VF-15 Banshee

EPISODE 18: PINEAPPLE SALAD

Iconic Scene: The deadliest thing in the universe, an anti-plot armor equation.

Quotable Quotes: Hikaru's lucky, he's got a real ace on his team...

Best Character: C'mon, it's Roy. This is his going-away party and it's great.

Best Death: Do I even need to say?

What else can be said about this episode except that it likely had a bigger impact here in the west than it did back in Japan. Sempai characters dying is not something new to anime (just looks at Ryu Jose from Gundam) and indeed the trope of mentor characters dying so the hero can stand on his own feet is about as old as stories themselves. The one thing I do have to wonder about this episode is, why did Roy do what he did? Why go to Claudia's instead of the hospital? My theory is that he figured he was bad enough off that there was as much a chance of dying on the operating table as surviving and if this was his time to go, might as well spend it with his lady love than being cut open by Docs.

EPISODE 19: BURST POINT

Iconic Scene: So long, Kakizaki.

Quotable Quotes: The barrier is going to overload!

Best Character: Hard to say in this one but I think we can award this one to Kakizaki's widow, 20 oz. Porterhouse. colonthree emoticon

Best Death: Kakizaki is going away this time, although his death here is not nearly as gruesome as it will be in DYRL.

Now THIS is a twist. Hot on the heels of Roy's death comes the death of Kakizaki and not JUST that but the final dashing of the hopes of getting the Macross's civilian population off the ship. This was a good place for this as we're nearing the end of the second third of the show and Macross was originally supposed to end eight episodes from now. It's time that the characters got kicked down and kicked again before they can rise back up. Hikaru has now lost not just his squadron leader but his sempai and now his wingman. Misa is depressed over various things, Minmay is being driven into exhaustion and generally there is an air of hopelessness. Certainly doesn't help that the UN Spacy brass has decided that a ship full of both thousands of their soldiers and thousands of civilians needs to be their sacrificial lamb.

EPISODE 17: PHANTASMS

Iconic Scene: We're flying, E.T.!! (insert John Williams score here)

Best Character: Britai/Kaifun for dying

Quotable Quotes: "Today, 1st Lieutenant Hikaru Ichijo, also known as the Crash King, tried to fly his bike into space."

Best death: No ACTUAL deaths but again, still fun to see Kaifun get the end he should have had in episode 34.

Back in 1989, as the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation wrapped up, they did a clipshow as the season finale called Shades of Grey. A somewhat appropriate title as the episode involved flashing back to a lot of the worst moments of seasons 1-2 of TNG (and there were a LOT of those). The flashbacks were presented as a kind of coma dream that they were giving Riker and the same sort of thing happens in this episode. Even though it comes just two episodes after the last clipshow, it's presented with new footage that makes for a surrealistic dream of Hikaru's. One thing to note is that in the dream, Dream Kaifun says that he won't let Minmay date anyone from the military. Hikaru doesn't hesitate in ripping off his flightsuit to reveal his old civilian flightsuit underneath. However, two years later when Minmay herself asks Hikaru to quit the military... he hesitates and ultimately doesn't go through with it.

EPISODE 16: KUNG-FU DANDY

Iconic Scene: Kaifun getting just a little bit of what he so richly deserves.

Quotable Quotes: "Wha! Wha! Wha! Wha! (seriously, that's what Kaifun sounds like to me.)

Best Character: Nobody really, just about everyone gets the short end of the stick in this episode.

Best Death: Once again, no deaths but Misa almost seals Hikaru's fate.

Personally, this episode is one of the worst, not in a general sense but just that it focuses so much on new character Lynn Kaifun. I hate Kaifun. I really, really, really, REALLY hate this guy. But then again, you’re supposed to hate him, even staff members hated this guy (I suspect that might be why his role in the franchise is continually reduced; they don’t even feature him in the pachinko footage at all). As other people have pointed out, the primary problem with Kaifun is his pacifism. Not that pacifism is inherently bad or anything (although thanks to Gundam Wing I can now spell pacifism backwards…) but Kaifun just spouts off some good-sounding ideas mixed with a bunch of complete bullcrap such as “soldiers only join the military because they like killing.” Which is then immediately undercut by Misa, Claudia and the bunnie's discussion on why they didn’t join the military for that reason. Everyone is just in a bad mood this episode, I suppose it’s because Kaifun spreads misery and ruin wherever he goes. Oh and to top it all off, why did even Misa have to get caught up with this guy and nearly kill Hikaru? And even though she admits to herself at the end of the episode that Kaifun is not Riber, she’s still going to be mooning over him for several episodes more. ARGH!

Lynn Kaifun: designed to be hated and succeeds spectacularly!

Well it seems it bears repeating that this is an early version of the episode, It'll probably be more polished when it rebroadcasts in April.

OK, first impressions of this episode 0.89: I can't say I've ever been overfond of the magical girl genre and so those stylings for Walkure don't do much for me. That said, in a general sense, it's really no more outlandish than Universal Bunny or Niji Iro no Kuma-Kuma from Macross frontier or the surreal, mind-bending, what-the-hell-is-this from Sharon Apple's concerts. Everything else in the episode was pretty solid, except for the stuff that Gwyn,Adrian, and Renato mentioned in the podcast in there being a few too many characters to present. I'm almost certain that scarred-up Aerial Knight that has never been seen or mentioned before will die next episode. I also get the feeling that the marriage Freyja was running from might be to one of the Aerial Knights or their boss, whom I will, henceforth, refer to as GLASSES MAN! (bum bum bum)®

And there was much cosplay to be had.

Hmmm, interesting. Now I'm even more anxious to actually see the episode when it airs...

I still keep liking Ikenai Borderline the more I listen to it!

THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME!

Nope, in 7, Gepelnitch was a dude. He was the commander of the Macross 13 fleet that the protodevlin took over.

But the design was very feminine and even had a feminine voice.

Sayla Mass's voice to be specific.

EPISODE 13: BLUE WIND

Iconic Scene: The Macross finally returns to Earth.

Quotable Quotes: "You're wearing a female uniform!"

Best Character: The Three Spies for being completely sincere in all that they do. colonthree emoticon

Best Death: No notables this time.

Not much to talk about in this episode. The Macross makes its return to Earth, despite more of Kamujin's plotting. The real show in this episode is Loli, Conda and Warera finally moving into the city section of the Macross. Most of the time, the old gag of man-dresses-as-woman usually results in some very low-brow comedy but here it works because the three spies are absolutely sincere in everything they do. I mean if you live in a society that has no casual clothes, how would you possibly be able to tell the difference between men's and women's clothes? Also, aren't the Prometheus and Daedalus on the wrong sides in this scene?

EPISODE 14: GLOBAL REPORT

Episode 14 is the first of two clip shows and isn't as... inventive as episode 17. So, not much to talk about here.

EPISODE 15: CHINATOWN

The waters are beginning to get even more choppy here. Misa and captain Global deliver their report about the Zentraedi fleet to the UN Spacy bigwigs, who seem remarkably reluctant to believe said report. Global and Misa also find out that the story the brass spun about the Macross's disappearance was that it was destroyed along with the city and all of South Ataria Island and now they won't let the civilians off the ship. This seems to be a very strange attitude to take because their explanation is that they didn't want to cause a panic by revealing the earth was under the attack of alien forces. But doesn't everyone already know that aliens exist? When the Macross crash landed back in 1999 it was not exactly subtle. As a final F you, Misa's father, who is also one of the admirals and one of the bigwigs, gives her a note telling her to get off of the Macross. On the one hand, I can understand why he wouldn't want his daughter in such a dangerous situation. On the other hand however it seems, again, cold-blooded of him to not give to damns about the tens of thousands of civilians on board Macross but want to make sure that his own daughter is safe. Newsflash genius: your daughter's in the military and if you didn't want her to be in danger you should never have let her join!

This episode also features the introduction of one of the most hated characters in all of Macross: Lynn Kaifun. But more on him in the next episode.

I'm sorry but I couldn't help myself. In reference to Captain Ernest Johnson. :3

https://youtu.be/fxVH5sKUlPg

Let's have some love for some, er, EU(?) characters.

And thus does Komillia return to the stage as Mirage's mother!

Perhaps but really, any one of the eight daughter could be her mother. I suppose there is a small possibility that she's a 9th daughter... maybe.

Well Macross does seem to follow the Star Trek/Yamato precedent for aliens mostly being human except with weirdly colored skin or bumpy foreheads. There's still that red-headed pilot chick who might be a Meltran or Zolan.

The Idols are all so cute...

Any idea if we'll get a crunchyroll simulcast?

Nope. As long as HG continues to exist, that will never happen.

Also, is anyone else getting a bad guy vibe from Loyd there, or is it just me?

EPISODE 10: BLIND GAME

Iconic Scene: Klingon captain KLANG!

Quotable Quotes: "Hey, is she prettier than us?" (RED ALERT QUESTION! Bail out Vermillion 1! Bail out!!)

Best Character: Probably Max, for continuing to be awesome and fighting Britai hand to hand.

Best Death: The poor schmuck pilot of Misa's Cat's Eye.

Also, what's Max's Valkyrie doing back there? A soft shoe shuffle?
Anyway, things that stood out about this episode: I think Hikaru's making meters out of microns here with Kakizaki's Valkyrie and arguing with Misa for the sake of arguing because that's pretty much their relationship right now. No wonder Roy had to step in.
Also, this is where the show will begin taking on more of its own identity. They started that with Minmay's first steps to stardom and will continue it with Misa and the Vermillion team's capture by the Zentradi. Previous to this, Macross was a pretty standard sci-fi space opera.

EPISODE 11: FIRST CONTACT

Iconic Scene: Miclone interrogation

Quotable Quotes: Show us what this "kiss" is!

Best Character: Once again, Max, for being the Macross James Bond.

Best Death: Nobody dies here but Bodolza does threaten Misa.

Objectively speaking this is the worst episode of the entire series. Mostly due to the fact that the animation quality here takes a sharp nose dive and then augers right into the ground. Not just that the quality is bad but there is tons of key frames and inbetweening missing that makes everything go herky-jerky all the time. According to some of my friends like Richard Clark, this episode was in fact so bad that it almost got Macross canceled. The staff then promised to make the finale of Macross, or what was supposed to be the finale and episode 27, look really really good in exchange. Other than that this episode starts developing a lot of things that will become important to the plot later on, mostly how the Zentradi are completely ignorant of any aspect of culture except for warfare. Now this is a point that I kind of missed on my first watch of the show but it should be understood that the Zentradi are not stupid. They obviously know how to use their technology, case in point being when they're able to translate the human language from just a few transmissions. The problem with the Zentradi is that they have been doing the same thing for so long , For so many hundreds of years that they have just simply forgotten everything else. That said their reactions to Misa and Hikaru's kiss is very, how shall I put it, Star Trek-ian. But it still feels very genuine and is starting to add a lot of depth to the Zentradi that wasn't there before.

EPISODE 12: BIG ESCAPE

Iconic Scene: Milia gets ready for her first sortie in her Queadluun-Rau (the first that we see anyway)

Quotable Quotes: "They're just miclones, I can more than handle them myself." (right up until you tangle with a certain blue-haired miclone)

Best Character: It's a tough call so I'll go with Milia for having a badass entrance.

Best Death: The brownies who were the first to suffer Milia's wrath.

And so our characters make their big escape while Loli, Conda and Warera are secreted aboard the Macross. Here we see Laplamiz and Milia for the first time. Milia's a fan favorite and I must admit, I'm a sucker for ladies with green hair (and/or green skin) but I think a lot of this is down to Mikimoto's design of her. Most of the Macross characters are not what you'd call deep or complex but Milia unfortunately tends to get the short end of the stick in this regard, especially in a certain later episode. Also, the short end of having her character look consistent between episodes. Also, a funny little thing to note: The Zentradi are unaware of culture, yes? So why does Milia always look like she's wearing lipstick?

Gubaba, stop trying to trick everyone into watching Shirobako.

He was designing your Optimus Primes and Diaclone Robot Bases, etc. at around 18. And what have I done.

An awesome podcast?

It's tough call (because Shammy) but I'm going to have to go with Ranka on this one. Can't resist Megumi's charms.

Nope, not available...

In any case, the new song is called Ikenai Borderline, eh? Maybe a slight reference to Sharon Apple?

Hmm, that's either a different type of head unit for the 31 or it's the head for the Draken III

Oh for crap's sake, would you guys stop with the monster hunter thing? Meters out of microns here.

Yes, but isn't annoying to order from amazon JP?

There isn't much choice considering there's no localizations for Macross.

Even so, at the absolute minimum, I hope Roy or Misa or somebody spent some ten minutes yelling at him about how much of a moron he is.