Elektrix

Hmm.. you're right, although her having amnesia may play into that. My thought was that from the way they described the incident, there shouldn't have been any survivors. Still probably up in the air from differences in translation.

They may just be worried about her relationship to SMS getting made public.. I can't tell yet if they're supposed to be a secret organization or not.

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

What I wanna know is, just what happens in a "fold dislocation"?

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

I think a big clue is the incident after Alto rescues her, and she screams, causing the Varja to bug out. They reacted, and that was not singing. Right now I am tentatively going with emotion, the reasoning being that the singing produces a higher state of certain emotions in these particular individuals, which attracts them. Ranka screaming in that scene was probably had a good amount of shock and confusion behind it, which caused the Varja to bug out.

Hell, we don't even know if there is anything special about Ranka at all, besides the fact that she's had previous contact with the Varja (and the UN seems to know there is some effect on individuals who have had contact with the Varja, or they wouldn't be doing the blood testing). Sheryl, on the other hand, may be the one who is truly "special" going into it.

But really, we won't know anything for sure until we actually see it. Would could all be way, way off base. WAFO

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

She didn't lose because of the song she sang, she lost because of the "talk" Leon had with the other judges...as someone mentioned earlier, if the Vajra are drawn to her singing, is it a smart idea to have her become the Macross 25's new idol?

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.

Yup, great scene there. I would've liked to have seen the "Aimo" song too though I think the scriptwriters went with "Pilot" since it jives so well with the dogfight scene. Using Aimo would've been kind of wierd. I have a feeling they're reserving "Aimo" for something bigger. It seems that this time around, becoming a celebrity singer isn't going to be as easy as winning the Miss Macross contest and I have a feeling they're going to use that song when the proper time comes.

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

Didn't we already go through this with Edgar LaSalle...?

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

If you get a spin-off to some series where a new character got the same last name that another main character from the previous series - most often the will have some sort of relation, even if a distant one.

In any it's pretty obvious Sheryl sharing the same name as Sarah and Mao can't be a coincidence - wethere Kawamori just put it there as a nod to Macross Zero or there is deeper connexion is yet to be seen. But considering all the possible connection there could be between frontiern and Zero it's hard not to think this is a possibilité

-Sergorn

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

Only some of it is Japanese...the rest is...something else. (Protoculture? Zentradi? Mayan? Zolan? Supervision Army? Galactic Whale?)

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.

You know - that picture looks like Alto is carrying Sheryl - like he's rescuing her - I'll take another look at it later tonight, but I don't recall Alto rescuing Sheryl so what gives with that picture?

VFTF1

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?

Just watched Ep 2. Much better pacing than Ep 1. Great show so far.

Is it just me or is Sheryl, so far, an insufferable, childish, egotistical, Diva?

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

Just want to say again, I'm really loving the instrumental background music in this episode, especially the music that starts when Alto & Ozma enter the SMS base.

I really hope we get this on the OST CD.

Graham

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

Oh yes it can.

5:34 - BOTH arms are shot off by pursuing Vajra

7:22 - Arms have magically reappeared

Good job with the quality checking Satelite.

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

-Elektrix

Wow, way to be a jerk. If you read my post again, I wasn't going off on a Mac vs. PC debate or whatever it is that you're insinuating. I was merely pointing out that I have had no problems with playing other files/ requiring more processing power in the past. I only mentioned I was using a Mac at all in hopes that someone would offer an alternative that wasn't PC-only to fix my troubles. But thanks for the rudeness.

I'm using a 1.8 GHz G5 with 2GB of RAM, and it HATES these h.264 files, whether I use VLC, Quicktime w/ Perian or MPlayer (hell, MPlayer immediately crashes when I try to load any of the Gattai files - and I tried 3 different versions of MPlayer last night). So, yeah, I think I have a problem with h.264. Any other types of video files play perfect on this machine. I spent hours researching this last night, and it certainly looks like I'm not alone in this frustration.

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.

Wow, 2 AM... that's kinda pathetic. I know I don't understand how Japanese TV works, but that seems kinda sad.

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.

Y'know...I wonder if they put the Nyan Nyan ad in there was part of the plan from the beginning, or if its popularity after the Deculture Version was aired inspired them to make it...

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

The ending song just seems sparse, not enough super awesome Kanno influence.

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".

The OST will be pretty good if the few songs we've heard are any indication...

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).

you shouldn't be scared of kanji, it's basiclly a shortcut for writin' hiragana. it goes like this, a word might have 2-20 (give or take a couple of letters) syllables to spell it and each syllable in japanese gets each own letter. so it would get tirin to write out all 10-20 letters just for one word. so instead, they borrow chinese letters and they write out the word usin' 1-??? kanji/chinese letters.

to make it easier, imagine japanese style in english language. instead of writin' out "apple pie" in english, we would "invent" new letters for it. "#" could mean "apple" and "*" could mean "pie". so as a shortcut we could use two letters "#*" to spell out "apple pie" instead of spellin' it out usin' all "8 letters".

sorry, but my college didn't offer part 2 of japanese in the next semester (i had to wait a year just for part 2) so i didn't continue in japanese. so i don't know very little kanji or katakana. somebody else could probably explain it easier.

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.

Yes, well learning Japanese isn't as easy as one might think.

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.