manwiththemachinegun

Okay, the scene just after the Vajra take the hit for Island 1, and just before Ranka starts explaining about the Vajra, you can see that there's still a large chunk of the NUNS fleet still alive. Past that point, you don't see them take any more casualties. So their absence in the finale scene is just for dramatic effect. Just like how we KNOW that a large part of Breetai's fleet survived the battle with Boldoza, but when the Space Fortress explodes, you don't see any ships other than the SDF-1.

Jesus wept, I just saw the raw on YouTube and I think I'm going to faint from the mecha-awesome that was just displayed.

well

Who cares about NUNS when you have S.M.S

As I have grown in my years, I have had more sympathy towards the cannon fodder of the universe. Needless to say, Henchmen 21 and 24 from the Venture brothers are an inspiration to me.

It's always nice to see some of the redshirts make it, they're like the little engine that could!

Plays taps...

Still, there's a big difference between mostly annihilated, and all annihilated. Hell, even those poor stealth frigates in Macross 7 who never managed hit anything, even some of those survived. At least they did slightly better this time.

Wait, so some people are saying the ENTIRE Macross 25 fleet was destroyed with the exception of Quarter and Island-1, is that true or do we just not *see* the fleet in the final shots?

Maybe Bilra wants the fold quartz so he can communicate with and find Minmei no matter where she is in the galaxy. Instantaneous communication and all that.

Cool, sounds awesome. I'm not all that into *too* much romance in my Mecha so harem ending doesn't bother me.

Animesuki on the other hand, is imploding.

The action sounds AWESOME thought, I can't wait till the RAWs are out.

And of course the reconciliation with the bugs was inevitable, I just hope NUNS keeps up on their weapon research in case they decide to get onry again.

Mr. Leon?

So I take it this is the mother of all Macross finales? Everything but the kitchen sink?

I don't see what the hate for retcon is for. Hell, even Tolkien retconned his stuff.

Don't think so. We only see four or five of the lead capital ships taken down by the Vajra beam spam. There were many more ships seen during the build up to the final battle.

It's also extremely dangerous for NUNS to send any kind of reinforcements. Remember, the current Vajra are immune to reaction warheads and the previous generation of Valkyrie arms and missiles. The only weapon that would help would be the Macross cannon and maybe some fighter melee moves, but the casualties would be astronomical. The best thing the UN could do was double weapons research and fold wave jamming so the Vajra can't adapt to future weapons.

Frontier and Galaxy have the most advanced Vajra fighting weapons, they have to make due.

Hey, I'm just working off of what Zero tells us about the purpose of the Bird Human.

Who knows, but the simplest explanation I think is just that the Vajra are the weapon the Protoculture use for 'judging' their creations. Regardless as to the moral hypocrisy (Judging creatures for making war when the Protoculture themselves fell apart from civil war), I think it'd be a lot more efficient to deploy one Vajra queen to observe and obliterate possible 'threats' to the Proculture than to waste a fleet of more intelligent Zentradi which could be used better elsewhere.

Well, I think there's one too, and the biggest sign of that was Sheryl's fold wave/fold quartz EARINGS being edited into Macross Zero Blu Ray. So we get a retcon and its not supposed to mean anything? Uh huh, suuuure. That APHOS was covered in purple like crystal which we now know is fold quartz. I think that says something don't you?

Adam. No, Lilith. Wait, I am confused

FV

So Adam just happens to have four wings and a "W" shaped body with an elongated orb for its lower section just like the Bird-Human?

I'm open to alternate interpretations, but damn, that Vajra super queen looks a hell of a lot like the APHOS.

Wait, so if the Vajra have no connection to the Birdman or protoculture, then what the hell is this?

I was ready to discount any possible connection, but this is pretty freaking important.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpXr917JAfk

If you will pause the video at 4:50, you can see that the basic body shape is almost exactly the same. And if you look at the center, rather than what we perceive to be the 'head' (Where Sara is being held), you can see it is vaguely insect-like not to mention the four angel wings.

And then there's that question about where Mao's fold quartz *came from*. The Mayan people are cut off from the outside world, but what do they have that no one else does? Fold Quartz... and the APHOS. That just doesn't fall from the sky does it? Not to mention, WHY Mao was interested in the Vajra to begin with?

I think it's pretty clear there is a BIG connection between Macross Zero and Frontier.

The simplest explanation is that the Vajra or the (divine sword), are what the Protoculture used for judging their creations. The Zentradi are military grunts, sure you can have them kill a planet, but what if you judging one? That takes time, you can't just park a military fleet for a few million years while your creatures are developing. So what do you do? Engineer a lifeform that has no real intelligence on its own, but rather is programmed with simple, basic instincts, and have it be one that can survive and adapt for long periods of time. The Vajra are sleepers, the Zentradi are a tightened fist. You only need one Vajra queen to judge a whole world, and if the creation becomes too powerful, you have the queen's offspring adapt and mutant to count those threats.

I was shocked. The second half of the episode was pure culture shock. I had no ide how the Zentradi felt until Ranka started. Deffinently reminds me of Macross 1 DYRL, Macross 2 and the first Macross series battle with Boldolsaa's fleet. Even after reading spoilers and predicting that it would be like this it was still shocking seeing that they went so far. Frontier is now the bad guys.

Frontier seemed to be as chocked as I was that the Varja (or rather Grace blaming it on the Varja) did that against us (Frontier). Felt like seeing Macross 1 DYRL with the story told from the Zentradi side and realizing that we are losing the same way we won in DYRL. I could feel people on Frontier thinking "How dare enemy use that song against us" after they tried to overcome the initial shock.

Frontier is still fighting for its existence and the ten million civilians who will die unless the Vajra are stopped. Frontier has been set up and manipulated at every turn, they're not merrily committing genocide for the sake of orders but survival. Its a different set of circumstances than the Zentradi had who were 'just following orders'. Most people don't even consider the Vajra sentient, just mindless monsters. Yes, this is supposed to be a sort of reverse DYRL but calling Frontier and not GALAXY the bad guys is pushing things too far. Frontier has done nothing but defend itself from the first Vajra raid if you recall, and was hunted down when it tried to run away.

The use of DYRL isn't a sign of the movie's canonicity at all. It's just reusing a popular song. Grace used it because it was horribly ironic. It could have been Holy Lonely Light fer crying out loud.

And let's just bask in it again...

Bug stompin MDE barrage.

Ahhh. **** yeah.

It has nothing to do with Earth being stuck up, it has everything to do with the survival of the human race, and that means abandoning fleets when they get over their heads.

Think about it, Earth is a superfortress sending out colony fleets as essentially back up hard drives to prevent extinction. Sure, fleets may be lost, but some will succeed, while Earth grows ever stronger.

It's perfectly logical. It's the same as governments sacrificing unimportant cities to protect key ones. It's ruthless, but hey, no one said war was fair.

For people who wanted more Macross Plus homages:

MDE Explosions?

Maybe the MDEs only have a small blast radius? Just enough to engulf part or the whole Red Lobster.

Oh no, those are full sized. You think they're going to break through planetary defenses with just anti fighter stuff? Nah, this is a full on MDE barrage, you can see the Vajra fighters as red and blue streaks.

Simple fact or not, Frontier is invading their turf... not the other way around... (and the only culprit behind the whole three month disaster is Leon Mishima).

Leon's argument to Alto was that the Vajra are bent on anihilating humanity... If that's the case why don't they just attack Earth and Eden and wipe us out? He's obviously lying to Alto...

So ten millions civilians have to die because of that? Frontier still has a legitimate reason for fighting, and they likely can't run at this point due to damage. And the Vajra FOLLOWED the Macross fleet and stuck a nest of killer drones inside Island-1 while the fleet was RUNNING AWAY. Real benevolent these bugs are.

The Vajra aren't a threat to Earth now. You're seriously going to trust the good will of a insect swarm that is immune to super nukes? Good luck with that.

This isn't settlers and indians, this is space bugs that rip people apart and have repeatedly pressed the attack on a fleet that has been essentially abandoned to a Darwinian experiment. Xenocide is ugly, but if you think a military force is going to let 10 million civilians die as a matter of "principal" (invading territory = bad) I doubt they'd agree.

My only point is that even provoked, it's silly to make excuses for a race of drones especially given that the bugs have prosecuted aggression against Frontier at EVERY turn never backing down from attacking even when the Frontier was trying to escape. The nest planted on Island-1 especially wasn't summoned there by Grace, the Vajra did that of their own 'will'.

I really hope so. They should have had them sing at the same time a lot more then they did so far in the series. I remember only two times. Not counting the intro.

It fells a little ironic that normally in Sci fi and anime we defend the earth from alien invaders and conquerors. And now Leon is making us into the bad guy who are trying to steal the Varja homeworld. I wonder if it will end like the end of space war 1 there we (Frontier) becomes like the Zentradi stranded on the Varja Homeworld living in an uneasy peace with the Varja (until Frontier have rebuilt and colonized the world)?

Even though Leon has ambitions, the simple fact remains that the Vajra have shown no sign of letting up on their attacks, and Frontier CANNOT survive three more months of fighting. This is still a war for the survival of Frontier.

After watching Ranka really flounder the last episode, I am much happier with this turnaround in her character, although in a ways, 20 was a regression for her overall.

I was also very touched by the last image of Ranka that was showing at the end of the credits. It was a beautiful illustration. Wish we had it without the credits.

Of course, now with the last few episodes, I'm still bothered by Alto's cardboard reactions. Is he unable to understand the enemy as a complex creature with perhaps its own issues? When he was about to off Ai-kun, and Brera b*tchslapped him, I actually was completely in agreement with Brera's actions. If the next episode isn't about Alto and allowing him to process and mature things, then I'll be seroiusly annoyed and start rooting for him to eat the pineapple.

(Based on the preview though, it looks like the next episode will let Alto sort of figure things out. I hope.)

I'm sure Alto would be quite willing for tea time with cuddly little killing machine, if his buddies were blowing the shi

out of his friends every chance they got without fail.

If bears attacked you a thousand times, and you've killed them a thousand times, AND they've killed people close to you, are you gonna sit still and do nothing when your friend jumps in front of one and says, 'No no! It's cool! This is a NICE bear!"

Doesn't work that way.

Frankly the Vajra are going to have to PROVE they want peace before any kind of ceasefire is agreed. At this point the Vajra are still mindless hordes ravaging a fleet that did nothing to warrant attack. YES, this was a war that was engineered by a third party, but that doesn't mean the bugs should get a free pass for killing at will. "It's their nature" doesn't fly with the fact that the Vajra fleet came out shooting in episode 14, while they were trying to communicate with Ranka.

Honestly, the Vajra are only bringing the dimension eaters on themselves at this point. They should have let the Frontier fleet go when they had a chance, now its time for Alto the xenocide to step up.