Macross Δ (Delta) - Mission 13 - READ 1st POST

[Heron]

Marzan, both of your points hit upon what bugged me about the episode. Also the action with the Valks

was more of the same Fighter Mode Dancing followed by Bogue doing his usual while, again, the other Aerial Knights looking on while Hayate used the same move on Keith he used to take Bogue out. Keith even emulated Bogue's countermove too.

Edited June 26, 2016 by Heron

[azrael]

Chuck's sister and possibly the kids are redshirts?

They kindof are at this point. Chuck's sister spent most of the show fawning over Messer, who's now dead. Her being swept out to sea doesn't really impact the story. She could be alive, being amphibious, but we won't be back at Ragna for a while. The rest of the siblings are comic relief.

Also there lost in Windermere side as their ship command center has been badly damaged and Heintz severely weaken and with the King death. I think it take a while to Windermere to fix their ship to activate its function

The barrier took most of the hit. If that barrier wasn't there, the command center would have been obliterated, vaporizing Roid and the King. Instead, the damage was minor. The main objective was still achieved. So in the end, it's a "W" for Windermere.

[charles88]

Yeah but with control system badly damaged, they cannot use ruins function for a while. And also they have to mourn their king

[CC-tan]

That. Was. EPIC.

Very action packed!! Normally I pay a little more attention to the dialogue when watching episodes raws, but I was so engaged in the action this time around that I barely caught a few lines here and there lol

A few things:

-I really hope Chuck's sister is okay thought initially that Chuck was gonna eat it when NUNS set off their bomb. I know she's not a major story player, but being hit by a wall of water while trying to save her siblings is a sad way to go.

-the lighting and water shots in this episode were SO GOOD. When the water is dripping from the Elysion as the sun shines on it~~ A++ can't wait to see that in blu ray quality~

-ding dong, the king is dead, time for a new pair of glasses.

-Walkure got new outfits again! But they look pretty goofy. Maybe it's because I'm biased, but I think I would like the new outfits more if Sheryl and Ranka wore them. (edit by @anzadesu https://twitter.com/anzadesu/status/747123768393248768)

[Heron]

Compared to what Chaos lost, planets, Messer, and the things in this episode, what happened to Windermere is nothing. Also if things like Messers death, the mourning may be all off screen.. :/

[SebastianP]

Marzan, both of your points hit upon what bugged me about the episode. Also the action with the Valks

was more of the same Fighter Mode Dancing followed by Bogue doing his usual while, again, the other Aerial Knights looking on while Hayate used the same move on Keith he used to take Bogue out. Keith even emulated Bogue's countermove too.

This incessant complaining about the combat being fighter vs fighter all the time is getting annoying. The reason we're not getting anything else is because unless you need to take or hold ground, Battroid and Gerwalk are pretty much useless in the atmosphere. The Aerial knights stay airborne because they don't have any ground objectives that they can't hit-and-run; and Chaos fights them in the air because they can't make them come down to fight them on the ground, and they can't just leave them up there because then they can pulverize whatever they want from up high.

In space, or in an enclosed area (like inside a colony), it's a different story. Mode changes in an atmosphere will kill your mobility, mode changes in space will give you options. In a domed city, you can't take advantage of fighter mode's extra speed or altitude performance anyway, and fighting street to street makes sense because you *can't* take off and nuke them from above.

Now, if the Aerial knights ever had something they seriously needed to take and hold on the ground, as opposed to just needing destroy something or to distract the defenders, we'd probably see them use Gerwalk for more than just landing or a hand-break, and battroid for more than proclamations. And that would cause Delta and company to have to follow suit. Or, if Delta did an op where they were assaulting, as opposed to destroying, a ground objective, we might see the knights use battroid and gerwalk.

But for the types of ops we see, fighter mode is pretty much the most useful thing to use, so that's what gets used.

(Also note that in the one space battle we do see properly, everyone uses Gerwalk mostly. On both sides.)

[This Confuses Gamlin]

We do see two Chaos VFs hovering in the air in Battroid mode, and they are totally unprepared for things flying past them.

The impression that I've had so far is that the Drakens and Siegfrieds are so evenly matched and flying at the edges of their performance envelopes that no one is going to do a mode change unless it provides an immediate and absolute benefit versus the penalties of doing so. Messer demonstrating that he could just backflip his Siegfried to get behind Keith (Episode 9) was a good example of that.

Edited June 26, 2016 by This Confuses Gamlin

[sh9000]

Damn that was good.

[kalvasflam]

So, Ernie is still pretty thoughtful, even though it didn't do anything, he thought enough to fire at the departing Windermere ships, just too bad he couldn't kill anything. At least he was able to send back the Walkure and his fighter squadrons on fold immediately, so there wasn't much time lost.

The Ragna fleet is just as useless as the Al Shahal fleet. At this point, you wonder why they have a fleet at all.

Finally, the bad guy's big guns fire up, and their first target is the Island class??? Yeah, Winderneres aren't just dicks, they are idiots, there are military targets around, and judging by the defolds, at least a few NUNS ship folded out. Kill them first, you can slaughter the civilians later, kill the enemy military first.

The animation on the fighter combat as pretty good, although it seems like with exception of Bogue, the other Aerial knights just stood around with their thumb up their ass. Bogue as usual tried to kill the Walkure... you go Bogue, keep that strategic objective in mind, one day you might actually succeed. Although why Bogue didn't fly right into the Walkure pyramid after he blasted apart the shield is beyond me, he could've played squish the Walkure with his Draken. He is probably afraid of Mikumo.

At last count, there are at least six Aerial knights, the evil twins and the two oldies just stood around at 3/4 of Delta ganged up on Keith. (I excused Bogue because he was trying to kill the Walkure... just like Elmer trying to kill the pesky ol' wabbit) Good thing the pretty boy can fly, otherwise, he would've died wondering how it happened that he got outnumbered 3 to 1; and why the rest of the knights hated him so much.

Finally, they should've loaded Delta 2 with real bullets, cause he tried to off Keith, and I think hit the cockpit or nearly so, but nothing happened.

[Windrider]

EPICCCC!!!!!!This most epic dogfight ever and Finally Hayate become next Shinigami. Messer Going to be proud of you Hayate as he surpass you by defeating White Knight Keith.

Hayate is still far from Messer's skill level and is not worthy of the title Shinigami. Freyja's song coupled with fold receptors buff is just way too OP and without it he doesn't even stand a chance against the White Knight of Windemere.

[This Confuses Gamlin]

there are at least six Aerial knights

There were at the start of the fight. When the bomb goes off somebody's Draken gets Kakizakied.

[azrael]

There were at the start of the fight. When the bomb goes off somebody's Draken gets Kakizakied.

At this point in the show, they'll show the deaths of any of the principal characters. The Draken that bit the farm was likely a red-shirt.

[F360]

WOW, a truly non stop episode

[kalvasflam]

At this point in the show, they'll show the deaths of any of the principal characters. The Draken that bit the farm was likely a red-shirt.

yep, there are other Windermere pilots, the ones I think of as Aerial knights are Keith, Bogue, the evil twin brothers, and the two oldies, Herman and the Apple farmer. For a moment, I was hoping Chuck would get killed... but no such luck.

As for Chuck's sister... I can honestly say with all my heart that I don't care. Swept out to sea??? you can swim right? So swim.... Eaten by Garfield??? Just fattening up the little guy for his eventual trip to the umineko-man factory... Protocultured into a giant bird human, well, something for Mira Mira to shot at that she can actually hit.

I'm not quite sold on this Windermere story line, am waiting until the translation come out, but I am hoping there isn't a conspiracy twist somewhere, because there has been no build up to it at this point, the Epsilon guys are just been thrown in. And while Roid would've made for a good O'Connor follow on, his meandering ways make me hope he has no conspiracy plot in mind, it would would make Grace roll over in her cybernetic grave. The one part I did find funny was Roid switching his glasses are the King kicked the bucket. Now, time to put on my new evil glasses with the special side burns.

[UN Spacy]

I saw two Draken's bite the dust in that reaction explosion...poor seacats. Hermann or one of the twins should've died here.

Edited June 26, 2016 by UN Spacy

[kajnrig]

Enjoyed the episode well enough. Voted negative. Some thoughts on this and the previous episode, which I binged together just now (skip if you don't want to read tons and tons of criticism):

- Hayate inherits Messer's plane. Fine. It's tired, it's boring, I would have much preferred it going to Mirage or Arad, but fine.

- Mirage again gets punted to the sideline in favor of developing The Shounen. Uggghhhhh. Is there any reason why she can't inherit the "coming of age"/"realizing true potential" story line? She's a frickin' Jenius, for crying out loud, and while it's great that they made it a particular point of conflict for her, come the frakk on. Don't just turn her into The Love Interest. That's so... ugh. Moving on.

- Actually, let's harp on that point a bit more. Aren't any of you bored that it's only ever The Shounen that gets the Dramatic Skill Level Up? Like I love Macross to death but good god was it boring to watch Shin and Alto (and Hikaru and Isamu and Ozma and Roy and even Luca to an extent and oh my god it really is pretty much every single pilot except The Female Ones, huh?) perform reckless feats of wonder while proclaiming hot-blooded declarations of mamoru as The Female(s) stand(s) on the sideline acting as their cheerleaders. It's so, yes I'll say it, sexist. So casually sexist. Why shouldn't Mirage take on Keith? Why shouldn't she, being platoon (acting) leader and protective of her teammates and yearning to get payback for Messer AND A JENIUS, be the one to inherit the Shinigami? She's developing an extreme fondness for Hayate and she's aware of it, and she's at least on friendly terms with Freyja, and why couldn't that make her turn into Shinigami 2.0? Come the frakk on.

- And I mean if "I Will Mamoru My Koibito" MUST be her motivation to get better, so be it, but surely she has other, just as legitimate reasons to do so. I already mentioned her family legacy, her closer ties to Messer and to Delta (and to Walkure, even) and to the entire planet of Ragna... Ugh. And it's not even just because she's a girl and feminism and all that even though yes that's a huge part of it. She's just a better character than Hayate. She would make the story better. But... gah. I've said too much and now I'm just talking in circles.

- I was hoping for Mirage to give Hayate a firm kiss on the forehead after saving him. Not as a romantic gesture, but more as an authoritative mother figure. It really seemed like she was embracing her role as Delta's second-in-command and would be extra protective of them.

- Action was fine. Getting mildly stale. Calling bollocks to whoever tried to justify the fighter-only dogfighting. Isamu and Guld and everybody else regularly went Battroid/Gerwalk in-atmo, and it made the action more creative, more engaging. The fighter-only engagement at the end of Zero was a neat little callback to the first episode of that OAV, but also nodded to the older tech/strategies being used in general, and then the animators/choreographers/directors/what-have-you began switching it up again. Here, with VFs capable of generating more than sufficient thrust in all three modes to keep everything moving fast, there's no reason why they can't more often change modes other than a lack of creativity (and budget, but I don't think that's the case here).

- You know what would have made sense as a fighter-only Macross show? Go back to the original idea of Delta. Competing air show idol groups. They have access only to old-tech traditional fighters, and the VFs slowly encroach on them as a neighboring conflict does. Gundam 0080-like.

- Sad way for The Sister to go, and actually I'm kind of bitter about that, too. I think the biggest question I have is "Why?". Why bother fleshing her out as much as you did (as little as it was) if all you were going to do was unceremoniously off her? It's not like a Game of Thrones or Walking Dead (or the first few episodes of Blue Gender, if you want to bring it back to anime) thing where characters regularly dying punctuates the bleakness of the story being told. They could have had her play a more... not so much "pivotal" as "on-screen" role as the series progressed, but nope, they just blow... her... up? It is a bit (intentionally, I'd imagine) unclear whether she and the kids died, though the general impression I get is that she did indeed die. Maybe they'll bring her back later on, in which case good on them I suppose, but eh. Kind of a waste of potential all around. Kind of like what's-her-face from Frontier, the big-breasted girl with the purple hair, who also could have been something more interesting than what she ultimately became. (On a side note, frakk off Luca, using this unconscious girl as your romantic motivation when all signs point to her not even being interested and literally doesn't know that you're there, way to creep.)

- Macross Elysion being the big damn heroes, though. Can't hate on that. And it gets the episode's money shot, too, bursting out of the water like the big balls of steel badass that it is.

- Can we get back to focusing on the side characters now? More Arad/Kaname, more of the Captain and the King and those conflicts? You know, the actually interesting parts of the show?

From the previous episode:

- I'm disappointed they didn't bring in someone from Alpha/Beta platoons to fill in for Delta. Some of those characters looked interesting. I'm also disappointed

- I'm also disappointed with how they depicted Mirage, unsurprisingly. Again, she's turning into The Love Interest rather than The Second-in-Command With a Chip On Her Shoulder. Not that she can't be both, but Misa Hayase she is not. That she doesn't reveal herself to Hayate/Freyja works for romantic development, but there hasn't been much of a triangle to this point, so it comes off as awkward and out of character, and more importantly it undermines what relationship DOES exist between the three of them.

[Tobi54]

Hate to be the party pooper but I can't be the only one to notice the SEVERE lack of macross missile massacre on this show, while Satellights CG work keeps getting better (not just the models, look at the water effects on the crash landing after the block) the fight choreography is still mediocre compared to Frontier, which was my worry after learning that Itano's protege was out of the production. I held off on pointing that out after what was in my opinion the weakest ace vs ace showdown of the franchise a couple of episodes ago, but after watching this episode there's no redeeming the lack of originality of the dogfight choreography, it's all chase, shoot gun, close up, zoom out, repeat. There's no circus! .The production value of this episode is through the roof, yet all the missiles are MIA 13 episodes in, it's driving me nuts.

[Seto Kaiba]

All right... settling in to watch the latest episode with a few of my fellow translators. I'm going to summarize our thoughts on this one as we watch.

(Wanted to do this on the big TV at home, but the AC's busted... so we're misappropriating the conference call suite with its lovely HD DLP projector. After all, authority's meant to be abused, right? )

... and we're right back where we left off, for once! If they'd cheated us out of the conclusion of another confrontation I'd have gone right off this show.

Captain Ernest "I suck a space warfare" Johnson actually had the presence of mind to shoot at the Sigur Valens as it started its fold jump... arguably the first time we've seen a ship fire INTO a fold effect, sort of the logical consequence of Macross Frontier's conclusion having the Macross Quarter fire its macross cannon OUT of a fold effect. I wish they'd at least bothered to design a new turret for the Macross Elysion since a decision to reuse the movie variant "quarter cannons" from the SMS Macross Quarter makes the Elysion look much smaller than it's meant to be.

You'd think they'd spring for better animation for the mid-season escalation of the conflict. The scene with the Sigur Valens and its fleet defolding, and the NUNS response to same, is literally a reuse of the footage from last episode with a different planet matted into the background.

No OP this time? I guess that's an OK tradeoff for getting to actually see the NUNS put up a fight before being curbstomped.

The Sigur Valens isn't using its dimensional fault barrier this time? Seems like they're still doing OK with a more conventional omnidirectional barrier system, and it sounds like the New UN Spacy is actually doing some small amount of damage to the ship. Ah, that's why this is an actual fight. Gramia's favorite toy is broken.

It looks like, while the Elysion pulls an about-face and makes the return jump to Ragna, they've sent Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta platoons to reinforce the NUNS via fold booster. My fingers are crossed for a "big damn heroes" moment for the three platoons flying the Kairos.

Weasel-face is once again the voice of reason, but noooooooo...

*sigh* Why is this show so totally averse to showing transformations in dogfights? Every other Macross show did it, why can't they? There was literally a minute long sequence of supposedly by-the-book ace pilot Mirage just sat there with an enemy on her tail when she could easily have taken it out with a quick transformation. The lack of variety in these dogfights is rapidly making them boring. Whoever did the combat choreography needs to either be replaced or made to sit down and watch the previous Macross shows.

OH. SNAP. That's one hell of a boom. That was definitely a thermonuclear reaction bomb, but damn that was not a low-yield one... that fireball was several kilometers across! Just like that, weasel-face killed a couple NUNS pilots and simultaneously scored more confirmed kills against the Aerial Knights than all four of the Elysion's fighter platoons combined. That was such an explosion it knocked the animation quality right out of Hayate! His EX-Gear looks like it was drawn by a five year old when he ejected. At least we got a good moment between him and Mirage out of it before the inevitable reversal.

Ugh... and we're right back where I predicted we'd be last episode. Kaos royally screwed up, everybody on Ragna's getting Var'd, and somehow Windermere managed to turn the NUNS plan to blow the ruins up to their advantage. Not the way I'd predicted they'd do it, but now it looks like they uncovered some new toy to attach to the Sigur Valens. I love how Walkure, a tactical sound unit created to prevent Var outbreaks, is literally doing NOTHING to curtail the Var outbreak on Ragna. They just stand around and react to it for five minutes. Even the song they picked for the counterattack is bad. Hayate taking over Messer's fighter is more cheap sentiment that falls completely flat. They need to stop trying to jerk our heartstrings about Messer's death, because he was an unlikeable tosser. Yeah, it's a cooler paintjob than Hayate's but that's all this is is a paintjob swap.

OK, so we know Alpha, Beta, and Gamma platoons remember what the lever on the left is for. Can they please share the memo to Delta?

Bogue, once again, is out there demonstrating he's the only other person besides weasel-face who's taken the word "tactics" farther than looking it up in a dictionary. Looks like he finally got his wish to have a free shot at Walkure, but of course he won't actually manage to hurt anyone. All he did was get Freyja fired up, for some reason... resulting in yet another case of mood whiplash in this episode. (Also, how is there a camera so close to Freyja while she's falling at faster than terminal velocity?) Ernest gets a big damn heroes moment and screws up, sinking the Elysion and Hemera for most of the rest of the episode. I'm betting that was supposed to work a lot differently in his head.

That, for the record, ladies and gents is the THIRD arm Hayate has misplaced since he joined Kaos. We got a couple more minutes of bland fighter-only dogfighting before Hayate and Keith remember that the bloody left lever does more than just the throttle, and Keith got shot down non-fatally. Then, apparently, Kaos and the NUNS just pack up and leave. They literally had Windermere on the ropes and they LEFT?! What the actual hell! One more shot from the Elysion's main gun and the frigging fight would've been a decisive Kaos/NUNS victory! Instead, they forfeited!

Post-credits... Gramia's dead, eh? I guess it's fine, he was starting to literally crumble earlier on. Now we presumably get to watch the Windermerean side bicker with itself for a while until enough heads are knocked together for them to restore order.

Overall, a neutral review. For a mid-series climax episode this fell far, FAR short of the mark I've come to expect from Macross. They didn't cheat us out of a fight's resolution like they've previously done, but this still felt incredibly unsatisfying. Windermere continues its winning streak despite this being the first time it actually took damage doing so, barely inconvenienced by the New UN Spacy and arguably helped by the Kaos forces from the Macross Elysion being incredibly bad at their jobs. The mood was all over the place, and flight/fight choreography was lazy again... apparently the only maneuvers anyone on the staff knows are the scissors. We had some good character moments for Hayate and Mirage and Hayate and Freyja, but it jumped around way too much and feels disjointed. This should have been a two-parter with better transitions between the segments.

It is my earnest hope that the next episode will see Captain Johnson, Lady M, and Kaos brought to account by the federal New UN Forces for having screwed up SO BADLY that they lost an entire star cluster and ensured nearly eight billion people would end up enslaved by a genocidal despot. Being rolled into the New UN Forces was presented like a bad thing in Frontier, but it could only improve Kaos's forces now...

As protagonists go, Kaos has been the Grand Central Station of disappointment. What's the point of making the New UN Spacy suck so the PMC protagonists can shine if the PMC sucks worse? SMS in Macross Frontier was presented as a seriously elite, professional outfit. Yeah, they had a super-powerful megacorporation ensuring they got to test the New UN Spacy's latest toys in the field before the rank and file got 'em, but their pilots were either extraordinarily talented and highly-trained civilians or former military pilots who practically oozed competence and confidence. SMS was everything popular fiction makes mercenaries out to be much cooler and more effective than they actually are. Macross Delta clearly wants its audience to believe that Kaos is every bit as elite and awesome as SMS, but they keep falling down on the part where they're supposed to actually prove it. If you judge them by their performance, Kaos is the embodiment of everything negative that professional soldiers say about private contractors... a pack of naive, inept crooks who, when the chips are down, can barely hold a rifle right let alone fight properly. It really says something that a sinister-looking soldier we're clearly supposed to dislike achieved more concrete tactical gains in five minutes than Kaos did in twelve episodes.

To paraphrase Rossini... "this show has its good moments, and its bad quarters of an hour."

[grigolosi]

Actually if you notice, Ernies shot in the dark at the folding SV did some good. It looks like it damaged the amplification aperture used by ketchup boy to sing into. He couldn't sing a note until they got near the PC structure after the big M-80 went off. (Seto you are damn correct, that was in no way a "tactical" warhead of any kind...). The scene that showed the aperture showed it glowing and in the 5-6 position there was some smoke coming off of it. The Windermerans had to fight their way to the surface of Ragna. Of course with the SV having an ODB at its disposal it made it.

Edited June 26, 2016 by grigolosi

[Midnight_Wyvern]

My heart can't take this crap. This show won't stop at being my favorite of the franchise, it's got to take over my damn brain.

[kalvasflam]

All right... settling in to watch the latest episode with a few of my fellow translators. I'm going to summarize our thoughts on this one as we watch.

(Wanted to do this on the big TV at home, but the AC's busted... so we're misappropriating the conference call suite with its lovely HD DLP projector. After all, authority's meant to be abused, right? )

... and we're right back where we left off, for once! If they'd cheated us out of the conclusion of another confrontation I'd have gone right off this show.

Captain Ernest "I suck a space warfare" Johnson actually had the presence of mind to shoot at the Sigur Valens as it started its fold jump... arguably the first time we've seen a ship fire INTO a fold effect, sort of the logical consequence of Macross Frontier's conclusion having the Macross Quarter fire its macross cannon OUT of a fold effect. I wish they'd at least bothered to design a new turret for the Macross Elysion since a decision to reuse the movie variant "quarter cannons" from the SMS Macross Quarter makes the Elysion look much smaller than it's meant to be.

You'd think they'd spring for better animation for the mid-season escalation of the conflict. The scene with the Sigur Valens and its fleet defolding, and the NUNS response to same, is literally a reuse of the footage from last episode with a different planet matted into the background.

No OP this time? I guess that's an OK tradeoff for getting to actually see the NUNS put up a fight before being curbstomped.

The Sigur Valens isn't using its dimensional fault barrier this time? Seems like they're still doing OK with a more conventional omnidirectional barrier system, and it sounds like the New UN Spacy is actually doing some small amount of damage to the ship. Ah, that's why this is an actual fight. Gramia's favorite toy is broken.

It looks like, while the Elysion pulls an about-face and makes the return jump to Ragna, they've sent Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta platoons to reinforce the NUNS via fold booster. My fingers are crossed for a "big damn heroes" moment for the three platoons flying the Kairos.

Weasel-face is once again the voice of reason, but noooooooo...

*sigh* Why is this show so totally averse to showing transformations in dogfights? Every other Macross show did it, why can't they? There was literally a minute long sequence of supposedly by-the-book ace pilot Mirage just sat there with an enemy on her tail when she could easily have taken it out with a quick transformation. The lack of variety in these dogfights is rapidly making them boring. Whoever did the combat choreography needs to either be replaced or made to sit down and watch the previous Macross shows.

OH. SNAP. That's one hell of a boom. That was definitely a thermonuclear reaction bomb, but damn that was not a low-yield one... that fireball was several kilometers across! Just like that, weasel-face killed a couple NUNS pilots and simultaneously scored more confirmed kills against the Aerial Knights than all four of the Elysion's fighter platoons combined. That was such an explosion it knocked the animation quality right out of Hayate! His EX-Gear looks like it was drawn by a five year old when he ejected. At least we got a good moment between him and Mirage out of it before the inevitable reversal.

Ugh... and we're right back where I predicted we'd be last episode. Kaos royally screwed up, everybody on Ragna's getting Var'd, and somehow Windermere managed to turn the NUNS plan to blow the ruins up to their advantage. Not the way I'd predicted they'd do it, but now it looks like they uncovered some new toy to attach to the Sigur Valens. I love how Walkure, a tactical sound unit created to prevent Var outbreaks, is literally doing NOTHING to curtail the Var outbreak on Ragna. They just stand around and react to it for five minutes. Even the song they picked for the counterattack is bad. Hayate taking over Messer's fighter is more cheap sentiment that falls completely flat. They need to stop trying to jerk our heartstrings about Messer's death, because he was an unlikeable tosser. Yeah, it's a cooler paintjob than Hayate's but that's all this is is a paintjob swap.

OK, so we know Alpha, Beta, and Gamma platoons remember what the lever on the left is for. Can they please share the memo to Delta?

Bogue, once again, is out there demonstrating he's the only other person besides weasel-face who's taken the word "tactics" farther than looking it up in a dictionary. Looks like he finally got his wish to have a free shot at Walkure, but of course he won't actually manage to hurt anyone. All he did was get Freyja fired up, for some reason... resulting in yet another case of mood whiplash in this episode. (Also, how is there a camera so close to Freyja while she's falling at faster than terminal velocity?) Ernest gets a big damn heroes moment and screws up, sinking the Elysion and Hemera for most of the rest of the episode. I'm betting that was supposed to work a lot differently in his head.

That, for the record, ladies and gents is the THIRD arm Hayate has misplaced since he joined Kaos. We got a couple more minutes of bland fighter-only dogfighting before Hayate and Keith remember that the bloody left lever does more than just the throttle, and Keith got shot down non-fatally. Then, apparently, Kaos and the NUNS just pack up and leave. They literally had Windermere on the ropes and they LEFT?! What the actual hell! One more shot from the Elysion's main gun and the frigging fight would've been a decisive Kaos/NUNS victory! Instead, they forfeited!

Post-credits... Gramia's dead, eh? I guess it's fine, he was starting to literally crumble earlier on. Now we presumably get to watch the Windermerean side bicker with itself for a while until enough heads are knocked together for them to restore order.

Overall, a neutral review. For a mid-series climax episode this fell far, FAR short of the mark I've come to expect from Macross. They didn't cheat us out of a fight's resolution like they've previously done, but this still felt incredibly unsatisfying. Windermere continues its winning streak despite this being the first time it actually took damage doing so, barely inconvenienced by the New UN Spacy and arguably helped by the Kaos forces from the Macross Elysion being incredibly bad at their jobs. The mood was all over the place, and flight/fight choreography was lazy again... apparently the only maneuvers anyone on the staff knows are the scissors. We had some good character moments for Hayate and Mirage and Hayate and Freyja, but it jumped around way too much and feels disjointed. This should have been a two-parter with better transitions between the segments.

It is my earnest hope that the next episode will see Captain Johnson, Lady M, and Kaos brought to account by the federal New UN Forces for having screwed up SO BADLY that they lost an entire star cluster and ensured nearly eight billion people would end up enslaved by a genocidal despot. Being rolled into the New UN Forces was presented like a bad thing in Frontier, but it could only improve Kaos's forces now...

As protagonists go, Kaos has been the Grand Central Station of disappointment. What's the point of making the New UN Spacy suck so the PMC protagonists can shine if the PMC sucks worse? SMS in Macross Frontier was presented as a seriously elite, professional outfit. Yeah, they had a super-powerful megacorporation ensuring they got to test the New UN Spacy's latest toys in the field before the rank and file got 'em, but their pilots were either extraordinarily talented and highly-trained civilians or former military pilots who practically oozed competence and confidence. SMS was everything popular fiction makes mercenaries out to be much cooler and more effective than they actually are. Macross Delta clearly wants its audience to believe that Kaos is every bit as elite and awesome as SMS, but they keep falling down on the part where they're supposed to actually prove it. If you judge them by their performance, Kaos is the embodiment of everything negative that professional soldiers say about private contractors... a pack of naive, inept crooks who, when the chips are down, can barely hold a rifle right let alone fight properly. It really says something that a sinister-looking soldier we're clearly supposed to dislike achieved more concrete tactical gains in five minutes than Kaos did in twelve episodes.

To paraphrase Rossini... "this show has its good moments, and its bad quarters of an hour."

This all makes sense considering the setting, they are all in some backwater cluster that nobody gives two figs about, so it's a place where they dump all of the losers like KAOS, from that perspective, suddenly, all of the poor decisions make perfect sense.

Let's face it, the Aerial knight as they have been presented are a bunch of losers, they would not have stood a chance against the SMS crew from Frontier. And it is obvious that Mirage is truly the black sheep, the Jenius family must have had genetic testing done and determined ahead of time how limited poor Mirage was going to be, so they dumped her out where she couldn't cause too many problems.

I think this would go a long way to explaining all of the leave before the fight is over, none of these guys are professionals. If the Vajra ever came to this part of the galaxy, it would be a massacre

[grigolosi]

Why do these fleets wait until the enemy has completely defolded to even think about opening fire. Seriously they know that the SV is huge and they can detect its size before it defolds. They know what these yahoo's are doing and how they do it. As soon as they detect the ship getting ready to defold....fire! Don't let them get a chance to fire a shot or let ketchup boy start singing.......Crewman- "Sir we have a massive object getting ready to defold!" Captain- "Well it could be any big ship defolding even though we are expecting the guys from Windermere to attack, hold your fire until we get a confirmed visual and sensor reading"..........Oh crap its Ketchup boy singing his opera again.....damn I guess it was those pesky Windermerans......

[charles88]

I completely disagree with you about NUNS officer

It really says something that a sinister-looking soldier we're clearly supposed to dislike achieved more concrete tactical gains in five minutes than Kaos did in twelve episodes

I dont know why you keep supporting him as this episode reveals the NUG representative and his lot are scum who simply blew up the ruins to collect data and left their own men to die, along with plenty civilians and didn't care about the damage to the planet. They just left everybody to rot when they got their data on exposed ruin. To me i says he most likely one of the corrupt officer who worked with third party conspirator.

[nexxstrait]

Blink and you miss it but there ARE battroids in this episode

And lot of gerwalk too.

[Master Dex]

GG says subs are delayed btw.. because... something about sending someone to In&Out... Which I can't really say I wouldn't do, lol.

Edited June 27, 2016 by Master Dex

[kalvasflam]

In&Out? Just get someone to Google Express the damned things... HYAKU, HYAKU, I don't want to wait, starve a little... just get the sub done.

By the way, is it me, or did Freyja start saying "PEW PEW PEW" during her falling through the sky? I was really concerned she was going to start shouting "DIE DIE DIE"

Edited June 27, 2016 by kalvasflam

[SuperHobo]

Getting In and Out or subbing anime? I would get the In and Out too. I still hope they can get the episode out today.

[Seto Kaiba]

Actually if you notice, Ernies shot in the dark at the folding SV did some good. It looks like it damaged the amplification aperture used by ketchup boy to sing into. He couldn't sing a note until they got near the PC structure after the big M-80 went off. (Seto you are damn correct, that was in no way a "tactical" warhead of any kind...). The scene that showed the aperture showed it glowing and in the 5-6 position there was some smoke coming off of it. The Windermerans had to fight their way to the surface of Ragna. Of course with the SV having an ODB at its disposal it made it.

Oh, we noticed. Captain Johnson did get lucky in that his shot damaged the Sigur Valens slightly and gave them maybe half an hour before Heinz was able to sing the Song of the Wind, but it didn't really affect the battle's outcome much. I guess this means Heinz isn't a very powerful Wind Singer, since Freyja doesn't need mechanical amplification to produce results and Heinz apparently does.[

Think I'm gonna start calling Heinz "ketchup boy" too... after all, look what his song did to Messer.

This all makes sense considering the setting, they are all in some backwater cluster that nobody gives two figs about, so it's a place where they dump all of the losers like KAOS, from that perspective, suddenly, all of the poor decisions make perfect sense.

Let's face it, the Aerial knight as they have been presented are a bunch of losers, they would not have stood a chance against the SMS crew from Frontier. And it is obvious that Mirage is truly the black sheep, the Jenius family must have had genetic testing done and determined ahead of time how limited poor Mirage was going to be, so they dumped her out where she couldn't cause too many problems.

I think this would go a long way to explaining all of the leave before the fight is over, none of these guys are professionals. If the Vajra ever came to this part of the galaxy, it would be a massacre

Yeah, I guess you could chalk part of their ineffectual performance up to being the scrubs stationed out in the galactic boonies... though you'd think that, as a private army owned and operated by one of the galaxy's megacorporations and contracted to provide for the planetary defense of Ragna, Kaos would at least be a little better than the glorified militia that the local NUNS was. There's none of the professionalism or rigor that we saw with SMS, and they were a private army owned by friggin' Space UPS.

It kind of chafes that, after so long spent depicting the UN Spacy as being a fairly competent organization - and even the NUNS taking a level in badass in the second half of Frontier - that we're expected to scorn the New UN Spacy in favor of an amateur-hour operation like Kaos.

Of the lot of them, only Mirage and Messer seemed to have an ounce of professionalism... Mirage's only real failing was being, if anything, so obsessed with professionalism and rules that she made herself into a fairly predictable pilot. When you start thinking about it like this, you gain a little sympathy for Messer for entirely the wrong reason. No wonder he was the fun police... the poor guy was the only serious soldier in the Kaos Clown College, and consequentially their only decent ace.

Why do these fleets wait until the enemy has completely defolded to even think about opening fire. Seriously they know that the SV is huge and they can detect its size before it defolds. They know what these yahoo's are doing and how they do it. As soon as they detect the ship getting ready to defold....fire! Don't let them get a chance to fire a shot or let ketchup boy start singing.......Crewman- "Sir we have a massive object getting ready to defold!" Captain- "Well it could be any big ship defolding even though we are expecting the guys from Windermere to attack, hold your fire until we get a confirmed visual and sensor reading"..........Oh crap its Ketchup boy singing his opera again.....damn I guess it was those pesky Windermerans......

Well, presumably they're waiting until enough of the enemy ship is in realspace to actually score a hit... barrier technology actually works on space fold principles, so it's possible that folding may provide a temporary protection from incoming fire because of the localized distortion of space.

Still, you raise a fair point. They spent entirely too much time gawping at the Sigur Valens and its escorts and not nearly enough time filling the intervening space with beams of fusion plasma. Or, maybe launching missiles timed such that they'll arrive at the target a second or two after the defold completes. The tactics would probably be a lot more sound if the NUNS weren't meant to be the scrubs who take one on the chin so Kaos doesn't have to.

I completely disagree with you about NUNS officer

I dont know why you keep supporting him as this episode reveals the NUG representative and his lot are scum who simply blew up the ruins to collect data and left their own men to die, along with plenty civilians and didn't care about the damage to the planet. They just left everybody to rot when they got their data on exposed ruin. To me i says he most likely one of the corrupt officer who worked with third party conspirator.

Um... you're misplacing the blame here.

Did you forget that the plan Major Valan relayed, as voiced in the previous episode, was to blow up the ruins with a thermonuclear reaction warhead before Windermere's forces arrived? If Lady M hadn't poked her oar in and gotten the NUNS to delay the detonation until after the Kaos counterattack on Al Shahal that ended up playing right into King Gramia's hands, the civilian evacuation probably would've been finished in a timely fashion instead of waiting until the last damn second and the detonation would've been done with no friendly forces in the blast zone. Because of Lady M, they delayed the blast and almost certainly slowed the evacuation down... leaving them in the unenviable position of having to detonate before the evacuation was finished and with their own forces nearby.

All that loss of life? That's on Lady M and Kaos.

Of course, if it hadn't been for that barrier on the Sigur Valens, Major Valan would've just won the entire war outright with a single bomb... he managed to catch the entire Windermere fleet in the blast. He missed one-shotting the enemy by a matter of a few seconds.

[Heron]

Thank you, Kajinrig, for articulating what I felt about the Valk combat. All in all your comment about Itanos protégé being out explains a lot.

[starla]

Enjoyed the episode well enough. Voted negative. Some thoughts on this and the previous episode, which I binged together just now (skip if you don't want to read tons and tons of criticism):

- Hayate inherits Messer's plane. Fine. It's tired, it's boring, I would have much preferred it going to Mirage or Arad, but fine.

- Mirage again gets punted to the sideline in favor of developing The Shounen. Uggghhhhh. Is there any reason why she can't inherit the "coming of age"/"realizing true potential" story line? She's a frickin' Jenius, for crying out loud, and while it's great that they made it a particular point of conflict for her, come the frakk on. Don't just turn her into The Love Interest. That's so... ugh. Moving on.

- Actually, let's harp on that point a bit more. Aren't any of you bored that it's only ever The Shounen that gets the Dramatic Skill Level Up? Like I love Macross to death but good god was it boring to watch Shin and Alto (and Hikaru and Isamu and Ozma and Roy and even Luca to an extent and oh my god it really is pretty much every single pilot except The Female Ones, huh?) perform reckless feats of wonder while proclaiming hot-blooded declarations of mamoru as The Female(s) stand(s) on the sideline acting as their cheerleaders. It's so, yes I'll say it, sexist. So casually sexist. Why shouldn't Mirage take on Keith? Why shouldn't she, being platoon (acting) leader and protective of her teammates and yearning to get payback for Messer AND A JENIUS, be the one to inherit the Shinigami? She's developing an extreme fondness for Hayate and she's aware of it, and she's at least on friendly terms with Freyja, and why couldn't that make her turn into Shinigami 2.0? Come the frakk on.

- And I mean if "I Will Mamoru My Koibito" MUST be her motivation to get better, so be it, but surely she has other, just as legitimate reasons to do so. I already mentioned her family legacy, her closer ties to Messer and to Delta (and to Walkure, even) and to the entire planet of Ragna... Ugh. And it's not even just because she's a girl and feminism and all that even though yes that's a huge part of it. She's just a better character than Hayate. She would make the story better. But... gah. I've said too much and now I'm just talking in circles.

- I was hoping for Mirage to give Hayate a firm kiss on the forehead after saving him. Not as a romantic gesture, but more as an authoritative mother figure. It really seemed like she was embracing her role as Delta's second-in-command and would be extra protective of them.

- Action was fine. Getting mildly stale. Calling bollocks to whoever tried to justify the fighter-only dogfighting. Isamu and Guld and everybody else regularly went Battroid/Gerwalk in-atmo, and it made the action more creative, more engaging. The fighter-only engagement at the end of Zero was a neat little callback to the first episode of that OAV, but also nodded to the older tech/strategies being used in general, and then the animators/choreographers/directors/what-have-you began switching it up again. Here, with VFs capable of generating more than sufficient thrust in all three modes to keep everything moving fast, there's no reason why they can't more often change modes other than a lack of creativity (and budget, but I don't think that's the case here).

- You know what would have made sense as a fighter-only Macross show? Go back to the original idea of Delta. Competing air show idol groups. They have access only to old-tech traditional fighters, and the VFs slowly encroach on them as a neighboring conflict does. Gundam 0080-like.

- Sad way for The Sister to go, and actually I'm kind of bitter about that, too. I think the biggest question I have is "Why?". Why bother fleshing her out as much as you did (as little as it was) if all you were going to do was unceremoniously off her? It's not like a Game of Thrones or Walking Dead (or the first few episodes of Blue Gender, if you want to bring it back to anime) thing where characters regularly dying punctuates the bleakness of the story being told. They could have had her play a more... not so much "pivotal" as "on-screen" role as the series progressed, but nope, they just blow... her... up? It is a bit (intentionally, I'd imagine) unclear whether she and the kids died, though the general impression I get is that she did indeed die. Maybe they'll bring her back later on, in which case good on them I suppose, but eh. Kind of a waste of potential all around. Kind of like what's-her-face from Frontier, the big-breasted girl with the purple hair, who also could have been something more interesting than what she ultimately became. (On a side note, frakk off Luca, using this unconscious girl as your romantic motivation when all signs point to her not even being interested and literally doesn't know that you're there, way to creep.)

- Macross Elysion being the big damn heroes, though. Can't hate on that. And it gets the episode's money shot, too, bursting out of the water like the big balls of steel badass that it is.

- Can we get back to focusing on the side characters now? More Arad/Kaname, more of the Captain and the King and those conflicts? You know, the actually interesting parts of the show?

From the previous episode:

- I'm disappointed they didn't bring in someone from Alpha/Beta platoons to fill in for Delta. Some of those characters looked interesting. I'm also disappointed

- I'm also disappointed with how they depicted Mirage, unsurprisingly. Again, she's turning into The Love Interest rather than The Second-in-Command With a Chip On Her Shoulder. Not that she can't be both, but Misa Hayase she is not. That she doesn't reveal herself to Hayate/Freyja works for romantic development, but there hasn't been much of a triangle to this point, so it comes off as awkward and out of character, and more importantly it undermines what relationship DOES exist between the three of them.

hohohoh... you wouldn't believe the high hopes i had...

when i saw the character line-up before the series started - squeed so hard that there will be a badass flygirl!

have i expected too much??? my heart dropped when i saw Haya-haya in Messer's valk. sigh, i wished it was THAT story but it's turning out not to be... i'm a total sucker so maybe the badass flygirl plot will find its way into the second half. copious amount of optimism needs apply

on a separate note, the female characterisation for Delta has been pretty disappointing & my coping mechanism is to just sit back & enjoy the ride. i can't afford to burst anymore blood vessels

[UN Spacy]

SUBS ARE OUT!

[kalvasflam]

hohohoh... you wouldn't believe the high hopes i had...

when i saw the character line-up before the series started - squeed so hard that there will be a badass flygirl!

have i expected too much??? my heart dropped when i saw Haya-haya in Messer's valk. sigh, i wished it was THAT story but it's turning out not to be... i'm a total sucker so maybe the badass flygirl plot will find its way into the second half. copious amount of optimism needs apply

on a separate note, the female characterisation for Delta has been pretty disappointing & my coping mechanism is to just sit back & enjoy the ride. i can't afford to burst anymore blood vessels

You know I think we all want another Milia, except we aren't that lucky.

It wouldn't hurt to have a female ace, a female idol, and a male... uh... male... uh.... I'm not sure what useful role to cast the male in. Gawd, it would be like the males are redundant except as pilots. Come to think of it, the closest Macross ever came to a male lead that wasn't a pilot was Mac7; and even then, Basara was a pilot.

[daflip702]

I'm seriously beginning to think that these "stick a letter in - platoons" and "A. Knights" are just a bunch of amateurs. It makes a lot of sense, hear me out. Ernest is considered a loser who taught Gramia. Mirage is lacking in genetics from the Jenius family adopted. A Breakdancer Hayate who can only do anything productive when he hears music (mention, he got fired from his last job). Messer is dead. Chuck runs with the family restaurant. Bouge only targets Walkure and fails. every. single. time. Roid is maybe the worst strategist I ever saw. Ketchup Boy is sick. Herman might die soon due to old age. Freya is a stowaway. Kaname is an idol has been. Mikumo is a nudist. Makina and Reina are in the closet......


%#@!^. Sounds like a motley crew of the damned. It's like watching 6yr olds play COD multiplayer. We are getting trolled by SK.


I would have to agree with everyone complaining about the lack of battroid/Gerwalk combat. Aces use battroid/gerwalk mode in atmosphere. It has been done. nuff said. I'll bet my bottom dollar that any of those Aces from the other series would mop the floor with these rookies and be back home by lunchtime.


On another note....Did any think it was hilarious when "Ketchup Boy" was blown away?

Edited June 27, 2016 by daflip702

[kuyaaids]

There were at the start of the fight. When the bomb goes off somebody's Draken gets Kakizakied.

Maybe a no-name Windermerean pilot probably

[charles88]

Um... you're misplacing the blame here.

Did you forget that the plan Major Valan relayed, as voiced in the previous episode, was to blow up the ruins with a thermonuclear reaction warhead before Windermere's forces arrived? If Lady M hadn't poked her oar in and gotten the NUNS to delay the detonation until after the Kaos counterattack on Al Shahal that ended up playing right into King Gramia's hands, the civilian evacuation probably would've been finished in a timely fashion instead of waiting until the last damn second and the detonation would've been done with no friendly forces in the blast zone. Because of Lady M, they delayed the blast and almost certainly slowed the evacuation down... leaving them in the unenviable position of having to detonate before the evacuation was finished and with their own forces nearby.

All that loss of life? That's on Lady M and Kaos.

Of course, if it hadn't been for that barrier on the Sigur Valens, Major Valan would've just won the entire war outright with a single bomb... he managed to catch the entire Windermere fleet in the blast. He missed one-shotting the enemy by a matter of a few seconds.

Once again i disagree with you and completely puzzled WHY you keep picture Valan a real good guy

Valan actually makes things worse no matter bomb denote earlier or not as it exposed the ruin true form as it allows Windermere use its function to full potential without excavating which take more time.Also the way he says as if he knew this would happen as subs mention he says about scientist predicted that and even have gall to massacred civilian and his own allies to exposed ruin and order retreat AFTER gathering data of the ruin instead of protecting planet to the last just show that he has evil hidden agenda and possibly one of the third party conspirator. I think Lady M knew that denoate the ruin will expose its true form and try to prevent it to happen. I wonder what reason you THINK Valan is good guy as he easily willing to civilian and his own allies for his own agenda?

Edited June 27, 2016 by charles88