Elektrix

Probably not a secret organization, but it seems like the military providing part of it is (hence the cover of "SMS Shipping", etc.). People probably know what SMS is, just not exactly what they are doing. -Elektrix

I suspect it's sort of like what you see in other sci-fi dealing with accidents with warp/etc. technology. I remember Star Trek: TNG did an episode where a ship, the USS Pegasus, was testing some sort of interphase cloaking device..... there was an accident and the ship rematerialized inside an asteroid. In other shows like BSG they usually mention the dangers inherent in using the FTL drive without plotting coordinates, with the risk being that you end up inside a star or planet or whatever. So I would guess a fold dislocation is something similar; folding into the wrong location, with disastrous consequences. -Elektrix

Wasn't this a significant part of how things worked in Macross 7 too though? I know you've been making a big distinction between emotion vs. singing, but I always got the impression in Macross 7 that the emotion and feeling was the core component of things anyway, not specifically the singing (just that the singing was highly emotional). -Elektrix

Ahh; I have to admit I didn't pick up on that. I was kind of wondering what Leon was saying to the other judge and why Cathy was scowling at him about it. But surely Leon or anyone else doesn't know yet that they are being drawn to Ranka? I can buy that Leon might have have his own agenda about who wins, but it doesn't make sense to me that they might already know about Ranka.

Yeah, that's true, it really wouldn't have fit (either as a song to perform for Miss Macross, or as something to juxtapose with the dogfighting). And yeah, it would have been inconceivable to lose after singing it, so it does make sense it's being saved for something more important.

It's kind of interesting that Ranka sang "My Boyfriend is a Pilot" rather than "Aimo" (what she sang to Alto at the end of Episode 3). To some degree I was expecting "Aimo" since the setup seemed to be that Alto was encouraging her to sing that song to others. But I guess it might be too soon for the song to be used, assuming it might play a similar role as DYRL. And if she had sung "Aimo", it seems hard to imagine she wouldn't have won "Miss Macross". -Elektrix

Wouldn't surprise me, although either way, clearly Edgar wasn't as major a character as Sheryl is, and any relationship between him and Claudia (I don't recall, did anyone ever definitively conclude whether it meant anything) would really not matter beyond just being sort of an interesting coincidence. A connection between Sheryl and Sara/Mao would clearly be more significant. -Elektrix

Indeed. And it would be one thing if this was just some bit character with the name of Nome (say, one of the other pilots in the series, or someone's assistant, or whatever), but this is a major character in the new show who is also a singer, and shares the same last name as the Nomes from Macross Zero. It's hard not to expect there to be some connection (whether it is explicitly spelled out, and whether she actually has the same DNA/etc. is another matter). -Elektrix

Yoko Kanno likes to use fake languages for some of her songs (Wanna Be An Angel from the Macross Plus movie is one of my favorite examples). I think I remember her joking once about the language for some of the Macross Plus songs being Zentraedi.

It's from the broadcast version of Episode 1 - an additional part of the concert sequence that wasn't in the original Deculture edition. -Elektrix

Considering DYRL was made as a theatrical retelling of the original series already, wouldn't the typical compilation movie be kind of redundant?

I think she comes across that way in her room, but I don't think she shows any of those characteristics really in the time she spends with Ranka at the end. And she seems to show a playful side to her character after pointing to Alto. The interesting thing about Sheryl is that she's already a star; it's not like Minmay where she becomes a celebrity during the course of the show. Or Basara, who is something else entirely anyway. But I think she clearly has her own personality complexities. -Elektrix

Glad someone else pointed this out. The orchestral music so far has been great, and it's definitely highlighted in this episode. I'm positive we'll get it on the OST CD, as pretty much every show Yoko Kanno has done music for has featured most of the orchestral work on the OST's as well. -Elektrix

Are we sure the VF-25 doesn't have nanotechnology regeneration capabilities? -Elektrix

Technically speaking, a PowerPC G5 is still perfectly capable of handling h.264 itself - in their h.264 FAQ Apple points out that a dual Power Mac G5 can handle a full 1920x1080 8 Mbps 24 fps movie without any problems, while less intensive h.264 content can run on much more basic processors than that. I'm just suggesting that there might be some other problem as well, as h.264 content itself shouldn't inherently be a problem for a single 1.8GHz G5 (remember, Apple introduced h.264 support into QuickTime 7 well before the Intel transition). I do understand your frustrations though in it not working, but I don't know if it's fair to say that h.264 is a "crap" format just because of it - there is still a lot of good about the format and its benefits over what came earlier (in fact that it is able to maintain higher quality with lower bandwidth; that's one of the big reasons we're seeing h.264 across the spectrum from mobile phone content to blu-ray. -Elektrix

Just watched the raw; even without understanding the dialogue, I still definitely loved it, and can't wait for more. Frankly I'm still just pretty excited about the fact that we're in the middle of the broadcasting of a new Macross series.

I'm not sure, but I don't think it's that unusual...... I've seen a lot of well-regarded anime that airs incredibly late like that; I don't think it's necessarily the equivalent of what airs in the US at 2 AM, for example.

Well, either way - as soon as we saw Lanka act out the commercial, I think it became inevitable that we'd see the ACTUAL commercial for it somewhere and somehow. Using it in the eyecatch probably makes sense, although it would have been funny to see it come on during a TV show inside the show. -Elektrix

I think the Kanno flavor is still there; the main thing it reminds me of is the vocal-only version of "Voices", or some of the other similar pieces from "Turn A Gundam".

Yeah, no doubt - and I'm definitely hoping we'll get at least 2 OST's out of this series. -Elektrix

One thing, thinking about it a bit more and comparing it to the full version of "Triangler", I will admit that I think I enjoy the song more as a full version than as an OP theme (of course, I like most of Yoko Kanno's OP themes in their full versions compared to the Intro short versions), but this might be one of the ones where I think it works better as a standalone full song than as an OP theme. Still though, it works for me. -Elektrix

Cool, just watched the opening animation from rapidshare. I'll still say I like the OP theme, and I think it works; I'm not sure necessary what is and isn't a "Macross-y" song, really........... the opening theme to SDF Macross is of course a very different kind of song for example, although one that seemed to fit the times (and still holds up, I think). It seems to fit the OP animation pretty well, I think, and I do like Maaya Sakamoto's voice on it. All I can say really is that it seems like a pretty nice theme, and I think I like it more than Macross 7's OP (and I say that as someone who is a big fan of large portions of Macross 7's various soundtracks). Not really my favorite of Yoko Kanno's OP themes, but it still works. Can't wait to hear more of her music for the series though. EDIT: Just listened to the ED theme as well; hard to say too much about it. Seemed like a mix of one of the vocal-only versions of "Voices" combined with something from Turn A Gundam maybe. -Elektrix

It sounds like a lot of people aren't digging what's been heard of "Triangler" so far; personally, I think I like it though (between the snippets used in the commercial, and the unfinished demo of the full song). I do agree it will help to hear it alongside the opening animation though, but it seems like a pretty nice vocal performance (especially some of the high notes she seems to hit in it).

Yeah...... I've read a few introductions to kanji, for example, and I get the feeling I could sort of learn some of it..... but I guess it's seeing a lot of it at a time, and very tiny (where it seems hard for me to even make out what the individual characters are) that is very intimidating to me.

I've always wondered about that; it's one of those things I've always wanted to learn, but it just seems very intimidating. Outside of spoken Japanese, written Japanese really scares me too; whenever I'm watching a show and there's a ton of characters on screen at the same time, and only on for a few seconds, and often very tiny, I am amazed that someone could easily read through them all.... frankly I have trouble even with just a fair amount of English text shown at once when only shown briefly.