Killer Robot

I think that was the same AfterEffects plugin documentation that was later put on Sheryl's medical report at the hospital (there placed after a more official-looking letterhead.) Looking it up, that was pretty clearly used for some of the space effects in the show, so apparently they just grabbed it out of software on hand.

One thing I really noticed there, only incidentally a spoiler:

I just have to say again, one of my favorite side benefits of the switch to CGI mecha models in Macross is the effect it's had on the New Macross class. Battle 7 always looked kinda goofy, but Frontier and Galaxy seem much more solid and menacing.

I was thinking the same thing. Grace "dying" at Gallia IV for no reason other than to watch the bomb up close instead of when she needed an excuse to be out of Frontier and out of Leon's radar is a really obvious thing to change when the slow reveal pacing of the TV series isn't needed. Sort of a second half equivalent to making Brera just show up as Sheryl's bodyguard rather than a mysterious Valkyrie/nameless man that shows up in trouble spots in the first movie.

I find DYRL amazing for visuals and sound, vacant for plot and connection to characters. It's a whole lot of fun after SDFM, but in the same way that it's fun to finish a 90s Playstation game with all its blocky polygons, then be treated to a nice CGI music video that means nothing on itself but gives a high-detail face to the good memory of what you just played through. (In my particular case I got things backwards and saw it before I saw SDFM. It was pretty, but meant nothing to me at the time.) Problem is, as time has gone by, and with successive Macross releases like Plus and Frontier, it's gotten less visually standout, and so the flaws just stand out more even for a viewer more familiar with SDFM. It's still hardly awful, but if I'm going to put something on a pedestal today for being concise and visually impressive, I'll go with the more strongly plotted Macross Plus. Which also has its flaws as a Macross title, but nothing's perfect.

I'd say Max and Exedore went beyond playing fast and loose and into having to carefully disregard a UNS upper command that seemed willing and eager to order the whole fleet to their deaths, and this while struggling with heartless and glory-seeking officers within the fleet. Anyway, this all is spot on: Macross has always been about the main heroic characters having to deal with the ranks above the headline ship's captain being filled with inept, warmongering, political-jockeying, and overall short-sighted superiors who mostly get in the way of them resolving the real threat. By and large the protagonists have been well aware of this, though how willing they are to speak their minds has been varied, as has their willingness to I'm not really sure where the idea of many fans that the military hierarchy is normally good and respectable comes from any more than I understand the idea that it is or ever has been a franchise mostly about serious military drama. While Macross romanticizes fighting for what you believe in and even enjoying a good fight, it's always made clear villains of those who seek wars, or would rather crush an enemy than understand it. Likewise, it's always made clear that the heroes' side has no shortage of such people and that they need struggled against as much as the enemy. As for Frontier's unique interpretation of this, a few things. SMS's status as a PMC did change some things, but in the series at least less than some make out. Would it really have been that much different if they were an elite fleet detachment that did most of the scouting, and because of this were more seasoned and better equipped than the forces guarding the fleet itself? Since that's exactly what they were, and all the more so when they were officially folded into NUNS in episode 6 or so. Or if Bilrer was a desk admiral on Island 1 that Wilder answered to, and who gave quiet orders to leave the fleet and investigate because something was very wrong higher up? This also wouldn't be too out of place in Macross context. The movie changes things some, but I'll hold full analysis for after that storyline is over. If I recall, however, SMS hadn't been formally put under direct NUNS authority yet in the movie, had it? I think it might stand out more that in Frontier, the Frontier fleet military was pretty clean. Underequipped and underprepared to start, this is true, but they were fighting and innovating and doing all they could clearly enough past that initial attack. If the protagonists did the heavy lifting in many engagements, this is largely because they're the protagonists - they got more done than all those faceless VF-11 squadrons on Macross 7, that's for sure. In Frontier, what was new was that the corruption, the conquest seeking, the short-sighted disregard for the good of the people, was due to a corruption in the civilian government, and further that it was not even someone arguably acting badly within legitimate authority, but assassination, betrayal, and a war deliberately engineered by agents of a foreign government. Frontier's military just didn't find out their civilian authority was corrupt until the last moment - and there they promptly acted to do the right thing. Was that Battle Frontier captain, for example a Global or Max? No - but his story role was more akin to that of the higher ups back home that were always in Global or Max's way, and next to them he feels like a pretty upright dude. The same holds true for "the military outside of the protagonists' particular chain of command" compared between the series. As for the comment on extending this to other Japanese media, I'd take it a step broader than just military commentary and suggest that anime is so full of independent individualists willing to break orders and tradition in large part because Japan is a culture very much about order and tradition, and even for those mostly content with it, the fantasy of breaking free and doing your own thing is a pretty obvious one. All the more so when said rebellion ultimately can save the world. Not like Western media is lacking in it, especially that marketed to young people who deal with authority of schools, parents, and so on every day.

Because "Grace is secretly evil" in itself is a big twist, a stunning surprise for the new viewer that offers much less when already known, compared to many other elements of the story to be retold. Actually, while I loved that particular twist in Frontier, I think the TV suffered a lot for holding onto the existence and details of the conspiracy. The level of mystery the writers tried to maintain kept Sheryl rather separated from much of the serious goings on that she was ultimately involved in, gave Brera basically no sensible place in the story until near the very end, and generally meant that all the exposition had to be crowded into already busy late episodes. Admittedly, a lot of this is just a problem where Frontier needed to be ten more episodes or so, and a lot of this was how much of the writing on the TV show was very seat of the pants, but both of these are significant in my take on the movie. First, they have little time to fool around: there's space for twists and secrets in the movies, but only for those secrets which can easily hold themselves. It also means a lot of stuff needs cut or compressed, unfortunately sometimes things that were pretty cool. Second, they've done this story through once already and this time have had time to think it all over, and seemed to have spent a lot of it on thinking "Okay, how would we have done this if we could do it all over again?" and "How can we retell this but still give fresh material?" There I think it's mostly worked well. On that last, A lot of comments have been on the love triangle and how that works, but even aside from the Alto/Ranka/Sheryl situation, I think other relationship "groups" of the series have benefited a lot from the movie retelling. As mentioned before, I think there's a lot gained from just a little screentime by making Brera tied in with Sheryl and Grace to start: it was a lot more cohesive than having Sheryl and Brera connected to Grace entirely separately. Tying the spy drama in quickly was important in that. Similarly, it seemed to make the relationships of Alto to Ranka, Ranka to Ozma, and Ozma to Cathy less floatingly separate than they were in the TV show. The movie made good time of getting the characters, the ones not reduced to total bit parts that is, significantly connected.

It's been touched on, but I really need to add the specific that I'd like to see the occasional human female in the cockpit. Even when you allow for the exceptions, it seems the bulk of named male pilots are human, and almost all the females are part to fully Zentradi so that they fit in with that established female warrior race. I didn't see Macross II until after Frontier came out, and it got my hopes up some until Sylvie explained she became a pilot because she was inspired by her Meltran grandmother. Canaria got to do some awesome stuff, but as noted she's a private contractor, and besides got to fly the tank of a bomber that only goes in after the fighters clear the airspace. Coming back to Nora who was AUN. The fact that female operators must be officers of some rank is true enough, but that being a near-universal trend itself isn't exactly an indication that it's a sexually equal future either, especially when you see all male captains. Still, I'll grant some of this is each series having that much as reference to the one previous. Also, I suppose that last I knew Japan was a country where, say, women can be police officers but only male officers can carry guns and the women get to get the coffee. Gender role is still big in general there, so maybe it looks like a more progressive future from that viewpoint, I don't know.

I meant the first time she followed him in episode 2. Just rewatched it to be sure: she was frantically hunting for her earring, then asked Grace for the concert footage to find if it came off there, and saw it fly off into Alto's EX-Gear. That's when she got Cathy to give her Alto's location and tracked him down. Before she got a chance to bring it up, they were attacked by Vajra and ran into the shelter. If you mean you were confused how it managed to slip her mind while they were trapped in there, that's another question, but shortly after that in episode 3 is when she suddenly remembers she forgot to ask. Which leads to the second meeting. As for making the big point of her leaving the concert when everyone was told to evacuate it - that was pretty bizarre. Especially after they'd shown all the audience all being out of the hall already. I can buy bad editing there.

She had a good reason to follow him around in the TV show: she thought he could help her find her heirloom earring, and things progressed from there. That said, I think the movie did a whole lot more to integrate her into his life and into the rest of the plot early on. I suspect some is further progression away from the early-in-production plans of Sheryl having a smaller role in the series overall. I have to agree there. With a few exceptions, Japanese animation by and large is weak on motion and strong on background, though it's of course most noticeable in TV work. Or theatrical releases that incorporate a lot of TV footage, for that matter. It also hasn't especially gotten better with the gradual marginalization of the medium in Japan tightening budgets all around. So the CGI was flashy, the colors were vivid, and the backgrounds were stunning, but the motion was unfortunately lacking. This was true of the TV series too, but it's a little harder to just ignore in a movie.

I find this quite interesting, though I'm going to wait for a fansub before I pass real judgements on more than the visuals. On the non-spoiler side, the new visuals are amazing, though it's sad that some of the recycled animation isn't as strong as it could be. I admit the TV show looked good enough that it didn't need a whole redesign DYRL style, but I wouldn't have complained either. And from what I can see of story changes, it looks like there are two categories: things that needed compressed due to time, and things that they had time to re-evaluate and fix up some. The TV show had a lot of seat of the pants writing where something later on could have been set up much better if it had been thought of earlier - the movie both being done as one piece and also being done after the story had been completed once allowed some "if we could do it all again" approaches. Ranka and Sheryl both get some interesting new developments and presentation. As for some more specifics on first impression:

I have two of those:

Also, while the survivors were only a tiny fraction of the original population, it still on the order of millions of people between human survivors and allied Zentradi. Still more than enough genetic diversity for setting up a healthy new population by cloning or normal reproduction either way.

The fold quartz thing makes sense: I expect that means that since Ranka has a "safe" V-type infection she creates fold quartz in her body like the Vajra do, and that it's a property of the microbe hive mind rather than the insectoid host. As for the genetic issues, finally an explanation as to why Michael can't just macronize for a less awkward relationship.

Yeah, I suspect some of it has to do with what series have what CGI budgets.

For that matter, FotSW used both "Meltran" and "Zentradi" to describe Chlore's fleet, so a reading that "Meltran" has a meaning of "Female Zentradi" would fit all cases in 7 and Frontier so far as I know. Klan is also of a generation born to actual parents and raised in human culture, so is more likely to view her heritage as the collective term rather than one of the two like one raised in the uncultured fleets of the past.

I'll bet against. They picked Frontier because it was "technologically backwards" regarding implants and cyborg capabilities compared to most jurisdictions and would thus be less aware about even looking for cyborg infiltrators. Doing the same thing in the more cyborg-savvy parts of the galaxy would only risk premature discovery. And once you have control of all the Vajra and the capability for near-instant travel through the Galaxy, no one has the defenses to shut you out forever.

If I recall, the Macross II timeline also found the factory satellite much later than the main timeline. That means that the rebuilding was presumably much slower, and in particular space vessel construction was more limited and largely focused on re-purposing salvageable hulls left after SW1. That makes it even less surprising that they were committed to a fortification strategy.

I wish I could really say that. Nice as it is symbolically that she did the part, actually watching it she's just part of the problem. Put one Japanese woman in a cast of North American voice actors who aren't even really feigning accents to simulate a multinational crew, and it really just stands out all the more. The earlier comment about it being like 80s early Japanese voice acting? Maybe some, though not entirely. ADV's is definitely more exaggerated, but going back and comparing it side by side I was surprised how much shouting and overacting is in SDFM compared to how I remembered it. It's easy to miss when it's not your native language, I guess.

That belongs in the "Next Macross idol" thread.

Only the first episode. The rest is just animation fixes and a couple of very minor additions to the last episode, probably less than a minute total.

This is the thing I wonder with all the grumbling over the new Cheyenne II. Why would using destroids based on 2009 models be so much better than destroids based on 2008 models? Especially when the 2008 models were minor variants on one that was rolled out in 2007? Whether the 04 frame and its assorted variants were deployed before or after the 03 is largely irrelevant, since their development and deployment were both highly contemporary. Further, in times of rapid technological development, especially in wartime, lots of designs come up at once and the last to be built isn't always what will most shape future development. The original Cheyenne being cheaper and quicker to make doesn't mean it was some lesser design either since those were apparently due to its smaller size and conventional power plant: the first might have not been a big disadvantage in later roles, and the second is a fundamentally correctable one for future designs - on a destroid that sort of switch doesn't have the sweeping changes and complexity that the same would on a variable fighter. Again, we haven't seen the whole picture for any of these, and it's not far-fetched that its basic design just proved more reliable and extensible when it came time to work on a new generation. All in all, why would it be unreasonable for post-SW1 Destroid designers to look at the Cheyenne rather than the Tomahawk, etc. for future designs? We're not comparing two generations of mecha, but rather contemporary models. It seems to me that available data wouldn't contradict either direction, so really there's no technical reason to complain about which direction the designers chose.

Strange and alien space-borne life forms, revered by ancient cultures, with humans mining them for body parts that make better fold drives, with a singer finally able to communicate with them and understand that they're not just mindless beasts? That remake sounds a little familiar.

Very interesting. Worth noting that if Frontier fleet is only at 10% of its population capacity, it says something for how severe their resource losses were over the course of the series if they were no longer able to sustain it. As for social stratification, it was already clear enough that the wealthy and poor still exist in the future, so some people getting apartments with windows and some not doesn't shock me too much.

To go a little further on this, I think the ultimate trick with a reboot is that for a great many fans, a reboot/remake wouldn't be enough. What they really want is to see Macross for the first time again, and no remake will make you ten (or whatever) again, new to anime, new to mecha shows, never have thought of that sort of story before, or so on.