Radd

The impression I got was that Galaxy never came under Vajra attack, that the message was a complete fake. When they cut to that scene of the Galaxy fleet safe and sound, they didn't look damaged at all, whereas in the communication we see huge chunks torn out of the colony ship as the battle was raging.

Er....but they did it with SDF:M. Well, first they cut it short, but then when it became popular they wound up adding episodes.

Ja, Luca has worked with Leon, but Leon was the President's assistant and a high ranking public official. Luca probably still doesn't know about the coup d'etat. Though, of course, we've no idea what the contents of the SMS message were. It's entirely possible that Luca and Alto do know, but consider the Vajra to be the bigger threat, letting their emotions get in the way of reason. I'm sure we'll find out eventually.

I'm pretty sure the Galaxy fleet will be making an appearance in the final episode.

It seems all of the remaining big questions are being set up to be answered and it will come down to people learning whether or not they made the right decisions. I think everyone who doesn't understand why Captain Wilder, Ozma, and company stole the Quarter, and the people angry at Ranka for helping Ai-kun escape back to the Vajra, are going to be shocked at the ending.

I'm still convinced they can pull everything together for the end. In fact, with the past two or three episodes, I've become more convinced of it. I certainly suspect the possibility that Sheryl will live, the Vajra deus-exing up a cure once peace is achieved or something...but on the other hand, the way things are I would not be surprised if we get a very bittersweet ending. At this point, I'd even say Ozma has a higher chance of surviving the series than Alto. However they go with it, I'm counting the days to each of these final episodes.

Just saw the episode. Absolutely brilliant. It really puts it into sharp relief how slow a lot of people are on the pick-up, though. It's perfectly understandable why some of the characters in the show view the Vajra as enemies to be destroyed, but come on people! How is it that there are still viewers who believe that? Frontier is a great show and all, but it's not exactly complicated. I don't know, but Ozma and company were not out to kill, they were buying time. e) None of the above. Yeah, they showed him finally sitting down to read the message. He was not abandoned. He was let in on it. Luca, too. They chose to stay anyways. To be fair, we don't know just how much the message revealed. They might not know what Leon did. But Alto, at the very least, should have begun to at least entertain the possibility that all was not as it seemed with the Vajra. Perhaps him more than anyone on the Quarter. But he, like Luca, are now driven by the hatred that's come from losing so much to the Vajra attacks. Why did Alto scream at the end? Several likely reasons, though I'm sure it will be made more clear by his actions in episode 23. a) Maybe he feels betrayed by his comrades, whose point of view he simply cannot understand. b) Maybe it's finally begun to realize that he's let his hatred blind him, and that he made the wrong choice. c) Maybe it was frustration, that he still could not best Ozma, who he possibly now feels has betrayed him. To be sure, there's gotta be a lot weighing down on Alto right now.

All kidding aside....are you kidding? The Vajra seem to naturally (or at the very least, biologically) create "fold quartz", which allows folding and communication even in regions of space where there are fold disruptions which prevent or slow down folding, and disrupt communications. So, it has been clearly established that this "fold quartz" is a valuable commodity, and as far as anyone knows the Vajra are the only source of it. Grace, and her mysterious co-conspirators, are manufacturing a war against the Vajra. Making it appear to the Frontier fleet, and the rest of the New U.N. Spacey that the Vajra are attacking without provocation, and that they cannot be reasoned with. It has also been strongly suggested that the Vajra are not as they appear to be, and that it may be possible to communicate with them after all. Unless there's a curveball yet to be thrown regarding Grace and co.'s goals, it would appear they are attempting to set up an irreconcilable divide between humans and Vajra, where humanity perceives the Vajra to be nothing more than unreasonable monsters, bent on humanity's destruction. Hunting down another intelligent race purely to kill them as a resource brings to mind words like "genocide" and "monstrous". On the other hand, who would argue against killing fearsome space monsters who would otherwise just try and kill you first? That's what's been indicated so far, at least.

Oh, how could I forget Full Throttle? That was a fantastic game, and someone actually strung together the video into a movie. Clean up the dialogue and story a little, redo the animation, expand on some of the characters and ideas, and you've got potential for a cult classic movie right there.

Actually, a Castlevania movie is apparently on the way, courtesy of (sound of dreams being crushed) Paul Anderson, of AvP fame! I hear there's also an animated Castlevania in the works, though I believe it's a related project. I hear Warren Ellis was writing that one.

So...the VF-0A had an arm fix, but it wasn't much of a fix, right? I've always wanted to pick up a VF-0A, but was put off by my experience with my VF-0S. If the joints are tighter, and the arm fix is good this time, then I might be swayed to nab one, finally. Assuming they apply this fix to an improved 0A as well, that is.

I agree that it's great to have either option. In this day and age it's unreasonable to expect otherwise (unless they do something like the Gurren Lagann release where they put out a less expensive sub-only set while working on a dub release).

, you say?

I think JBO's observation applies to pretty much any game you can think of. There's potential to turn most any videogame into a good movie. Unfortunately, in the current movie industry culture it is highly unlikely to happen. Even anime versions of videogames tend to be on the poor side. I think an animated Metal Slug could be a blast (pun intended). Though I hear Japanese audiences tend to react poorly to the kind of dark humour I suspect a good Metal Slug movie would require.

Actually, Ranka did sing just because she wanted to be a singer. I'm not certain how anyone could argue otherwise. When it was discovered that her song had an affect on the Vajra, she cooperated because she thought she was helping to save her friends. Quickly she realized something was wrong, but it was the encouragement of Alto and others that kept her going. Minmay did not sing to "bring peace". She sang as part of a distraction while the Macross and Vrlitwhai's fleet launched their attack on Bodolza's flagship.

I find your ideas intriguing, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. You don't think these are unreasonable standards to hold anyone to? Even Ranka was surprised when the Vajra attack only intensified. At that point she wasn't clear about what was happening. At the funeral, Leon asking Ranka to sing after she'd already been through, and had personally lost (as far as she knew) so much, for a publicity stunt, it was in horribly bad taste and I find it difficult to understand how anyone could rationalize finding fault with Ranka in that. In the real world Leon's request would have been a career ending blunder for a public figure (assuming they had not staged a coup and held complete, unrestricted authority). Performances at somber and emotionally charged events such as that funeral service are arranged ahead of time, not thrust onto someone like that on the spur of the moment.

That's true. I'd forgotten about that, but now that you mention the scene I remember it.

My first choice would be the VF-4. My second choice would be the VF-4. I'd also love to pick up the VF-4. Come to think of it, I might nab another VF-4. After those, I'll probably nab a VF-171, VF-1, and then maybe a VF-25. Seriously, I plan to get 4 VF-4's. One to display in each mode, and one that is likely to be broken within a year due to how often I'll be pulling it off the shelf. I've wanted a VF-4 toy since I first saw the screenshots back in the mid to late 90's. It is hands down my favourite design.

I'll have to watch the series again, but I only ever got the impression that the Zentradi were frightened of the Protodevlin, not that they were being made more aggressive. It's a neat concept, though. It's been a while since I last watched Macross 7. Maybe after Frontier is through I'll go back and do that.

Regardless of whether or not Ai-kun is an individual, or part of a hive mind, it's been made abundantly clear that Grace and those she's working with are pulling the strings, tricking both the Vajra and Frontier into fighting. We know this, it has been explicitly stated. If he is just a part of the Vajra hive-mind, then that makes it even more clear that the Vajra are trying to communicate. It is unreasonable for anyone who has followed the story this far to believe that the it would be a good outcome for humanity to wipe out the Vajra. Knowing this, it makes not one ounce of logical sense for anyone to call Ranka a traitor for attempting to bridge that gap. The alternative is either endless fighting, or Frontier's defeat being used to egg the rest of humanity into war with the Vajra. Grace's victory, either way it would seem.

I normally use Firefox, but played around with Chrome for quite a bit yesterday. I noticed some pages it loads blazing fast, but other sites it chugs on for an unbearably long time before finally loading. Kinda odd, but a couple of the sites it chugged on where sites I visit regularly, so that puts me off the idea of making Chrome my main web browser any time soon. I did notice that the sites it chugged had lots of Flash, but those same sites load relatively quickly for me in Firefox. Sites like the Adult Swim site, and 1up.com. I think it did the same with YouTube, too. Once or twice it completely froze up while loading one of those sites. All tabs. I think that's about when I stopped using it.

Now that you mention it, I seem to recall that, too.

I really shouldn't need to point this out, but he was replying to someone whose argument he'd quoted.

Unfortunately, as much as the Joker had done that would still be highly unethical, and could only come back to haunt Gordon and Batman later. As it is, it seems to me that Dent has been set up to take a pretty big fall, post-mortem or not, in a future film.

He was pointing out the faulty logic of declaring Minmay a saint and Ranka some sort of sociopathic puppy-murderer.