kalvasflam

Unless that technology was transplanted secretly onto Frontier... ah ha... See, Galaxy could still have been wiped out. Besides, that way, we don't have to explain how Grace gets back to Frontier.

He is? Good airline pilot may be... I don't think he has any delusions about being the Red Baron...

That's easy, he is dodging fantasy missiles. The last time he approached a Vajra ship, he did that, figures, bigger ship, more armor, woohoo, more pieces to eject, and he still had leftovers. I wonder if Battle25 isn't just the front block of the city hard welded. It does feel like it. As for the use of reaction weapons, I wonder why they bother restricting its use at all. Should've been the first option when the fleet was threatened with so many Vajra battleships I thought. Instead of sending the fleet to attack head on, use the reaction weapons immediately. I think on the pacing of the episode, I have a feeling that the show is being rushed because of its lousy time slot. If anything, the Ranka kidnapping should've gone on for another episode, it didn't seem to have advanced the story much further, and the Vajra is still a big ugly insect that in Ranka's case found an interesting little toy. This wasn't anything like the Misa/Hikaru/Max adventure with the Zentradi fleet. That one, we got more insight to the Zentradi, this one was less revelation, and more about the rescue. Which brings me up to the question, why did Brera have to conduct the rescue at all? Because, now that Brera has formally revealed himself, what's next? Is he going to be assigned to NUNS, SMS? How is he going to explain his previous interventions, or is Leon just going to find a way to cover up for him? I have an uneasy feeling that the story is starting to drift like M0. I hope I'm wrong.

Call it silly, I was just looking at Pine salad, and thinking Gladiator. Got this imagery where Maximus and company are surrounded by Roman guards, and Comodus comes out and he says to the crowd: Cake or Pine salad.... Anyway, my vote is for Ozma next, my only question is who gives him the pine salad... Ranka, Bobby, or Cathy? Well, considering the title, it's probably Ranka.

Time up... well, for spoiler moratorium. I just got finish watching the RAW, interesting stuff. My initial opinion is that despite the build up from ep 13, this did not compare as well to episode 7. I actually liked episode 7 better even though this one was grander in scale. I thought the song that went along with the battle seem a bit forced and inappropriate. Obviously, given the Bandai involvement, I'm guessing this episode is designed to sell toys. Special packs for Alto, Alto VF-25 armored, VF-25 armored with reaction missiles, VF-17 with reaction missiles. I think that's about all of them. That said, this was still a good episode despite the reused animation, but it could've been so much better. Interesting points: - Did the bridge bunnies just tell Cathy that Bobby is interested in Ozma? If I heard that right, Cathy's reaction is well guarded. - As someone pointed out, Sheryl's poor piloting save her and Mikhail's lives. Neat, I'm more impressed with Sheryl every day, she gives me Misa vibes, and Ranka definitely has more Minmei vibes. - For such a broad fleet action, they actually had lots of useless character development, I'm sorry, I don't like Nanasei, or whatever the hell her name is, she's dead to me. Any time focused on her is wasted. My take is either they focus in on fleet action, and there could've been more done, even considering the small budget or do all these personal human interest stories, don't do both. - As for Luca, dude, you're frigging rich, just do her and get it over with, and move on to someone else, this childish "I'll return" crap is lame. We all know you're the evil genius behind Grace. Drop the innocent act. - Grace is alive... YES.... ok, I'm sorry if I seem a bit excited, but she's one cold hearted villain I can live with, it's the quiet ones that gets you. I'm sure Grace will have a story in mind for Sheryl or anyone else who asks. (Please don't disappoint me, Grace) - What the hell is this with Alto's armored VF-25? I swore he must have ejected three sets of parts, and was still loaded for bear when he blew up the Vajra queen. - Got great DYRL vibes when Alto blew up the Vajra queen, just like when Hikaru assassinated Boldolza. - The Vajra, did I miss something or did they turn stupid. When their ships came from behind, their battleships fired one shot each, and look like they didn't fire any more. Like they were waiting for Ranka to start singing. In the time it took for Alto to load up reaction missiles, they should have ripped Frontier to little pieces. They shot once and then stopped. - And what happened to the Vajra fleet that was in front? Were they wiped out already? - What's up with Leon? He was just smiling along the entire episode, like he was expecting the Vajra to be dumb and not blow up Frontier after the first shot. - As for Brera, ok, we still don't know anything about Galaxy, it could be destroyed, if it was, Brera can claim whatever he wants, how would anyone know the difference. Hi, I'm Brera, I'm from Megaroad, we've been out of touch for decades, but here I am in my brand new VF-27. - In my estimation, Brera was following Grace's orders exactly when he rescued Ranka. Like I said, Grace is one calculating bitch, what a babe... - I wonder what the funny crystals are about. It'll be interesting if they have a decent stories for it. I do hope they show more VF-17I and make them at least not so much of a grunt unit. If they keep doing that, I'll start thinking that I'm watching Gundam or something. I think overall, this episode raised up a few more questions. I'm definitely don't think it was better than ep 7 in spite of the build up. Hope they do another fleet action, and do it better next time.

From the description so far, I agree, thinking back to

Heh, should have put a surgeon general's warning on this one I guess. It was kind of gross.

Wish I could've seen the episode live, will wait for RAW I guess. Can't wait for the subbed version.

can't get it to work. dropped in: mms://60.239.50.230:8888 and nothing.....

Hmmm, still trying to figure out Keyhole, which channel is it supposed to be on the list?

If that's truly the case on the second part, and not just then I'll be truly disappointed, after some interesting character building, they would just discard him is a bit unbelievable. I think one of the problems possibly with Gundam 00 might be that in season one they had too many interesting characters, and they did a good job of developing all of them to some extent that there wasn't as much focus on Setsuna, who by contrast wasn't quite as interesting in the beginning...

Methinks that Grace is actually from the future, and is anti-Sheryl because she is the love child of Ranka and Alto, but eventually Sheryl wins over Alto, and Alto abandons Ranka and said love child Hikaru-style. Grace adapts cybernetic body (needed for time travel, ala-terminator style), goes back in time to keep Sheryl from getting Alto, and to prevent Ranka from turning into: New Ranka Result of Google image search if you type in fat Ranka on the image page of Google, and was too funny to pass up.

Very nice Graham, I think it's easy to say that if the VF-1 is based off the Tomcat, the VF-25, -27, and I think even the nose of the VF-17I is based off the Flanker. There is just no arguing it, the Flanker is by far the prettiest aircraft around these days.

Watched it over the weekend finally. Great movie, it's amazing how much expression they managed to pack into EVE and WALL E even though for all practical purposes, they are just blocks, but the expressions that they manage speak volumes about the creativity of Pixar. It's amazing how well Pixar managed to pull that off, because if you look at it objectively, WALL E is not too different from Gumby. BloodPhoenix, you can take what you will from the movie, but I find that if people go to movies to look for meaning or purpose, then they probably forgot about the reason for why they went to the movie in the first place... which is entertainment.

One other interesting thing, was it just me, or did the PPB knife from the VF-27 look quite a bit larger than the puny knife on the VF-25

Probably talked about before, but isn't it interesting that the VF-27 main gun seem to operate in two modes, either it fires a concentrated beam or uses what look like bullets. This was very noticeable both in ep 13 and ep 9 I thought. I wonder if the gun itself actually have two magazines or if the scatter beam are actually just smaller pulses of energy. Besides that the armament of the VF-27 is also quite unique, looks like at least two sets of additional guns mounted on the outboard engines, micro-missiles stored internally. I wonder how many units there are actually, so far we've seen about three of those planes, where are the others I wonder?

May be Grace isn't quite the mastermind... I wouldn't be surprised if Luca turned out to be the evil genius, or at least part of the axis of evil. After all, if we go back to ep 7, he went through a lot of trouble to access the Vajra battle ship, and I think Brera was sent in to protect him. Note, Brera only went in after Luca was captured. As far as Alto/Sheryl and company confirming what happened to the planet, I doubt if that matters after the Vajra went all out to kill Frontier. The war has started already, and the little niceties about how it started doesn't matter much any more. Sure, certain parties might get into trouble later, but it still doesn't make any difference since Vajra has been attacking since ep 1. So, let the war begin. But hopefully this won't end in another armistice with Vajra becoming the next Gubaba.

Well, as long as they make a mention of Admiral Rick Hunter and call that ship the wrecked SDF-2, I'm sure that'll solve all the continuity problems. Oh, they also should tie in Zor, and the Robotech masters, hell, the Vajra can be the evolved Invids.... and doesn't Stick... I mean Scott Bernard look a lot like Leon? Besides, it makes sense right, this is why Admiral Rick Hunter never made it back to Earth, he crashed on Galia IV.... All hands killed and all that.

Man, I haven't seen the episode yet, but it sounds really interesting, given the spoilers though, I wonder My vote personally is for Sheryl right now, to me she is a bit more like Misa, strong personality, and know what she wants, but there is a chance that she might not make it out of this. After all, Ranka is also not a wishy washy type, partly thanks to Sheryl's encouragement. One thought that's may be worth another spoiler,

Well, that's true, it'll be interesting to see Frontier fleet composition. I don't actually recall seeing non-escorts around frontier, but that doesn't mean much so far.

Slightly off tech topic, but what exactly is the rough composition of a Macross immigration fleet? I seem to recall that the fleet itself looks a little bit like a BSG fleet, with more warships, but also ships for entertainment, manufacturing, farming, etc. But don't remember if Mac 7 really put out the composition.

Has there been confirmation of how many episodes there will be for Mac Frontier? I wouldn't mind seeing something on the order of 40+ episodes if they can maintain the decent animation and a good storyline. One thing they should not do is rush the story. Right now, there is a nice pacing to the story, part of the reason is that there are numerous interesting characters centering around the three main characters and enough room for good character development. There are enough interesting threads that hopefully they can push up the episode counts, and give a nice and satisfying end. I always hoped that the original SDF Macross was a bit longer.

There is an easy answer for these three.... THREESOME.

If anything the US refusal to sell Japan F-22 is just a sign of weakness. So, what, it's the most advanced fighter today, but if there isn't someone somewhere putting the next ATF on the board, I would be just shocked. With allies like Japan, selling them the F-22 make sense. Why? Because like every other country, you don't want them to develop their own homegrown tech that might be 10x better than what you have. You'd rather have them be dependent on you. That's why it was a good idea to put the JSF out for sale. Just like it is a good idea in the long run to put the F-22 out to the Japanese. I would be less inclined to put it out to Israel knowing that those guys would just turn right around and put the tech out on the open market, and evolve out their own stuff from it. After all, you beat the other guy by being one generation ahead, not by keeping the current generation away from them.

Barney... duh, it's purple right? With it's built in FAST pack, it's also fat. So, Barney it is.