the quality, and that’s why its individual moments lost a bit of impact.
I loved how it all ended – maybe it’s because I didn’t really have any high expectations. Also, I could see all different ways the show could end, so I definitely wasn’t surprised by anything that happened. It was a bit rushed but that’s all.
By the way, I don’t really understand why people are so desperate to see a conclusion for the love triangle. I can understand shippers who are emotionally invested in either pairing (if only it wouldn’t manifest in bashing the other girl for being “in the way”), but otherwise… I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I didn’t watch the show for the love triangle and couldn’t care less about who wins in the end. (Sorry, Macross love triangles just don’t do it for me.) For me, this was more about how the Power of Love saved the world and all that jazz, and I liked the way it ended, with Ranka and Sheryl being friendly rivals. I would’ve been disappointed if either girl “won.”
I enjoyed the series, but I thought the writing was not so good. Alto was never a consistent character, and events were presented in a muddy way. It just seemed to me that they spent a lot of time spinning their wheels and going nowhere in particular.
The visuals and music were outstanding, however. And I like Nakajima Megumi best when she is singing the simple songs that you don’t like. There is so much honesty, melody, and sweetness in her voice.
The Shipper’s whining on other boards made this ending quite worth it. Sweet Schadenfreude. Taking it back to square one means both are on equal footing. And thus the flame wars..may/may not start anew.
The battle scenes were worth it though.
So you’re watching Blassreiter too? I’ve found it kinda interesting.
Are you going to ignore that they announced a movie the second after the last scene? Also the way Alto survived was rather obvious (Hello episode 7 and why is Alto behind that spaceship for so long, why is there no closeups of his cockpit?) and was mentioned by lots of people, don’t feel ripped off because you “fell” for it.
personally i hate alot character as much as a loser character..
Inconsistent – the guy seems like he is confident on the outside, but the whole love triangle just should not have happen. I stopped after 10 or 12 ep cant remember but i never really saw ranka as being part of the triangle..i mean she acts like a kid but alto and sherl act like teenagers who are a bit more mature…
WTF why is there a love triangle between a kid, a girl who is more mature and a dude that cant make up his mind whether he has a loli complex…and in a action show none the less…
action was great but the love triangle and all really ruined it for me…stopped watching dot think i will watch it any time soon…
(Personally Michael would have made a better lead character)
Seems like an okay ending to me. I kinda like that the triangle ended ambiguously just to piss off all the flaming “shippers”. 😉 My main problem is that it seemed rushed; that perhaps Ranka’s redemption should’ve taken longer.
Major props to the whole cast, though; everyone was great. Hearing Kikuko “Belldandy” Inoue as a villain was quite something.
Hashi, I also like Megumi Nakajima best singing the simpler songs like “Aimo” (the original version) and “Cat Diary”. I generally prefer hers out of the two, but I think “Diamond Crevasse” might be a good candidate for Song of the Year at next year’s Seiyuu Awards.
I think Grace pretended she wanted to kill the Vajra but in reality wanted to “conquer the universe”…yeahx2, typical anime villian objective right?
Well I wasn’t too disappointed that the love triangle didn’t have a conclusion…well, they have to save some plot for the movie i guess?
It was the best series this season AND a superb hommage to the original Macross series.
Beautiful.
I am very happy and hope to see more than just retell it all movie, but this constellation leaves enough room for more. Wow.
Also psgels this was rather dumb
“I just can’t label this series as the one with the best graphics. Birdy the Mighty had the best animated fights in terms of 2D”
First off why are you comparing 2d animated fights in Birdy to Macross Frontier which has no fights in 2d? If you want to compare 2d animation that’s fine but Birdy’s just as inconsistent as Macross when it comes to 2d animation, try Soul Eater next time.
just as I thought, he didn’t even choose between ranka and sheryl~!! urrgghhh!! the ending was very exciting but there’s some scene that didn’t really fit, like on how the 3 gather, and on how ranka slapped sheryl, etc, some are obvious too^__^ after the war it feels like they just do anything to fill that 23 minutes time.
Westlo: to clarify a bit, I meant individual scenes, not overall consistency. Indeed, Birdy’s animation was mostly average, but its few major action-scenes were the best of the season for me, even when taking Soul Eater into account.
I wouldn’t say the ending was necessarily bad since I was glad enough only by the fact that Macross came back.
However I’m greatly unsatisfied with its Frontier ending becuase 1)Alto didn’t choose between Ranka and Sheryl, 2)Alto did survive thorugh the deadly explosion-outrageouse, 3)Brera gets back to his mind in perfect timing, 4)Ranks slaps Sherly in her face and Sherly was touched by it and cures the V-infection-wowwwwww, 5)Ozma’s Dash Love Heart-what the hell?, 7)lame theme-justice always wins yeah…. 6)And that all of these happened too abrupt and sudden
man list goes on and on
Actually there was only part that I really like and that was the picture of ‘Lynn Minmay’.
What a pleasant surpise there…
I like how they tied up everything and more or less provided an explanation for everything. This is one series that I can put aside fondly and not have any vague feelings about.
So to summarize, Grace/Galaxy did research on the vajra and discovered that you can control the galaxy/universe by the fold waves that the vajra use to communicate. But they needed a little queen to insert themselves into the vajra network. So Ranka was created but the Vajra wanted to ‘rescue’ Ranka when they heard her song, ended up destroying the research vessel and Ranka escaped to Frontier.
Obviously Grace also escaped back to Galaxy and probably shared her discovery with the powers that be on Galaxy and tried to cultivate another queen in Sherly but that didn’t work out so Grace/Galaxy hatched a plot to fake Galaxy’s destruction by the vajra in order to use Frontier to discover the vajra homeworld and of course use Ranka, Grace went to Frontier with the objective of finding/using Ranka. In between, I guess Grace destroyed a planet to cover up the truth. Using breya, grace got Ranka to lead them to the vajra homeworld, send a call for Galaxy to go there as well for the hostile take over. So they managed to successfully connect to the network but too bad the love triangle dynamic Ranka,Sherly and the immortal Alto was more than a match for the power of the whole galaxy so they were defeated.
I got that from the first watch thru so it’s probably full of mistakes, correct me if you will.
Soooo Minmay ended up with a Zentradi…poor Rick.
It was a pretty straightforward ending. Nothing groundbreaking here, it felt so familiar and typical. Nonetheless, it was enjoyable enough. There are lots of questionable scenes though, loose ends with lame explanations, but overall it was pretty decent.
Blassreiter had the best 3D fights? I will have to kindly disagree. The 3D graphics in Reiter were mostly out of place and uninspiring, the action sequence may be good, but the way they existed in a mostly 2D background proved to be a terrible combination. Moreover, you are comparing apples and oranges really. Macross is about space battles and large fleet fights, while Blassreiter is more on the personal dueling front.
And to think you also dissed about Macross’ music. Well, I respect your opinions, but I absolutely have to disagree about the music, given that I like it, not to mention all of its singles all made it to the top 3 on Japanese charts. Thats saying something, especially when no anime series managed to do the same for years since the late 90s.
I seriously doubt these songs would have made it to the top 3 if they hadn’t been used in something like Macross. It’s the associations that make a popular song. It doesn’t mean the music itself is better than average. Any half-good song would have achieved a good chart position. I find there are far more impressive soundtracks than this by Yoko Kanno herself and many other artists. Typically they aren’t as pop-music compatible, probably don’t appeal to masses and are never played on the radio in the first place. Who cares what kind of music half-educated, unexperienced, hormon-driven teenagers enjoy anyway – except for the music industry? Maybe you don’t know but you can’t compare pre-Napster chart rankings with those of today. What’s called a big hit today would have been hardly noticable in terms of sales 15 years ago.
Nice explanation from Zohan. just what i had intended to say. but i think Ranka being a little queen is just an accident. her mom was infected in the first place, but the baby inside adapted to the infection & would have these umm… bugs?… settle in her belly like vajras do instead of going straight for the brain. Grace’d indeed tried using Sheryl as a little queen but things didn’t work out. she was fortunate enough to discover Ranka though.
Instead of trying to destroy the vajra as Grace claimed to at first. she was just trying to use them to conquer the universe through using fold waves to connect minds, & ultimately ruling the universe as one. any resistance, she’ll just deploy “her” vajras. but the vajras wasn’t hostile to begin with. these humongous bugs just happens to be life forms with no brains of their own & act as one in general.
About the love triangle, i didn’t like it that much. it just takes up too much space & character development was inadequate partly because of that. & thank goodness none of the girls win in the end!!