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I think that's Kawamori's point with leaving the triangle open ended. Instead of the show providing an answer to the viewers, the intention here is to let each viewer decide the answer for themselves. Yeah, "who does Alto end up with" is the question. Lanka? Sheryl? Maybe both? But it's a question the show is asking us, and there's no wrong answer. ... Hah, now watch the movie totally resolve it.

Okay then, compared to the first 13 episodes, why do you think the last 3 episodes of MacF have been stuffed to the gills with recycled animation? It has to indicate something. I doubt the production staff just did it for shits and giggles.

They re-used the clip of that small Vajra from Ep1 spinning while it fires missiles, twice. They re-used the clip of that small Vajra from Ep7 getting wasted by Ozma, twice. It's one thing to recycle a piece of animation once per episode, but recycling the same animations more than once in a single episode, and in a short timeframe, to boot? That's a whole 'nother thing. On top of that, they've been recycling an increasing amount of 2D. It isn't like MacF has been this way from the start. For 13 episodes, it was doing a really kick-ass job of avoiding stock footage, and now all of a sudden, it's a stock-footage bonanza. That isn't the kind of thing that just happens. If it's because they decided to extend Frontier's run, great. That's cool. Sure, it's bad for the episodes they have to hastily pad out with clips. But overall, that's cool. On the other hand, if it's because production ran into time and/or budget problems, that isn't cool. That's very uncool. I don't want to see the amazing battle choreography gradually pushed aside to make way for more and more recycled clips of something firing, followed by something exploding. I don't want to see the 2D increasingly re-used, and the new stuff gradually farmed out to cheaper and cheaper animation houses. And most of all, I don't want them to be forced to make changes to the actual storyline because certain scenes and setpieces and whatnot became too expensive to invest their limited time and money into. Yeah, I think it's lame to have three weeks straight of cliptastic episodes. And yeah, I think it sucks how Evil Aimo was unveiled during a cliptastic fight because that made the whole episode less disturbing than it should've been. But it ain't just that.

Geez... What's with all the recycled animation? After episode 14, where the highlights included Lalamia getting killed by stock footage, followed by a clipshow, I thought for sure this episode wouldn't re-use anything. Do it once, sure. Do it twice, fine. But three times in a row? What the hell? I kind of feel like I've just watched Phantasm... Back, to back, to back. Stock footage is dissapointing, but if it doesn't get in the way of anything, then at least I can accept it. But that's one battle that shouldn't have been a montage of clips. Talk about taking the wind out of something. Seriously, what happened? MacF was going along just fine, and then WHAM. Has the series become plagued with deadline/budget constraints like SDF:M or something? I know it's celebrating Macross' 25th anniversary and all, but that's taking the tribute a little too far.

All three of my VF-1Js came with cracked sockets right out of the box, too. Plus, their chestplates are skewed to the left, Hikaru and Milia's necks are warped at the pin, Milia's left swingbar was bent way out, and recently Max's neck hinge became so loose it couldn't support the head without flopping over, just on its own somehow. They're cheap, they're well articulated, they look just wicked panel-lined, and their sculpts bug me the least out of all the VF-1 toys out there(except for their VF-1S head, eew). But damn, Toynami did not think the plastic through.

That "G.I. Joe battle" didn't seem too out of place to me. I mean, on one hand Ogotai had a battleship armed to the teeth aimed at Temjin's group. On the other hand, Temjin had access to nuclear warheads and a squad of Quaedluuns ready to use them. If either side provoked the other too far, they'd be condemning themselves(and probably everyone, mutually assured destruction FTW) to death. Damn, in a situation like that I'd implicity avoid mowing down the guys on the other side...

What. WHAT. Denying that's the SDF-1 is like denying those are Alto and Brera's Valkyries in the Ep13 preview, so I must ask myself, has the world gone insane? It's like if you grew up with a sibling, fell out of touch for awhile, then run into them somewhere unexpected. And instead of thinking "I wonder what they're doing here", you think "Huh? That can't be them! Last time I saw them they were living on Long Island! It must be a secret twin Mom never told me about!". This thread just makes me sad.

If Chihiro had better editting, their translation never stopped making sense at times, and they subbed the lyrics... Then you'd have Lunar. I really don't see any reason to pick Chihiro over them. They're still no substitute for AIA IZ, though... But, whatever. Your mileage may vary.

I just tried Chihiro. What I'd heard about them was totally wrong, that's for sure. No slang, and if anything, they're even more literal than Shinsen. Definitely not the subs for me(and their filesize was so wonderful, sniff). BTW, you have to either hardcode the subs or convert them to a format MP4 can handle, like SRT. Yeah, I wanted to try GG, but their smallest release of episode 11 is about 300MB and too high-res for my computer to deal with. Lunar, on the other hand, I forgot were even subbing Frontier. Guess I'll give them a shot before crawling back to Shinsen.

Great. Wonderful. Now the closest thing to an alternative is Shinsen Subs... With thier much inferier video quality and bigger filesizes(gotta love that combination, gotta love it), erratic release schedule that sometimes just plain takes forever, and translation that errs on the side of being too literal, to the point that the English suffers, sometimes alot. No disrespect to Shinsen. They gave me my cherished Deculture Edition. But they just don't fill the same niche as AIA IZ. I think it would've been better if AIA IZ kept plugging away at Mac F even if they couldn't deliver on a timely manner and got backlogged, then to have the niche they were filling entirely dry up and die. I'm willing to bet at least a decent number of the 7000 people who downloaded the last episode would agree with me, too. This all around sucks. I'll have to cross my fingers and pray Shinsen never gives it up, 'cause if they do, then I probably can't follow Macross Frontier anymore(because after them, Chihiro's the only one with reasonable filesizes, and I hear their translation is a bit too liberal and chocked full 'o English slang... I don't want to spend 14 hours every week downloading something 'iffy').

It'd be uncomfortably like the Protodeviln, but I'm starting to wonder if "the Vajra" are actually Protoculture-created lifeforms that became infected with some kind of virus. It's the whole conversation about transplanted Hydra from Eden and "the true horror of the Vajra"(then cut to the berserk Hydra with glowing red eyes) that got me thinking. But since they can presumably transmit something called a V-Type Infection which NUNS is aware of, you'd think Leon would already know their "true horror", if my speculation is anything more than BS. Then again... That's still kind of a mystery either way. If the V-Type Infection isn't a red herring, shouldn't the Hydra incident tell Leon nothing he doesn't already know? Except perhaps that the Galaxy agents aren't above spreading it on purpose to get what they want.

Sure is. But is there any reason to believe that isn't an amusingly confused romanization of Lanka Lee? The English language doesn't have the crazy Japanese R/L/D consonant, but that doesn't really stop us dumb gaijin from being able to learn it. The Japanese language doesn't really stop a person from learning our crazy English R's and L's, either, it's just that it's historically been regarded with apathy in domestic Japan. But the seiyuu in MacF keep making a marked distinction between their R's and L's. Listen to the intro for Ep8, for example, where Mr. Announcer says PROTOCULCHAA. And then FOLDO. And then ZENTRADI. And then PROTOCULCHAA again. If they said Arto, Ranka, Grass-Chuui, Macloss, etc... as often as they said Alto, Lanka, Glass-Chuui, and Macross, I could just chalk it up to typical apathy. But they don't. I can't recall the cast failing to make a distinction, even once. So when they've been saying Lanka for 8 episodes... And Lanka coincidentally happens to be a Sanskrit word from Indian mythology just like 'Vajra' is... And the only thing going for Ranka is a romanization from katakana... Then I'll have to stick with her name being Lanka. Heh heh, guess my question's answered.

I've got a newbie question. What's up with the trend for spelling Lanka's name with an R? Everybody on the show keeps pronouncing it with an L, and since 'Vajra' is an Indian reference, I thought her name was taken from Lanka/Sri Lanka. Am I missing something, or does the whole Ranka thing just stem from an Engrishy romanization of the katakana for a Sanskrit word? But even if it doesn't, they still keep saying it Lanka, so what the Hell?

Best case scenario, supporting the ADV/Manga Entertainment dubs would persuade the powers that be to bring Macross Frontier & Macross Zero to the States with dialogue that's at least 50% rewritten at random and English dubbing that wouldn't cut it at amateur puppet theater. I think The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy et. al. have taught the general audience... That is, the more casual audience a dub would be aimed at... That watching an "adult" animated TV series doesn't have to feel like you're watching the highschool drama club rehearsing a bad play in the supply closet inbetween flipping burgers and asking "How may I take your order?". I don't want to see MacF & Zero come over to the States, only to have them - or Macross as a whole - deemed unmarketable because the wider audience balked at the shitty dubbing.

Lemme just jump in and say to anybody having "darkness issues" with AIA, make sure you don't have crappy video overlay settings. 'Cause their releases aren't like stunningly darker than the stuff from Shinsen(see pic). If you're having problems with one and not the other, then your computer's default settings for displaying h264 content, whatever they are, probably suck ass. Mine do.