Macross Δ (Delta) - Mission 22 - READ 1st POST

[Aries Turner]

That's assuming the movie is still a thing.

No, no... what I am assuming here is the movie is a thing already. I am assuming the whole problem is because it is already done, awaiting to be aired (to the winds), following the events as told in #13 and hoping to make those extra 13 episodes end right as it already was at #13.

I'm crushed they didn't reenact that one scene from Titanic out on the bow of the Sigur Valens.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Aries Turner

[Product9]

I was mistaken, the animation from Sayonara no Tsubasa wasn't reversed to make the PV1 animation. I must have been watching a reversed YouTube clip earlier when I was looking for the SnT animation that was in my memory.

Checked my copy and made a little GIF to show what I'm on about. I couldn't quite get them synced up exactly 'cause the videos I sourced were at different frame rates, but I got pretty close I think.

Imgur Link

[Zinjo]

The best answer I can think up is "it shows that you care." If they're just going to reuse the same stuff over and over, they might as well just record the battle scenes using the latest Macross flavored video game and call it good. Heck, they can produce the whole anime that way. Why even have voice actors when text bubbles will get the same story across?

I'm calling it now - the next Macross show is going to have a "www.Bandicam.com" watermark on top of the screen.

Though, I'm a little confused as to why they don't at least change the camera angles to make the animation at least seem kind of new. Isn't one of the benefits of CG that you can move the camera and lights around really easily without actually having to create any new content? Admittedly I'm far from professional level at computer graphics, so there is probably some trick they're using like prebaked lighting or something that I don't know about. But given the models are different (such as the Draken chasing the -31 in PV1 being a reversed shot of Brera's VF-27 chasing the YF-29) wouldn't they have to rerender everything anyway? Might as well tweak the paths or change the camera angle to give it a fresh feel.

True. If you have to render new skins, changing a few details to give the illusion of a new sequence couldn't hurt (it isn't like it requires a whole new set of cells). Though we have no idea what kind of budget or time constraints the production team is under. Sponsors want to get the most bang for their buck so spend no unecessary money is the mantra. Nothing new on either side of the Pacific...

What would be cool is to produce different action sequences as opposed to the recycled TV broadcast versions for the home video releases of the show. This could be billed as a marketing draw to sell more units.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Zinjo

[Product9]

What would be cool is to produce different action sequences as opposed to the recycled TV broadcast versions for the home video releases of the show. This could be billed as a marketing draw to sell more units.

They sort of did that with Frontier. Apart from fixing animation errors (which was good), they also added some extra recycled fluff to the final battle. Mostly a lot more ships and Valkyries blowing up right before the part with Alto being woken up by Ranka's singing. IMO it sort of cheapened the whole thing because, like I said before, my eyes are drawn right to recycled animation. It made it feel exactly like what it was - stock footage crammed in for no good reason.

But, yeah, with 3d models changing the angle doesn't mean much. That's what makes them so efficient - they're 3d. The only thing I can guess is they have some caching or baking that speeds up re renders with different textures, but to me it just seems like they are being lazy. Just changing the camera angle a bit would add something new. But, again, I have no idea how they do things over there and can only draw from my own limited experience in 3d graphics. Also, they cheat in some shots, like the VF-171's gunpod appearing out of nowhere behind the machine as it transforms, so changing the camera angle in that instance would give that away.

[Valkyrie addict]

Delta, just like Frontier, was made only to sell toys and music.

Only way I can show my discontent is not to buy their stuff, didn't do it with Frontier, as hell I won't do it now, I love the mechanical designs of Delta but no...just no.

I really wish I could hear what do Japanese fans think of the show.

[sharky]

'cuz now he has Freya *AND* Mirage, not just Freya. (at least, that's what I thought they were blatantly implying)

Wouldn't be surpised if Hayate uses this as an excuse to push for a threesome. "C'mon, it's for medicinal purposes, it evens me out dude!"

On another note, I'm going to interpret Mikumo's Walkure gesture after she slapped Freyja as a Walkure middle finger.

[Seto Kaiba]

No one loved Messer enough to try. There lies that tragedy.

Not even the audience.

Not to mention the whole "Oh.. how'd we get out of prison?" bit. The writers seem to have developed an uncontrollable fetish for leaving serious issues completely unresolved with no explanation. Are they just repeatedly writing themselves into corners they can't get out of, or are they so desperate for padding to fill in the plot with that they're just throwing plot threads at the wall like spaghetti and hoping something sticks?

In all honesty, I have this weird suspicion based on the way the guard had NO PROBLEM letting Kaname into the same hospital wing as a patient that, if Walkure had foregone the attempted break-in and simply showed their IDs and asked to visit Mikumo, the guards would've had zero problem letting them in and would probably have asked for autographs.

Like... getting tossed in the clink for an episode was a "Why did you do that? You could've walked right in the front door any time you wanted!" thing.

Can anyone explain to me why Hayate doesn't just take off the fold quartz pendant? That was what was allowing him to resonate with Freyja, right?

Alto put on the earring to tap into the fold song. Hayate could take off the pendant to tap out.

Right?

And remove his Orphan's Plot Coupon? NEVER!

No, no... what I am assuming here is the movie is a thing already. I am assuming the whole problem is because it is already done, awaiting to be aired (to the winds), following the events as told in #13 and hoping to make those extra 13 episodes end right as it already was at #13.

From what we've been told, it sounds like the movie was intended to be a wrap-up/climax rather than a compilation movie like DYRL? or the others.

It sounds like the stuff that was earmarked for the movie got rolled into the 2nd cour, so there may not be a plan to do a movie after adapting the movie's plot for the extended series.

[trojan_gambit]

Seriously though, the explanation in the Blu-Ray special features is stupid too... there's really no reason for the body suits to be completely transparent or for the holographic projector harness to be underwear. It's fanservice and nothing else... one more serious flaw in an overwhelming litany of flaws that plague this series.

Honestly, what it feels like is fan fiction. BAD fan fiction. The kind of bad fan-fiction you normally have to go to the eight letter R word for.

Can't even be sure if Makina's voluptuous body is real or just holo projection too.

Macross Delta had some pretty glaring problems even before the second half went to hell. A bunch of its cast are blatant expys of the more popular characters in Frontier, and the cast is so huge that characterization got spread awfully thin and left almost the entire cast a collection of flat characters, and many of them aren't really relevant to the plot at all. They expect us to care about all these flat, largely useless characters like Theo, Xao, Qasim, Makina, Reina, Kaname, Messer, etc. Several of them, like Makina, Reina, and the twins, are obviously only in the show to throw the h-dojinshi circles a bone and could be deleted from the series without consequence.

The same as Mirage doesn't have to be a Jenius.

[Sandman]

Delta, just like Frontier, was made only to sell toys and music.

Only way I can show my discontent is not to buy their stuff, didn't do it with Frontier, as hell I won't do it now, I love the mechanical designs of Delta but no...just no.

With the lack of mecha action and add ons for the 31 i'm beginning to think it was only made to promote walkure with some small tidbits thrown to the mecha crowd.

[Graham]

What's all this talk of a movie suddenly? Has there been any official announcement?

I mean I kinda assume they will be making a movie or two, but I don't recall seeing any news about it so far?

Ah never mind, just read page 3 of this thread (was reading backwards from page 5......hahaha).

For the first time in Macross history, they've managed to take a great set of mechanical designs, great music, a handful of engaging characters, and an enormous and well-developed setting and produce a whole that is somehow significantly less than the sum of its parts.

Completely agree.

[Graham]

I think it's obvious that when told to expand the series past 13 episodes, they either didn't have the budget for much mecha action, or given the popularity of Walkure's songs decided to focus more on the girls and their singing, rather than anything mecha related.

It's a shame, as this series started with such promise, but really went downhill fast after episode 13 and I think we can all agree it's not just due to the lack of mecha action but also many other factors as well.

[Xigfrid]

I haven't seen anyone mentioning the previous episode ending (mission 21) ? Have I missed something in ep 22 ? Keith was supposed to have a revelation in the singing chamber about a new technology breakthrough during ep22 ...

[Roy Focker]

You'd think they'd ask for more money with the requests for more episodes.

"We like what you did with those 13 episodes and your budget of 13 million. If we give you an extra 2 million can you make us 13 more episode?"

Who agrees to that?

[squaresphere]

Ultimately it boils down to bad writing and direction. The combat action shows there's a lack of creativity in choregraphy direction. Writing wise its obvious that there was probably a lack of direction in trying to create believable motivation that would result in credible action.

Example, Makina and Reina. There's been enough scenes where one or the other is in life threating danger that would give a reason to booster their song power but that trope is never used... so why even have them sing on the battlefield other than to be potential targets?

Combat, honestly the last "creative" battle choregraphy we saw was the astroid battle where they were using the surfaces to convserve fuel. Post that it's all been scissor in the sky. Now M+ broke this up by combining low and high altitude fighting even to the point of using ground terrian. Honestly, Delta platoon might have benefited more from this tactic. That being said it would have costed more from an animation perspective to introduce more transformations and ground related combat. That being said, I wonder how hard it would have been to take some of MF VF25 combat animations and apply them to the VF31. Shortcut? yes but breaking up the action types would have been worth it.

[azrael]

You'd think they'd ask for more money with the requests for more episodes.

"We like what you did with those 13 episodes and your budget of 13 million. If we give you an extra 2 million can you make us 13 more episode?"

Who agrees to that?

I don't think it's money in that sense. Obviously, expanding the series would give them more money but you've spent all the time making the first half look good and now you've been ask to crank out another 12-13 episodes when you only planned for 13. That means you'll need to pay the animators more to crank out drawings (man power). They likely spent long hours making the first half look good. Now they have to do more, but with less time. And with CGI, unless you want to shell out more $$$$$ for a new cluster to help render brand new CGI, it's not going to happen in time. Since Time = Money, they didn't have the time to crank out everything without spending a lot more cash on equipment or man-power. They may have gotten double the budget, but they now had less time to work on everything.

With the story pacing, all the plot points we've been screaming about that should have happen earlier in the show would have happened sooner if they were in a movie. They took those plot points that would have filled about 3 minutes of movie time and stretched it out to fill 23 minutes of TV time. So when we say, "Why didn't this happen sooner?" is because if this was a movie, it would have happened sooner. If the cut out >1/2 from each episode since Episode 13, the story would fit well in a movie format. Stretching it out, dragging out those movie plot points unfortunately isn't paying off.

[RedWolf]

I haven't seen anyone mentioning the previous episode ending (mission 21) ? Have I missed something in ep 22 ? Keith was supposed to have a revelation in the singing chamber about a new technology breakthrough during ep22 ...

You mean Roid. With Heinz dying his plans wont work. He keeps asking who the hell is Mikumo to be able to destroy the Protoculture structures. The chamber provides the answer, the Star Singer. Given her genetic memory Mikumo is likely cloned from a Protoculture Star Singer. Which means she has greater admin rights to the system than Heinz. With Mikumo infiltrating Windermere Roid has her where he wants. .

[Zinjo]

I don't think it's money in that sense. Obviously, expanding the series would give them more money but you've spent all the time making the first half look good and now you've been ask to crank out another 12-13 episodes when you only planned for 13. That means you'll need to pay the animators more to crank out drawings (man power). They likely spent long hours making the first half look good. Now they have to do more, but with less time. And with CGI, unless you want to shell out more $$$$$ for a new cluster to help render brand new CGI, it's not going to happen in time. Since Time = Money, they didn't have the time to crank out everything without spending a lot more cash on equipment or man-power. They may have gotten double the budget, but they now had less time to work on everything.

With the story pacing, all the plot points we've been screaming about that should have happen earlier in the show would have happened sooner if they were in a movie. They took those plot points that would have filled about 3 minutes of movie time and stretched it out to fill 23 minutes of TV time. So when we say, "Why didn't this happen sooner?" is because if this was a movie, it would have happened sooner. If the cut out >1/2 from each episode since Episode 13, the story would fit well in a movie format. Stretching it out, dragging out those movie plot points unfortunately isn't paying off.

Exactly.

When you look at SDFM, every episode after 27 (the original end of the series) was paced out and with the exception of the two "spacer" episodes the story flowed well. Then the additional 9 episodes ordered by the sponsors that were tacked on at the end seemed out of place and forced. The irony is that those 9 episodes formed the foundation of what Macross has become today...

Delta had it's production schedule up-ended at episode 4 (The question is when did this happen, in pre-production or during airing?), so the plan had to be hastily re-worked and to do any re-writes on the fly is never a good thing. Very few writers or writing teams are capable of producing a coherent story this way.

I wonder if the whole provocative "connection" between the Elysion and the City ship was a metaphor as to how Kawamori felt about the change in the production schedule? I'm sure as studio president he had a few projects lined up for after this show and this change affected his schedule and possibly some potential bookings.

In essence Delta feels like an inverted M7. Where the story started in 7 after the halfway point, with the music taking up most of the first season.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Zinjo

[Zinjo]

You mean Roid. With Heinz dying his plans wont work. He keeps asking who the hell is Mikumo to be able to destroy the Protoculture structures. The chamber provides the answer, the Star Singer. Given her genetic memory Mikumo is likely cloned from a Protoculture Star Singer. Which means she has greater admin rights to the system than Heinz. With Mikumo infiltrating Windermere Roid has her where he wants. .

That is not how she was made according to what has been revealed. She was cloned with fold quartz imbedded within her cells. That may well be how a Star Singer was created, but there is no evidence she was cloned from a PC.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Zinjo

[ayaxr]

Combat, honestly the last "creative" battle choregraphy we saw was the astroid battle where they were using the surfaces to convserve fuel. Post that it's all been scissor in the sky. Now M+ broke this up by combining low and high altitude fighting even to the point of using ground terrian. Honestly, Delta platoon might have benefited more from this tactic. That being said it would have costed more from an animation perspective to introduce more transformations and ground related combat. That being said, I wonder how hard it would have been to take some of MF VF25 combat animations and apply them to the VF31. Shortcut? yes but breaking up the action types would have been worth it.

Pretty sad this is what we're seeing from a Macross series. I think you described it best... Always scissors in the sky, with the corny "wind/music" effects tacked onto the fighters...

I don't necessarily want the mecha to be the one and only center plot for an Macross anime, but it sure as hell should play an important role. To be honest save for a very small number of scenes this whole story can be done WITHOUT the need or purpose of transformable mecha.

[cwmodels]

Honestly, what it feels like is fan fiction. BAD fan fiction. The kind of bad fan-fiction you normally have to go to the eight letter R word for.

Macross Delta had some pretty glaring problems even before the second half went to hell. A bunch of its cast are blatant expys of the more popular characters in Frontier, and the cast is so huge that characterization got spread awfully thin and left almost the entire cast a collection of flat characters, and many of them aren't really relevant to the plot at all. They expect us to care about all these flat, largely useless characters like Theo, Xao, Qasim, Makina, Reina, Kaname, Messer, etc. Several of them, like Makina, Reina, and the twins, are obviously only in the show to throw the h-dojinshi circles a bone and could be deleted from the series without consequence.

The first half of the series is better, but if you go back and rewatch it you quickly notice that the characters are present... but don't seem to be at all involved in the story until the last two episodes. Stuff is happening around them, but all they can do is react to it with dull surprise until the attack on Ragna. Nothing they do has any real effect on Windermere's advance and the Aerial Knights. In short, they're not really participating. Literally everything they do either achieves no result or helps Windermere, and for the majority of the series they don't seem to even care. They actually attempt to stop the NUNS from taking a proactive stance to oppose Windermere, which is full-on "Whose side are you on, anyway?". They do such a sh*t-awful job that it's impossible to take them seriously as an elite mercenary outfit hired to protect the Brisingr Cluster when they achieve nothing, practically hand the cluster to Windermere with a bow on it, and their leader's only character trait besides being XBOX HUGE is that he's renowed for being really phenomenally bad at his job. Lady M is no better, since she seems to be holding an idiot ball up until Windermere seizes Ragna, and then quietly vanishes into the background.

For the first time in Macross history, they've managed to take a great set of mechanical designs, great music, a handful of engaging characters, and an enormous and well-developed setting and produce a whole that is somehow significantly less than the sum of its parts.

Macross II and Macross 7 used to be the fandom whipping boys for being unimaginative in story or mediocre in animation and design... but now we have Macross Delta, a show we can point to and definitively say "This is how you do a Macross series wrong."

I actually liked the first half of Delta a lot. It was very colorful and fun and different and felt like it was geared toward a younger audience. Despite being a bit clunky in the story pacing, there were a lot of energy in every episode with the way they intercut the songs and action scenes. There was a certain exciting momentum of discovery that propelled the show forward. I had a good time watching and rewatching every episode.

I felt it was more character driven with emphasis on Hayate & Freyja's journey from episodes 1-8, so I was willing to forgive some of the story pacing flaws and letting many of the characters being pushed into the background. And it worked pretty well by following those two from joining the team and discovering their powers and abilities and how they fit into their whole grand scheme of things in the Windermere War. It also seems like they were setting up matches and conflicts between certain characters from both sides which will pan out in the later parts of the story.

Then Episode 9 starts to focus on Message and Kagame and Arad, so I thought: "Great! they are gonna develop those 3 characters now with a second triangle and it'll continue to be a revolving door of shifting focus from characters to characters throughout the series"... But then it all went down from there with Messe's death. The show drifted aimlessly in space in the second half like the characters in them.

What I also find troubling is the sudden injection of fan-services into the second half which I think really cheapens this show even further. I felt uncomfortable watching those scenes and don't find it matching the fun, lighter tone of the earlier parts of the series. You didn't need it in the first half to sell the show, why stick it in now? It kinda feels like they are just spinning their wheels in mud and not know how to get the audience's attention anymore unless they default to typical anime cliches or go lowbrow.

It's just really disappointing.

[ayaxr]

I actually liked the first half of Delta a lot. It was very colorful and fun and different and felt like it was geared toward a younger audience. Despite being a bit clunky in the story pacing, there were a lot of energy in every episode with the way they intercut the songs and action scenes. There was a certain exciting momentum of discovery that propelled the show forward. I had a good time watching and rewatching every episode.

I felt it was more character driven with emphasis on Hayate & Freyja's journey from episodes 1-8, so I was willing to forgive some of the story pacing flaws and letting many of the characters being pushed into the background. And it worked pretty well by following those two from joining the team and discovering their powers and abilities and how they fit into their whole grand scheme of things in the Windermere War. It also seems like they were setting up matches and conflicts between certain characters from both sides which will pan out in the later parts of the story.

Then Episode 9 starts to focus on Message and Kagame and Arad, so I thought: "Great! they are gonna develop those 3 characters now with a second triangle and it'll continue to be a revolving door of shifting focus from characters to characters throughout the series"... But then it all went down from there with Messe's death. The show drifted aimlessly in space in the second half like the characters in them.

What I also find troubling is the sudden injection of fan-services into the second half which I think really cheapens this show even further. I felt uncomfortable watching those scenes and don't find it matching the fun, lighter tone of the earlier parts of the series. You didn't need it in the first half to sell the show, why stick it in now? It kinda feels like they are just spinning their wheels in mud and not know how to get the audience's attention anymore unless they default to typical anime cliches or go lowbrow.

It's just really disappointing.

That fan service episode was really out of place. it wasn't even sprinkled on, it was a plot on its own for the "hacking" or whatever... meh...

[Zinjo]

That fan service episode was really out of place. it wasn't even sprinkled on, it was a plot on its own for the "hacking" or whatever... meh...

Well when you plan for a 13 episode series with a movie climax and your money men ask you to change to a 26 episode show, it really screws up everything. Thus you get episodes that are completely out of place and pointless, just to fill the time you never wrote for. Azreal put it best earlier in this thread.

This would be the sponsor's biggest goof! Stay on schedule and then do a follow up movie to the climax film and milk the franchise a bit more. Frontier had two movies retelling the story of the series. With Delta being a spiritual successor to M7, they could easily have followed up the movie climax to the series with a second movie about an unrelated situation, similar to M7: Dynamite.

It is better to go out with a bang, than mess with success and diminish the popularity of a series in the end.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Zinjo

[cwmodels]

That fan service episode was really out of place. it wasn't even sprinkled on, it was a plot on its own for the "hacking" or whatever... meh...

There was also Mirage's boob scene in episode 14 and Elysion back-dooring the city ship. It all seem like some immature yuk-yuk joke with the production staff patting themselves on their own back. I am certain this show is geared toward female audience and If they think girls responds well to this kind of humor then they are way out of touch with the current market.

Well when you plan for a 13 episode series with a movie climax and your money men ask you to change to a 26 episode show, it really screws up everything. Thus you get episodes that are completely out of place and pointless just to fill the time you never wrote for. Azreal put it best earlier in this thread.

This would be the sponsor's biggest goof! Stay on schedule and then do a follow up movie to the climax film and milk the franchise a bit more. Frontier had two movies retelling the story of the series. With Delta being a spiritual successor to M7, they could easily have followed up the movie climax to the series with a second movie about an unrelated situation, similar to M7: Dynamite.

I don't truly buy this 13 episode excuse theory (which is mostly people on this board second guessing from one sentence found in a booklet) and that is because the Windermeres are still poorly set up as antagonists throughout the series with poorly defined motivation and powers. Even if you just end the series at episode 13 with Delta force stopping their invasion, they still would've been paper-thin characters. There are obvious problem from the get go and it just got magnified as the show progressed and I think this squarely fall onto the shoulders of Kawamori and the main staff he picked for this series.

Edited August 31, 2016 by cwmodels

[RedWolf]

That is not how she was made according to what has been revealed. She was cloned with fold quartz imbedded within her cells. That may well be how a Star Singer was created, but there is no evidence she was cloned from a PC.

Check the dialogue again Mikumo never mentioned Fold Quartz but Fold Receptors.

[Zinjo]

There was also Mirage's boob scene in episode 14 and Elysion back-dooring the city ship. It all seem like some immature yuk-yuk joke with the production staff patting themselves on their own back. I am certain this show is geared toward female audience and If they think girls responds well to this kind of humor then they are way out of touch with the current market.

Ummm, which market are you referring? The Western or Japanese market?

I don't truly buy this 13 episode excuse theory (which is mostly people on this board second guessing from one sentence found in a booklet) and that is because the Windermeres are still poorly set up as antagonists throughout the series with poorly defined motivation and powers. Even if you just end the series at episode 13 with Delta force stopping their invasion, they still would've been paper-thin characters. There are obvious problem from the get go and it just got magnified as the show progressed and I think this squarely fall onto the shoulders of Kawamori and the main staff he picked for this series.

You can read the discussion starting here:

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=44085&page=2#entry1299377

Personally I tend to trust Seto's translations since he's been doing it for many years now and the other members who read Japanese have yet to correct him. They certainly ain't shy about such things.

As for the story, it is weak and so is the premise. Welcome to pop culture TV anime.

However, as I've said before, if you want to see a hard drama pray for a Macross OVA. TV Series are too expensive to do anything other that what the current market trends demand. The current market trend is NOT toward thoughtful space opera mecha shows right now.

That being said, there is nothing stopping you from writing your own hard hitting Macross drama, that shows them how it's done. There is a fan fiction section on these boards...

Edited August 31, 2016 by Zinjo

[cwmodels]

Ummm, which market are you referring? The Western or Japanese market?

However, as I've said before, if you want to see a hard drama pray for a Macross OVA. TV Series are too expensive to do anything other that what the current market trends demand. The current market trend is NOT toward thoughtful space opera mecha shows right now.

That being said, there is nothing stopping you from writing your own hard hitting Macross drama, that shows them how it's done. There is a fan fiction section on these boards...

BOTH. Because female audience do not respond well to sexual contexts in that kind of manner. Woman in general wants to see pairing and relationship and romance. Gratuitous T&A don't work for them the same way it works for man.

WHOA.... hold you horses here. Where did you even get the idea that I wanted it a hard hitting space drama? I never said that before and Macross never appealed to me in that fashion either. Did you not read the part where I said I really liked Delta for the light and fun aspect? This is exactly the kind of second guessing I was referring to in my above post. You projected what you wanted to see in things I never said and you ran with it by making up a bunch of excuses for ME. And that's what happened with the translation in that booklet. People are making up stuff about sponsorship and time and budget cuts and pressure and other details when none of those reasons were stated.

Edited August 31, 2016 by cwmodels

[Zinjo]

BOTH. Because female audience do not respond well to sexual contexts in that kind of manner. Woman in general wants to see pairing and relationship and romance. Gratuitous T&A don't work for them the same way it works for man.

Girls are not the only demographic, if that were so, there would be little to no mecha as well as Bandai and Hasegawa would not be sponsors of this show. So the target audience is teenagers, male and female. Boys have little interest in seeing long suffering girls pine after a numb skulled heros, but there it is... I expect the music appeals to both.

WHOA.... hold you horses here. Where did you even get the idea that I wanted it a hard hitting space drama? I never said that before and Macross never appealed to me in that fashion either. Did you not read the part where I said I really liked Delta for the light and fun aspect? This is exactly the kind of second guessing I was referring to in my above post. You projected what you wanted to see in things I never said and you ran with it by making up a bunch of excuses for ME. And that's what happened with the translation in that booklet. People are making up stuff about sponsorship and time and budget cuts and pressure and other details when none of those reasons were stated.

I did project the common complaint of members on these forums, my bad.

As per the speculation, I read this in your post.

"I don't truly buy this 13 episode excuse theory (which is mostly people on this board second guessing from one sentence found in a booklet)

This does not come across as "making up stuff about sponsorship...", not at all. It comes across as questioning the validity of what is stated in the published notes, there is a big difference. Based upon what was written, I responded to it. Granted I ran with an erroneous assumption after that.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Zinjo

[Product9]

I feel like a lot of you guys are assuming they make the show as they go, but near as I can tell that's not how production works for TV shows or movies. If they ordered more episodes after episode 4 aired I seriously doubt they'd be able to produce new episode in time for episode 14 to air. Ten weeks is just not enough time to record the lines, write the scripts, do the animation, and all the other stuff that they need to do to make a show like this one (bearing in mind those things can't be done in that order - you can't record lines before there's a script). It's not like they come in on Monday to start producing Sunday's episode. I'm pretty sure they don't even produce the episodes in order, but admittedly I really don't know.

Secondly, I'm seeing this "rose colored glasses" thing going on, and have been since Delta started. Every time there's a problem, Frontier is referenced as having done it better. The thing is... Frontier wasn't that good. It was okay, but it had a lot of the same problems as Delta. Remember "High School Queen"? Just... just remember that for a second.

Heck, Frontier didn't even have that much mecha action either, and the action it did have was completely rehashed almost every single time. It still had the same VF-171s (albeit blue) exploding over and over and a few reused shots of VF-25s doing their thing.

Frontier also wasted time. Remember that episode about Michel's older sister? How did that play into the overall plot? It didn't.

I'm just trying to put things into context here, because now I'm seeing a lot of sentiment for pre-episode 13 Delta, as if that was so much better. It wasn't. I was there; I remember. If anything, pre-ep13 was better because we still had the rest of the series to look forward to.

Honestly, I'm withholding my overall opinion of Delta until I can watch it at my own pace and actually get a feel for the story more naturally. The problem with having entire weeks between episodes that take place back to back is that it does affect our perception. The flow is interrupted, and there is a lot of time to conjecture and speculate, and when the next episode airs most of those things are rendered null. Then the process begins anew.

[Strumvogel]

Oh man. There I was worried at the start of the series about how the sponsors could possibly screw up the show... Silly me. *snark*

Seriously though, when I was looking at the summer upcoming lists of show a couple of months back, I was wondering and worried about how Delta wasn't listed as "continuing". Rightly or wrongly, this all only adds to it.

Product9:

To be fair, Frontier not only had the fan anticipation behind it, it also started strongly. Delta, in my opinion, not so much. While it had the fan anticipation it just wasn't as strong and people were disappointed with the first preview ep for Delta while people just blew up for Frontier's.

So all that adds up really to what we are seeing now in people's reaction to Delta.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Strumvogel

[cwmodels]

As per the speculation, I read this in your post.

This does not come across as "making up stuff about sponsorship...", not at all. It comes across as questioning the validity of what is stated in the published notes, there is a big difference. Based upon what was written, I responded to it. Granted I ran with an erroneous assumption after that.

The reason I strongly speculate the current problem of the show stems from Kawomori and the staff and not coming from sponsorship or budget or not having enough content is due to 2 reasons:

#1) this interview with director Yasuda Kenji published back in May:

https://karice.wordpress.com/2016/05/29/p509/

Where he states this:

"Then we had something of a camp where we set out the entire series, and kept adding more and more detail until it all materialised, until it felt complete. I’ve been involved in a lot of adaptations, so I found this experience of learning how to create an original story really interesting. That said, this is Kawamori’s way of creating something—it’s quite unique in that he usually hasn’t decided for certain what will happen next (laughs)."

Kawamori doesn’t really like doing what’s been done before, or something that’s pre-ordained or according to a particular pattern, does he?

"And I’m the complete opposite, someone who has peace of mind only when there’s a relatively set plan for going forward. So this experience was somewhat nerve-wracking (laughs). Even if the general framework is established, we’d go this way and that on the path towards the goal. Saying stuff like “this character would act in this way,” (we’d) come up with something that brings the character to life and thus changes the path forward. There were times when I worried about whether we’d be able to wrap up the huge canvas that we’d laid out. But since this is Macross, we leant on the power of songs and used feats of strength to push it through (laughs). Macross ∆ should end in quite a different way from all the other series that have come before."

One of the strengths of an original work is that we can go back to a script that we’ve written and rewrite it, stacking up little pieces of foreshadowing. It feels like we’ve complied close to two episodes worth of content into each densely packed script. And each of these packed scripts has also been turned into an even more packed storyboard, so there really is a heap of content.

That tells me he has done more adaption anime work than creating original shows. So the strength of creativity and keeping it balanced still fall upon kawamori.

#2) At the end of June Kawamori announced this:

http://www.project-the-next.com

And this announcement came 2 weeks after he attended Beijing Comicon. The bottom of the website copyrighted it to kawamori Shoji and Xiamen Skyloong Media (a China bases entertainment company). With my recent dealing in China trying to launch my Captain China comic over there, I've learned that there is a huge demand to develop entertainment IP, content, and commercial properties for the Chinese market and they are willing to invest an unbelievable amount of money to make it happen, and they want it FAST FAST FAST! And judging by the video clip on that site, THE NEXT is already well under way in production. This is unusual too since I've never seen Kawomori splitting attention when a Macross series is actually running.

None of the Macross series since Plus had perfect writing. But there was at least a consistency of following it's own internal logic with character depiction, motivation, technology and keeping the overall story in coherence. And I found none of that in the second half of Delta. It feels like someone trying to ape a Macross show without grasping those core values, and having no direction on where to go now.

So my gut feeling is that Kawomori has already jumped ship and hand the majority of Delta's production over to Yasuda Kenji, and his inexperience in handling original creative work is causing the show to decline in quality.

[Product9]

To be fair, Frontier not only had the fan anticipation behind it, it also started strongly. Delta, in my opinion, not so much. While it had the fan anticipation it just wasn't as strong and people were disappointed with the first preview ep for Delta while people just blew up for Frontier's.

I agree that Frontier started a lot better than Delta. Frontier's opening act was spectacular. Unfortunately, it quickly degenerated into mediocrity with a few flashes of brilliance here and there. I'm just saying it shouldn't be setting the bar, because it suffered from a lot of the same things as Delta is right now, and unless I'm mistaken, people were angry back then too.

On the mecha action front, I wonder what series has more at this point - Frontier or Delta? Also, Frontier would have been a lot better if they didn't try to shoehorn it into a high school setting for no good reason. At least Delta has that going for it... although I think more people can relate to kids in high school than they can to magical girls who are singing on a battlefield. That lack of relate-ability is probably a big part of why Delta's opening wasn't as widely accepted as Frontier's.

Edited September 1, 2016 by Product9

[505thAirborne]

I am personally enjoying all these posts far more than Delta at this point, keep it coming guys!

Edited September 1, 2016 by 505thAirborne

[Valkyrie addict]

I am personally enjoying all these posts far more than Delta at this point, keep it coming guys!

HAHAHA!! Indeed!!

I'm sure the mayor sponsors after seeing how successful the convoluted mess of the two Frontier movies were they just decide to do something more crappy, confusing and mindless to see how many merchandise they can sell out of it. Frontier was not good, it was succesful because people wanted new Macross and took whatever was thrown at them, and besides, Frontier recycled a lot of plot points from SDFM as "nostalgia" nods to the original, in the end, Frontier didn't make much sense at all´either.

But the sad truth, Macross hasn't made much sense since Zero.

[Strumvogel]

HAHAHA!! Indeed!!

I'm sure the mayor sponsors after seeing how successful the convoluted mess of the two Frontier movies were they just decide to do something more crappy, confusing and mindless to see how many merchandise they can sell out of it. Frontier was not good, it was succesful because people wanted new Macross and took whatever was thrown at them, and besides, Frontier recycled a lot of plot points from SDFM as "nostalgia" nods to the original, in the end, Frontier didn't make much sense at all´either.

But the sad truth, Macross hasn't made much sense since Zero.

I didn't think too much of the first Frontier movie since it is practically re-doing the first half of the series and to be fair, much of the second movie didn't do much for me either, however everything from when "Houkago Overflow" started playing onwards was just pure pleasure.

One can argue that the recycling is what made it work since it is taken from something that is familiar and worked. Meanwhile Delta is trying something newish and um.. err.. is doing something I guess, I don't know what though...

[Raptor One]

I've seen a lot of anime start off with promise and then turn into total trainwrecks over the years, Guilty Crown and Aldnoah Zero come to mind, but I never thought it would happen to Macross.

And damn, I can't believe people are actually trying to make it sound like Frontier was just as bad as Delta is now. Even when Frontier had lulls, it still held my interest, still captured my emotions. The worst part about Delta is that I'm not even mad about it, I just watch it and when the episode is done I'm like "Okay, cool."