Macross Δ

I haven't watched such a terrible show in years (I don't really watch too many tho). It is so terrible that I have to get on a public website and rant about it. The story is OK, but the way the story is told is awful. I do not feel emotional at all to all the plots, characters in this series what's so ever. By comparing with Macross F, I was hooked at least from the first six or seven episodes. I watched this series simply because it's Macross - I wanna know the plot, period. The staff seem very strong yet I'm very disappointed ... that they made a show that is so plain, tasteless. The struggle of all the characters are all too cliche. I bet any high school student can write this kind of juvenile story. Storyboard, I guess, is the one to blame. Unfortunately the director, Kenji Yasuda happened to be a terrible storyboard. Therefore he can only direct a show with mediocre storyboard and thus a dull show.

Every time I remembered the fact that I spent time watching this, I kind of get pissed off with myself for having done it. Why?

Story: 3
Like every Macross, you have mecha, singing idol(s), and a love triangle. In this case, it's villains are a bunch of bishounen faux-prussian knights with hair tentacles that have a diamond star dangling at the end. The story starts off about curing space rabies with singing and by the end evolves into a Macross Frontier plot clone about hive-mind control of the universe. By itself, I would have dropped the show and not bothered. The pacing of the story ... was terrible. Major hints and plot points are left unresolved at the end. At some point I started to treat this show like a 26 episode song commercial. At least I love Macross as a franchise enough to keep giving it a chance until it was too late into the show that it'd be pointless to drop. Heck, I wasn't even bothered by the mahou shoujo transformations or the chaotic idol/mech combination as a premise.

Characters: 1
At the start, we're introduced to Hayate, Freyja and Mirage. Lazy vagrant worker who just got fired, stowaway singer-wannabe, and the out-of-the-book pilot, respectively. As I watched on, here's how I would summarize them:

-Hayate's character was like an immature kid who did things on impulse and lacked respect for the people he worked for. At least he finally finds a job he enjoys?
-Freyja turned out to be a canon Mary Sue with a heart-shaped hair boner that gets erect at the sound of music. To make it worse, it even changes color depending on her emotions. (Really, you tried that hard to make her endearing to me? Well, it backfired.) Last but not least, at every opportunity she had to grow, someone always came and helped her solve her problem either by doing something for her or giving her the answer to her problem. So, she kind of just never grew. I couldn't even feel sorry for her gonna-die-young problem because her species naturally dies young anyway. It's not a disease ending her life prematurely, its just what being a member of her species entails. Imagine hearing the love story between a kid and his cockroach friend, the cockroach is doomed to die before the kid and you're supposed to feel for the cockroach's woes...
-Mirage on the other hand had a forced crush on Hayate and her development could be summarized by "After 26 episodes, I realize I like my job that I've been doing all my life."

Additionally, the "Love Triangle" for the above 3 characters is so forced, resolves in such a clearly manipulated way, that not only do I not feel the third leg of the triangle had a legit place in the show, I feel there's nothing connecting the three characters at all. They weren't doing believable things to help each other grow like the three characters in Frontier.

Now, there's also the question of why can't the heros be anyone else?

Well, here's the most hilarious problem: It COULD have been anyone else. In this show, unless you were Windermerean or Mikumo, your relevance to the plot was abysmal at best. They could have made Kaname the main character, focused on her growth and you will have much better developed characters focusing on Kaname, Mikumo, and the bishounen nobles of Windermere. At least this way you would have non-flat characters on both sides of the conflict.

Art: 9
At the very least, the artwork was good. It at least meets the standard of post 2010 anime titles.

Sound: 10
The sound was 80% of the reason why I finished this show. If that had been crap, I'd have dropped way earlier.

Overall, this is the worst modern entry in the Macross series.

Who's this for:
-Ranka lovers
-General moe lovers
-People who were sore that Ranka and Minmei lost their love triangles
-People who just wants to see pretty images on the screen and listen to overglorified Jpop
-People who want to see an idol group in anime

Who's this not for:
-Anyone looking for something that can live up to Macross (the original) or Macross Frontier
-Anyone who want characters with depth
-Anyone who wants a plot with a resolution at the end

Well…. That was really disappointing.

It seems that Macross has this thread of one good series, then one bad and then another good one ( hopefully the next one will be good)

I loved SDF Macross , it’s one of the best shows I have watched, then Macross plus was another bang. I watched Macross zero and even thou it wasn’t that good, at least it was decent. However, then came Macross Seven and ruined the franchised for me. After that awful series which I dropped after 7 chapters I dropped the franchised in disappointment, never cared to watch the next one as I ... thought that after Macross Seven the franchised was dead and nothing good will come out of it.

Then one day in my boredom I decided to give Frontier a change and OH boy… was I wrong, Frontier was really good, loved it. Then I decided to watch delta after being hyped by frontier, only to be disappointed once again.

So here is a little rundown of Macross delta .

Pros:

Character designs are really good, nice and colorful.
Animation on the characters can look really good at times.
And… that’s about it…

Cons:

They turned the idols into magical girls… that actively fight and dance and sing … IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WAR ZONE, while people sheer for them… again IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WAR ZONE. Idols in Macross have an important role, but it always felt realistic ( in Macross universe context that is ) as they were support for the pilots with their music… not doing magic tricks on the battlefield.

Music is not that good, not one single song stuck to me as on the previous shows, Macross Seven dispite being awful has the best songs in my opinion

Characters are really boring and uncharismatic, all the characters are archetypes and they stick to that archetype during the run of the series, in turn making the love triangle boring as I do not care for any of the characters.

Mechs look … horrible, how come the Valkyries from frontier ( 2008 ) look better than the valkiries on a 2016 show? That’s beyond my comprehension.

And over all the series is … boring, it has no soul, I’ll put it at the very button of the franchise. At least Macross 7 had awesome music going for it …

The series has a decent start, but as a whole, it doesn't amount to much and really falls apart in the second half. I really wanted to like this series. It's just not good, though.

With a little more planning and a higher budget, this could have been a great show. It has elements that could easily be expanded into something great. It is a shame it was all wasted.

Music
I really liked Borderline and Giraffe Blues. I found the other songs forgettable.

Art
They needed more budget for what they wanted to do. The first episode introduces what is supposed to be a unique fighting style ... for the main character, but you never really see it again. The series is plagued with things like that. At a concept stage the art is fine, in execution it's all lacking. Again, I suspect this is due to budget or not enough time.

Story
The story feels like they didn't plan it out. It has some strong elements, especially during the first part of the show, but as a full package it doesn't come together well and all of the characters suffer as a result.