frothymug

Right at the 27:45 mark

Request: Can someone make a 1920x1200 wallpaper of a scene from the 2nd MacF movie for me? I want the picture of the Quarter firing its buster cannon, while anchored on a derelict planetoid. ...that one scene where it shoots at the Queen-class carrier. Thanks in advance!

Humans and Zentraedi are both children of the Protoculture. That alone is enough of a reason to explain their compatibility. However, unless some even more advanced civilization genetically engineered the Vajra and Protoculture, I'd entirely rule out the possibility of compatibility with the space bugs.

I want to point out the possibility that just having an earring isn't going to give one the ability to "feel" the Vajra consciousness or communicate with others who have the capability to use the fold spectrum. We know that both Ranka and Sheryl have a fold microbe infestation in their bodies... but Alto? He may also have an infection at this point because.... in the first movie, in order to prevent her from getting infected by a Frontier-native virus,he ingested some of Sheryl's blood when she hurt herself. Even though it's never actually stated, that may be why he can "feel" the emotions of those connected to the fold spectrum.

Am I to assume that HG's involvement in this is that Mechwarrior used some Macross designs in their game? I remember the Marauder looking like a Glaug, but was it the Spartan that also got lifted?

I've already mentioned this a few pages back and it got buried, but figured it's worth another bump: Has anyone watched "Toradora!"?

That's a good point.

I noticed that part too... where Ozma is ordering his squadron after the initial attack. "He looks just like Roy, right there!", I told myself when I first saw the movie. My only guess is that since Grace is kind of her mother, she'd be more willing to go along with the plan.

Was anyone else also lip-syncing the words to Seikan Hikou during the prison concert scene? I've never been a fan of the moe character archetype, but lately... I'm also beginning to find the tsundere's to be completely irresistible, no matter how moe they come...

I can't get Ranka's first concert song out of my head!

You're not alone in wondering who the heck those three guys are. I also paused the movie to try and identify them. As has been previously mentioned, they appear to be crew members from the Quarter. There was a similar trio in the background at the end of the series standing next to Elmo Kridanik. Again, I have no idea who they are and why they're there. I initially thought they were the Diamond Force pilots, but they are wearing SMS garb.

Sorry, guess I had a knee-jerk reaction there

Complete conjecture as to whether or not it's a fold fault. I'm sure the writers were alluding to something caused maybe by the Protodeviln... but then again, it was probably just a plot device to quickly and easily explain away the reason they can't contact the main fleet.

Again, they kind of are treading into Vajra territory. To them, the fleets would be the pests.

As I mentioned in my lengthy "review" earlier in the thread, it seems that the relationships are already implied. The supporting cast really didn't get much screen time, so you didn't see any kind of "struggle" in their connections. To me, it seemed that Michael and Klan were already more than just good childhood friends. However, nothing in the movie actually supports that fact. I just assume that from their behavior together. You see her hanging on his arm in a few instances. To me, that says, "we're more than just friends". ^this Other than that, I like a lot of her singing. She just sometimes tries too hard.

In a natural state, I see the Vajra as semi-sentient hive-minded creatures. They are similar to other socially-based creatures here on Earth, like bees and ants. Take bees, for example... you get too close to their hive and they'll start to defend it. You provoke them, they'll sting you. In the series, the Vajra were lured to the Frontier fleet by Galaxy. You ever get visited by a bee and if you swat at him, he'll get upset and try to sting you? Yeah, that's kind of the way I see it. When the Vajra are on "auto-pilot" their natural behavior will seem familiar like that.

Chapter 49 is up.

I didn't like the first movie after the first time I watched it. Subsequent viewings changed my mind about a few things, giving me a better overall impression. Perhaps your point of view will change in the same manner.

I would consider a "cameo" to be up to a couple of minutes in a movie or show. Said character shows up, says and does a few things, and then disappears. It's okay, though. There were tons of other stuff in the movie to love.

In my writing, I stick with the term "miclone" and "micloning" to help differentiate that word from "macronize" and "macronization". I think it's just a matter of preference on the spelling. Everyone knows what you're talking about, otherwise.

Okay, since the spoiler deadline has passed, I'll give my extended impressions of the movie. If you haven't seen the movie yet, don't read this, as it will pretty much spoil everything about the movie! This is very TL;DR, but I felt like sharing my more significant thoughts on the movie: Right out of the gate, I was blown away by Sheryl's opening concert scene. I had seen screenshots of this one and immediately thought it was pretty badass. I was not disappointed. Not only was the song brilliant, but the concert was just awesome. Whoever designed these things probably had the greatest job ever, to let their imagination run wild with whatever they could come up with. This concert was fraught with sexual innuendo, yet it was done with, in my opinion, fairly good taste. I've never liked gratuitous fanservice in the series I watch, but this was handled well. heh heh.... stamen and pistil... Even though I'd never actually WATCHED it, I immediately recognized the Astro Boy clips playing in the background. Nice touch. Beach scene: this is the only fanservice that I could really complain about. Although it was nice scenery, it was an excuse to get the girls into bikini tops that were a little too tight and maybe they were drawn with some extra curves, if you know what I mean. I rolled my eyes, but smiled anyway... it was nice to look at. I laughed so hard when Ozma caught Alto with his arm around Ranka. Captain Wilder on a surfboard? Hang ten, Cap! The Boddole Zer Mobile Fortress was a nice touch. Felt good to see one of those things again. The Ranka concert was, once again, pure win. Obviously, her music is aimed at a completely different demographic than Sheryl's, but I was VERY impressed with the production values. The song was so uplifting, and the concert scenes seemed like a tribute to the styles of The Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice in Wonderland. Megumi Nakajima has really evolved into a much better singer than from the series. "Open, Ranka!" The fight near the Mobile Fortress was fairly well-done. One thing that really jumped out at me was the new "chase camera" aspect they used in some of the combat scenes. Following the craft while it ducks and weaves its way through the incoming fire, while it shoots down some targets and flies through the debris... c'est magnifique! A little nod to DYRL when it showed Alto's MFD tracking the reaction missiles to their targets. The scene were the Quarter fires its buster cannon on the Vajra Queen's ship: greatest desktop wallpaper EVER. Ranka's second costume reminds me of Wendy Ryder's costume from MII. The scene where Alto's VF gets impaled was quite a surprise. Once again, Brera shows why he's such a badass... if only he wasn't such a dick sometimes... Ozma knows something's up with him when he's caught abandoning Alto. I should have expected as much from Leon's efforts to foil Grace's plan. Some nice EX-gear action, there. Those soldiers were pretty badass to easily destroy all of those Galaxy agents. I have to say, I like how Luca was actually made into a more useful character. Okay, prison concert... I had to suspend my disbelief on this one. Why would they allow such a concert to happen, when they know that everyone in the band is close to Sheryl and EXTREMELY capable of breaking her out? I later realized that it was probably part of Leon's plan to allow it. It was absolutely perfect to have Klan, Michael, and Kanaria role-play as the members of Fire Bomber. I noticed Mena was playing keyboards, but I guess she was supposed to be the stand-in for Ray. Did anyone notice Temjin as one of the prisoners? Also, did anyone else lip sync the words to Seikan Hikou while they sang the song? "Tamashii ni ginga nadareteku!" Ozma vs. Brera. Epic. I thought it was a great idea to have so much EX-gear action in this movie. I wondered why Michael and Klan inexplicably showed up in this scene and didn't really do anything, but I kind of wonder if it was just to troll the viewers when the hull breach happened. Fairly well-done scene. The loss of two of the story's heroes served as motivation for the rest of the characters to develop into something better. Sheryl's and Ozma's sacrifices were quite noble. Because of this, we see Alto evolve into the hero he truly was meant to be. You didn't see this transformation from anyone in the series. I loved how he shook off Michael's grip on his hand and returned the gesture in kind. Good on Ranka for admitting her feelings for Alto. Mega bonus points for her maturity as a character, here in the movie. The final battle is where the CGI really started to shine. At this point, I felt that this is where Macross sets itself apart from many other modern space combat animes. When I watched the movie, I didn't get the "Big Wednesday" reference, but I later looked it up. Very nice touch... Again, having the Quarter ride a giant piece of debris into the atmosphere to avoid burning up... another example of writing genius that not only explains how they survive re-entry, but also serves as a visually entertaining action scene. I almost cheered during that part. Ozma and Sheryl reappear. I kind of half-expected this to happen, but to have Ai-kun show up out of nowhere and magically teleport them back inside of the dome... just seemed half-assed. I'm glad they survived to this point, but again... had to suspend my disbelief. Also, we saw Ozma spit up a bunch of blood earlier, but he seems to be okay now! Grace's redemption was a nice touch. I always suspected that she'd actually turn out to not really be the bad guy in the movie. I wonder, though... did she destroy her slave implant herself, or was it removed or destroyed by someone else? I immediately recognized Sheryl singing Northern Cross acapella, since it's my favorite song of hers. In comes the cavalry! As expected, I almost squealed when Isamu showed up. "Ikeze (sp?), kawaii ko-chan!" I was a little disappointed that that was all we saw of him. Nice to know he's still alive and flying to his heart's content. Can you imagine the fun he probably had fighting the huge armada in front of him? Another medley to finish out the movie, which is a nice touch. The final song was also great, too... Ranka's and Sheryl's costumes looked like something out of a Final Fantasy game. When the Vajra started humming the tune to "Aimo", I literally got the chills. Another nice touch. Alto used himself as some sort of liason to convince the Vajra Queen that the people of Frontier are not a threat. We see that he does, in fact, make his choice as to who he wants to be with. It's unfortunate that he did not choose Ranka, but Sheryl is a better match for him. He tries to tell Sheryl, but is stopped by the Queen's fold-out. I'm pretty sure he was saying "Ai shiteru" to her when he was cut short. At the movie's end, we're left wondering what happened to Alto, much like the ending of Zero. As has been mentioned in earlier posts, there's some kind of relationship between this ending and that of Shin and Sara. At this point, it's all conjecture, but it does a good job of making your imagination try to consider the possibilities. Although she's in a coma at the end, we all know Sheryl will make the comeback. We see her moving her lips to Ranka's song during the credits. The second song kind of implies some sort of comeback concert with Ranka. Music/concerts: 10/10 As I mentioned earlier, the producers really outdid themselves on every level when it came to the songs and concert scenes. I really can't say much more about this subject, because I honestly don't have to! Yoko Kanno... WINNING! CGI: 10/10 I thought the first movie was a considerable step up from the series's graphics. This movie's CGI is, yet again, another vast improvement in quality. The only thing I can think of that was negative was when they rendered the Sheryl dancers in the first concert, and the some of the fans at Ranka's concert. Everything else was a visual treat. Both the mecha and concerts were equally well-done, a balance that is harder to achieve than one would intially think. Character development: 8.5/10 I was slightly disappointed in that many of the supporting cast did not get much of a role in EITHER of these movies. Relationships were implied and rarely, if ever, did any of those relationships find a challenge. Klan/Michael, Ozma/Cathy, Monica/Wilder... all of them seemed to already exist in their current forms. Of course, we see that Monica is simply smitten with the Captain, but he never shows any kind of behavior in return. Points were regained when we saw Alto's transformation into a hero. Still, I would have liked to see some more interaction between Klan/Michael and Ozma/Cathy. Such things would have given the movie a bit more depth in other dimensions. Ozma really shone as the "big brother" character we've all grown to love since Roy Focker. If it was possible, I'd love to have a few beers with him someday. Combat: 9.5/10 Once again, the combat coreography was top-notch. The YF-29 is a gorgeous design, but it really didn't do much more than a similarly-equipped VF-25 with a super or tornado pack. This is where the combat lost a few points with me. As has been mentioned several times, the 29 was put in as an attempt to sell more toys. Anyone who denies that is an outright liar. The chase-camera wasn't used enough, but was effective when it was implemented. I'd like to see more of that kind of cinematography in future titles. I could almost physically feel the beam cannon effects during combat. NUNS pilots were actually competent, which is something I always have to give points for. Story: 8.5/10 We all know why this lost points. Everything was going great until the end. The ending was pretty cool, but I felt somewhat underwhelmed by the result. If Alto had been KILLED, I think it would have made better marks. However, having him disappear like that kind of rubs my fur the wrong way. I didn't feel this way about Zero's ending, and that's probably why I didn't like it in this movie; it's already been done, so cut that out! All throughout this flick, I was having to guess at who really was the bad guy. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it isn't. I like to know who to root for, besides the main characters. Leon turned out to not be such a bad guy, but he had a little bit of a mean streak in him. Trying to off Luca like that was pretty underhanded. However, his handling of the Galaxy takeover was very impressive and would have worked, if it wasn't for that meddling kid, Brera. Overall, the pacing was good. Different types of action scenes kept things spiced up. The first movie suffered from a gaping hole in the pacing, as the best parts were at the beginning and ending of the movie. This one was chock full of tempo swings and really resonated well with my attention span. Overall: 9.3/10 I'll highly recommend this movie to all of my friends. Aside from a few snags here and there, it was an overly entertaining movie that didn't get hijacked by things like fanservice and pointless filler material. A lot happened in this movie and I found myself checking the progress bar to see how far along I'd gotten. When I expected to be 3/4 of the way through, it was actually only 1/3 done. Normally, that sounds like a bad thing, but it's not! It's as if I'd come to expect a certain amount of material and when I sensed that my quota had been met, I found out that there was still so much more to come! I had this same feeling when watching the Lord of the Rings movies. It was nice to get a bit of a follow-up scene at the end of the movie to let everyone know everything's going to be alright. When I got done watching the movie, I felt pretty good about the outcome. Aside from Alto's mysterious disappearance, everything came out with a positive tone. This movie somewhat whetted my appetite for all things Macross, but I'm still going to be patiently looking forward to the next installment in this magnificent franchise. "DECULTURE!"

If you go to their site, they have a link to a codec pack called "CCCP". Install it and your media player will play the movie flawlessly.

Milia: "Listen to me, Chlore! The Zentraedi are living with the Micronian race in peace now..." That's what I was referring to. Interestingly, I've seen good things from when you guys are dubbing the Zentraedi language. Your recent video showed the attention to detail when putting vocal inflections on certain phrases. Sounds good!

Yeah, you did post this pic... and a version of it with the naked chick blurred out as an apparition. Are you talking about the SDFN-4? The Global? Got to watch the new movie today. One thing I will say is that someone on the writing staff must have been reading my fanfic when they came up with some story elements in the movie. Oh, who am I kidding... it's just a coincidence. Still, I was screaming a bit on the inside. Fortunately, I think my planned ending is safe from being like the movie's ending. All these months and I kept hoping that they wouldn't turn out to be the same.

Okay, to answer an earlier comment, there was a good handful of recycled CGI combat footage, but it was hard to catch them all the first time I viewed the movie. They're there, but it wasn't too bad. Obviously, I have a lot to say about this movie, but it's 3-effin'-30 in the morning where I'm at and I want to get some sleep. Had myself a busy evening, but managed to get two views in. One full-length, the second a quick skimming of the best parts. I'll probably sit down tomorrow and scan through the movie once more while writing my overall impressions here.