Macross Delta

[shinta|hikari]

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/olliebarder/files/2015/10/macross_delta_latest.jpg

Summary from Wikipedia:

Macross Delta is set in the year 2067, 8 years after the events of the latest Macross TV series, Macross Frontier. As the galaxy is plagued by the Var Syndrome (ヴァールシンドローム Vāru Shindorōmu), a mysterious phenomena that turns people berserk without any apparent cause, a team of talented idols, the Walküre, uses the power of their songs to calm down the infected, assisted by the Delta Squadron, a team of experienced Valkyrie pilots, while facing the interference from the mysterious Aerial Knights Valkyrie fighter team of the Windermere Kingdom (Kingdom of the Wind) (ウィンダミア王国（風の王国） Windamia Ōkoku (Kaze no Ōkoku)).


Episode 3 is out.


So what I finally figured out after watching the latest episode is the meaning behind the hand signal that the idols keep making. It was shaped into a W, so at first I thought it meant Walküre, the name of their idol group. Three episodes later, I figured out it actually means waki, and that's a good thing.

[shinta|hikari]

Ep 5? Or was it 6?







Wow, if it weren't for the waki, I'd drop this show in a heartbeat.

This is really bad. It's full of cliches and tropes, and their military organization makes illogical decisions like sending pilots and rare panacea divas on spy missions that could get them killed.

WTF happened to Macross?

[MFauli]

The only Macross I´ve ever watched is the one with Sheryl and the green haired loli. And that wasn´t great, so I´m not sure why one would expecte any good of this one.

Macross always appeared to me to Gundam as Marvel does to DC. The former might be flashier, but the latter has much more depth and quality to it.

[shinta|hikari]

Frontier had Sheryl Nome.

Delta has catfish.

[MFauli]

I haven´t seen Delta, but I´d give catfish a try over the shemale that was Sheryl.

[shinta|hikari]

Why are you even posting in this thread when you haven't seen the show or care about Macross? Shoo!

[MFauli]

Well, I care about her :P

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/macross/images/7/7f/RankaLee-Na_F-12.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140905191523

[shinta|hikari]

Whose name you don't even remember. How convincing.

And Ranka isn't a loli.

And good luck screwing these things (http://i.imgur.com/uweOi9X.jpg).

[MFauli]

1.) I entered "green girl" into google and found out her name, pff!
2.) I mean, she´s certainly flat
3.) Thought you felt lonely in here ;]

[shinta|hikari]

1) Doesn't change that you forgot.
2) Flat =! Loli. What are you, Australian?
3) I was, but I'd rather be lonely than associate with anyone who calls Sheryl a shemale. Are you blind and deaf!?

[MFauli]

1) Doesn't change that you forgot.
2) Flat =! Loli. What are you, Australian?
3) I was, but I'd rather be lonely than associate with anyone who calls Sheryl a shemale. Are you blind and deaf!?

1.) I remember what´s important, in this case: Her cute face and the gorgeous green hair ;>
2.) Oh, somebody knows his Australien porn laws :D
3.) The art really varied a lot in the anime. Sometimes she was hot, other times she had the jaw of a guy. Ranka Lee was consistently cute.

But I don´t want to further derail the Macross Delta-thread, since I don´t plan to watch it any time soon :>

[Ryllharu]

There's a reason shinta is lonely in here. Macross Delta sucks. But I'm still watching anyway because:

1) The OP is awesome. The best of the season and one of the best Macross OPs overall.

2) Frejya. She's everything Ranka was, but 10x better and not whiny. Her stupid heart-rune is forgivable because of her "creepy laugh" and the VA is doing great. Her VA is an awesome vocalist, when the story lets her sing properly.

3) Mirage.

4) It's Macross. I love Macross. I'm drawn to it even though it sucks.

But this series is garbage. Here's a sampling why:

1) Like...a billion races introduced. Macross, until now, has had only 3. Humans, Zentradi/Meltrandi, and Protodevlin (which were also kind of silly and stupid).

2) Windermereans (Frejya and the bad guys) only live a max of 30 years. For arbitrary reasons. It doesn't even make sense. Had they picked 50, it would have made sense. There's literally no reason why that would make evolutionary sense for the Protoculture to develop so short a life span. Even if they were pretending they were attuned to whatever because of the runes (which are also stupid), there still wouldn't be a point. The Protoculture never even made it to discover the Vajra, the only species to actually communicate across the fold according to Frontier. That was kind of the point of the entire conflict. To obtain and abuse that ability. That the Windermereans have it spits in the face of the lore developed for Frontier. And in cliché form, they're the "last" culture the Protoculture developed. Except for the fact that because of the Zentradi, the Protoculture didn't need to keep experimenting.

3) In short, as detailed above, there are a number of other instances where Delta contradicts all of the other Macross titles in terms of lore. They've rewritten a lot just to provide a framework and justification for these bad concepts.

4) Mikumo sucks. They're trying to make her super mysterious, and while Koshimizu Ami and JUNNA are both good in the portrayal, Mikumo has zero of the charisma that Sheryl had, none of the dignity that Myung and Sara Nome had, or willfulness of Mylene. Unless Mikumo turns out to be Sharon 2.0, I'm gonna be disappointed. I haven't had a general apathy toward a Macross songstress since Minmay, and even her whiny bitchiness had more personality than mysterious-for-mysterious-sake Mikumo. They clearly designed her appearance to pick up on what made Sheryl super popular, but in terms of persona she is just completely flat.

5) The other girls in Walküre are not much better. Touyama Nao playing the green hair girl has been completely wasted, pink big tits is a stereotype twice over (because she's actually a big tittied mechanic! Stereotype of not being a ditz while acting like one), and the only one of any value is the redhead, and she gets no screentime.

6) The aerial combat has been uninspired, or simply poor. I'm not knocking it because of the CG, I'm knocking it because it hasn't once had a decent Itano Circus (https://youtu.be/BzXfVgYCxWI) and we're on episode 7. The asteroid fight scene was basically just a bad early-2000s music video, not something entertaining from a VF Combat perspective. Even the fight from episode 3 was the reference of the pilots and not a fixed point in space. It's like the studio doesn't even understand what they're doing.

7) The big innovation this season is delta-shaped fighters for the bad guys and swept wing VFs for the leads? They don't really look or function any different from Frontier's. The delta-shaped VFs work exactly like the group from Frontier, even having a drone-carrying unit and a more heavily armed one. There's nothing unique about the VF-31 Siegfrieds our leads are using, except for the gundam-style bit units that protect...

8) Our frontline fighting heroines, jumping around in battles with VFs and battlepods using rocket skirts. No. Just no. If Sheryl, Ranka, and Minmay can dominate the battlefield from a flight deck, so can these girls. It's stupid, doesn't make sense, and as shinta mentioned, they're risking their greatest military asset doing ground missions where they can't actually do any good unless they give themselves away.

9) While we're on this topic, where is my Super Dimensional Fortress action? Frontier had it by episode 6. SDF-1 Macross had it in full by episode 6 (and multiple times before that). Macross 7 created the idea of a Battle and City split unit.

I can keep going and going, but I've made my point.

[shinta|hikari]

This picture summarizes Delta pretty well.

1778

[Ryllharu]

God help me, I'm still watching it.

So let's make this a MID-SERIES REVIEW.

13 episodes in now, there have been really only 2 good episodes. Or more like 1 good episode (Eps 11), and two good halves of another 2 episodes.

The Good:

Frejya - It's hard not to like her character. Hell, it's hard not to love her character. She has a good personality, is anything but passive, is reckless in a way that has been set up from the very beginning, is well rounded and even has realistic flaws. She's like a better version Ranka in every way.

Frejya's VA - As far as first timers go, holy shit. She's got range, she performs her character well without ever overacting (Kabaneri...), and gets some real emotion in there. It also goes to her credit that she's a good enough singer, than she can sing professionally...badly. The plot insists that Frejya lack confidence, get scared, etc. It's a much harder skill to sing badly and in the right tone convincingly, than to simply sing well, because it requires exceptional vocal control and a good set of acting skills combined.

The execution of the love triangle: This has been a real surprise for me. It's Macross, of course there is going to be a love triangle. But this one has really been different thus far. It's very subtle and unique. The love triangle has only shown itself from the perspective of the two girls, Frejya and Mirage. Hayate has been utterly oblivious to the fact that Mirage and Frejya are both interested in him, while the two of them are very much aware of the other...and so is everyone else. Hayate is just friendly with both; he respects Mirage and admires Frejya's conviction. They've played the triangle with either Mirage or Frejya getting uncomfortable when Hayate is friendly to the other girl, and each of them know it. The frequent knowing glances toward each other, the shyness around him that the other witnesses, the minor stalking. It's a clever approach to what's become somewhat formulaic for the franchise.

A few of the songs - Very few, and only specific versions. The OP (and that version). Giraffe Blues (the Kaname lead version from eps 11), and Ikenai Borderline (the episode 1 version with Frejya cutting in).


The Bad:

Mikumo - Her character design is frankly ridiculous, they try the two actresses approach that they used with Sheryl in Frontier but somehow it just doesn't work and she has the personality of a shiny rock. The "mysterious" vibe they give her reeks of Try-Hard. She's like a bland version of Sheryl and Sara. I'll give her singing VA credit, JUNNA is a very good singer, but her voice doesn't even fit the character, it matches Koshimizu Ami's voice closely enough though (better than Sheryl's two did).

The other two girls - Touyama Nao's talent as both a singer and a VA is completely wasted as the kuudere hacker and same goes for Makina's VA. The two of them just fade out as background singers. They even get their own duet, and due to the shitty songwriting this season, it falls flat.

The combat - What a disappointment. The animation is okay, but the framing, composition, and general impact of the combat is worse than any version of Macross since SDF Macross (which was crippled by 70s budget and technology). Not a single proper Itano Circus so far, and there have been only a scattering of shots in Macross' signature style, with the camera set at a fixed point while the planes trade places in foreground and background. Something that's been around since Plus. None of that. At best we get a fleeting shot from the pilot's orientation in the cockpit. Even when they try to do something fancy, it's mediocre at best compared to it's predecessors.

The "Why The Hell Am I Subjecting Myself To This?":

The plot - Racist doctrine, unexplained motivations, pointless developments, lame emotional tugs at viewer, pathetic callbacks, and a primary plot that somehow manages to be more asinine than "Protodevlin versus Pacifist Pilot that Uses Guitar to Fly Plane". When it does make sense, which is exceptionally rare, they drop it and come up with the next silly part.

The character motivations aren't much better. The villains are the moustache twirling variety, spread between, "I am the best at everything, and you are unworthy," and "RAWR, RAGE AND KILL YOU BITCHES!" No subtlety, no nuance, just bland racial superiority with less depth than cardboard cut-outs. The hero side isn't much better, they've added so many, they don't really bother to flesh anyone aside from Freyja out beyond the usual cliché notes.

The dialogue - Holy shit the dialogue is just BAD. It's not gg troll-translating, they're being pretty literal. "How can he fly so steadily in this wind?!" // "This wind....he's risking his life!"

All the time. Every episode.

I get it, they're Windermereans, har har. But everyone on the humans/NUNS side says shit like that too. Constantly. It seems like it is a vague callback to Macross Plus, where the two male leads were both glider pilots in high school, they knew how to use the winds to their advantage in a jet fighter. And also a callback to Macross F movies with Alto dancing on the thermals and wind shears. But the whole mystic wind bullshit in Delta just comes off as stupid because they overuse it, and apply it to the stupidest shit.

Those lines I quoted above? They take place in a turbulent headwind and some crosswinds from normal clouds.

Macross Delta has its ups and downs. Mostly downs. But it's watchable. Most of the time.

[shinta|hikari]

You're putting too much attention into this.

All I see is the waki, and before you say I'm putting too much attention into that, listen to this.

I know.