The Macross Franchise has always been one of eye candy, and Macross Zero does not disappoint in the slightest. As the first Macross of the new Millennium, the graphics are utterly gorgeous. The CG is a bit unrefined at times, but the way it’s animated and contrasts with the background; the huge explosions and vivid and detailed animation. If anything, you should be watching this OVA for its amazing visuals. The audio? Again, beautiful. The best of the Macross franchise that I’ve seen (meaning the Original Macross and Macross Frontier).
But what about the rest of the OVA? Um… yeah.
I think it’s best described as “chaos”. Macross Zero is typical of Shouji Kawamori; both the good parts and the bad parts. The story has some interesting parts; there are a number of interesting characters, but at the same time it just feels so incomplete. I found it very confusing to try and figure out what everyone’s motives and ideals were throughout these five episodes. The creators like to introduce things without any build-up whatsoever and overall the storytelling feels very unbalanced.
As for the characters: I loved native side-characters. It’s just too bad that they hardly got any airtime. The lead characters didn’t impress me too much. The male lead is yet another bland teenager who somehow is authorized to fly a jet fighter. The female lead character is just way too naive. Their whining often gets in the way of the story and especially that female lead just keeps going on and on about her ideals and how you shouldn’t mess with nature and stuff.
I admit that at times she has interesting points about war versus nature, but at others we just see Kawamori taking another chance to shove his enviromentalistic ideals down your throat. On the other side, the main villains are also pretty shallow. There was just nothing that made me interested in them.
So no; as substance, this OVA rather failed. However, as entertainment it more than succeeded, it only because of the beautiful visuals and its amazing visual direction. Especially in the final episode this stands out like no other: the story becomes just ludicrous at that point, but oh, did it look pretty.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 – The story is poorly balanced, but the visual and technical direction rocks. |
| Characters: | 7/10 – Unappealing teen-aged lead characters whose whining often gets annoying. |
| Production-Values: | 9/10 – CG looks a bit out of place, but other than beautiful. |
| Setting: | 7/10 – Way too little back-story and too preachy at times. |
I didn’t really enjoy this as much and, honestly, would probably rate this lower myself. At times the story didn’t even feel like Macross and I don’t think the ending was an adequate payoff.
this was the first Macross ive ever watched… the Ova only gave me the “oh well!, w/e” feeling, but i did like d cg