Winter 07 in Anime

[Valles]

So, the big prize this year is...
Macross Frontier.
Okay, point one? It's OMFG squee pretty. The flight shots are so smooth and so detailed that they can't possibly be anything but CG, but the color and shading is so perfectly cel it coulda been done by hand. The future-world setting is rendered in a way I can only call 'lush', and the character designs are gorgeous - even Ranka the green-haired kid, whose 'publicity photo' was taken at a startlingly unflattering moment.
Point two? I like the characters. All of them, pretty much. Ranka's cute, Alto's a bit rasher than I like my company IRL but otherwise a very stand-up guy, and Sheryl is, though a bit of a cipher at the moment, definitely kakkoi.
Point three? Action sequences are fast-moving, very well arranged... four out of five stars only 'cause following flight maneuvers gives me a (figurative) headache.
Point four? Already there are sweet, sweet hints of long-term plots.
All in all, the best first episode I've seen in... um, ever?

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"Reseeestunce ees fiutil. Yoo weeel bee Useemooletud. Borg Borg Borg."
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[VladimirTherin]

Oh, kick-ass!
tokyo tosho com has the first episode subbed btw...
God, this series looks awesome so far :-)

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

The sub is kinda bad, and I don't care about any of the characters yet... but it's all so pretty that I don't care that I don't care!
Best Christmas present ever!
ETA: Okay, having finished the episode... ^.^
Alto: half Hikaru Ichijo, half Camille Vidan, all good.
New Old Skool Valkyrie: Awesome.
Enemy: appear to be creepy biomech aliens, as opposed to the faux-biomech Zentradi design aesthetic. Interesting.
End theme: Wait, this is Ai Oboete Imasuka! OH HELL YES.
ETA even more: the Shinsen-Subs release (also on Tokyo Toshokan) is much, much better than the first one out.
--Sam
"There's not going to be a Christmas. We killed Santa!"

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

Okay, final thoughts (for now!) on ep 1, after watching the Shinsen-Subs version.
This thing is dying for a competent dub, because trying to read the subtitles and follow the Valk action? Not easy. ^.^
The VF-25: second best Valkyrie ever. (I remain a devotee of the original.)
EX-Gear thingies: had me laughing till I cried. Someone point Gryphon at this stat, because Valkyries finally have their very own Cyclones!
Ranka: is her hair just cartoony exaggeration, or does she have hi-tech Smart Hair that changes colors and moves around? Also, her cell phone/pet frog is cute and disturbing. It'd make a good Pokethulhu critter.
...And whatever the biomechs are, the fleet President appears to have been expecting them. As has the Skull Squadron leader. (And these Skulls are a Blackwater-style group? Odd.)
--Sam
"Good afternoon. I'm Brian Pinhead, and these are the news."

[Foxboy]

I'd noticed the hair thing on Ranka as well.
We can hope it's a lighting thing, like was supposed to be the case with Lum Redet from Urusei Yatsura, whose hair was supposed to be iridescent like the back of a CD.
Also: Utter Bitch Galaxy Fairy Sheryl vs. UberCute Ranka. Who wil be the de rigeur Idol Singer of WIN?
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Valles]

O.o
Am I the only person who actually liked Sheryl?

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"Nyan-nyan nyan-nyan nihaou nyan!"
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

Haven't seen enough of her to know one way or the other. Alto's rant was completely unjustified as far as I can tell, though -- what the heck does Sheryl's entourage have to do with evacuation procedures, really?
Also...
Sheryl Norme. Sara Nome. Connection...?
--Sam
"You know, Charles, when I feel like a raving dingdong, I find a nice chamomile tea..."

[Murmur the Fallen]

As I loved every single gosh-darn macross ever (except macross II and i didn't really think it was that bad)--
however: how long before the strange environmental/spiritual thing that kawamori's done since earth girl arjuna shows up here?
and: where is my fire bomber reunion concert?
-murmur
there are three elements in macross always: pop music, love triangle, valkyries. we've got the pop, and we've got the valkyries, so . . .

[Berk]

Note: These biomech aliens have appeared before. Or something LIKE them anyway.
Max, Miriya and the rest of the 'Dancing Skulls' take them on, on a formerly inhabited world with Egyptian-like ruins in Macross M3. Big, nasty bugs. They never explained WHERE they came from, though.
I wonder if this means that the adopted Jenius Sister might finally appear in an animated series?- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Foxboy]

Too bad we have to wait until April for Episode 2. They aired episode one early for the 25th anniversary of the original Macross.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

Macross M3? Que?
And I plan to use the time until then to finish watching Macross 7 and Zero. n.n; Never found the time for either. Now seems good
--Sam
"And you don't eat crackers in the bed of your destiny!"

[Berk]

Macross M3 was a game for the Dreamcast.
It wasn't very well coded and had some very strange controls. It was neat in that it introduced us to what Max and Miriya did between the last episode of the first series and Macross 7, besides breed up a huge number of daughters, however. It also introed the A-10 Warthog of variable fighters, the Variable Gurag.
Basically, Max and Miriya ran what amounted to a secondary training school for pilots, and ran special missions for a span of about ten years. One of these earliest missions involved the capture and ultimately adoption of what may have been the world's first natural born Zentradi. (Max gave her his name, but Miriya considers her a (very little) sister.)
Moaramia Falnya Jenius, commonly just called 'Moa' is most likely the offspring of a Meltrandi from a related clone series to Miriya (something about the Jifon series being close cousins, or something) and a technical caste Zentradi. Micronized she stands, full grown, at just barely five feet tall.- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[katreus]

I liked Sheryl too.

[WengFook]

Among my RPG gaming group there are several running jokes which sprang from the need justify to the GM why or how our starting level characters, no matter the system or genre, get their cool equipment.
One of these for vehicle/mecha scale equipment was that the mecha would land in front of our characters, pop the cockpit hatch and the pilot would walk out and take a couple of steps. Then keel over dead, for no apparent reason. Leaving the character a really cool piece of equipment.
Generally however our various GM's have always shot down this story since the probabilities of that happening were quite low and thus keeping up the running joke
Cue last's night group viewing of Macross Frontier episode one. All went well until the very end of the episode where Alto jumps into the empty VF-25... after it landed... and the pilot flew out... then promptly got killed... leaving Alto with a really cool piece of equipment
After I pointed that out there was much rofling _______________________________
"Walls are meant to be broken." - Makes sense figuratively and literally.
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Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

To be somewhat fair, it seems that he and the extreme sports kids are somehow affiliated with Skull Squadron. Though I don't know how to square that with his not knowing Ozma's sister. (Ranka and Ozma. Are the Lees part Zentradi, or is "Ozma" just a weird Romanization of Azuma? As a friend points out, boys named Tip who turn out to be girls named Ozma are fine, but MEN named Ozma are just strange. )
--Sam
...who is very annoyed at having to wait MONTHS for the next episode...

[Berk]

Sheryl is interesting.
There's something more to her...
...And she uses a variation on Basara's catchphrase, that can't be an accident.
I will laugh if she whips out Anima Spiritua power at some point and brings a Bug to its knees.- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

I don't dislike the whole music thing. It's part of the background. Even the Anima Spiritia, I accept and am amused by.
But JUST ONCE I want them to fight something that DOES NOT GIVE A DAMN about music, and I hope the Bugs are that thing. ^.^
Also, I've half convinced myself that Sheryl really is Sara Nome from MZ somehow.
Finally, a prediction: Sheryl will not be part of the love triangle. That leg will be filled by Lieutenant Glass.
--Sam
...and wasn't "Deculture" a Zentradi expletive back in the day?

[katreus]

Hey, that happens in a fair amount of anime/books. I remember it happened in Green Rider (by Kristen Britain): horse with rider on back comes crashing through the underwood, passes on the task, girl gains horse and equipment.
Gundam Seed -sorta- did it. It's just the pilots died fairly far away from their gundams so that they weren't able to use them when the hero wandered by, but it's the whole dying elsewhere, equipment here, that's the thing, no?

[Berk]

For some reason, some GMs don't dig literary tropes in their tabletop games.- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Elsa Bibat]

But the rest of the New York Sakura Taisen OVAs has been subbed and available with the usual suspects.

[Bob Schroeck]

Now that's good news. Thanks, Elsa!

-- Bob
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I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere....

[drakensis]

Seems to me that Alta is not affiliated with the Skull Squadron, but that Michael and some of the others in their little flight team are. If the subbing I've got is correct there's also some reason that he can't sign up for the Spacy to fly a vf when he gets out of school (although the reason is unstated).
Not that this will keep him from his Destiny as a Mecha Pilot, but it does make me wonder at the reason. Legal trouble? Medical restriction? UN Spacy policy of refusing Saotome family members from signing up in case they develop love triangles?
As for Sheryl, she's a bit snotty during the evacuation but yeah, can't fault her for evacuating and it's not like she's pushing people out of the way. The 'Listen to my Song' is probably standard for performers by this point due to Basara.
The VF-25 is interesting, looks like a VF-19 with VF-1 wings. And the animation is mind-blowing. Hope they can keep it up.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Elsa Bibat]

Cutie Honey The Live is probably the most surprising tokusatsu show I've ever watched. Yes, T&A to the wazoo but also probably the largest amount of graphic onscreen deaths for any tokusatsu series I've ever watched (it is a Go Nagai thing after all).
And the most awesome fight sequences that actually make you believe the actresses were doing it and not stunt doubles. Plus the best English-speaking Japanese villain on the planet (trust me, his English is perfect).
And underneath all that, disturbingly well-scripted episodes which is incredible for something I thought I was just gonna watch to laugh about the T&A for an episode.

[Foxboy]

Aa! Megami-Sama! has a new series as well, first two eps at the usual suspects.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

I know this makes me shallow, but I'm not going to watch a Cutie Honey in which all the naughty bits are obscured by magical sparkles.
--Sam
"Egad, man, what's the point?!"