Sheryl Nome: Building a better Basara?

[SchizophrenicMC]

NO GOD DAMN IT! the guitar hero controller for a flight stick was stupid and I WILL NOT GET OVER IT! EVER. He should have just been flying the plane with normal controls while playing a regular guitar at the same time because he's just that awesome. makes way more sense and is still cooler.

Star Power Ready!

Except, for Basara, that just means he can unleash an even bigger load of AWESOME!

If you wanna get into faces on mecha, the 08th MS Team's Gundams were actually a lot more realistic than any Valkyrie was, and they had faces...

I mean, a main character got his mecha blown up several times without being Alto!

[DeeBot]

If you get right down to it, there's nothing terribly realistic about trying to control a humanoid robot thingie with a joystick or two, foot pedals, and a lot of buttons. I mean, not that you couldn't make it work, but surely you could come up with a better human interface than that.

[VFTF1]

I kind of appreciate that the only "unrealstic" thing about Macross 7 that people keep complaining about is the guitar-piloting mechanism Basara uses, which, as Deebot mentions, is no more unrealstic than what we have in the real world - namely a joy stick and a couple of levers. Just like spinning a wheel in a car is also "unrealstic" but it works.

From a technical stand point, I'd think that cross-dressing devil-men from an alternate dimmension would rate higher on the "unrealstic" chart than Basara piloting via his guitar

Pete

[Keith]

Or:

-transformeing airplanes/robots in general

-genetically engineered super aliens

-fold travel

-giant transforming battleships with super big beam cannons

-"Genius" fighter pilots

-The fact that HG keeps preventing more of this from coming out here based on sheer willpower...

[SchizophrenicMC]

Or:

-transformeing airplanes/robots in general

We're working on it

-genetically engineered super aliens

Who's to say? We have 'em

-fold travel

Again, working on it

-giant transforming battleships with super big beam cannons

It'll happen eventually...

-"Genius" fighter pilots

Well, now, all you have to do is press the fire key twice and your "dogfight" is over. Used to be you had to know trajectory to guide bullets along the right path at well over 300 miles an hour just to damage the enemy. Dogfighting REQUIRES genius pilots.

-The fact that HG keeps preventing more of this from coming out here based on sheer willpower...

THAT is unbelievable

[ff95gj]

Heh. I still don't like Basara after your kind guidances on how to appreciate Basara. Thanks guys.

The songs are decent (anything near Minmay or Sheryl and Ranka? Big NO for me), but I would like them better if it's not from someone like Basara.

I know there are sci-fic animes with mechs with mouths. I grew up with those.

So someone is telling me Macross is going in that direction? That's why I hate it in the first place.

"Mechs with mouths" anime are good, but different from what a Macross should be.

No wonder some people think guitar control is good, if they are regarding Macross as those Super Robot animes.

[Gubaba]

Heh. I still don't like Basara after your kind guidances on how to appreciate Basara. Thanks guys.

The songs are decent (anything near Minmay or Sheryl and Ranka? Big NO for me), but I would like them better if it's not from someone like Basara.

I know there are sci-fic animes with mechs with mouths. I grew up with those.

So someone is telling me Macross is going in that direction? That's why I hate it in the first place.

"Mechs with mouths" anime are good, but different from what a Macross should be.

No wonder some people think guitar control is good, if they are regarding Macross as those Super Robot animes.

That's a nice bit of flame bait you posted there.

OF COURSE, no one is saying that Macross is a super robot show.And to get on some "Ah, if people don't dislike the guitar controller, then they don't know Macross like I know Macross" is just silly.

[VFTF1]

The songs are decent (anything near Minmay or Sheryl and Ranka? Big NO for me)

I think it's hard to compare them - actually, it's hard to compare Minmey to Sheryl/Ranka as well...

I mean - what's a better song? Ai Oboeteimatsuka? or What 'Bout My Star? I think trying to compare them in terms of "which is better?" is like asking "what's better - Mozart or Ray Charles?"

Now throw fire bomber into the mix, and what you've basically said is:

"The songs by Journey are decent (anything near Mozart or Ray Charles? Big NO for me)"

I think they aren't meant to be compared like that because the genres are so different. You can't blame classical music for NOT having guitar riffs, and you can't blame smooth Jazz for not having the intensity of Death Metal.

Same with Macross music:

You can't say that Fire Bomber is "worse" than Sheryl and Ranka from Macross: Frontier because they are so totally not in the same music line. I mean.... is Fire Bomber louder, more puncuated, more deafening screaming AAAAHHH!! excited YES. Is Sheryl/Ranka more graceful? More subtle? More fluid? Yes.

Now - I think it's ok to say (for example): "I'm more in the mood now for X music instead of Y music" - but it's really hard to generally proclaim that X is just fundamentally better than Y.

This also goes for Minmey - whose music is from a "bygone" era...

Ultimately - there is a mood and a framework for all works of music. I think the framework of Macross 7 was tailor made for Firebomber's music, and I think that for J-pop rock'n'roll - it's some great great music.

Minmay, Sheryl and Ranka are NOT Rock'n'roll - they are something else - and they are great too.

But I guess if you don't like Firebomber's music - then it must be really hard to appreciate Bassara.

I remember I didn't like him either, but the more he sang, the more I liked his music.

And as has been pointed out, Basara doesn't want you to like him - he just wants you to like his music

Pete

[eugimon]

I like Fire bomber music, mostly. The show kills it by playing the same song over and over but it's a lesson they learned for Macross Frontier which had new music on a regular basis.

[Keith]

I think the major issue bieng missed here, is that Macross 7 has all the fundamentals of any other Macross series, with the addition of rockingly aweseome Basara-ness & hot blooded passionate songs. Since every Macross incarnation takes a different direction on the main themes, I really don't see why some complain. If you didn't like it, sucks to be you, you've missed the boat on awesomeness, but Macross is still Macross.

[kung flu]

He never sings to anyone, he sings at them. He tries to force people to be affected by his music.

That's the impression i get from basara too. It feels the music is not just being forced at the other characters, but also being forced at the viewers too. Singing almost every single episode gets really irritating, almost a form of torcher

I believe sheryl is a much more tolerable character and most of the time we hear her sing its at a concert and not in a cockpit. Also her songs are much better

[Killer Robot]

When the usual Basara complaints come up, the weird thing is this:

The first I saw of Macross 7 was the movie. Well, so much as you can call a half hour production a movie. And there, my first impression was that Basara was a cool, good hearted dreamer, sometimes misunderstood but ultimately inspiring. I liked that quite a bit. Just when I got around to the rest of the series I didn't see that guy. I saw someone in the same clothes with the same songs, but the misunderstandings felt well-founded and the eventual inspiration felt forced. I see what he was meant to be, just something got left out between scripting and release and I can't not see the gap between what he was meant to be and what he actually was portrayed as. Maybe that bothers me more than if he really was just some shallow self-absorbed jerk with a special power to save the galaxy.

(As an aside, I hated the furry demon guy in the movie, but once I saw the TV series Gavil became a favorite. But anyway....)

Macross 7 does stand out for being far more super robot than the other Macross series and being more sanitized overall(lots of pointedly non-fatal casualties if not quite to GI Joe levels), and while I wouldn't call that entirely damning, I can't blame the people who think it is: SDFM was one of the main series that defined the real robot genre, and it got pretty grim too. Macross II took only small steps in concept and setting elements past DYRL. Macross Plus took a leap to heroes in advanced prototypes rather than mass production Valkyries, but it wrapped it in a story to make it feel less standard super robot hero mech, and the story otherwise was closer to a lower and grittier sort of sci-fi. After that, 7 is a pretty big leap into the wild land of psychic weapons vs. giant space demons and I can't blame someone for not making it even if I was okay with that part in the end. When people say "guitar control stick!" or "Valkyries with faces!" they might be fixating on small and fundamentally insignificant points, but I think they're generally just quick examples used to point out a stylistic shift that was considerably deeper than the "school kids and fanservice" people complain about with Frontier.

Myself, I love Macross 7 for being a fun sitcom about Mylene and her crazy parents/wacky neighbors and the grander war story I can take or leave. But everyone has their own favorite parts.

[Bri]

I think the major issue bieng missed here, is that Macross 7 has all the fundamentals of any other Macross series, with the addition of rockingly aweseome Basara-ness & hot blooded passionate songs. Since every Macross incarnation takes a different direction on the main themes, I really don't see why some complain. If you didn't like it, sucks to be you, you've missed the boat on awesomeness, but Macross is still Macross.

In addition to this, I really like the explanation that Kawamori gave for the continuity issues between the different Macross anime in a recently translated article. In essence each Macross anime is a filter to which we can percieve the Macross universe. We get a distorted view due to the demands of each particular show in terms of audience and sponsors.

Macross 7 is aimed at the youngest audience of all Macross shows, is repetative and has a super robot theme. If the less serious elements bug you, just see it as a way to explain the M7 events to a 5 to 10 year old audience.

[VFTF1]

I agree with Killer Robot's above post on the generalities of why some people might find Macross 7 outlandish.

Which doesn't stop me from loving it anyways

Bomba!

Er --

But sort of getting back to Sheryl/Bassara - since we're getting off track here - another thing which differentiated them was the fact that Sheryl needed love and Bassara didn't. Ultimately, Sheryl really needed Alto, whereas Bassara was literally just fine on his own.

Although I guess you can say he "needed" that loli to drag him to a spa, undress him and get naked otherwise he would never have woken up...

But other than that - I can't say he really needed love in his life.

And another difference:

Bassara was kind of like Sheryl in terms of childhood - both were found alone and isolated.

However - Bassara seemed to have a guitar or at least be singing already, and Rey was a good father figure to him.

Sheryl on the other hand was found by the Evil Grace...

So - just some comparissons there...

Pete

[ff95gj]

That's a nice bit of flame bait you posted there.

OF COURSE, no one is saying that Macross is a super robot show.And to get on some "Ah, if people don't dislike the guitar controller, then they don't know Macross like I know Macross" is just silly.

I didn't see any flame bait... Do you feel like to flame now?

I still think guitar controller doesn't belong to Macross. "A fighter should not be piloted by a guitar in the Macross universe." Does it sound silly?

At least in G Gundam, it's a parallel universe, not the UC.

And for the songs... It's totally personal. Just my personally preference.

[ff95gj]

When people say "guitar control stick!" or "Valkyries with faces!" they might be fixating on small and fundamentally insignificant points, but I think they're generally just quick examples used to point out a stylistic shift that was considerably deeper than the "school kids and fanservice" people complain about with Frontier.

Myself, I love Macross 7 for being a fun sitcom about Mylene and her crazy parents/wacky neighbors and the grander war story I can take or leave. But everyone has their own favorite parts.

Your post is inspiring; and yes, the guitar controller and the mouth are just the more symbolic parts. Sing a song to beat monsters? That ruined the nice idea the original SDF created: music wakes up the culture thing within people to cease wars. In M7, music is magic, as simple as that. You can see the music waves expel a monster. (And thankfully the producers know better to come up with another good reason in MF.)

I don't mind that kind of story design in animes; but in a Macross? Even if Gubaba thinks I am silly, I still have to say "Macross should not be like this".

To say the better parts of M7; I like it when it's about the Max and his families. In fact in the latter half when Basara and Gamlin become fast friends, I like the parts when they help out and appreciate each other ("the guys thing") too.

[VFTF1]

Well - I don't think it's magic. It LOOKS like that because of how it is animated - the rainbows and all that.

But really, what ultimately happens is that the Protodevilin discover that they are able to create spiritia themselves - they don't need to steal it from other people.

This is not magic - it's very similar to awakening culture in the Zendradi.

The only difference is that Dr. Chiba tries to make it precise and scientific.

But this is also a good part of the story, because it is often true that politicians and governments try to take something unique and beautiful and make a system out of it - which is impossible.

So - look at Jamming birds and remember the Colonol who trained them so hard?

This is a good example. The military believed that they could use science to quantify the power of music and then train soldiers to sing and use music as a weapon.

Bassara proves that this is not possible - that the heart and the passions of love and emotion are more important than science and that science can never understand the power of love and music by using numbers - because it is a power so big that you cannot comprehend it in numbers.

But this is not "magic" in the sense of something irrational. Remember that science is not the same thing as rationality. Science, especially modern science, is all about a method of experimentation and the attempt to quantify, count, and learn the relations between things so you can manipulate them.

But rationality tells us that part of what makes humans unique is that there is something in them that cannot be quantified - this is the human spirit - what Dr. Chiba and even the Protodevilin call spiritia.

Notice that just like the UN Spacey were the same as the Zendradi in that both of them built huge armies and powerful weapons, so the Protodevilin are the same as the Macross 7 UN Spacey because BOTH of them try to use Spiritia as a weapon.

Bassara rebels against this idea - he always shows the military that if they think they will win by giving orders and pointing fingers - it won't work.

Only Basara's burning love heart will open the eyes of everybody - both the Protodevilin and the humans of UN Spacey - to the truth.

Pete

[Killer Robot]

But rationality tells us that part of what makes humans unique is that there is something in them that cannot be quantified - this is the human spirit - what Dr. Chiba and even the Protodevilin call spiritia.

That was exactly the thing. When a story is about the human spirit, which is something that cannot be quantified, cannot be isolated, and yet seems to have the power to motivate friends and sway enemies - that's not so magical. When the story is about the human spirit as something that has visible and reproducible effects, when "vampires" are amid the population literally drawing the human spirit out of people to feed their masters; when the human spirit can be used to directly and visibly cure concrete medical conditions(even those caused by said draining), when scientists can measure the power of a given person's spirit and create devices that amplify it to visible levels, when the human spirit -can- be recruited and weaponized (do recall the Jamming Birds were not entirely without power - they were just far too untrained in them, too unready for combat to really be useful, and pretty much just assembled for the wrong reasons), when the main gun of the fleet's flagship can be modified to fire the human spirit, and when the human spirit does nothing to sway enemies that aren't extradimensional space demons and their hypnotized minions (recall against Chlore's fleet they had to ditch the sound energy thing and use old-fashioned music and persistence) - if that's not turning it into magic, what is? Does Basara need to put on a pointy hat and say "Spiritia Missile!" with a wave of his guitar?

Now, I'm not saying that the power of the human spirit was never there in other Macross productions, just that there it kept more to the realm of human interaction. The Zentradi culture shock at being exposed to too much of what was unfamiliar to them, or Sharon Apple's ability to hypnotize an audience - these were powerful, but temporary and not exactly quantified. Macross 7 took that idea a big step further. To come back around to the original topic of this thread, here and not in Sheryl's personality is where I think Macross Frontier was a reinvention of Macross 7. Enemies more alien than the "warrior race of giant humans" Zentradi were in SDFM, music and culture as focal points of humanity's self-identity after SW1, the ways in which Zentradi have adapted to living among humans after a couple of generations, people with special powers to reach the enemy past being the biggest celebrity on the ship, and the ethics of weaponizing and controlling something that is intensely personal - these are all issues from 7 that Frontier addressed and, I think, reinvented more in keeping with the themes and mood of Macross as it stood pre-7. Obviously 7 isn't an alternate universe or something, but its big stylistic step into over the top and fantastic concepts with super robot trappings is what polarized fans of earlier series, and was one that Frontier moved back from.

[VFTF1]

if that's not turning it into magic, what is?

I guess we just have a different interpretation here.

Think about it this way:

If we went back in time to 500 years ago and told people that television and the internet and radio would transmit movies, music videos, plays, dramas of all sorts around the world and people would be moved by them and that these images and sounds would effect how history is shaped - what would they call this description?

Magic.

If we went back in time to 5000 years ago and told people that humans would one day build buildings as tall as mountains, fly, that they would leave the Earth for the moon... what would they say we were talking about ?

Magic.

Science IS the transformation of desire into possibility, and in that sense science is magic - albeit it is the METHOD which has changed. Modern science, unlike ancient science, is experimental rather than deductive, and unlike ancient magic, modern magic is scientific rather than mystical.

Thus, I do not find it hard to concieve that what you describe could actually come to pass, and I see Macross 7 as a serious drama that warns of the dangers that science poses to the human spirit when science tries to replicate it.

This theme is not new in sci-fi. After all - take Terminator - the machines gain sentience (a characteristic of human spirit).

I don't think Frontier moved a step back from Macross 7 thematically. If anything, it advances and builds on the themes of Macross 7. I think that in the end, where it really differs is in the aesthetic, which is based in DYRL and Macross Zero, and where both the mecha and the monsters are not so "cartoony" in their aesthetic, as was the case with Macross 7.

Pete

[SchizophrenicMC]

Pete

Definitely a philosopher.

Sing a song to beat monsters? Yes. In fact, 12 or 13 years BEFORE Mac7, there was a little anime called The Super Dimension Fortress: Macross. And in that little anime, one of the main characters sang a song to beat monsters. Those monsters were giant aliens who were trying to destroy the titular ship, the SDF-1 Macross. So, while she sang, one of the other main characters fought in his transforming plane, the VF-1 Valkyrie. Alone, the weapons would do no good against the coordinated attacks from the monsters' advanced technology. However, against an uncoordinated enemy, they stood a chance. And her songs? They played havoc with the enemies' minds and removed their focus on battle. Removed their coordination, so the soldiers could cut them down.

... And in that little anime, one of the main characters sang a song to beat monsters. Those monsters were giant aliens who were trying to destroy the titular ship, the Macross 7. So, while he sang, he and the other main characters fought in their transforming planes. Alone, the weapons would do no good against the coordinated attacks from the monsters' advanced technology. However, against and uncoordinated enemy, the stood a chance. And their songs? They played havoc with the enemies' minds and removed their focus on battle. Removed their coordination so the soldiers could cut them down.

So, is SDFM silly?

[Killer Robot]

Definitely a philosopher.

Sing a song to beat monsters? Yes. In fact, 12 or 13 years BEFORE Mac7, there was a little anime called The Super Dimension Fortress: Macross. And in that little anime, one of the main characters sang a song to beat monsters. Those monsters were giant aliens who were trying to destroy the titular ship, the SDF-1 Macross. So, while she sang, one of the other main characters fought in his transforming plane, the VF-1 Valkyrie. Alone, the weapons would do no good against the coordinated attacks from the monsters' advanced technology. However, against an uncoordinated enemy, they stood a chance. And her songs? They played havoc with the enemies' minds and removed their focus on battle. Removed their coordination, so the soldiers could cut them down.

... And in that little anime, one of the main characters sang a song to beat monsters. Those monsters were giant aliens who were trying to destroy the titular ship, the Macross 7. So, while he sang, he and the other main characters fought in their transforming planes. Alone, the weapons would do no good against the coordinated attacks from the monsters' advanced technology. However, against and uncoordinated enemy, the stood a chance. And their songs? They played havoc with the enemies' minds and removed their focus on battle. Removed their coordination so the soldiers could cut them down.

So, is SDFM silly?

That's just the trick. It didn't happen that way in SDFM. Or rather, it didn't happen nearly the same way. Minmay had no special powers. Her song had no special powers. Music wasn't even the biggest part of what got through to the Zentradi and convinced them that there was maybe more to live for than fighting. It was the whole of the broadcasts from the Macross, the sights of men and women living peacefully together, the strange sorts of entertainments, the wild stories brought back by the spies and passed among the troops, the strange ways these miclones had, the unthinkable act called "kissing." And yes, it was Minmay, but in a lot of ways she was a symbolic shorthand for what the Zentradi found themselves longing for, in the same way that "guitar controlled Valkyrie" is a symbolic shorthand for why many found Macross 7 jarring. Even when she did the concert during the big battle to distract the fleet, it was relying on the momentary confusion and fear to knock out their leadership, not to convert the main fleet, and Exedol made the point that the kiss was going to be instrumental along with the song - it had a much greater culture shock value anyway. And most importantly, all this happened entirely in the realm of normal human interactions and communication: the way of shocking someone with unfamiliar concepts, the way of swaying someone to your way of thinking through example and encouragement, of finding common ground with your enemy. It happened in a larger than life fashion, it's true, but only because the Zentradi were far more culturally repressed than any human society and so their shock was pretty intense(all the same, look up cargo cults, or some of the other real world examples of culture shock when two very different human cultures have met in the past.) This isn't to say that Minmay wasn't important, or that the effect she had wasn't very real, but it wasn't all that far from the power communication, charisma, and symbol have on real people in the real world.

Macross 7 didn't have these happenings on a symbolic stage, but rather a literal one. Song and song energy having direct and quantifiable effects on the minds and spirits of others, special powers that some had and some didn't, devices that directly magnified said power, said power working specifically just on the psychic space monsters and their mind-controlled minions but not directly affecting others. Macross Frontier by contrast still has the power of song be nothing more or less than conventional communication - the power Ranka shows is in the end very simply the ability to communicate with the Vajra through their own fold-based language. The step from SDFM to Mac7 is the step from a story about a doctor who works like any other but has bedside manner and understanding of his patients gives him a knack for healing that mechanical medicine alone can't match, to one about a doctor who is so understanding of his patients that he puts his hands on them and heals through direct application of will. That step from "song as a means of emotional communication" to "song as a literal and quantifiable force" is a pretty big one by any means, and some fans not minding that step doesn't mean it isn't there.

[Keith]

Actually, Minmay "did" have special powers, in that inadvertently, it "was" her singing that saved the day. Not through the culture shock tactic's it was used for, but by moving the hearts of a few, which spread like wildfire through many. Without the "contamination" of the 3 spies, the Britai Adoclas fleet wouldn't have defected (nor had reason to) against Bodolza. In turn, the Macross would have had zero backup against Bodolza, no inside info about the command structure of his fleet, and would have gone out with the Earth in a blaze of electric death.

The war against the Zentradi wasn't won when reaction missiles were fired up Bodozla's rear, it was won when Britai realized he had no choice but to support his wavering troops, or face extermination by Bodolza.

That's the part Macross 7 builds on, distilling the accidental effects of Minmay into intentional ones. It's not Basara's singing that "beats the monsters," it's hte passion that he puts into it that becomes too pure for them to handle. Some choose to roll with it & ride out the wae (Sivil & Gigil), while the rest rebel against it until the end. The message of the series being that unlike the first time around, even if you have bigass weapons to sneak up on your enemy with, sometimes they're bigger, not all scenariou's are winable through force.

Basara won over Sivil, and wound up teaching the Protodevelin that they can produce their own sustenance through the type of passion he'd shown.

As for 7 being tailored to the youngest common denominator, each series pretty much targets the youngers of their respective generations, while being broad enough for adults. If you're going to damn the whole super robot genre as "kiddie stuff," then you're going to have a crap load of Gurren Lagann fans (including myself) on you for it. Gurren Lagann sharring a lot in common with Macross 7, swapping out singing for drills.

[VFTF1]

But Gurren Lagann makes up for it by having cool background music anyways

Another point to add is that these general criticisms of Macross 7 always fall apart when you take an episode by episode analysis. We should remember that this is an anime with more than 40 episodes to it (IIRC) - and there's really ALOT happening here. It's a lot more complex than people give it credit for being.

Remember in the beginning Bassara seems to just be this crazy guy - nobody knows Max is secretly supporting it. And only later does Dr. Chiba (a Minmey fan) finally make the breakthroughs in his experiments to create the song-boosters and enhancements. It's not evident from the outset that something like this is possible.

And WHERE in Macross continuity did we previously get a hint that something like Sound Boosters could work?

The Ubber Serious ... Macross Plus.

I mean - the whole scheme behind Sharon Apple was to measure and quantify human emotions and to set up a computer program that could control those emotions using music.

Hm...

Kind of like what Dr. Chiba perfected for Sound Force to use.

There's a million other details in the series that complicate the simple narrative of 'Macross 7 Kiddie Face on Robots poo poo rainbow anime" theme.

Pete

[Bri]

As for 7 being tailored to the youngest common denominator, each series pretty much targets the youngers of their respective generations, while being broad enough for adults. If you're going to damn the whole super robot genre as "kiddie stuff," then you're going to have a crap load of Gurren Lagann fans (including myself) on you for it. Gurren Lagann sharring a lot in common with Macross 7, swapping out singing for drills.

Gurren Lagann and M7 share a super robot theme, not the same genre. GL is postmodern, parodies and makes homages to '70s super robot shows in a clever and unconventional way, M7 is just a copy of the format, without doing any thing inventive. Even within M7 there are differences, Dynamite is more capable then the TV series to interest a broader audience. Not surprising given that SDFM and M7 were normal TV-series that had to look at ratings in a time when anime was still mostly childs fare.

Other Macross productions were OVA's/late night anime which cater to a specific audience. The target audience for anything produced after Eva can immediatly be identified if you look at the broadcasting time and format. SDFM is one of those rare exceptions that can capture a broad audience. M7-tv remains a kids show, more then any other Macross, due to it's point of view, it's repetative and simple nature. However M7 is fun and should not be ashamed for what it is.

As for super robot, there are plenty of shows around, even pre-eva, to prove that it is not just kiddie stuff. Thinking of Gunbuster, Ideon, Mazinger-Z just to name a few.

[Xeros]

Now I am going to try to play Ace Combat with a control of Guitar Hero...

[Killer Robot]

Gurren Lagann and M7 share a super robot theme, not the same genre. GL is postmodern, parodies and makes homages to '70s super robot shows in a clever and unconventional way, M7 is just a copy of the format, without doing any thing inventive. Even within M7 there are differences, Dynamite is more capable then the TV series to interest a broader audience. Not surprising given that SDFM and M7 were normal TV-series that had to look at ratings in a time when anime was still mostly childs fare.

Other Macross productions were OVA's/late night anime which cater to a specific audience. The target audience for anything produced after Eva can immediatly be identified if you look at the broadcasting time and format. SDFM is one of those rare exceptions that can capture a broad audience. M7-tv remains a kids show, more then any other Macross, due to it's point of view, it's repetative and simple nature. However M7 is fun and should not be ashamed for what it is.

As for super robot, there are plenty of shows around, even pre-eva, to prove that it is not just kiddie stuff. Thinking of Gunbuster, Ideon, Mazinger-Z just to name a few.

Oh, definitely. I don't hold Macross 7 being a more a children's show or more a super robot show than other Macross, my real complaints about the series are of pacing and character development, but on the other hand, I can't blame others for finding that a hard pill to swallow with a franchise that otherwise defined itself by how it wasn't a super robot show, and by keeping heavier shades of dark and gritty warfare in with the bright action and song. I like my share of super robot shows and light entertainment(not that SDFM is exactly grim and adult fare), but there's a difference between liking variety and wanting wild swings in mood between a work and its sequels. I loved Gurren Lagann myself - on the other hand, I would have had serious misgivings to that as a Macross sequel even if they turned all the drills into guitars and said the Anti-Spirals were another Protoculture project gone wrong. I similarly wouldn't want a new Star Wars movie in the mood and feel of the new Battlestar Galactica despite both being series I quite enjoy.

Macross 7 definitely takes a lot of themes from the original Macross, I'll never deny that, but it takes them to a much more fantastic level. And it seems that a lot of what Frontier does is in the same direction as 7, but reinvented in a mood and presentation more in keeping with the original scope of the series. Which is entirely in keeping with it having so much else to tie into earlier Macross series.

[VFTF1]

Enough talk! This debate ends now!! Let's go!!!!!!!!!!! TOTSUGEKI LOVE HEAAAAARTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pete

(proud to have spent the last hour working on Sheryl's ass!)

Edited June 30, 2009 by VFTF1

[Bri]

When comparing Basara to a female singer, I'm surprised the resemblance to Haruhi hasn't come up yet. Both are slightly anti social jerks with hearts of gold. Both can play a guitar and sing. Both are pretty much invincible. Could Basara have reality altering powers? hmm...

[VFTF1]

The comparisson has already been made in the Haruhi Suzumiya thread .... or...wait...was it maybe in the Revoltech 2G thread when somebody showed off their culture festival Haruhi...

In any event - the notion has come up

Pete

[Garou Kuroryuu]

There's a million other details in the series that complicate the simple narrative of 'Macross 7 Kiddie Face on Robots poo poo rainbow anime" theme.

Be it as it may be, it's precisely that "kiddie face on robots poo poo rainbow anime" envelope that prevents me from watching M7 AND ENJOYING it, and it seems I'm not the only one.

I'm not trying to convince any of you guys who did like it to turn your opinions, but as well, you gotta admit that the points expressed by those who don't are well sustained, be it for stylistic, story-telling or jerk-guitar-piloting-singer issues.

Peace

[Bri]

Be it as it may be, it's precisely that "kiddie face on robots poo poo rainbow anime" envelope that prevents me from watching M7 AND ENJOYING it, and it seems I'm not the only one.

[...]you gotta admit that the points expressed by those who don't are well sustained, be it for stylistic, story-telling or jerk-guitar-piloting-singer issues.

How would you be able to judge the validity of those points raised, without having seen M7?

[dreamweaver13]

When comparing Basara to a female singer, I'm surprised the resemblance to Haruhi hasn't come up yet. Both are slightly anti social jerks with hearts of gold. Both can play a guitar and sing. Both are pretty much invincible. Could Basara have reality altering powers? hmm...

doesn't hurt that the Haruhi series even made a reference to Macross 7. so you just might have something there... Bomba!!

[SchizophrenicMC]

Basara and Kamina are the only two characters in all of anime- no, all of EVERYTHING, awesome enough to row without a boat and fight the power with manliness, awesome, and red and yellow super robots!

Now, I'm off to prove a guitar CAN be used to fly a plane. It's a good thing Ace Combat 6 and Guitar Hero are both on the Xbox 360. Wait. I don't have Guitar Hero. Damn.

(Cousin, can you come here?)

[dreamweaver13]

Basara and Kamina are the only two characters in all of anime- no, all of EVERYTHING, awesome enough to row without a boat and fight the power with manliness, awesome, and red and yellow super robots!

And what about Koji Kabuto? forget guitar controllers. he's the only one i've seen pilot a mecha using an exercise bow bar.

[VFTF1]

Of course, there's also the Transformers version of Sound Energy, if we're going that route, which is the cheap immmitation version (kind of like TFs themselves): namely Jazz unleashes his "light and sounds" attack (according to his tech spec), which sounds like it COULD be a Minmey attack, but unfortunately in the cartoon is portrayed as two satelite dishes coming out of his ass, and proceeding to emit a screeching sound that gives friends and enemies alike a splitting head ache...

Pete