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So, I'm not trying to start a hate thread or any fights. I'm curious to hear what idols from the Macross continuity you like the best. Any music or musician/group are fair game. I'll kick it off, I like Sheryl Nome. I like her character (even if she's a bit conceited and arrogant), she's honest with herself, and I actually find her music to be the most catchy. Now don't get me wrong, I like the others, though Minmei is probably my least favorite, since she's a very flimsy character. I dislike Nekki Basara, but I like Fire Bomber. I'd say Ranka is my second favorite, she's really upbeat and cheerful, which is refreshing. What about y'all?

I wonder if I'm the only one to feel that Ranka's story at the end of the TV series is far from complete. Alto and Sheryl are both adults and we have learned much about them including family traditions and we know their ultimate choices in their fate. Well, except the triangle part - one can reference the movies for that one though. In any event, at least apart from love life, each of them clearly knows who he/she is and what he/she wants and lives for. Ranka has just spent something like 8 episodes being heavily pounded and surviving against all odds - and her emotional life in that period clearly was not her own. By the time she decided to confess to Alto, she was getting emotional feedback from a big Vajra network - of which some members were being killed around her. And she did not know about the feedback. The feelings raging within her were not of her own origin and quite out of her control - all she could do was direct them at Alto (and possibly to a degree Sheryl, depending on how one reads some clues). As this sort of feedback was gradually erasing her, Grace guilt-tripped her and we know what happened. Yes, she fought her way out of it heroically, and now the Vajra are gone. Ranka is left with: - A drained emotional life that was driven by forces external to herself, and to humanity, for whatever number of weeks, and she just started to take it back ("I will not stop singing nor loving" is a start, but only a start). - A double-whammy feeling of guilt - not only does she feel responsible for the destruction of the 117th fleet but now she was a tool that nearly wiped out humanity and got a lot of pilots killed (and she probably knew some of those killed, by sheer demographic) - On the plus side, some very good friends (Sheryl doubles as a mentor), an excellent track to a galactic singing career (they'll be shortly making a quartz fold drive, too, so she can have a gigs on Earth and around colonies easily), and a manager to match. Oh, and a real brother who can kick a lot of ass. These, however, are all things somewhat external to herself and not resolving the great deal of internal turmoil she is still facing. And all we know of her background is a brief glimpse of her mother... The movies sidestep the issues instead of resolving them. In the movies she never "changed sides", instead she had a "take me ant leave Frontier alone" moment. So in the movies she does not face massive guilt, and she can identify fully with the people of Frontier even when she loses Alto and sees Sheryl in a coma - giving her a clear sense of identity and direction. That's clearly a different story (perhaps the movies are the story as told by the two singers quite a few years after the fact? it also leaves very little rivalry in there and has them as BFFs from first sight - consistent with them telling it after many years of being BFFs). So on the series Ranka... I actually think Alto belongs with Sheryl (not here to debate that) but at the same time would want 10 more episodes of Ranka, to see her actually finding the real herself after all she went through, and perhaps discovering more of her background in the process. Guess this makes me a bad Sheryl fan AND a bad Ranka fan... but seriously - I wonder if this ground has already been covered elsewhere in the fandom, it's been 6 years after all.