Macross F

Being the most anticipated anime of the spring season 08, I am NOT a bit surprised that MF turned out to be the most disappointing one. Except the incredible CG-implemented starwar-like battle scenes, there is nothing else to it, absolutely nothing. Even the music is average. The plot and the characterization are terrible too...Wait a minute, what am I talking about? There is no plot and characterization in this show. I can summarize the plot of the first eight episodes I watched into one sentence: two girls whoring around one guy plus some random battles against aliens. I'm sorry if I offended the fans but ... that's how it seems to me.

Then there is the horrible characterization. None of the characters serve any purposes nor add anything to the show. Alto is OK but he doesn't have any strong points that can make the audiences remember him. He is just a very normal very boring very bland character. The other ones are even worse. I don't know what the writers were thinking when they created Sheryl. She was first introduced as a bi...a very mean lady (ep1). Then the writer suddently decided to drop this side of her and switched her into someone who looks out for Ranka. In recent episodes she changed her personality again and apparently became jealous of Ranka for no reasons(ep6). There is not even transitions between these changes. What a messed-up character development this is. Lastly Ranka, well, I think she is only there to attract fanboys. I absolute don't see any personality in her.

I'm starting to get a little disappointed about these new animes. None of them is even close to the ones like Eureka Seven or Ayakashi. As a matter of fact, this Macross Frontier makes Gundam Seed look like a masterpiece, and I think Seed only deserves a 7/10 at most. And may I remind you that MF is the most anticipated series of the season? I think you get my point.

Having just finished the Macross Frontier, I have to say that this one falls way short of its predecessors. Hiroyuki Yoshino (who is also responsible for the abominations that are Code Gaess and Guilty Crown) seems to think that throwing together everything from his previous shows and whatever’s popular in other successful shows will make a great show. As one blogger rightly commented, “It’s not the number of ingredients that make a delicious dish”.

Now before I get into the meat of what didn’t work here; I want to give credit where credit is due. The music by Yoko Kanno, as always, was top notch. Although ... the pop music was a bit Engrishy, that’s common to all J-Pop and they can’t really be faulted there. I loved the overall designs of Macross Frontier with its whole San Francisco vibe. The fleet shot was also interesting as it made it look like a group of turtles or insects as well as giving the impression of the large-scale of these ships. I enjoyed all the concert scenes and thought the use of holography in some of Sheryl’s early concerts was pretty inventive and shows a progression in technology from the Sharon Apple concerts in Macross Plus. But despite this base design, the series went horribly askew when Yoshino took the reins of series composition.

Characters

The characters, although well-designed, were poorly developed. I couldn’t consider any of these characters endearing or lovable, and in a year’s time I will have probably forgotten all about them. They were shallow puppets that were used as tools to achieve the creator’s ends, without ever taking on a life of their own. While Ozama and Catherine’s relationship seems realistic and mature, but the vast majority of relationships were the typical high school romance crap. But they go above-and-beyond the call of duty here; not only are these relationships implausible, but they come out of nowhere and are resolved so poorly.

The cast, though well-designed, has obvious analogs in Super Dimension Fortress Macross or later incarnations in the series. The Captain resembles Global. You have the standard chatty girls on the bridge. The enemy, like Gepellnich (in Macross 7) is shrouded in mystery and you don’t get a good look at his/her face 'til the final few episodes. Ranka’s aesthetic is largely influenced by the design for Mao Nome from Macross Zero. Ozama Lee’s role takes on a lot of characteristics of Roy Focker from SDF Macross and Catherine Glass is a clone of Lt. Hayasse.

Finally, the villains are utterly worthless. Their plans are at times transparently obvious and at other times so vague that you could never be expected to understand what they’re talking about. The Vajira themselves, unlike the Zentradi or the Protodevilins of the previous series, are not sentient and react like worker bees to some queen. Even though these hive-mind creatures don’t really think for themselves (except for the pet), they seem to react to Ranka’s songs. Sounds stupid huh? Well, their explanation is equally stupid. I wont spoil it.

Plot

The plot was scattered and lazy. Political intrigue was full of plot holes and unrealistic to both the way other Macross ships are governed and the way governments function in reality (though this seems to be a consistent problem with Hiroyuki Yoshino). As stated before, they went out of their way to have lots of screen-time with villains saying a lot while remaining so vague that you could never decipher what they were saying.

In every previous incarnation, Macross ships have had a civilian leader (a mayor or president) and a military leader. In Frontier, part of the military is contracted out to SMS, some sort of private security firm; there doesn’t seem to be any reason for this arrangement. Most of the series only shows SMS getting involved in the conflicts, but toward the end, they start showing another full-sized military force operating out of the Frontier. Yoshino, having no political savvy whatsoever, portrays the President having absolute authority over the military; this goes against all precedent and seems to undermine the notion of separation of power clearly portrayed in Macross 7 and in the original SDF Macross. Though one might mistake the Captain of SMS as the equivalent of Max Genius, he is clearly not a military captain and in fact no one seems to fit this role. The military leaders outside SMS are a bunch of sniveling sycophants who do nothing but react to what’s going on outside the ship (almost as if Yoshino was trying to tell the audience how to react).

The foreshadowing flashbacks were poorly used and basically showed the same things over and over, trying to make the same obvious point. These flashbacks continue throughout through the end of the series, even though the message is already clear by Episode 10. The ending was particularly incoherent, and it really answered none of the questions. Relationships are abruptly resolved, if resolved at all, many other threads were just left dangling.

Conclusions

All in all, the plot was a sloppy mess. It wasn’t fun to watch and wasn’t engaging either emotionally or intellectually. There was never really a moment where I didn’t know where this was heading – no surprises. I don’t feel that this series did anything to expand the Macross universe or the underlying mysteries of the franchise; and despite lots of cameos we really learn nothing of the fate of characters from previous series (with a couple exceptions).

The worst part though, is while letting this man work on Macross series was possibly a good financial decision, it has ruined what was otherwise an original and authentic saga. Yoshino didn’t seem to care about what came before, except that there was material there to exploit. He merely saw fans of the franchise as potential viewers, then he roped in pop music fans, mecha fans, high school anime fans, and a dozen other tropes in order to maximize his viewership. The man has no integrity as an artist and no respect for a classic property that’s been going since 1982. It had been ten years since Macross 7, so I hope in 2017 (or hopefully sooner) when they get around to making another series, that the original creators don’t let this jackass anywhere near it.

(Warning: contains spoilers)

Macross F (or Frontier) is extremely impressive, because I never thought an anime about idols singing teaming up with giant robots in space to save the world together could be THIS dull. It also puzzles me how people sing this so much praise, claiming it's the best Macross installment. Let me just make it clear that this is the first Macross I have watched; and yet, it was so bad it almost killed any desire I had of checking out the rest of the franchise.

I'll try my best to keep it short, but let me break down what I think are some of ... the most critical points that made F a bad anime.

The story starts following Alto Saotome, a pilot trainee, as he crosses paths with Sheryl Nome, a famous idol, and Ranka Lee, a regular girl who dreams of becoming one; all while bug-like aliens known as the Vajra invade the Frontier. Alto is then scouted into the Military, getting caught up between his battle duty and his relationship with Sheryl and Ranka, who increasingly get more and more involved with the intergalactic battles as well. Sounds interesting, right? Well, keep yourself seated. From then on, things start to get complicated; characters are introduced left and right. Political conflict, cyborgs, biological diseases, tragic backstories and copious amounts of romance are thrown into the mix. Everything quickly becomes extremely convoluted: they are unable to properly develop and explain everything they want to show us. Thus, Macross F suffers with HUGE issues in pacing and tone, especially pacing - there were some occasions where I kept asking myself if I missed out on something, because things happened so quickly I couldn't keep up.

When your main plot (and 60 subplots branching from it) is going this fast, of course it will crash. Things happened extremely suddenly, and with no foreshadowing whatesoever; we're just supposed to take at face value that Grace is the main antagonist, in a sudden reveal that makes it hard to take it seriously when nothing in the episodes leading up to this hinted on it. You're just supposed to accept that Mikhail's sister is dead, and that Sheryl was found rummaging through garbage and parentless (a huge plot inconsistency), and that Luca has a crush on Nanase. The reveal of the motive for Grace and the Vajra is so stupid I couldn't contain my laughter. And with all that, the big, emotional moments such as character deaths and tearful goodbyes are extremely hard to care about. Why should I when you squashed your reasons into a single one minute long scene instead of developing the characters properly throughout the show? And there is also the big bad of the entire thing: the love triangle, and the other smaller romances. A love triangle between Alto, Sheryl and Ranka was EXTREMELY unnecessary. I cannot stress enough how unnecessary it was, and how much it empoverished the show. There's no need to measure words: it was garbage. Alto treated both girls really badly (I'll expand on this later) and the girls would often commit acts of love for him, and feel motivated to do things for him, when not a single reason is given for them to feel and act this way. Not to mention that, in the end, after all that kissing and crying and touching, Alto doesn't even end up with either one. If you're going to write in a shitty love triangle into your setting about giant robots, at least compromise and give it a proper resolution instead of this cowardly, open ending bullshit. There's also a lot of dumb ass things that made no sense I could point out (like Ranka becoming famous overnight on the same beat as Sheryl falls out of stardom to the point people wouldn't recognize her on the street), but if I were to list them all I'd be here all week - there were just too many. To finalize, the battle scenes, which should be the highest point of F, put me to sleep. They are messy, full of the characters spouting bullshit technical terms and plot exposition that often made little sense, and I found myself completely uninterested in anything going on, even visually.

But well, as if all of this wasn't enough, the characters were even worse. Yes, I am sorry to say, they were so poorly written it was horrifying. Starting with Alto, our protagonist: I don't know what went so wrong here. Maybe they were aiming to make him a tsundere or just broody, but what they came out with was an asshole. Don't be fooled by descriptions saying Alto is "a normal high schooler" or "just a little broody". Alto is unlikeable from the get-go: he's always disproportionately angry at any and everything for absolutely no reason. He is always yelling at his own friends. And he is always treating the two girls who are in love with him like hot garbage - ESPECIALLY Ranka. It was painful and infuriating to see him make disgusted faces at Ranka and ignore her texts and calls, acting like she was a hassle but still leading her on while she was clearly in love with him. He was also overly aggressive with Sheryl, going as far as screaming at her about her lack of professionalism because she got sick while the girl is bedridden, so ill that she can't get up or move. Then he had random moments of tenderness where he acted nice to them, even though minutes prior he was being the biggest prick in the world, only to return to his default asshole state later. That's because his personality is about as consistent as a pile of diarrhea. He undergoes no real character development, which, well, guess it's fair since his entire character is so intolerable and inconsistent to begin with that I don't see any salvation. He had an interesting background as a Kabuki actor, but they barely explored it - and when they did, it was in the dumbest ways you can imagine, namely jokes about him being a "princess" and his brother trying to convince him to quit battling and go back to acting AS THE PLANET WAS ON THE VERGE OF BEING DESTROYED. Oh yeah, they also tried to explain the fact that he acts like a wolf with rabies with him having a dead mom. When this is the main character of your story, you're already starting off on the wrong footing.

The other two main characters are Sheryl and Ranka, who, like beaming hope at the end of a tunnel, are surprisingly both likeable and reasonably consistent. Ranka gets more relevance and a bigger role in the story; she is a bright, cheerful and kind young girl with a love of singing and a dream of becoming an idol, who later uses her voice to help fighting off the Vajra. Her lighthearted optimism sometimes almost made me forget how annoying everything else was. But unfortunately, Ranka gets treated horribly by her own narrative; between her family trauma, Alto being an absolute bitch, both the heroes and the villains using her for her magic voice, and even brainwashing, she doesn't seem to catch a break. Most of her motivation centers around Alto as well, which is absolute bonkers when she has two older brothers and friends who both care for and encourage her more than Alto ever did in his entire sorry life; ultimately, Ranka also gets very little development, only becoming very slightly less childish by the end. Sheryl, on the other hand, is headstrong, confident and a little arrogant, if anything - not without reason - with a friendlier side to her. She's extremely fun to watch and she owns the show whenever she's on the screen. But, once again, unfortunately, her character development is poorly handled. Instead of teaching her how to be more humble and caring of others, the narrative punishes her for her confidence with a terminal illness. The idea is that she is at her best when she's depressed and dying, rather than thriving on her career and aware of her own talent and presence. And again, the love triangle butts in to make things worse, where Sheryl acts oddly ooc when she's around Alto. Sheryl and Ranka's friendship has so much lost potential, too. The very few scenes they have together are very sweet, but they all end with Alto showing up to ruin everything. Sometimes they were weirdly, vaguely hostile to each other, because I guess they absolutely have to since they like the same guy. Go figure.

The rest of the cast... I don't even know if I should expand on them and make this review even longer than it already is. Let me just say they are bad, cookie cutter archetypes, and that I wish writers knew that they don't HAVE to pair up every single character with each other in forced, nonsense, dogshit romances. Every time Mikhail and Klan were onscreen with their bullshit I felt like barfing. Desk Man, Sugita Man, whatever is his name because I quite frankly don't remember or care, was the most boring villain I've ever seen and so ugly he hurt my eyes. Brera and Ozma were alright, as they at least they were consistent and nice to Ranka unlike everyone else in this show. In short, all you need to know is that none of them are particularly remarkable. Or interesting. Or well written. Or even good looking (Mikhail is really ugly, sorry to note. Who designed this?). What is with mecha anime with school settings and adding dozens of uninteresting, underdeveloped, stereotyped characters and expecting us to care about them all? I've sat through this with Valvrave and Code Geass and it's disappointing to see the pattern repeated in Frontier.

At least I can say ONE nice thing about all this, which is: the music is certainly amazing. I'm listening to Diamond Cravasse while I write this review, and Sheryl's vocals are like velvet - whereas Ranka's silky voice works perfectly on their duets, so props for that. I really wish the music was more important than the strange science and spaceships in the plot itself, but it's more of a decoration/thematic background. As for its visuals, maybe they were impressive back in 2008, but it just didn't age too well. The art looks pretty off and there's a bunch of animation blunders. And like I mentioned before, save for a select few, the character designs were offensive to the eye; Klan literally looks like she walked out of porn (what was with her wide eyed blushing every other minute), Cathy and her friends look really boring, Luca has nothing of note besides looking 10 years old and Mikhail is just God's mistake.

Summarizing all of it, Macross F maybe even had potential. A lot of its ideas were interesting and could have been amazing if properly developed and expanded on. But instead they went on the bland romance, misplaced fanservice and trainwreck route. That's a crying shame. I'll just move on to Macross Plus now and try to forget I ever watched this.

I’ve been watching every macross these past weeks, and this one is definitely the worst entry of the franchise. The music is amazing, the rest not so much. In every series i watched, i found the cast to be more or less really good, some characters i disliked strongly but not enough to trash the whole show; macross F manages to have the WORST cast out of every macross. Sheryl and Ranka are the saving grace of it, and Brera is also a good character, everyone else was either a blatant carbon copy of a past character (Cathy is obviously inspired by Misa and so ... on) or straight up unlikable. Alto is the worst macross protagonist ive met, his looks and background are so good but his personality? not so much. It’s obvious from the very beginning of the series that he prefers Sheryl, and yet he keeps on being uncertain and misleading Ranka, who ends up with a broken heart each time. The treatment of female characters in this show is absolutely terrible, from Ranka and Sheryl who are used for the worst love triangle i’ve ever seen, to girls like Cathy, Nanase, Klan, who did absolutely nothing except being used for fanservice and add to the amount of couples this show has. Klan was especially bad, the whole mess of having a different body when being micronized was absolutely disgusting, every other micronized zentradi is normal and then you have this girl who has either huge boobs or a childlike body depending on her size. Disgusting. Her romance with Michael was terrible as well, Michael always treated her like garbage and now before dying he confesses? Give me a break.
The enemies weren’t good either, Grace was the pinnacle of unlikable, the other guy was so irrelevant i dont even remember his name; all he did in this show is have sex with Cathy in one of the first episodes and thats about it.
Long story short: this show is shit. The music is fantastic but you can listen to it without watching this crappy anime.

I watched recently Macross SDF and I loved so much. And then I wanted to keep watching the secuels and, after Macross Plus ( this one is pretty good), I watched this.

I'm trying so hard to describe with words how much disappointed I am with the work they done over here.

This anime was made in 2007 - 2008. We are talking about 10 years after the other Macross show (Macross 7), and there is a very high jump in animation improvement, but, it seems that, that much that they improved in animation, they lost it in imagination.

In Macross Frontier we can see the same ... approach, with the same 2 Heroines, secondary characters that don't contribute so much to the history.
We can see in, all the serie along, how the it trys to "Looks like Macross SDF". Apporting that fanservice that even gonnes wrong all time.

Also, other thing that pissed me off are the songs.

In Macross, the voice, the sing of the heroine is one of the most important factors, and the way of transmit feelings to the viewer, BUT! There are so many ways to do it.

Here, the song didn't transmit the feeling that you were looking for if you come from Macross SDF. Here, the songs are just OST, putted there to make the viewer like them forced with an Idol half naked. You can't In any moment that the singer its feeling the song, even you cant feel it, its so sad.

The Episode Distribution:

There was also an other point of the show that annoyed me so much is, how "heavy" were the episodes, It's like the episode tries so hard to tell so many things, so many story lines, and made it so hard to swallow, ( and, in the end you realize that all was pointless.)

I won't recomend this anime show to noboddy that enjoyed Macross SDF, just for not destroy their illusions like mines.

I don't know how this anime has a high rating.

It's painful to watch, very bad CGI mixed with ugly animation which also seems to be made in a computer.

The plot is also not interesting.

I recently discovered Macross and binge watched all there is available.

The only good ones are from the 80s and 90s. Animation is beautiful and the story is also super nice.

... By the way, you can pick any anime from the 80s and you gonna have beautiful animation and killer soundtracks.

Anyways, after Macross 7 (which is ok, but also not THAT good), it seems the franchise went down hill.

I got really disappointed with the franchise because I thought we we're gonna get a sequel with Hikaru and Misa, following their travel to colonize other planet. Only OVA that touched on that was Macross 7, which at least had some known characters such as Max and Milia.