Difference between revisions of "Macross Frontier"

Revision as of 23:40, 1 June 2009

Genre

Mecha, Romance

Sum it up in a Sentence:

Music has the power to save or destroy the universe. Again. And again. And again ...

Main Description

After the Zentraedi conflict, the population of Earth has been sent out to colonize the universe, but a new alien menace has been attacking the colony ships. Against this backdrop, we have the lives of the men and women tasked with protecting the fleet. Cue battles and political intrigue.

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Personal Opinions

Thirst Mutilator

The only Macross series I have seen to date. I knew a bit about the series going in, mainly there were space plane/robot and a love triangle (also that in one iteration they controlled their planes with GUITARS. RAD). I didn't know about the whole singing/diva angle that it takes VERY seriously though. I wasn't quite sure what to think - I really liked not only the quality but the style of animation, and the fact that the protagonist's feminine features was a gag and not a given of the series. But all the singing and some (not all) the dramatic scenes struck me as just kind of awkward in that "Gee I hope no one sees me watching this" kind of way. Great space fights though. The ending was epic - not quite TTGL galaxy-throwing-epic, but epic nontheless. 4/5.

Buzmeg

I liked Macross Frontier while I was watching it. For starters, none of the main characters make you desperately want to slap them completely senseless because they are too <insert adjective> to live. This alone puts Frontier at the top of my list in the Macross series. The space battles are glorious affairs, and the ending was suitably epic. If you are watching this series for transforming fighters and capital ships in flashy battles, you will get satisfaction, but not every episode. The animation of the whole series was top-notch.

Okay, the music. Look--this is a Macross series--you will get bludgeoned by J-Pop, so you'd better at least be able to tolerate it. Unlike a lot of series that use music, Frontier has a *LOT* of different pieces, so they don't bludgeon you with the same song every episode. Kanno Youko composes the music with the two main female leads being newcomers. The main female is a pop idol (big stretch) with the secondary lead aspiring to the same (another big stretch). Both singers do a creditable job and seem like they have actual singing talent. Normally, Kanno Youko and decent singers is an unmitigated ticket to awesomeness. The CD singles sold amazingly well in Japan. So, maybe my taste is a bit off, but the music just doesn't feel ... memorable. After hearing each one a couple times, they just kind of burn out. I have a much stronger reaction to the good songs from the Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex soundtrack or the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, for example.

Plot and characterization are okay, but they are definitely the series weak point. While the writers can produce a heartwrenching moment (you'll know it when you hit it), most of the characters and plotlines just feel a bit shallow. It feels like there were too many threads flying around, and the writers didn't really know their final path and the most important characters until about halfway through. Consequently, when good or bad things happen to them, there just isn't enough investment in them. The "bad guys" (all of them) were just characterized too weakly, and the good guys seemed to just be pulled along on the events rather than actively shaping some of them. The "bad guys" felt more like a plot MacGuffin than anything else.

Overall, I enjoyed Macross Frontier, and it is certainly a very good anime. However, it never quite reaches the level of "great" on any particular front. 4/5

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