Finally got to watch Macross Zero!!!!

[Valkyrie Griffon]

So I have wanted to see Zero forever.....saw the first episode fansubbed years ago but couldn't find the others. Finally had a chance to watch it this past week and liked some things about it and disliked somethings about it. Shin kinda sucks as a main character, his motivations are hard to understand and he seems to waffle from episode to episode as to what his focus is. Zero Roy is a very interesting take and not what I expected based on his (Robotech) persona. Still thought he was probably the best character in the show. The show itself almost seemed like two separate series; it's basically kick-a**-tropical-Valkyrie-battle-show and then this almost separate "Macross-Island-Adventure", which makes me think of Evangelion for some reason. It's almost like the two aspects of the show don't really connect, at least not in the same way that they do in the original Macross, Plus, or Frontier.

That said the Valkyrie battles were excellent. In fact while the show falls far below Plus the dogfights were actually much better in my opinion. The valks move in a much more believable manner than Plus where Isamu routinely flew his valk around in a manner that looked like a child playing with a toy. Also the more gritty, realistic, pre-SDF Macross designs and combat was really well done and that final face off between Shin/Nora and Roy/Ivanov was friggin awesome. I also liked that the series presented both the UN and Anti-UN forces in equally unfavorable light as things unfold. The original Macross tells us that the alien ship crashed and all humanity united; this version presents a slightly more realistic view of a more tumultuous transition prior to the Zentradi arrival.

Overall a cool series though nowhere near as good as Plus or what I have seen thus far of Frontier which I also just started. That said some of my favorite mechs from the franchise now come from Zero after having finally seen it. In fact I was planning to clear out my Zero Valks but now they are probably my favorites.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Valkyrie Griffon said:

Shin kinda sucks as a main character, his motivations are hard to understand and he seems to waffle from episode to episode as to what his focus is.

Shin's pretty straightforward as Macross characters go.  Like Nora, the Unification Wars wrecked his life to the point that he defines himself by the conflict.  The series is mostly him finding something else for his life to be about besides fighting.

 

3 hours ago, Valkyrie Griffon said:

The show itself almost seemed like two separate series; it's basically kick-a**-tropical-Valkyrie-battle-show and then this almost separate "Macross-Island-Adventure", which makes me think of Evangelion for some reason. It's almost like the two aspects of the show don't really connect, at least not in the same way that they do in the original Macross, Plus, or Frontier.

Macross Zero's plot isn't a self-contained, stand-alone story the way most Macross titles are.  Its story depends on the audience being familiar with the revelations Macross 7 made about the Protoculture's civil war and collapse, and some of the related supplemental materials.  All the same it doesn't really come full circle and actually mean something until Macross Frontier.  

 

3 hours ago, Valkyrie Griffon said:

That said the Valkyrie battles were excellent. In fact while the show falls far below Plus the dogfights were actually much better in my opinion. The valks move in a much more believable manner than Plus where Isamu routinely flew his valk around in a manner that looked like a child playing with a toy. 

The VF-0 and Sv-51 are completely different animals from the YF-19... we're talking four full generations worth of technological advancement there.  They move much more like a modern fighter aircraft because they ARE much more like modern fighters.  They're both using overtuned conventional jet engines, and the VF-0 is literally a derivative of the F-14.  The distance between them and the YF-19, developmentally, is just about the same as the difference between the first jet prototypes in World War II and an F/A-18.

 

3 hours ago, Valkyrie Griffon said:

The original Macross tells us that the alien ship crashed and all humanity united; this version presents a slightly more realistic view of a more tumultuous transition prior to the Zentradi arrival.

No it doesn't.  This is not new... this is right out of the opening narration from the very first episode of Super Dimension Fortress Macross.  The alien starship crashes on South Ataria island, the formation of the Unification Government is proposed, and in response wars started breaking out as various groups opposed to a one-world government emerged and it took the better part of the next decade to restore order.  Several of the characters in the original series elaborate on their exploits during the conflict during the series.  Some of the details given in the official chronology make it pretty clear the Mayan Island incident in Zero was pretty tame compared to some of the other conflicts in the Unification Wars.  (No major population centers get nuked, for instance.)

[jenius]

Yeah... the SDF-1 crashing and uniting humanity is from Robotech, not Macross.

I have a few problems with Zero. Did the episode count get changed during production? One of my bigger problems is the pacing of the last couple episodes. IIRC, there's a fairly significant jump between episode 4 and 5. My biggest issues stem around the flying rocks... just never liked how all that go handled. 

[Mommar]

23 minutes ago, jenius said:

Yeah... the SDF-1 crashing and uniting humanity is from Robotech, not Macross.

I have a few problems with Zero. Did the episode count get changed during production? One of my bigger problems is the pacing of the last couple episodes. IIRC, there's a fairly significant jump between episode 4 and 5. My biggest issues stem around the flying rocks... just never liked how all that go handled. 

Rocks?  What about the idiotic flying log?

[anime52k8]

24 minutes ago, jenius said:

Yeah... the SDF-1 crashing and uniting humanity is from Robotech, not Macross.

I have a few problems with Zero. Did the episode count get changed during production? One of my bigger problems is the pacing of the last couple episodes. IIRC, there's a fairly significant jump between episode 4 and 5. My biggest issues stem around the flying rocks... just never liked how all that go handled. 

The first time I watched zero I legitimately thought that I was missing an episode when I got to 5.

[treatment]

1 hour ago, jenius said:

Yeah... the SDF-1 crashing and uniting humanity is from Robotech, not Macross.

I have a few problems with Zero. Did the episode count get changed during production? One of my bigger problems is the pacing of the last couple episodes. IIRC, there's a fairly significant jump between episode 4 and 5. My biggest issues stem around the flying rocks... just never liked how all that go handled. 

I don't believe the episode-count got changed during production.

However, I do believe Kawamori smoked some really really bad weed around after ep-3 to be adding his bizarro Arjuna-trip into a Macross series...

 

 

[Sir Galahad®]

I think the flying rocks thing would specify the songstress has that kind of power when she sings, which was disappointing that Sheryl didn't have any. It would be nice that she would get cured from the Vajra disease because she held some power being a descendant (I mean Mao telepathically communicated with Shin) instead of Ranka commanding the bacteria to move out of her brain in the TV series or via blood transfusion in the Movie. 

[Seto Kaiba]

20 hours ago, Mommar said:

Rocks?  What about the idiotic flying log?

Sufficiently advanced wood.

[Zx31]

I think Zero is perfectly serviceable as a stand-alone series. My only real issue with it is that unless everyone on the SDF-1 has memory loss, nobody at that time should know as much about Protoculture as they do.

[Seto Kaiba]

11 minutes ago, Zx31 said:

I think Zero is perfectly serviceable as a stand-alone series. My only real issue with it is that unless everyone on the SDF-1 has memory loss, nobody at that time should know as much about Protoculture as they do.

Nah, remember it's explained in series that the "humans were created by ancient aliens" thing is considered a crackpot theory only really taken seriously by a handful of anthropologists and researchers like Dr. Hasford and Dr. Turner.  Even if the Birdhuman incident hadn't been classified top secret, having an alien ambassador tell you point-blank that that particular crackpot theory was gospel truth would've been a profound shock for the UN Government.

[Zx31]

Sure, but that doesn't explain Focker knowing as much as he does in Zero, then being completely silent about it in SDF

[RealJayDee]

Its a great series. The leap between last gen fighters to the first prototype valk.

Though the story is in many ways vague, it let us to have a little taste of how "old" valks originated, performed, with earth's "physics".

To me the point of zero wanst telling a story, but explaining the origin of the vf's.

Whatever the vf 31 is, it owes itself to the vf0.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, RealJayDee said:

Its a great series. The leap between last gen fighters to the first prototype valk.

It doesn't really show that, though... the VF-1 was already completed at the time Macross Zero is set.

 

3 hours ago, RealJayDee said:

Though the story is in many ways vague, it let us to have a little taste of how "old" valks originated, performed, with earth's "physics".

To me the point of zero wanst telling a story, but explaining the origin of the vf's.

The story's not really all that vague, it's just not a stand-alone story.  You need to have seen Macross 7 to make sense of some of the Protoculture-relevant plot points in the OVA... and it had basically nothing to do with the origin of VFs.  In fact, at the point the OVA is set the VF-1 design had already been frozen for protection and the VF-0s had been removed from testing for use as training planes while manufacturers were tooling up to begin mass production.

 

3 hours ago, RealJayDee said:

Whatever the vf 31 is, it owes itself to the vf0.

Not really... most of the technologies that went into the VF-31 were developed after the VF-0.

[arbit]

I'll take the flying rocks, but what I never understood was the need for severely anatomically detailed nudity. Macross nudity is usually not so "in your face".

[Master Dex]

See "Do You Remember Love?'s" Minmay shower scene, and Macross Plus: Movie Addition Lucy topless scene. Both are short, but basically to the same level of what we saw in Macross Zero. Movies and OVAs can get away with that unlike shows.

More importantly, it's a cultural thing too. Japanese aren't as prudish about nudity as Americans (especially when it comes to female breasts). Sure they don't go around in everyday locations showing off, and your standard TV shows (or anime such as the primary Macross shows) won't have it but it's not uncommon in late evening broadcasted stuff. This is even true in Tokusatsu genre shows (the same genre as Super Sentai, aka the source material for Power Rangers) where more adult themed shows won't shy away from one episode or two of nudity (see the Garo franchise for an example).

[MacrossDynamite7]

Anyone have a link to where I could watch Macross Zero?

Edited October 3, 2017 by MacrossDynamite7

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, MacrossDynamite7 said:

Anyone have a link to where I could watch Macross Zero?

Not a legal one, no... and we try not to link to pirated content here.

[Valkyrie Driver]

19 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Not a legal one, no... and we try not to link to pirated content here.

With Harmony Gold out there, do we really have much choice?

Anyway... I liked Macross Zero when I first saw it. I still do. The VF's were great, and I really liked them. The whole thing made a lot more sense after I saw M7 though, as many others have said. It does rely a lot on earlier productions. It's a puzzle piece that doesn't make total sense until you watch M7 and MF, to truly understand the implications of the events for the macross universe. 

 

[Checkmate]

I finally finished watching it last night. THank God for this thread! I was so confused after watching the OVA.