bishopcruz

If the supplementary light novels were to be fan-translated, I'd be reading them because they (supposedly) supply some of those details missing and addressing the loose ends seen in both the TV series and the movies.

If this flick were to be three hours, then there might be some more coherence, but since this runs to almost two hours, some things had to be cut out... not until we might get an extended Director's Cut or something.

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But those novels don't help the movie. Just like the TV series doesn't help the movie either. For better or worse, the Frontier movies stand on their own, yes supplemental materials can add depth perhaps, but they don't make the story, as told, any more coherent. About half of the reviews that are currently out online mention this as well, the twists happen without enough time to process them, or give them the necessary weight. Wingis feels like someone condensed Return of the King from a nearly 4 hour movie into a 2 hour one, but decided that no scene or twist could be excised. As a result there are awesome moments there, but the film moves to quickly to have them mean all that much.

If you're just going to be ignorant of plot points in the movie then just go ahead.

Whatever.

.

Look, I love Macross, I'm not a huge poster, but I've followed the series through the Robotech days and been around for a while. I said in my previous post that the list of plot points and twists was non comprehensive, but I thought it might give insight as to what stood out, and how I saw the film. It's a bit facetious, but that is intentional and intended for a bit of levity. Some fans are exceptionally defensive about this film I have noticed, both here and on AnimeSuki. I just happen to think that the film, while a lot of fun, is quite flawed in the actual storytelling department. It's still beautiful, the characters still rock, the battles are still amazing (though the last battle was a disappointment.) but the structure and execution of the actual story were just plain bad.

Enjoy it for what it is I suppose. If you like it, more power to you, but honestly I feel that it just isn't that great a film. The first one was stronger overall, and MacF, warts and all did a better job in its final act than this one did. I mean, this is a discussion forum, and I was disappointed, hence me coming here to discuss it. I loved False Diva, I thought it did a bang up job of adding new twists to the old story and ended on one hell of a high note. They did a great job condensing the story, and making the characters shine, especially the triangle. I actually ended up liking Ranka quite a bit in movie 1, as opposed to being at best ambivalent to her in MacF. Wings did a lot of new things, but it really did altogether too many of them, the pacing of the film was off, the climaxes weren't as grand, and the ending was a retread of Zero. Again, not to say it didn't have some fist-pumpingly amazing moments, it did, but they didn't flow together well. The prison was manned by idiots, the NUNS fleet broke the laws of space-time, the Galaxy/Frontier war just kinda happened willy-nilly, and the fake deaths got old, fast.

That said, I loved the Fire Bomber nods, the fun stuff with the SMS, Isamu, and the other epic moments, but by the end of the film it was clear that the tapestry they were woven into was flimsy at best. I'll watch it again soon I'm sure, and maybe my opinion will change, but as it stands Wings is half Awesome! half Awful!.

Sayonara no Tsubasa is way better paced film than DYRL ever was and I think narrative is much more skillfully manipulated... and multi-leveled to boot, which makes it all the more impressive. DYRL is fantastic and one of the best 80s anime films but I think it was one upped by Sayonara apart from nostalgia factor, especially in terms of storytelling. nice to see the oh so familiar positive feedback flooding in here. That's exactly how I felt after getting my mind blown last spring

Really? I thought its pacing was the movie's biggest problem. It rarely ever allowed itself to breathe in any meaningful way. The only point I felt that really tried was the mirrored confession by Ranka, and even that was just speeding along. The more I think about it the more I do feel that the movie was brilliant in how it just completely knew how fans were going to react at every moment. It was fanservice after fanservice, awesome moments strung together without stucture, it was almost stream of consciousness in how efficiently it threw fist-pumpingly awesome moments at us. The problem is, by doing that the overall story suffered. The film is nothing but plot twists and OMG haha/badass moments, structurally it had major issues.

Evidence of this can be seen by the regular visits of the exposition fairy. She was all over the place, it seemed that 5 minutes couldn't go by without someone monologing for an eternity about some random bit of information that the filmmakers couldn't be bothered to explain organically. It bordered on self parody at points. Then we have the fake out deaths, I believe I counted about 5 of them, in a single two hour movie. That is a TON. Add those to the other plot twists, I mean here is a non-comprehensive list of the ones I remember:

-Sheryl knew she was being used. Pretty cool, but kinda makes her a hard core bitch when you take the events of the first movie into account, and it doesn't make a lot of sense.

-Sheryl is dying

-Killing Ranka will save Sheryl.

-Galaxy attempts an infiltration

-Wait Leon has a countermove,

-Sheryl will be executed.

-Wait he kills Luca

-Just kidding

-Hey Ranka, I'm your Brother, just thought you should know.

-In order to stop Frontier's government who is now to a man inexplicably evil, SMS with an inexplicably alive Luca, and Ranka, will rescue Sheryl. Who is an avowed spy. You guys do know that this is High TREASON right?

-Alcatraz is run by idiots.

-Wait Brera is under the control of Galaxy

-Ozma is dead!

-Brera is dead!

-Sheryl is dead!

-You Believe us THIS TIME right?

-We've tracked the Vajra to their home planet, time to do evil.

-Thankfully we have an unlimited supply of Fold Quartz, and can control them with our Deus Ex Machine.

-SMS has to fight the Vajra and the frontier. By themselves.

-The Quarter can surf, which is kinda awesome.

-Ozma, Brera, and Sheryl are alive? Who knew?

-The Galaxy was in control the WHOLE TIME!!!! Bwa-ha!

-The combined NUNS and SMS fleet were able to instantly jump to the Vajra homeworld to stop the Frontier, or is it the Galaxy at this point, who cares? I know I don't.

-Isamu is awesome. Seriously, I know I am bitching about the nonstop nonsense, but man this cameo almost wipes it all away.

-Suddenly Alto states to the SMS what every video game player has known since the days of the Famicom. SHOOT THE GLOWY BITS!!!!

-Did I mention the Quarter is still surfing?

-"Ranka, I like womens." "Sheryl, I love you, but sadly I need to recreate the ending of the movie we filmed in an alternate universe."

-Shoji Kawamori REALLY likes Macross ZERO for some reason.

I mean, dear God!

Commie's own website has multiple options/resolutions. http://commiesubs.com/ Anyways---I liked the first movie a lot better.

Glad to see I am not alone. I really think that as people rewatch this film, opinions are going to cool.

I watched it with Chinese subtitles, I guess they were just acceptable. Any case, I was afraid to say this, but heck: I didn't like the second one. Actually the problem was not only the Zero-type ending (which was predictable IMO). I felt that there was a general lack of creativity and although not much animation was recycled (only minor parts like the VF-171 launch?), there was a lot of Macross history tribute. I guess what I am saying is: fan service for the younger viewers and lots of nostalgia for Macross fans, but lacking that edge SDF or DYRL had back in the day. Also, it'd probably be hard to digest for un-educated audiences that just want to watch good anime and not necessarily looking for moe.

Pretty much, this film is essentially Macross Porn. Not high quality porn like EP 26, but Bang Bus style nasty stuff. Yeah it gets you off, but you feel kinda dirty afterwards.

So it's 50/50 or a 5/10. I'll not be surprised if you kept on your rose-tinted lenses while saying DYRL was one true masterpiece of the whole franchise.

?

Nah, SDFM is probably the best the series has ever done, though Mac+ and at times MacF have come close. DYRL, well, I have come to appreciate over time. It's story was a bit of a mess as well, though the updated visuals and it's eventual movie within a movie status have helped me appreciate it. Great direction, and the final battle was epic as all hell. Plus, y'know, gorgeous.

As for Wings, yeah, I think I might kick it to 6/10 but it wasn't as good as the False Diva. If I rated it on fan service, I think it would have gotten a 9/10.

Hi guys! Been gone for a while, but figured that now that the second movie was out it would be a great time to come back. I'll see if I can do some more thoughts tomorrow once the spoiler embargo is gone.

Quick thoughts though.

This movie is truly almost equal parts awesome and awful, and almost none of it is in between.

Character work is often amazing, Alto, Ranka and Sheryl build on the great work of the first film, and Grace has some added depth (though she loses a lot of villain points.)

The overall plot is awful, I mean Macross II awful. Maybe even worse. Dramatic timing is nonexistent.

At least the final battle is the best in series history. Wait no, it was disappointing as all hell save for one amazing cameo.

It might. Maybe.

Nyah nyah!

And I thought we were friends!

I see how it is.

Is it possible to both be happy for people and hate them at the same time? That's kinda how I feel now, course getting out to Japan at this point would be an impossiblity for me anyways, but DAMN.

I hate you all so much.

But seriously, have a good time, and take and post pics. From the concert and you MW afterparty.

Thought I'd pop in. Been busy, and not as much time for Macross posting, and hey, Gubaba had things handled. Still loved seeing Shaloom getting his due, especially after he repeatedly lied to me in regards to the novels, the radio show, and other fun stuff.

The only reason that I ever started checking was because once I found out about those Ohnogi "novels," I WANTED THEM! Since of the primary reasons for the existence of my Macross Transaltion Project is to make the verbal homages in Macross Frontier clearer to English-speaking fans, novels that are referenced in Frontier were something that I was EXTREMELY interested in. Once I started digging, I ran into bishopcruz, who had been trying to find verification for Ohnogi's involvement with Frontier.

Yeah, though I think it was you who first asked the question about Ohnogi, and whether he had worked on the show that got me digging. Christ on a crutch that took a while, and a lot of it was not handled the best way it could have been, after searching Wiki, Japanese fan sites, and other stuff. I THEN decided to check the credits. I already pretty much knew that Ohnogi didn't work on the series, but the credits clinched it.

Other stuff didn't add up either, IIRC, Ohnogi would have been hard at work on Mnemosyne during the time he was supposedly working on Frontier, and lead times for animation can be brutal, I doubted he would have had the time to do MacF. Still, DISPROVING something it hella harder than proving it.

We started working together (me on the novels, he on the radio interviews; and he started the Famitsu investigation, discovering which issue the interview was in, and searching for the issue high and low). So it took two knowledgeable fans several months to find ANYTHING that could prove or disprove Shaloom's words. And that's not even including peppering magnuskn, Sketchley, Renato, Azrael, and Bariaburu Faita with questions.

So don't feel bad about not investigating it. It was my tenacity to get the novels that started it, and it was nly my outrage at seeing others take Shaloom's information as fact that made me write and post my essay.

Yeah, seriously, it was a time consuming endeavor, especially when my Japanese is utter crap. I mean truly crap. In the grand scheme of things, the time would almost assuredly have been better spent doing other stuff, but then we'd still be bitching at Kawamori and believing ridiculous stories about the behind the scenes MacF drama. So, I know, now that this is out, I feel pretty vindicated.

Heh. I already had a situation like that:

http://macross.co.jp/bbs/entry.cgi?mode=al...ree&no=5662

Me, I'm wondering how many people sent hate mail to Satelight, saying things like, "Kawamori you troll! Why didn't you let Ohnogi write episode 25? He did such a great job on episodes 18~24!!!"

And some poor Satelight employee says, "Um, boss? We got another one of those weird bits of hate mail about your friend Hiroshi."

And Kawamori says, "Another one? Jeez, and they think I'm on drugs...?"

Well, at least those letters should be less frequent though. In either case, I very well may, in the odd chance that I ever run into Kawamori, ask him if Ohnogi in any way helped with Frontier, and y'know, videotape the response.

Game. Set. Match.

Even knowing that the interview was pretty much going to be like this. It's nice to know that we're finally vindicated. Smoking gun indeed.

At least it's nice to know the work we put into this has pretty much panned out. I think it's pretty safe to conclude that no, Ohnogi did NOT work on MacF in any major way, and that Shaloom is a big fat liar, or barring that, clinically insane.

I can't actually quite describe how nice it is seeing this interview up after spending a lot of time trying to track it down, get scans, etc.

I think I'll just leave it as, it rocks.

Anyone with a Kinokuniya near them willing to pick me up a copy if at all possible? I can paypal the funds and shipping costs to you immediately, I would just very much prefer not having to pay ridiculous shipping on what is essentially a disposable magazine. I did that once already.

Gah, I really need to get these scripts out. Time has been a killer. I pretty much cleaned up all the scripts from ep 32+, the movie, the OAVs, and Encore, I just got caught in final revisions.

Apologies to all, should hopefully be soon.

Edit: Yeah, the rank fixes will also be part of the revision.

Just wanted to chime in here real quick. I've been away from the boards due to some RL stuff, but it's nice to see that the investigations that me and gubaba did have been convincing enough to the rest of the gang on both here and AS to convincingly make our point. Now that the Famitsu issue is coming in to Gubaba we should have a pretty solid base from here on out.

And as has been said, there is no verifiable evidence at all that Ohnogi actually worked on MacF, and there is reams of evidence than suggests otherwise. I remember scouring credit lists, interviews, message boards and the like and finding not a damn thing. But now that it looks like we'll finally be getting our hands on the Famitsu interview, then amen, hallelujah, figuring out which issue had the interview, confirming it, and tracking it down was a fair bit of work, (that didn't completely work out, but that's life.)

The only info that I am pretty sure is accurate from the interview is the polygamy thing, there were some Japanese blog posts that pre-dated the Shaloom release of it that referenced it.

Though, man, NCSX had that issue? I emailed them about it months ago when I was trying to track it down, and got no response. Grr...

Anyway, Gubaba, great job on the essays, can't wait to see your Famitsu article translation. Looks like an end to this is finally in sight.

As much as it seems nice, reading Japanese sans Kanji would be nigh impossible, WAY too many homonyms. Gotta get back on my Heisig's remembering the Kanji, took a week or two off, and I'm paying for it.

And Gubaba, try jisho.org, it has a really handy "lookup by components" feature that I love, I mean the NTC is awesome, but it can be unwieldy, especially when you have Kanji whose stroke count is a bit unclear.

Ok, been gone for a bit, RL and all.

I didn't say lists with her on top are superficial, you make it sound like I'm trying to discredit her. My bip on Ranka was in response to yours about how she didn't place here (which is actually dead wrong as she was number three with CC separating them in the March poll), and I had remembered her always close behind on the one's I'd seen. I only looked it back up after the post. It was never to imply that polls with her losing were of lesser value and you insult me for impling that I do. I think they all are rather stupid. I just think that these lists should be taken with a grain of salt, and are essentially beauty contests, not gauges of great character. It's a flavor of the month poll, nothing more. Hence my example of how a pretty much awful character like Feldt is in the top ten despite doing next to NOTHING for twenty five straight episodes. She's likeable,even I like her, but it gives a clue as to just what kind of poll it is. Wow, Sheryl beat her. Big whoop. So yes, its a gauge that Sheryl's popular, but with whom, and why should we care?

Ok, relax no real intent to offend, but the main argument that you were putting forth against the NT polls was that a lot of the characters on it sucked, which very well could be true, but they are POPULAR, which was my point. I'm not saying that Ranka isn't popular, she is, but in every poll I have seen since the end of the series, Sheryl is more popular. That's it, no real deep meaning or anything like that. Also, the March Poll had them close, but in April the gap widened, and Ranka did not place in the May poll at all, which is what I was talking about when I said Ranka didn't place. My wording was a little unclear, so I apologize. And again, that was my whole argument, and it was in response to a comment that basically said: "Ranka is more popular than Sheryl in Japan." This might have been the case in the past, but it isn't now, at least from every poll of the type I have seen.

And you can say you didn't mean to imply that the Newtype poll wasn't worth as much as other polls but this line speaks for itself:

With voters like that, It's basically tantamount to her winning a beauty contest. Ranka tends to stay close in other polls.

It just seems like you are downplaying some of Sheryl's popularity because you don't like her that much, as you have said yourself.

The beauty contest thing doesn't really work either, because if you look at say, the may 2009 poll, we have at least 5 moe character types that are there. Hell, C.C. from Code Geass (which I haven't seen) is often towards the top, and she is a young looking, green haired girl. We also have the main from Lucky Star, Haruhi and Yuku from Haruhi Suzumiya, and Furukawa from Clannad. It's not like the design type that is Ranka is discriminated against.

What do these polls say about the characters? Not much, other than popularity at any particular time, it fluctuates, as these things are wont to do. But it's probably the best we have to go by when it comes to which characters fans like more. Popularity is a fickle bitch, that's for damn sure, but again, the only reason we can, or should care as you put it is because the point came up in the discussion.

Unpopular characters can be more compelling than popular ones, and I wasn't trying to make the argument that Sheryl was a better character simply because she was popular. I stated the reasons I liked her better early on, and I'm not going to go over them again, but they are my taste. But again, the polls were only brought up to challenge the idea of Ranka being more popular than Sheryl in Japan, that's it.

Thanks for the clarification, Gubaba. It was simply my understanding that LDF was only made the end after they had the series cut down. I'm sure the last nine weren't what was intended, but obviously they had to adapt something, and I still think the series is stronger for it. I'm all for ending the narrative at the proper high watermark, but if a story is still there, why not?

Agree with you here. Though honestly I thought it was the time-skip that really helped. I do have a thing for series that actually progress over years. Also to the earlier points, I would have LOVED to have seen a longer courtship between Max and Miria, though I suppose it would have lost the whole Max is pretty much insane angle that I loved from SDFM.

Maybe Macross: The First will expand on it.

What about patching an ISO of a DVD release? I was thinking of doing this for DYRL and Kara no Kyoukai (ok, not Macross, but AWESOME) and I wanted to get the ISOs, then convert the ASS or whatever files from the MKVs I have into sub files, and then patch them into the ISO, burn it, and then have a happy burned high quality DVD that i can not only see on any player, but without any video degradation. Being able to lend them out to my non-techie friends is also good.

Bishopcruz, Love Drifts Away was never meant to be the original ending. SDF Macross was not written as a 25 episode series initially. I think you're a touch confused on it's history. The show was set to end at Love Drifts Away once, but that was a compromise when the series had it's episode count extremely cut. It was going to be longer then 36 (49?). Then it got cut to 27 (which is why they added the recaps, and why LDF seems so final), so they cut the postwar stuff and some other things during SW1. About halfway through, their ratings skyrocketed, and the show was extended to 36 episodes, allowing them to reinsert some of what was initially cut, namely the aftermath. I've heard rumors that Macross 7 has some of the other ideas that didn't make it (like Max and Milia's breakup I suppose), though I don't know if it's true.

Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to take DYRL as proof that Macross was always meant to end at Space War 1. Oh, and Sheryl my be in the top 10 on Newtype, but have you seen the rest of the list? It's not exactly a complete who's who of fantastic characters most of the time. Feldt Grace is at 10, and she wasn't even an actual character for just about the entire season. With voters like that, It's basically tantamount to her winning a beauty contest. Ranka tends to stay close in other polls.

I'm not saying that Ranka isn't popular in Japan, just again, Sheryl does seem to be top of the heap. It's also kinda odd to imply that the lists where Sheryl is ahead of Ranka are not as good as other ones because they're more superficial or what have you. She really is the most popular character from the show.

Ok, from what you're saying about the original SDFM kinda contradicts everything I have heard as far as how things were once production started. The way they were plotting the for a while pretty much set up 25 to be the finale, I think the show was stronger due to the fact that it WASN'T, as I've said before. It got to 27 when they added Global Report and Phantasm, becaue by that time they knew they were going to have to churn out 9 more episodes, and they weren't ready for them. Or at least, again, that was my understanding.

I had also heard (and it's plain to see), that the Max and Milia thing was rushed, though in the end I think it added to the charm of the two of them being frakken crazy, and teenagers.

Edit: Also, I know that there's a lot of info in the Ohnogi interviews, but its probably best to kill speculation about the hows and whys revealed in them until they're confirmed one way or the other, which will be soon.

There are two separate points to argue.

1. You can fit 1 million people into the SDF-1 and it'll be only about as cramped than the USS Nimitz (which is about as spacious and comfortable as a current fighting ship gets).

2. You CANNOT fit the damn park where Max fought Miria with knives, the friggin Big Open air areas where Max fought Miria with Mecha, the Damn Shao Pai Long studio, the dang military base where the battroid mode valks were walking round, the gawdamn stadium where Minmay keeps performing, that bloomin atrium area where Hikaru speaks with Minmay before he flies off, the longish roads we see, the bleedin' multi story hospital with airspace to spare where Hikaru was warded, the rather spacious shopping and eating areas, that great big artificial sky and damnit what else I forgot to mention into the SDF-1.

There is definitely at least as much anime magic in the Macross City depictions as a transformers show.

Hold on, I think what some people aren't taking into account is the height and width of those leg sections. Each of them looks to be about 200m wide and about as high, which BTW is REALLY damned high. Depending on how you do the layering you could probably have the equivalent of several square city blocks on say, 5 seperate floors, and still have room for 7 story buildings on each, plus a sky, generated above. each area would have about 9 square blocks of space. Not enough to really make cars feasable, but you can have a reasonably decent facsimile of a city in there. The magic comes in the long views. Unless the hologram system is also making it seem like the city stretches on for farther than it seems to.

DYRL as a whole has probably the most realistic possibility of what could happen (outside of the stadium, which would be ok if it had like 1/10th the capacity. I especially thought the date between Minmay and Hikaru showed a pretty "realistic" look, the vistas didn't extend very far, and even the park, while spacious, was surrounded by buildings, and even those seemed to be the end of the city.

I mean hell, we have cruise ships right now that are a fraction of the size of the legs of the SDF 1 that have a LOT of amenities, movie theaters, ice skating rinks, areas for full stage shows, interior shopping streets, several story high interior open areas, you name it. Imagine what you could pull off with triple the width and 3.5 times the height.

Some of the thing you mentioned would be out, the REALLY big stadium (the one when Khyron attacked was the absolute maximum size you could possibly have. and it would probably have to be on its own floor. But as I said the Macross dwarfs most skyscrapers in the world, it's just that frakking big.

Then again, the things I had the most trouble understanding the existence of were the smaller things, the roads with cars was one, but the HOTELS were another. I mean, they cannot be expecting much tourist trade, though now that I think about it I can see some soldiers trying to bring their lovers there for some "I'm a VF-1 pilot, I have the lifespan of tissue paper" nookie.

But of the stuff you listed, i think the only real problematic one, other than the stadium is where max and Milia fought, it seemed way too big.

I've heard that too, though to be fair I can't remember if ti was a credible source or not. I thought there was some stuff other than the liner notes that mentioned that the ending of Love Drifts Away was what was originally intended. Though I think some of the more embellished stories of that are in Shaloom's liner notes.

Actually I'm pretty sure that Sheryl is still more popular in Japan, she is still in the Newtype top 10 character polls, Ranka is not. Now I think that people over here end up HATING Ranka more than the Japanese, but there are many reasons for that, shipping being the primary one. That being said, had SDFM ended at episode 25 (sans the recaps) as it was intended to, we would have been left in much the same boat as MacF. It could just be that Kawamori doesn't like a lot of resolution to couples, at least in Macross. I mean, hell, we've actually only gotten a real romantic resolution that doesn't involve the death, in SDFM. I think the endings work to the series' detriment, others disagree.

Again, it's just hard for me to imagine him going gung ho for a Sheryl OR Ranka ending, and then changing it at the last minute to please fans. Likely the ending had probably been set in stone for a while, it was just poor execution on the relationship angle that left a lot of people going WTF?

BTW the Mac7 ending kinda had similar issues with me, so it could easily be a trend that Kawamori has.

Edit: Damn you Galahad, beat me to a lot of it.

Anyway quick note:

Also Homosexuality, which was frowned upon in Japan a few years back have been slowly gaining acceptance.

Um what exactly do you mean by that? Homosexuality has generally had a fairly tacit acceptance in Japanese culture for quite some time, but it's place in pop culture tends to less than nuanced. I mean, currently in anime you have the Male as female-stand ins that are the bread and butter of Shonen-Ai, and then you have the 'Gay is funny!' characters. Bobby was awesome, but his homosexuality was played entirely for laughs, his inclusion as one of the 'girls' in the polls kinda shows this same bias. Bobby is a joke, and meant to be taken as such.

That's not particularly new either, hell, I can't think of a non Shojo story wherein the gay character hasn't more or less been played for laughs.

'Sokay. I don't like her for her, as you call it, "characterization."

After all, she spent the last six episodes in a coma, and I still adored her...

And here I was expecting you to defend her very large er... characterization.

Why do think MacrossWorld has a "no politics" rule?

Still...THAT, I can understand. Politics is important. Things like the economy and health care are burning issues. "Which Macross girl is hotter?" doesn't even come close...

Clearly you aren't a real anime fan then. I mean if you can't understand that Alto's love life trumps everything, you may as well turn in your card.

Sheryl fan here who can admit that the others are pretty much batshit crazy at times. I never did understand the whole traitor angle, either, it seems really odd. What I did end up liking about Sheryl more from about her first appearance was the fact that she actually seemed to be a competent, professional singer, who was good at what she did, and didn't take much guff. That in and of itself was can be a rarity in anime. What cemented her was the jotting down lyrics on those panties. That was a nice, realistic touch, a LOT of writers and singers carry a pad around for just such a reason.

Ranka, again, to be fair, I had it in for since episode 1 as well. I really, really hate uber Moe for moe's sake, and I felt that that was what she was. Going by archetypes, it really is one of the harder ones to pull off and have me in any way like the character, so props all around to the writing staff for not having me hating her by the end of the series. But the problems I found with her I think were inherent in her character type, and that was one of the big stumbling blocks for the writers.

Of the female teens, only Nanase (Sorry Gubaba) had a less compelling characterization. Klan who I expected to also loathe, got very compelling by the end, and well, Sheryl has been discussed to death. The problem is, the moe archetype had very few places to go before it becomes something else. Ranka couldn't significantly mature because if she ceases being child-like she's out of her specific character trope. Not to mention, I can't ever think of an anime where when there was a cute childlike character paired with a self assured, guarded one (think Hikaru/Madoka, or hell even Minmay/Misa) that the more compelling characterization has come from the former. Minmay didn't become REALLY interesting until she was able to leave her airheaded and naive side behind. Sadly for Ranka, she never really had the chance.

I think that's why a lot of the Ohnogi "interviews" rang so true with a lot of fans. If I were to read an interview that said hey, y'know, we really wanted the Alto/Ranka thing to work out better, but couldn't make it happen during production, I'd probably buy it, because there are sign of it there, just as there were signs of the sidlining of Ranka, should you choose to see it that way.

As for the shipping, I think there is ample, mainly visual language cues that very much hinted that Alto would have ended with her. I was pretty much in dread of it for a good portion of the series, chiefly because a) on the rare occasions I do ship, I tend to lose and b) Many of Sheryl's scenes in the final episodes were written, IMO, very ambiguously. Of course, had it ended up in a Ranka ending, I would have been a little cheezed because, while the visual cues were there, and might I add in spades in certain episodes, the story cues were simply not.

As far as majority on a forum jumping on a minority and calling them idiots, not exclusive to shipping, or hell any other forum. You want to see it at its worst, find a politics thread in the off topic section of any anime or gaming related board, drop an opinion that is not just to the left of Mao, and see how quickly you get jumped on. I think penny arcade once had a comic about it, it was an equation like opinion + anonymity = apeface or something like that.

Having seen M7 since I voted, I'd have to say a Fire Bomber concert could indeed rock. But man I'd still kill for that Sharon one. As for Sheryl's popularity, few reasons I'd figure. First, even though it isn't as lopsided here, she is the most popular character from F. Second she might acutally have the single best song in all of Macross (tied with Oboete Imasu Ka). And 3rd, ok, having trouble coming up with the third, um she kinda gets nekkid on stage?

Then again, I doubt I'd turn DOWN a concert from any of the above, though I might not pay for Ranka's (too bubblegum for me I think.) Ah, who am I kidding, I probably would.

Actually, the first Mary Sue was an ACC published as part of a Star Trek fanzine in the 70s. It's not a novel, but rather a very short fanfic: at best it's a 30 second read. The point being parodied is not that the character is perfect (she ultimately dies in the end, after all), but rather the way in which the character is sold to the reader (when she dies, she's mourned by all). This is where the talk of authenticity comes in: the ACC, an unofficial, fan created character, is elevated above the official (and by extension, authentic) characters in the series.

While this concept has been simpified down along the lines of "an annoyingly perfect character" courtesy of sites such as Wikipedia and TvTropes (since when was deconstruction defined as "subverting a genre"?) it still carries that theme of authenticity with it. It's hardly surprising, then, that the OP makes reference to Ohnogi with phrases such as "A fan that knows the director is like a computer programmer with a screwdriver," or describing his writing as "bad fanfiction"; the association with fandom is used here too in order to imply that the latter half of the story was somehow unauthentic. This, in turn, leads the OP to suggest how things "ought" to have turned out. Why not fight fanfiction with fanfiction?

Mmm... yes I know that's where the character type originally got its name, as well as its definition, but the character type had existed before, this paper talks about 19th century Mary-Sues. Remember the original ACC Mary Sue from that story was a parody of characters that had existed before.

It's also a fairly convenient way to get across an image of a character type as well. Someone who is just a little 'too' special for the universe in which they exist. Since the author creates the universe, its far harder to have characters that seem out of place among the cast, but it does happen.

If you'd like to discuss this more, PM me, as I don't want to derail the thread further.

Not much else to disagree on though, can't say that i agreed much with the OP.

Are you still need them? I've got subs for all "Macross 7 Encore" movies, but haven't got for Macross 7 Dynamite, only old hardsubbed version. I can share this subs, if you need.

If you can toss me the subs for 1 and 2 it'd be keen, I technically have 1 finished, but 2 still has to be merged and it is a pain in the rear end. I basically redid "Fleet of Strongest Women" by hand off of a psycorps script, and am pretty proud of it, but I could take a look at that one too, see if I'm missing anythng.

As I said, for now the series is subbed except for encore 2, in the next few days I'll be giving the scripts a once over, as well as scrubbing the ones that VIP released for consistent naming.

Also if anyone has a list of ranks and what they SHOULD be, I can see if it's not too hard to fix them all.

I'm also looking for scripts for all of the omake, I have it all as part of the torrent, and I think they would be cool to have subbed. PsyCorps has scripts for about half of them, though timing would have to e done by hand, and that takes a while. The omake are about 5 minutes each, tops, and if there are no scripts, maybe we can get some forum members together to get them done. Sadly my listening comprehension isn't where it needs to be yet, but soon, it will be.