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The picture in the post above is taken from the official site's page for episode 16. So she's going to be in a space suit at some point during episode 16. Given that this isn't normal behavior for Ranka (episodes 12-14 were a hopefully unique situation), it's noteworthy and useful when trying to figure out what will happen.

Maybe. Though one of the early spoilers for the episode stated that So it could be a reference to that. Or it might even have a double meaning and be a reference to both.

He's fine with love. He just sees Ranka as a little sister - at least up until episode 12. And that's entirely appropriate for someone who's his age and has a weird girl (his words) hanging around him who looks roughly 12 years old. Funny you should mention Sheryl... In episode 5, Sheryl states why she's spending time with Alto. It's because Alto doesn't treat her like "Sheryl". Alto treats her like a normal person. He's the only person she knows that isn't blown over by her fame. Ranka's blinkers mean that she doesn't treat Alto like a normal person. Instead she sees him as the larger than life inspiration who is the love of her life and who will go and live with her in the castle at the "And they lived happily ever after" stage of her Cinderella story. Or in other words, Ranka treats Alto an awful lot like the way that regular people treat Sheryl. Actually, Luca doesn't mouth off to him either. Alto seems to get along quite well with Luca. As I noted above, Alto doesn't get into arguments with Luca. Coincidentally, Luca's the only person who doesn't seem to enjoy winding Alto up at every opportunity. And that just shows that you don't understand what that was all about. First, going back to his father wouldn't have allowed him to keep his SMS job. His successor stated repeatedly that Alto was still "acting", and that deep down inside he didn't really care about flying. That should have hammered home to you that no, there is no way that Alto could have returned home and kept flying. Returning home meant submitting to his father. And it meant turning his back on his dreams. Second, given what his father does I suspect that he wouldn't have cared at all about Birdhuman. His father is a classical actor, and probably would give it about the same amount of consideration that Ozma did (i.e. it's "vulgar" entertainment). Additionally, Alto's "part" was basically a simple stunt job. It's not the sort of thing that you draw genuine praise for. Third, episode 4 showed that it's his father who has turned his back on Alto and not the other way around. In episode 4, Alto was clearly ready to talk to his father. But instead his father denied knowing who Alto was. Alto turned his back on acting, but has shown that he's willing and able to talk to his father. But his father appears to have taken Alto's rejection of the family business quite personally. Given that and the conversation in episode 11, the offer to Alto was clearly an offer to "come home, all is forgiven provided you abandon this flight school foolishness and resume your role as a classical actor." His father would have found a way to talk to Alto privately without Ranka present, and probably would have been annoyed at her presence (gauging it specifically to be an attempt at manipulation for the exact purpose that you described it to be for). If Dad says, "Son, I need to talk to you privately," then there's going to either be a private talk or a public argument. Yes, perish the thought that Alto should actually be allowed to chase his dreams! Episode 11 gave Alto three options - 1 - Return home. This would have represented him turning his back on his dreams. 2 - Hang out with Ranka. This would have represented him subordinating his dreams to the image that Ranka has projected onto him. 3 - Go with Sheryl. This represented him chasing his dreams and pursuing what he really loves to do with an opportunity that he likely wouldn't see again for years. It's as the dialogue between Alto, Clan Clan (another person that Alto hasn't argued with), and Sheryl goes in episode 5 - Some people are simply meant to do certain things. Alto is meant to fly.

I think the original plan was for the Zentraedi civil war to buy Brera enough time to get information from the Global (Alto notes that the computer in the Lab on the Global has been recently wiped, which means that someone was there shortly before him and the only person in position to do that was Brera) without any interference (there's always the small possibility that the 33rd Marine Corps might have noticed him), and then rile the Vajra up and get them moving. Once the Vajra were in the air, Grace would set off the Dimension Eater just as she did in episode 13. There's no way that the Khyron clone would have been crazy enough to attack Frontier with just the Zentraedi command ship.

I'm not blaming her. I'm just pointing out that she's got a very basic character flaw, and it's why at least some of us aren't all that fond of her (besides the fact that she looks and often acts like a 12 year old). No, it's RANKA's special place. She's only seen him there once. We've seen her retreat there other times as well (such as in episode , indicating that it's a place that she likes to go to when she wants to be alone. And I've no doubt that Ranka's a romantic. That's why she's blinded by her Cinderella story. Alto, on the other hand, is quite clearly not that sort of romantic and anyone who pays attention to him (as Sheryl does) can quickly pick up on this. That gets back to the problem I mentioned - Ranka has trouble opening her eyes and seeing that everyone else doesn't necessarily like the things she does. And it's why Griffith Observatory was not a good place to invite Alto on HIS birthday (on Ranka's birthday, on the other hand...). Or in other words, if Ranka lowered the blinkers from her eyes for a few minutes and actually thought about what kind of a person Alto is and the kind of things that he likes, she'd have realized that asking him to meet her at Griffith Observatory so that she could give him some cookies wasn't really going to be all that great of a gift for him. But then one of his friends would be dead (Since Ranka wouldn't have pushed Michael to do something without the immediate threat to one of her friends, which means that Luca wouldn't have thought of the new fold booster, which means that Michael wouldn't have been on hand to fly Sheryl away from Gallia 4. Note that I am NOT saying that as something negative about Ranka. It's basic human nature.).

There's information that suggests that Howard Glass is president of the entire NUNS, and not just Macross Frontier. That would include Macross Galaxy.

Two things First of all, there's new information liberally sprinkled in amid all of the recap that fills you in on Grace's actual plans. That's been a huge question mark to date, but the little comments during the recap portions are actually quite enlightening. Second, the recap more or less stops at the halfway point which means that you let your impatience get the better of you probably just as things were about to switch back to "normal" storytelling mode. And I'm not sure what you meant by "comedy" with reference to the voice overs. They're letting you (i.e. the viewer) know just what Grace has been up to this entire time. There's lots of comedy, but it's in the sing-off in the second half.

Actually, Grace's group indicates that the bio-plant is important because it will easily allow them to modify the environment inside Frontier. Thus, from the sound of things, Grace's group needed a colony fleet that they could radically change, and Frontier fit the bill. The lack of cybernetics seems to be tied to this. As others have suggested, it might be that the presence of cybernetics would make it more difficult to carry out the changes that Grace's group has in mind. The current guess is that Grace's group seems to want a colony that they can change in some manner to provide a friendlier environment to the Vajra.

Ranka's problem isn't that she's selfish per se. It's that she doesn't stop and think about what other people actually want. As a result, you get her rather silly birthday gift of summoning Alto to her special place (i.e. Griffith Observatory) so that she can give him a bag of cookies that she baked. While she obviously couldn't offer Alto the same thing that Sheryl did, she could have come up with something more appropriate for who Alto is. I also sometimes get the impression that she's convinced that she'll eventually end up with Alto simply because she's the one going through the Cinderella story. As I said, she's not selfish per se and she's not unkind. She just doesn't stop to think about what makes the people around her different. She offered Alto what she would want as a birthday gift instead of thinking about what Alto would want.

I think you're right that Grace's gang needs to get rid of Sheryl. If Sheryl finds out that Grace is working with Ranka, then she's going to start asking inconvenient questions and poking her nose in places where it doesn't belong. Sheryl's demonstrated before that she's very independent when she feels the need to be, and an annoyed Sheryl angry over the fact that HER manager is working with her professional rival Ranka is not something that Grace needs or wants to deal with. It's far easier to keep Sheryl sidelined and in the hospital while possibly being slowly poisoned. I don't think they need a messy "accident", though. So long as Sheryl's in the hospital, then she can't interfere. If they just slowly kill off Sheryl and keep interfering with any medical tests then they should be able to make it look as if anything that happened to her didn't have outside help.

Actually, in setting cloning is an understood science. The Zentraedi were cloned warriors, and a lot of cloning was done early on after the Space War in order to help reestablish the human population. So if Sheryl were a basic clone, then there shouldn't be any problems. It's the possibilities that arise when you're talking about something other than a basic human clone that start to create potential problems. Grace also casually talks about contaminating the entire Frontier fleet, suggesting that she's planning on doing something nasty to the Frontier population as well. Grace and her cohorts clearly don't see individual human beings as being worth much.

We don't know. It hasn't been explained. It's possible that it stands for "Queen 1", and is a reference to the "Little Queen" title that Grace mentioned in episode 14. I'm forced to wonder how long that trust will last if/when Sheryl discovers that Grace is now working with Ranka... Nah... I think both girls just realized that there's not much point using femine wiles on Alto when the other female is around. They're just waiting until they have a chance to get him alone. Then whoever does it will REALLY put him on the spot.

I think the Galaxy Gang has already decided that Frontier is expendable. From the way they were talking about how Frontier was chosen, it sounded to me as if they planned to contaminate Frontier with something, and the bio-plant would cause the contamination to spread.

Nah... That was just straight pineapple. No salad there. On a more serious note, the conversation between Cathy and Ozma was interesting. We finally get confirmation of their suspicions about what's going on, and they've realized that Leon must be the individual in the President's Office that's responsible. Another item that caught my attention was Ozma calling attention to Mr. Bilrer's sudden interest in Alto. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Ozma and Mr. Bilrer are part of the same "side" in this whole thing. Given that... 1.) Ozma apparently asked Ranka to keep a secret (probably her background - she mentions the secret in episode 3 when she sees Ozma's fighter being carried to the hanger and freaks out), suggesting that Ozma is aware that people will be interested in Ranka due to who she is, and 2.) The SMS is about as familiar as anyone with the Vajra, even having their own code for them despite the fact that Frontier has never actually encountered them, and 3.) Dialogue among the Galaxy conspirators (i.e. Grace's group) coupled with the fact that Alto vanishes from Grace's camera as he approaches Mr. Bilrer's mansion, and 4.) The fact that Ozma calls attention to the fact that Mr. Bilrer has taken an interest in Alto, and 5.) The fact that the older adopted brother of the "Little Queen" would just happen to be the squadron leader for Mr. Bilrer All lead me to suspect that whatever Mr. Bilrer is up to, he's been working with Ozma who's fully aware of what Mr. Bilrer's plans are. It's just a guess, though. We'll find out more next week. We don't know when the promotion actually takes/took place. It's possible that he hasn't actually been awarded the new rank yet, and it might be one of the things that Mr. Bilrer plans to do while he's speaking with Alto.

Usually when they show the road around him, he's on the ramp that leads to the SMS entrance. I would imagine that it doesn't get much vehicle traffic during the middle of the day.

Probably because Ranka's the "Little Queen", and Brera's her brother. The preview summary for the episode that was released before it came out indicated that all of Sheryl's work had been canceled until she fully recovered. That's probably what she was upset about (though I won't know for certain until I see a translation). Keep in mind that Grace fully intended for Sheryl to die on Gallia 4, and Grace's plans for now probably involve keeping Sheryl out of the way while the plans for Ranka continue to develop.

Must... Have... Sub! On a more serious note... It was interesting to note that Alto vanished from Grace's screen as he approached the entrance to Mr. Bilrer's house. The guy must have a very good security system that Grace is unable to hack into. I got a definite "anti-Grace faction" vibe from it. Considering that Leon appeared to be coordinating with Bilrer back in episode 5 (he contacted Bilrer with information on the people who were taken to see the "dead" Vajra lobster) and Leon's now working with Grace, I'm getting more and more curious about what's really going on behind the scenes here. Maybe between this episode and the next we'll finally have enough pieces to start putting the disparate sections of the jigsaw puzzle together?

Yes and no... Naming ships after mythical figures is normal. Naming a matched pair of vessels after those two specific individuals isn't likely to happen by accident. Prometheus is the titan who created humans, and who gave them fire. Daedalus was a clever human inventor. He's perhaps best known as being the father of Icarus, who had a fatal accident with a pair of wings that Daedalus invented (because he ignored Daedalus's warning not to fly too close to the sun). So typically you're not likely to see those two names associated with each other, unless it's a Macross homage. Not anime, or even a TV show, but the PC video game Descent: Freespace had a Vasudan cruiser 'PVC Macross'. You were ordered to support it in a couple of missions, and if you successfully defended it then it helped you defend the Vasudan Destroyer 'PVD Hope' as you escorted the damaged Vasudan destroyer to safety during one of the multi-mission arcs.

You mean, "Make-up Tips with Bobby"? Hmm... you could have some fun trying to think up humorously appropriate blog names for the different characters in the series.

That's what happens when you kill a character off - people stop asking you to continue their story. Seabook from F91 gets interest, but largely because it's known that Gundam F-91 was supposed to be the early portion of a new TV series instead of a stand alone movie. So there's interest in knowing how the original story would have turned out. (and Seabook does get revisited in the Crossbones Gundam manga - pirate Gundams!) In any case, Tomino has indicated that he's not really interested in telling any further UC Gundam stories. iirc, he might be interested in doing his Turn A Space project if given the chance, but otherwise I think he's done with Gundam.

Wouldn't need to do that. Having the Frontier fleet stumble across a colony that includes (among other people) the child of the late Hikaru and Misa (who died of old age in their sleep) would probably take care of things well enough. Who knows. No one likes loose ends, and a line about favorite characters just plain "disappearing" never to be revisited again is in many ways the ultimate loose end.

For me, the quick shot of Canalia looking at the photo of her with her kid knocked home for me that this time the characters really feel like they're in danger. In episode 7, there was no real feel that things were "that bad". Sure, there were a lot of Vajra. But you never really felt like the characters were in any real danger (even when the big Vajra ship "ate" Luca's fighter - notice that they tried to capture him again in this episode instead of blowing him up?). Canalia looking at the photo of her son suggested that maybe she was feeling her mortality in this episode and genuinely wondering if she'd ever see him again. That's because Roy and Ozma have different motivations for their dialogue. Roy's giving general "good guy impress the girls" advice. Ozma is worried about the little girl that he's been raising for the last several years. For all intents and purposes, Ozma is Ranka's father and Ranka is Ozma's daughter (adopted, not biological obviously). Ozma cares about Ranka just as he'd care about a daughter. And you'd better believe that there are a LOT of fathers that would make that exact threat with every intention of carrying it out if their little girl was in serious danger because of a possible screw up by someone they knew. Ozma's comment is an outgrowth of the same feelings that drive his conversation with Bobby earlier in the episode. No. Alto tagged Nene, the pink-haired one (the one that hid behind Klan Klan when Alto and Michael started fighting in episode 9). The one that died was the one with short red hair that hadn't had a line of dialogue to date.

Hard to say so far. I don't think Grace would have gone too far overboard to mess up Sheryl's immune system. After all, Grace thought that Sheryl would be dead at the end of episode 13. It's not as if Grace had any long-ranging plans for Sheryl's illness. There may very well be some legitimate exhaustion brought on by Sheryl's juggling work and school, but I doubt there's anything more than that. Besides whatever Grace did, of course. It's also important to remember that when Sheryl skipped out on the "medication", she appeared to recover almost immediately.

Hikaru's also already an amazing pilot (he flew for his family's air show, and he arrives in a stunt plane). And iirc, SDFM makes it clear that it's more or less glossing over Hikaru's Valk training. Shin does get good quickly with the VF-0, but he still has to learn how to properly think about what he's doing. Early on he gets his head handed to him repeatedly in training because he keeps thinking in terms of fighter piloting instead of Variable Fighter.

Sheryl would need more training first, though. You can't go from "barely knowing how to fly" to "high performance jet fighter pilot" overnight (as episode 14 shows). I think having her in the pilot's seat would fit with her personality. But we'll have to wait and see what happens. And then there's the episode preview summaries for the next few episodes that have been released to date...