junior

You need room to swing it, though. During the knife fight at the beginning of the episode, Alto didn't have enough room for a sword. Of course, after the initial stab his knife wasn't long enough, since a second stab got his arm grabbed by the Vajra just before the knife hit. Pff... Making Vajra listen to Ranka just makes them go berserk! Or, as the old saying goes... "Everyone's a critic!" And Cathy obviously fainted so that Ozma would catch her! It worked, too...

In episode 4 when the Vajra arrived, it announced its presence by blowing a massive chunk out of the wrecked Zentraedi warship that Alto and Clan Clan had been standing on. From the look of things, it basically vaporized roughly a quarter of the wrecked hull. The big gun seems to still work fine. It's just that the Vajra haven't had the opportunity to use it on the appropriate kind of target since then. Fighters don't sit still the way that capital ships do, and as a result it's probably hard to use the cannon on them at full power. Brera's casual destruction of the nest as he fled emphasized to me something that I mentioned earlier - i.e. that he could have destroyed the nest at any time if he'd wanted to (particularly if he'd done so before he attacked Clan Clan, since she would have initially assumed he was friendly and hesitated in attacking him), but instead chose to "play" with the SMS pilots for some unknown reason. After watching the GG sub, something caught my attention during Sheryl's conversation with Alto. Sheryl mentions to Alto that she wanted to try going to school just once. When Alto calls attention to this statement, she clarifies it by saying that she meant attending school on Frontier. Slip of the tongue on her part? Or did she genuinely just mean Frontier? And what about her background would make her afraid to admit that she didn't attend a school on Galaxy?

Just because DYRL isn't canon doesn't mean that it isn't possible. In fact, the fact that it's in DYRL suggests that it might very well be possible. After all, a movie that's supposedly loosely based on something that actually happened (i.e. Space War I) isn't likely to have something rather basic that's known to be impossible, such as macronized humans. And so far as I know, there's never been anything written that suggests that it can't be done. So we really don't know. Also, Mikhail is often drawn with somewhat pointed ears, so there's a good chance that he's at least part Zentraedi.

The problem is that a sword doesn't guarantee Alto a kill, or even necessarily make it more likely. His stab might have killed the Vajra, but we don't know that his knife actually was at an angle to hit a vital spot. And if he had one arm swinging a sword, then the enemy would have at least one arm free to flail around at him with. So there are trade-offs either way. But isn't Ozma's load-out the result of the options that he chooses for his fighter? Right before Alto leaves on his combat trial, he tells the flight crew to equip the super-pack for his plane.. So it appears that Alto and Ozma have some options as to what they can equip their planes with that Luca (and possibly Mikhail, depending on whether the sniper equipment is optional or not) don't have. Though I suppose it's possible that even the radome on Luca's plane is an optional pack that can be removed in the hanger to make room for combat equipment. I'm fairly confident at this point that Skull is only four planes. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were more teams on the Macross Quarter than just the Skull and Pixie teams. That's an awfully big ship for just seven craft.

It's hard to tell without a still, as Brera's right next to the asteroid, and the camera's zoomed out when the shot hits making it difficult to be certain which of the two Clan hit. But the debris certainly looks like chunks of the asteroid. And something established at one point in the thread tends to once again be a topic of discussion five pages later when people have quit reading what came before. His craft gets shaken from proximity to the explosion. You can see it in the brief shot of his cockpit when he's annoyed for a bit instead of his usual smug self. But apparently it wasn't enough to do any real damage to his VF.

I dunno. It seems like the primary point of grappling with an opponent is to hold them steady long enough for Mikhail to shoot them. Admittedly, this technique does have its problems (as shown in episode 9). But it's probably a lot safer for a VF to hold its opponent's arms still than it is for the VF to try and keep one arm free so that it can hit the other guy with a close combat weapon. And Alto did get a knife stab in at the start of the fight. Another issue when fighting the Vajra seems to be just finding a weak point on the things. A sword's not going to do you much good if sticking a blade into your opponent doesn't really stop them. In any case, Alto and Ozma aren't flying specialized Valks. They're both flying general purpose fighter craft. Standard dogfighting should generally be enough to keep the fight away from Mikhail and Luca. And if any enemy craft do break off to try and go after the two support members of Skull Squadron, then presumeably Alto or Ozma can run them down before they really become a problem. The role assigned to Alto and Ozma is to set the "front lines" of the engagement, and keep them there so that Luca and Mikhail have a safe place to operate from.

That's what Ozma and Alto are for. If the fight somehow gets too close to Mikhail, then it's their job to give him enough cover to pull back and redeploy. And Mikhail does serve a very useful purpose in the squad. Currently he's the only squad member with a gun that can actually hurt a Vajra with a single shot. Clan Clan tried a point blank blast with her cannon and barely cracked the armor.

She's macronized in the swing picture, though, so the goofy effects that her genetics have on her micronization don't matter. The thing I'm wondering about is that she looks really young in the picture, and that's when Mikhail was a kid. So I'm guessing that at most she can't be more than a few years older than Mikhail.

I noticed the number. Does this mean that he's secretly James Bond? With regards to VF-25 movements, they actually happen twice in the episode. Immediately after the accident early in the episode, Alto uses his VF-25 to shake his fist at Mikhail. That makes sense, though, since Alto is emphasizing how upset he is. The incident between Mikhail and Clan presumeably involves, as others have mentioned, Mikhail setting his VF-25 to mimic his body movements, much as Alto does with Luca's fighter in episode 7. The reason he might do this is because he's apparently goofing around during his comments to Clan, and the movements might be an attempt to emphasize his silliness. To me, the movements of his VF-25 appear exagerated when compared to how you might normally expect to see someone act, which emphasizes to me that it really is just him goofing around. After the slap, it could be that he's not holding his head because physically felt the slap, but rather because he has his head in his hand (inside the cockpit, and thus duplicated by his VF-25 since he has it hooked up to mimic his movements) as he tries to figure out exactly why Clan got ticked off at him. Does anyone have a DOB on Clan Clan? She looks younger than her "teenage" form in the still in which Mikhail is playing in her swing.

I'm surprised that no one has posted a screen grab of Mikhail on Clan Clan's swing.

Minor damage!? Alto blew off his leg! That's a bit more than minor... Though it looks like Mikhail didn't manage to get a good shot in since I couldn't see any damage from his snipe. I stated this earlier under the spoiler tags, but I don't think that's Grace. I compared the voice with the Grace scene early in the episode, and the voice of Brera's boss sounded a bit too deep to be Grace. Sheryl mentions in an earlier episode that Grace has a bad habit of snooping around when given the opportunity, and natural curiosity would more than explain what Grace was doing spying on the meeting. It's a high level briefing regarding the aliens threatening both Galaxy and Frontier. Who WOULDN'T want to listen in? Natural curiosity might also cause Grace to start focusing in on Leon after the meeting (since he's the one who appears to be responsible for organizing the information on the Vajra), which could lead to some possible revelations... I don't think it could be, since Clan Clan apparently has some screwy genetic problem that keeps her from shrinking properly. Theoretically, a small clone body couldn't have that sort of problem if the large body didn't have it. Of course, I can't think of ANY form of shrinking and enlarging that would cause Clan Clan's problem. Edit - And another thing... Given how casually Brera blows up the derelict ship, it occurs to me that he didn't need to engage Clan Clan when he did. Clan Clan basically watches the dogfight between Brera and the Vajra. And then once the dogfight is over, it's Brera who makes the first move to engage Clan Clan. It seems likely that Brera could have blown up the derelict without Clan Clan being able to do much about it. She might have been able to chase after him, but only after the ship was already gone. And given how easily Brera disengaged from Alto and Mikhail even after he'd lost an engine, I don't think that Clan Clan would have been able to keep him from leaving, either.

I've heard something similar about his background. It's probably speculation based on the fact that his ears are definitely pointed when compared to other characters (you can see this quite clearly during his conversation with Grace early in the episode). Edit - 12 hours is up! And it was an almost useless spoiler tag anyway...

rofl Great pic.

Gee... I wonder who would do such a horrible thing? Other items...

Region coding for Blu-Ray is a non-issue as far as compatibility between the US and Japan is concerned. Here's a map - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Blu-ray...without_key.svg As you can see, pretty much the entire Western Hemisphere (with one small exception in South America), as well as Japan, Korea, South-East Asia, and most of the Western Pacific (excepting Australia, New Zealand, and part of New Guinea) are part of Region A. So we shouldn't have to worry about the region coding.

One other item - This didn't really come from anything specific in the episode so far as I can tell, but it did occur to me while watching the episode. I suspect that there really is a mutual "interest" between Mikhail and Clan Clan, but due to the obvious difficulties in actually doing anything about the relationship (due to Clan Clan's problem while micloned) nothing is likely to come about (presumeably humans can't actually be macloned like Max was in DYRL). Under this theory, Mikhail deals with the issue by a form of denial that causes him to chase women that are exactly the opposite of Clan Clan - i.e. the older women that it's been stated that he prefers.

Nah. I think ADV will still be fine. By and large, Americans expect their anime releases to be cheaper than the Japanese do (or at least, that was the case the last time I checked a few years ago; this may have changed). Also, little things that one expects on one end of the Pacific may not be present on a release that's handled on the other. There's a reason that Bandai has an American subsidiary that handles all of their releases in North America. Then there are issues related to merchandise warehousing and storage. In short, there are a whole host of issues related to properly selling a product besides simply checking to see whether the sub-titles are in place or not. I don't think ADV (or any similar company) is in any real danger yet.

The important thing, though, is that we really don't know. We can speculate on why the two ships left the fleet. But we really don't know exactly why it happened. They may have fled. They may have been cut off. They may have been ordered away. We just don't know at this point. I'm sure that if it really matters to the plot, then we'll probably find out within a few episodes.

I'm sure as noted it's just "footage reused for convenience and cost sake". However, it just so coincidentally happens that Luca's wing-mounted sensor pod (which Alto sees is still intact when he arrives in the chamber) was on the far side of the plane from Brera. So it's possible that the footage originated from Luca's sensor pod. It's curious to note that Cathy only mentions Alto's report of the VF-27. We know that Mikhail saw it as well. Did Mikhail not mention it? (either because he wasn't sure what he saw, or because he assumed that he'd been staring through his gun sights too long and was seeing things?) Unlike Alto, Mikhail only got a brief glimpse of it. Regarding Brera getting on-board - who knows? It's entirely possible that he's inside Frontier completely legally as a visitor, having flown to it on a passenger liner from another destination (i.e. much the same way that Sheryl arrived). The stereo-typical method involves having his VF-27 hidden somewhere nearby. But that doesn't have to be the case.

And so...? Brera killed them because they were in Brera's way. The clearest indication that Brera had zero interest in helping Alto is what he did when Alto finally ended up in the same room as Brera. Brera hid. And he watched without doing anything while Alto struggled with two more Vajra (which ended up costing Alto his fighter). And then he blew up the gunpod that Alto was using. Brera could have had Luca free before Alto even arrived. Instead, he left Luca trapped and hid himself. You're reading far too much into the fact that Brera shot up a couple of Vajra that got in his way. And you're completely ignoring Brera's actions throughout the remainder of the episode. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. If Brera had truly been interested in helping Alto, he could have been much more pro-active about it. And if they were ordered to leave? Is there still no justification? I've provided rationales that fit with what we know. It's too early to start shrieking, "There is no justification! Shoot the deserters and reduce their bodies into useful biological components!" The attack on Frontier in episode 1 was fairly light (despite the complete inability of the VF-171 fighters to handle it). Even the small Vajra detachment sent to catch the Dulfim and Kaitos (and presumeably that was only a small part of the much larger Vajra fleet that attacked Galaxy) was significantly bigger than the Vajra force in episode 1. There was no need for Frontier to send ships off for any reason. Frontier didn't even bother to transmit a distress signal, which demonstrates how small the Vajra attack in episode 1 was. Trying to draw parallels between what happened in episode 1 and the attack on the Galaxy Fleet is pointless since there's nothing in common between the two events. What we know is that Dulfim and Kaitos left the fleet at the start of the fight. We do NOT, however, know why. We can make guesses, but it's far too early to say with any certainty exactly what happened. They could have been sent for help (since the fold distortions were screwing up long range communications). Or they could have been ordered to draw off Vajra forces (which may have worked if the Vajra sent a disproportionately large force after them) by making a run to safety. Or any other number of reasons why they may have been ordered to fold out when the Vajra attacked the fleet. In my opinion, it's noteable that Leon never actually states that the Dulfim and Kaitos deserted. He merely mentions that they left right as the Vajra attacked.

The fact that both of the female members of the triangle are singers improve the odds somewhat in favor of a singer this time. At this point, I suspect that one of the two girls will succeed at business while the other succeeds with Alto (which means that if Sheryl gets Alto, she'll probably step out of the limelight and let Ranka exceed Sheryl's popularity; I'm not saying that either girl will quit singing). Right now, Ranka has friends and wants to be a singing superstar. Sheryl is a singing superstar and wants to have friends (real friends; not just employees like Grace, mindless sycophantic leeches, or people who are too bedazzled by her stardom to act normally around her). We'll see what happens...

I had the same translation. But the impression that I got was that there was some confusion as to why the Dulfim left the Galaxy fleet. If the Dulfim had been under orders to go for help but the command crew of the ship had been killed in the fighting (say the Vajra hit the bridge), then this would explain it. Given the number of Vajra that evidently arrived (apparently enough to pose a serious threat to the Galaxy fleet as a whole), the two ships would have been dispatched for help immediately if that were the intent instead of waiting around for the situation to develop. There's also the alternate "information gathering" theory that I suggested in the episode 7 thread which would also fit with the two ships being ordered to leave immediately without even the command crews knowing the real reason why they were ordered to depart (since they were basically being set up by their superiors). But there's a lot of speculation in that post of mine. The important thing is that there are reasons why the ships might have left immediately while under orders. The key for me is that there's no actual mention of cowardice on the part of the two ships. So we don't know for certain that they actually ran away.

Something that occurred to me... I wonder if, just to add to the wacky hijinx at Mihoshi High (I always wonder if there's a reason that the school shares the name of a character from Tenchi Muyo), Klan Klan is going to sign on as a flight instructor? I think I'd pay money to see the look on Mikhail's face when he walked into his "classroom" (or however the flight program works) and saw micronized Klan Klan in the teacher's spot.

Don't forget the three Zentraedi spies (four if you count Millia) in SDF Macross. My own thought is that since Frontier is an entire fleet, there's enough traffic to and from the ships in it that anyone who is really determined and puts a little forethought into it can smuggle themselves in without too much difficulty. And there's been no evidence of surveillance systems inside the main Frontier colony ship. So there's no reason to think that they're any more security conscious than in Japan today. There's even passenger traffic between different fleets as shown in episode 1 (it's possible, though unlikely, that Brera arrived by taking a passenger liner from another fleet). The primary problem for anyone sneaking onboard is going to be basic necessities. You need a place to stay, you need food to eat, and you need a way to get clothes. The first requires ID. The second and third take money, and for that you need ID. SDF Macross touched on this briefly when the three Zentraedi spies went ravenous with hunger and tried to eat the plastic food display items (and got a job out of it). That ship was also big enough that there were all sorts of compartments that no one ever went to (which apparently allowed them to hide a full-size battle pod) where they could stay. And I'm not gonna touch on the clothing issue... I'm guessing that there was enough regular havoc onboard the Macross that the person who hired them didn't worry about ID (as well as the point that the idea of someone trying to sneak onboard the Macross would seem a bit nuts).