Killer Robot

How about make Protoculture a plant that is also a fuel source?

Graham

I like where you're going with this, but how about a floor wax that is also a dessert topping?

Appropriate for a 13-year-old? I would think so. There's no blatant nudity, and no gratuitous sex involved in the series. I would say, if your 13-year-pld has even a little maturity, it would be fine for him.

For a little more detail, there is definitely violence: it isn't entirely gory, but it's not afraid to show some blood and death either. As said, there's no explicit nudity, but there are scantily clad pop stars, lingerie or concealed nude scenes, and some sexual humor. It's not nearly on the order of the modern fanservice anime, but it's more "10:00 TV slot" than it is Macross 7's level of santized presentation. I would have been allowed to watch this when I was 13, and I would show it to my own kid if I had one, but YYMV.

I don't understand the middle picture.... is she killing Ai-kun!?

Pete

I think it just refers to how she treats her phone. I mean, who else has personal electronics with a violence-based interface?

That aside, I suppose the real value in them, aside from their obvious point-defense applications, would be planetary/colonial defense once the colony has started to establish itself on a planet.

That's the other thing. Given there is manufacturing ability on fleets, they'd probably be better off either making the destroids once they settled a planet, or once they were getting near one.

Truth is stranger than fiction, eh?

Seriously, this is the stuff great action movies are made of. You can't MAKE this kind of sh*t up.

As for swords in modern combat? Maybe not. But edged weapons, i.e. bayonets, are still integral skills that soldiers are trained to have/use.

I think that's the key here. Bayonets, knives and rifles - the battroid is conceived pretty solidly as giant modern-style soldier, in contrast to a lot of sci-fi franchises, like Star Wars or Gundam, that cast their mecha/warriors like knights, psychic warrior monks, or other historical/fantastic motifs. As such I think we'll see few features that would be out of place on a modern fighter or soldier, with minor exceptions like PPB, ICS, energy rifles, etc, which are more general sci-fi ideas.

As for whether we see a capital ship with a sword or rocket punch or what have you, who knows? Macross moved its super robot features to the ship itself, so there is room for more craziness, especially if it's done as a desperation tactic rather than as a deliberate new feature.

Now that you mentioned those anicent anime, didn't Dirty Pair have plenty of fan service? Or was that tame compared to the stuff available today.

I know what I saw of Dirty Pair was heavy on the fanservice. Tame next to some stuff today, or even near its time, but someone who's seen a lot of Dirty Pair and gets freaked out by Sheryl's first concert probably hasn't seen it in years and doesn't remember it so well.

Thanks for all the work!

Side note: anyone else think it odd that Shammy seems less familiar with snow, given she's from Finland?

(Obviously, that's not Gubaba's fault, just weird for the original writing.)

http://i534.photobucket.com/albums/ee343/m...LE/DSC00387.jpg

IMO, Alto's behavior never came across as emo to me. He aways seemed quite calm and level-headed. He didn't bitch and whine, or agonise about killing (like most Gundam pilots). He just got in his Valk and did the job, without fuss.

Graham

I wouldn't call him uniformly calm and level-headed, though he sometimes is. Other times he's obviously trying to be cool and stoic. The rest, he's uniformly and sometimes violently angry. Still, I totally agree that three of these are pretty poor fits with the general "emo" stereotype of being emotional, and depressively mopey. I think a lot of people just say "emo" because he's not a cheery guy or raging hot blooded manly man or something. Which is true, and he's not the most dynamic person, but not the same thing.

Just dropped by Kinokuniya this evening and picked up the Ranka book and the False Diva Guide Book (which is more like a "Guide Magazine," but whatever). I haven't cracked it open yet...

The Ranka book, though, is a lot of fun. And has month and day for pretty much every episode of Frontier, for those of you who are timeline-minded.

I'm curious now how long the series was start to finish, if you could? I remember seeing some events pinned to days in the character blogs, but that was just a piece at a time. Not that I was timeline-minded at all before seeing those.

Sheryl's answer is probably the most useful. Because they can't not do it.

I don't feel dead.

Back in the grave, you!

Stuff grabbed from the 'booru:

In the future apparently humanity has forgotten how to eat pizza. And probably not a movie spoiler:

Also, there seems to be a lot of Sheryl art on a "birthday" theme. Last I knew she didn't have an official birthday like Alto and Ranka, or am I mistaken there?

Sorry if this is a noob question, but I was wondering where are all the Meltrans in the SDF series, especially on Earth after "Love Drifts Away"? I mean, obviously Milia and Lap Lamiz are featured heavily, but you really don't see any other females populating Earth. Did they all get wiped out in the battle, I'm sure someone had to be driving Lap Lamiz's ship right?

I'm sure if there were plenty of Meltrans hanging out on Earth, it would have assuaged all the angry Zentrans pissed off about having to do manual labor. I'm sure they would have been all down with making a little culture between them, right? Or did all the females get micronized and hook up with humans? Macking on newly culturalized Meltrans would be like hitting on junior college freshman girls, I would imagine. Easy pickings! Ha.

This should maybe be a newbie thread thing, and will soon be moved there if so, but either way I recall that there are a couple shown in scenes of the civilian Zentradi on Earth. They're a little easy to miss since those purple jumpsuits they all wear are a bit sexless and they're mostly in the background. One possible explanation is that there were fewer of them simply because the subset of the Zentradi that allied with Earth was mostly male. Laplamiz's fleet seemed to be the only female one under Britai's command, and it seemed a distinct minority of those.

FRENCH

?

She apparently speaks it at least, seeing as she wrote a note to Grace on her mirror in French once.

I find it interesting that Ranka seems to have a "Why on Earth am I wearing this" look in the Valk pictures. For a girl that took weraing a carrot on her head in stride, she certainly looks uncomfortable. We even get bald Ranka.

It makes the carrot costume look pretty normal by comparison, is why. I kinda like that she looks really self-conscious about the outfit, it would be weird otherwise.

The VF sniper rifle WAS kind of silly, though I'd argue it was a sympton of the real problem.

All our relevant characters had their own custom machines. Not just paintjobs, full unique equipment loadouts. On special advance-issue prototypes, even!

That's a slap in the face to the original series, which took great pains to avoid having a hero mech. Everyone had the same gear and the same plane. Sure Hikaru's 1J had a funny-looking head, but it wasn't any better or worse than Focker's 1S or everyone else's 1A. It went the same speed, fired the same gun, carried the same missiles... it was just another bird in the sky.

On the contrary, I found Frontier to be a welcome swing back the other direction. After Plus and 7 being entirely about the hero mechs in the form of prototypes and majorly altered variants with unique technology and loadouts, or valks technically in production but much better than all the others and only with three per fleet, the VF-25 being something that had some cannon fodder squadrons was a nice return to the old ways. Even the variants: the ELINT version was a nice callback, the sniper really a small alteration in weapons loadout, and both Michael and Luca seemed to have variants that were not special so much as specialized, and not better so much as choices for the couple of kids in the unit as of the beginning who were given specialties that would keep them a bit out of the direct line of fire. I grant, I still would have liked to see the heroes in the same mechs as everyone else, but even as it stands it was a big step back toward old Macross and I liked it.

How much contact did Brera and Sheryl even have in the TV series? I can't actually think of them actually meeting face to face. Brera was a link between Alto and Ranka, and really didn't interact with anyone else. (well, that one time he fought Ozma)

I don't believe they ever met. Making Brera Sheryl's bodyguard to start like he later became Ranka's in the series could potentially do a lot to make him a significant character in the movies.

And if we're using these as possible outcomes, she may end up with Brera! You know, high class star and rogue fighter pilot who may or may not be one of the enemy...

If you ask me it looks like she's going to need some more convincing.

And her cheeks are too rosy. It's like she's constantly blushing.

I think that describes a great many characters in recent anime especially. Seems a general stylistic choice rather than part of her design. Now Luca's cheek color, that's a specific character trait.

So am I the only person who noticed that this is a VF-25 BIPLANE?

I will accept this, but only if we can get Macross Zeppelin out of the deal.

From past experience I suspect that if a remake was made, fans would be either upset at all the changes, annoyed that it's nothing new and fresh, or possibly both at once. I can't see it ending well.

Btw, is that MacF manga cover just a joke, or something related to what's in that issue?

Actually both.. In that issue, Sheryl comes looking for Alto at the school to get her earring back on the same day that Ranka transfers in, and instead of him taking her sightseeing around Frontier they get spotted by her fans in the school and have to take refuge in the VF-1 mounted on the school roof. Which then falls from the extra weight as the roof had been damaged in the last battle, sending them falling down. Fortunately the Valkyrie is apparently still live and powered, so he transforms it and lands safely in battroid mode. Think of it as a weird cross of episodes 5 and 8 of the TV show, with less panties than either.

The outfits? Not appearing in this manga. I suppose it's just a joke to go with the VF-1 that does.

The pairing no one imagined! And look at Sheryl, she looks about as happy as half the shippers probably are.

Even if you care to take the manga as canon, just due to brand identity if nothing else most famous female performers keep their own name on marriage. I would expect her to still be called Mylene Jenius in 2059 even if she married Basara, then Gamlin, then Isamu before finally settling in with some guy we've never heard of before. Likewise, even if Ranka fell into a black hole next week I wouldn't expect any "Sheryl Saotome" references in future sequels.