Macross F Movie 1: Itsuwari no Utahime

I was thoroughly confused by Macross before sinking my teeth into the series. You’re telling me that these aliens, who are giant humanoid creatures, are usually, there’s exceptions, tamed and turned vulnerable through the power of Japanese pop idols and mechs that resemble a fighter jet with human limbs? Frankly, I was sold because that sounds like the sickest shit ever. My first exposure to this franchise was watching the original series, SDF-Macross from 1982. It’s one of my all time favorite mecha series, and I loved everything about it. The larger than life robot fights, aliens (zentradi), personalities, drama, and the music. The song ... “My Boyfriend’s a pilot” is a song I never grew tired of. In fact, it still pops up in my music rotation to this day. When I heard that they were airing a Macross movie in my local theater, I knew I had to be there. Macross on the big screen?! My imagination ran wild, but as long as the fights were epic, the idol singing got stuck in my head, and there was a love triangle that humanity's fate rested on, I’d be a happy man. So did Macross Frontier: The False Songstress meet my expectations?

Being mostly unfamiliar with the franchise outside the original series, I was worried I’d be missing vital information, crucial to understanding this movie’s plot. Thankfully that wasn’t the case at all. Upon research after watching the film I found out that this is actually a movie adaption of a TV series of the same name, with some slight differences, at least in this movie. I knew enough of the lore to pinpoint Zentradi in the crowd, understand the vocabulary they use in this film with words like, ”deculture”, and a handful of references to SDF Macross. The girl who’s working to become an idol even sings the classic, “My Boyfriend’s a Pilot” at some point. That being said, even without my basic understanding of the universe, a viewer could watch this movie on it’s own completely blind and still be thoroughly entertained.

The movie centers around Alto, a young pilot for the Macross, who’s unit and area get ambushed by aliens called the Vraja while on an expedition across the galaxy. Meanwhile his friend, and head commander’s daughter, Ranka aspires to become an idol instead of following her “Nii-san” footsteps. He’s not her biological brother, but took on the role of raising her after her actual family was killed in an attack by the Vraja, and she lost her memory as an effect. Coinciding with the invasion is the appearance of pop idol legend Sheryl. Who’s claim to fame is that she’s not genetically enhanced, or biologically altered with robot parts and sings/performs as impressively as she does. It’s up to Alto to fend off the Vraja, find out if there’s a lineage between their attack and Sheryl’s arrival, and make sure Ranka is in good company while on the road to becoming an idol.

This story is remarkably similar to SDF-Macross’s story, and for that reason you’d think that I’d be peeved, but I wasn’t. Maybe it was the relief I felt that it was going to be similar enough to SDF-Macross that I wouldn’t be lost. Regardless of the reason, I was glad the plot was more familiar than I’d anticipated. I was surprised the love triangle wasn’t drawn out long, or held much significance at all. Ranka and Sheryl held little to no ill will towards each other, even before the climax of the film where they perform together. Maybe it’s a different case in the sequel, but the love triangle drama wasn’t as strong as the dilemma that Alto faced when dealing with Sheryl and his CO (Ranka’s brother) when he was convinced she was a spy. Alto even goes as far as to slam into Sheryl like a professional football player after he thought she was going to hurt Ranka. As far as the plot goes, there’s only two gripes I have. The first one being that, either I missed a scene or it’ll be explained in the next movie, but the significance of Ranka’s pet alien rodent, Ai-kun, is never fully explained. The other is that Alto’s learning the ropes of what it takes to be part of the fighter unit he joins is glossed over, as are the other people in his squad. They’re given distinct designs, but aside from Michael, hardly anyone else part of their platoon has any lines. Again, maybe this touched on more in the sequel or the TV series, but our roster in this movie is very small. I was also confused about the significance of Sheryl’s earring and how Alto was able to see into her past while wearing one. None of these problems had deterred my enjoyment, in fact, it motivated me to learn more about the Macross universe.

The characters are fun and unique, with their dialogue and banter between one another being endearing and feeling natural. It wasn’t ground breaking dialogue, but it did more than serve its purpose as a vehicle for what I was looking forward to most from this film: The mechs, the space kaiju, and a cute idol performing her guts out to a background of space warfare. And boy did this film deliver on that front. I was slightly disappointed that the ships and Vraja were CG, but something about the way it looked appealed to me aesthetically. It wasn’t good CG, or particularly attractive to look at, but something about it was endearing and I liked it. Sometimes the camera would spastically jolt left to right instead of just staying still and focusing on the action. Instead it felt like it was trying to be a part of the action, which was done right for the most part, but it was something I picked up on. Aside from that, the fights, explosions, and final performance culminating together at the end elevated my experience from an 8 to a 10. It was amazing stuff, great powerful songs being played while these huge robots, ships, and aliens are all fighting each other in an effort to save Sheryl’s unit from being annihilated. Sadly they’re not able to take all the ships they set out to save as refuge, but they regardless put up a great fight and arguably came out victorious.

Macross Frontier surprised me with its charming sense of humor, larger than life fight scenes, and tantalizing romantic drama much more than I’d expected. Being only familiar with the first installment of the franchise, I was floored that this gave me a similar vibe as that series did. Though my theater’s audio wasn’t as loud as I wanted it to be, and the film itself seemed compressed and not set at the right resolution. From what I’ve heard, this was not mutually exclusive to my theater. So I don’t dock it any points for that, and I’d recommend this in a heartbeat to any fan of mecha anime. Did this movie meet my expectations? Yup, all I wanted was giant robots, explosions, and cute girls singing and it did more than delivered.

Available officially in America for the first time, I went to see it without having seen anything "Macross" aside from vague memories of "Macross Plus" and "Robotech".

I liked it quite a bit as a faux-jukebox musical. It's not my favorite example of any of my favorite genres, but it is an example OF a fuckton of my favorite genres all at once. Songs, cute girls, mechas, a little romance, some intrigue, some comedy, a side-hustle montage... That's the good stuff.

It's kind of a shame that it's held back by its obsession with one-sided, increasingly obnoxious objectification of all the girls. Even the side-cast girls who ... have no characterization at all in this version of events. It's all the more apparent when they "try" to be equal-opportunity by giving the main dude, Alto, a shower scene. No ass, No titty, No credit.

The movie's age also shows in how fast the action is. When they were able to go to full-CG mechas, a lot of mecha shows took the bewildering step of trying to animate everything as if it was happening in real-time rather than in a cartoon. You cannot see shit in this movie's action scenes.

And that's kind of an issue, too. As it was playing, I was having a lot of fun with it. But trying to discuss it with my friend as we were leaving... It's like empty calories. There's not a bunch there.

But it is an extremely complete-feeling movie for a (mostly) compilation film, which was refreshing. It's a neat story worth a watch.

Macross Frontier: The False Songstress

This is Macross. It’s a space opera about music, missiles, and a love triangle. And a pretty good one at that. It covers the first half of the TV series with some changes. I watched the TV series a while ago and don’t have a great memory of what happened. That said, this movie introduces everything you need to know to get into the universe. Some of the parts feel a little rushed but it does a good enough job with the characters and the story.

Story 7/10

The story could get a little confusing if you are not paying attention to ... the subtitles or you haven’t seen the TV show. The background story is standard fare for Macross: there is a space colonization fleet, insect aliens that fly through space and shoot machine guns from their antennae, our good guy squad of fighter pilots, a mostly benevolent government, a rival space colonization fleet, and maybe a secret plot to undermine our good guys.

The main story focuses on the three characters of the love triangle and the pilot squad. It plays out well. Our MC is an effeminate pilot who backs up the pop star during her concert. They hit it off and have a date through San Francisco riding on cable cars and eating hot dogs. Then there is our green-haired girl. She is already friends with the MC, a budding singer, and her old brother is the leader of the squad. She gets jealous of the two aforementioned characters and has to deal with it along with her career.

Where the TV series has us spend time with the squad in school, the movie just cuts to the chase. And good for it. I remember those middle episodes of the TV series being hard to get through. They lost focus and tried to shoe horn a high school drama into it.
The movie gets into the action quick and keeps up the pace. Things are interesting from the get go and the movie alternates between musical/action sequences, character development, and plot progression.

They introduce quite a few story threads (earring, manager issues, character backstories, etc.) that could have probably been cut to focus more on the characters and the main story. The side stuff was probably filler in the TV series and they thought it’d be interesting to cram as much in as possible. There were times when they played up the earrings that I thought took away from the drama and tension of the scenes. The setting, the characters, and the action were compelling enough at the climax that we didn’t need the trinket to remind us of the personal connection.

I was about the give the story an average grade, but I’m going to give it plus one for the intrigue involving a conspiracy of characters. It was a nice touch.

Characters 8/10

The characters are the strong part of the movie. Our main character, Alto, is a dud. He’s just kind of there and, as with anime at large, I really don’t get the ladies see in him. He’s got long hair, is effeminate, and is a pilot. Character traits? Ummm. He’s just kind of there.

The ladies are better characters. Sheryl is the established pop star. She’s entitled, arrogant, and haughty but has a soft side. She was going to hire a mercenary group for an unauthorized rescue mission for 120M credits. How does she pay? She slings her Vega Black credit card at the guy. “If that’s not enough, you can take royalties from my next album.” Nice.

Ranka is the green-haired loli. She’s sweet and innocent and needs to overcome her shyness to rise gain stardom. I recalled her being annoying in the show but I didn’t think that about her here. She’s just sweet and nice.

The supporting characters are your basic Macross cast. You get a rival pilot, the big brother squad leader, the squad, the captain and the bridge crew, and the pop star manager and some mysterious person with her. There was not enough time to really get into it with them but I did enjoy the limited time there was. Michael was the rival pilot and a solid #2 buddy/backup throughout. He was a smart guy and had a few good lines of dialogue with Alto pushing him to make a move with Ranka and then explaining past entertainers who were spies. Inglorious Basterds anyone? That was cool.

Overall, I liked the characters. There wasn’t any over-the-top dramatics or anything that really hit it out of the ballpark, but our band of characters were a cool group to spend a couple of hours with.

Music & Sound 10/10

The music was great. We get a (raunchy) Sheryl concert to start, the nonsense Aimo song that they lean on to try to build some mysterious back story, some more Sheryl tracks, Ranka winging it in the mall, a couple of ditties, and then the big concert at the end.

Fave track was Sagittarius 9 O’Clock, Don’t Be Late because it was catchy, had cool jet and missile action, and had spacey lyrics. I loved that they worked the space theme lyrics into the songs. Second best song was Diamond Crevasse. Again, it was catchy and space-themed and also, it served as the ending theme for the TV show where they showed montages of locations in SF. I loved that this was anime SF.

The Japanese voice acting was good. I liked that Ranka’s singing voice served as her VA.

The sound effects were completely adequate. Space jets, missiles, explosions, and all the rest.

Art 8/10

The art was pretty good. I liked the character designs. Our lead women were cute and wore character-appropriate outfits.
The space battles and jets were cool too. There was CGI and it didn’t suck.

And then there was the setting. They do the anime version of San Francisco and Los Angeles. It’s awesome. The setting was one of the big reasons I was able to make it through the TV series. I used to work at one of the intersections that they showed in the anime and walked the streets where the characters lived. They showed the landmarks and I loved it.

Enjoyment / Overall 8/10

I had a good time. This isn’t once-in-a-generation, ground-breaking, best-in-class movie. But it’s pretty stinking good. For me, it was about the music, the missiles, and anime San Francisco.

Solid stuff throughout. Incredible music, good characters, and good action.