Where Are They Now? (Shin-Macross Zero, Macross F cast)

[Aaadriiann]

So I just rewatched Macross Frontier and had a few questions about what happens after certain points...

1. Is there any extra material about what happen to Shin from Macross Zero and if how/when he returned to NUNS?

2. Depending on which is canon, Macross Frontier TV or Movie, what happens to Alto, Ranka, and Sheryl after events of TV or Movie?

Inquiring minds have to know! 

[Seto Kaiba]

In before Newbie & Short Questions thread merge... 

8 hours ago, Aaadriiann said:

1. Is there any extra material about what happen to Shin from Macross Zero and if how/when he returned to NUNS?

Nope.  The most we see/hear of Shin Kudo or Sara Nome after the ending of Macross Zero is when time-displaced versions of the main cast (Shin, Sara, Mao, Nora, and D.D.) from during the OVA's events briefly appear on the planet Uroboros in 2060 due to the influence of a Fold Evil that a rogue NUNS VF-X Special Forces unit is screwing with.

 

Quote

2. Depending on which is canon, Macross Frontier TV or Movie, what happens to Alto, Ranka, and Sheryl after events of TV or Movie?

"Canon" is a word that is difficult to apply to Macross.  Shoji Kawamori's attitude towards continuity amounts to a "broad strokes" canon, and he's often opined that he sees each Macross title as a dramatization of a "true" history.  (When you get right down to it, it's that he just wants to tell his stories and not get bogged down in minutae.)

Official publications like Macross Chronicle generally favor the "series" version of any given story for timeline purposes, though as with DYRL they often acknowledge movie-only things as things that exist in their setting too but under a slightly different context.  Examples include the movie VF-1 being a later block version of the VF-1 than the TV VF-1, or both of Exsedol's forms being true... one being his miclone form and one his giant form.

As is customary for Macross, we don't really have any significant information about what happens to the characters after their story ends.  Kawamori likes to move on once a character's story has ended, rather than have them hang around once they're no longer the focus of the story.

Ranka and Sheryl are implied to have continued their music careers after the events of the series, but that's about all.

The only hard info I can recall comes from non-official material like Variable Fighter Master File, which has some minor remarks that confirm that Ranka and Sheryl were still touring as idol singers into the 2060s.  One entry describes a New UN Spacy squad which pulled escort duty during one of Ranka's tour stops on an emigrant planet in 2062 painting one of their VF-25Cs with her likeness to commemorate her visit there, and another describes the SMS bodyguard detail assigned to Sheryl once she started working out of Macross Olympia temporarily being redesignated a special unit "Queen's Knights" with modex numbers picked by Sheryl to match her and Alto's birthdays (Aircraft 1123 and 727).

EDIT: The most we usually get when a past character is referenced is a brief and usually minimal statement of what they're up to... like Basara still bumming around space c.2060, or Kim Kabirov having stayed in the NUNS long enough to become a General.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Seto Kaiba

[Aaadriiann]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

In before Newbie & Short Questions thread merge... 

Nope.  The most we see/hear of Shin Kudo or Sara Nome after the ending of Macross Zero is when time-displaced versions of the main cast (Shin, Sara, Mao, Nora, and D.D.) from during the OVA's events briefly appear on the planet Uroboros in 2060 due to the influence of a Fold Evil that a rogue NUNS VF-X Special Forces unit is screwing with.

 

"Canon" is a word that is difficult to apply to Macross.  Shoji Kawamori's attitude towards continuity amounts to a "broad strokes" canon, and he's often opined that he sees each Macross title as a dramatization of a "true" history.  (When you get right down to it, it's that he just wants to tell his stories and not get bogged down in minutae.)

Official publications like Macross Chronicle generally favor the "series" version of any given story for timeline purposes, though as with DYRL they often acknowledge movie-only things as things that exist in their setting too but under a slightly different context.  Examples include the movie VF-1 being a later block version of the VF-1 than the TV VF-1, or both of Exsedol's forms being true... one being his miclone form and one his giant form.

As is customary for Macross, we don't really have any significant information about what happens to the characters after their story ends.  Kawamori likes to move on once a character's story has ended, rather than have them hang around once they're no longer the focus of the story.

Ranka and Sheryl are implied to have continued their music careers after the events of the series, but that's about all.

The only hard info I can recall comes from non-official material like Variable Fighter Master File, which has some minor remarks that confirm that Ranka and Sheryl were still touring as idol singers into the 2060s.  One entry describes a New UN Spacy squad which pulled escort duty during one of Ranka's tour stops on an emigrant planet in 2062 painting one of their VF-25Cs with her likeness to commemorate her visit there, and another describes the SMS bodyguard detail assigned to Sheryl once she started working out of Macross Olympia temporarily being redesignated a special unit "Queen's Knights" with modex numbers picked by Sheryl to match her and Alto's birthdays (Aircraft 1123 and 727).

EDIT: The most we usually get when a past character is referenced is a brief and usually minimal statement of what they're up to... like Basara still bumming around space c.2060, or Kim Kabirov having stayed in the NUNS long enough to become a General.

Interesting. I have noticed that Kawamori does have that tendency to move forward after each series is done. I figured maybe the Master Files or other supplementary material may have slight mentions, which you have indicated there are. Thanks for your wealth of knowledge!

[Knight26]

20 hours ago, Aaadriiann said:

So I just rewatched Macross Frontier and had a few questions about what happens after certain points...

1. Is there any extra material about what happen to Shin from Macross Zero and if how/when he returned to NUNS?

My personal head canon is that Shin and Sara were folded to another Protoculture Colony world and found themselves on a similar city as Hikaru and Misa.  The two of them survived for years on their own, Shin rebuilding his damaged VF-0 with Protoculture tech and became parents to Nekki Basara.  Basara later escaped in the VF-0 using the Bird Human as a fold booster after which he met Ray.  Shin and Sara then lived out the rest of their days cut off from the rest of the galaxy.

 

[pengbuzz]

On 2/6/2020 at 9:47 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

In before Newbie & Short Questions thread merge... 

Nope.  The most we see/hear of Shin Kudo or Sara Nome after the ending of Macross Zero is when time-displaced versions of the main cast (Shin, Sara, Mao, Nora, and D.D.) from during the OVA's events briefly appear on the planet Uroboros in 2060 due to the influence of a Fold Evil that a rogue NUNS VF-X Special Forces unit is screwing with.

 

"Canon" is a word that is difficult to apply to Macross.  Shoji Kawamori's attitude towards continuity amounts to a "broad strokes" canon, and he's often opined that he sees each Macross title as a dramatization of a "true" history.  (When you get right down to it, it's that he just wants to tell his stories and not get bogged down in minutae.)

Official publications like Macross Chronicle generally favor the "series" version of any given story for timeline purposes, though as with DYRL they often acknowledge movie-only things as things that exist in their setting too but under a slightly different context.  Examples include the movie VF-1 being a later block version of the VF-1 than the TV VF-1, or both of Exsedol's forms being true... one being his miclone form and one his giant form.

As is customary for Macross, we don't really have any significant information about what happens to the characters after their story ends.  Kawamori likes to move on once a character's story has ended, rather than have them hang around once they're no longer the focus of the story.

Ranka and Sheryl are implied to have continued their music careers after the events of the series, but that's about all.

The only hard info I can recall comes from non-official material like Variable Fighter Master File, which has some minor remarks that confirm that Ranka and Sheryl were still touring as idol singers into the 2060s.  One entry describes a New UN Spacy squad which pulled escort duty during one of Ranka's tour stops on an emigrant planet in 2062 painting one of their VF-25Cs with her likeness to commemorate her visit there, and another describes the SMS bodyguard detail assigned to Sheryl once she started working out of Macross Olympia temporarily being redesignated a special unit "Queen's Knights" with modex numbers picked by Sheryl to match her and Alto's birthdays (Aircraft 1123 and 727).

EDIT: The most we usually get when a past character is referenced is a brief and usually minimal statement of what they're up to... like Basara still bumming around space c.2060, or Kim Kabirov having stayed in the NUNS long enough to become a General.

I like the fact that Kawamori isn't concerned so much by "canon"; it makes for far more possibilities in Macross and allows things like Macross II to exist and impart their own take on the franchise. Although sometimes I'd like to know a little more on the histories of characters after their story arcs, I understand that unless a specific "chapter" (how I see each story fitting into Macross overall) has a purpose in coming around again later on (such as Max and Millia aboard the 7th fleet), then it's done and set.

[Gerli]

On 2/6/2020 at 11:47 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

I

EDIT: The most we usually get when a past character is referenced is a brief and usually minimal statement of what they're up to... like Basara still bumming around space c.2060, or Kim Kabirov having stayed in the NUNS long enough to become a General.

Or Isamu working for SMS

[Seto Kaiba]

17 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I like the fact that Kawamori isn't concerned so much by "canon"; it makes for far more possibilities in Macross and allows things like Macross II to exist and impart their own take on the franchise. Although sometimes I'd like to know a little more on the histories of characters after their story arcs, I understand that unless a specific "chapter" (how I see each story fitting into Macross overall) has a purpose in coming around again later on (such as Max and Millia aboard the 7th fleet), then it's done and set.

It works well in the sense that it keeps new Macross features largely accessible to new viewers... because it's an effective way to prevent the kind of continuity lockout problems that the Universal Century Gundam shows have become increasingly prone to.

On the other hand, the more inquisitive casual viewers and fans can find this position frustrating since it makes it difficult to have a definitive answer to many questions.  This, I suspect, is why Macross publications try to go both ways on it... Kawamori has his view, while some printed works take a firmer attitude towards continuity.  Everyone gets what they want, and (almost) nobody goes home unhappy.

[Aaadriiann]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It works well in the sense that it keeps new Macross features largely accessible to new viewers... because it's an effective way to prevent the kind of continuity lockout problems that the Universal Century Gundam shows have become increasingly prone to.

On the other hand, the more inquisitive casual viewers and fans can find this position frustrating since it makes it difficult to have a definitive answer to many questions.  This, I suspect, is why Macross publications try to go both ways on it... Kawamori has his view, while some printed works take a firmer attitude towards continuity.  Everyone gets what they want, and (almost) nobody goes home unhappy.

Since I am the latter viewer/fan described I also appreciate the with the wealth of knowledge, like yourself! 

[bjsmaker]

They are on the Megaroad 01 with everyone else who has disappeared

[JB0]

On 3/28/2024 at 10:32 PM, bjsmaker said:

They are on the Megaroad 01 with everyone else who has disappeared

Party capital of the universe.

[Raikkonen]

On 2/6/2020 at 4:47 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

The most we see/hear of Shin Kudo or Sara Nome after the ending of Macross Zero is when time-displaced versions of the main cast (Shin, Sara, Mao, Nora, and D.D.) from during the OVA's events briefly appear on the planet Uroboros in 2060 due to the influence of a Fold Evil that a rogue NUNS VF-X Special Forces unit is screwing with.

Totally missed this. Anyone have the timestamp or screenshot of this? 

[Seto Kaiba]

28 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

Totally missed this. Anyone have the timestamp or screenshot of this? 

That's from the PlayStation 3 game (and light novel) Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy... one of the few non-animated Macross works to be explicitly part of the official setting.

That different characters from past Macross titles keep popping up is a major part of the story, and there's representation from pretty much every animated title that existed at the time the game was made except for Macross II. Because the timey wimey ball is very much in play thanks to a temporal weapon, you get to see weird stuff like Sheryl meeting her grandmother (Mao) and her great aunt (Sara) when both of them are technically younger than she is, Mylene bickering with Quamzin despite him having died decades before she was born, or an SMS crew from 2060 sh*tting a brick when the SDF-1 Macross from 2009 suddenly appears in their vicinity carrying a crew of legends.

For instance, that crowd of all the idols from past titles standing together at the end of the trailer is not something figurative... That is an event that literally happens in the story.

Edited May 13 by Seto Kaiba

[Raikkonen]

20 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's from the PlayStation 3 game (and light novel) Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy... one of the few non-animated Macross works to be explicitly part of the official setting.

That different characters from past Macross titles keep popping up is a major part of the story, and there's representation from pretty much every animated title that existed at the time the game was made except for Macross II. Because the timey wimey ball is very much in play thanks to a temporal weapon, you get to see weird stuff like Sheryl meeting her grandmother (Mao) and her great aunt (Sara) when both of them are technically younger than she is, Mylene bickering with Quamzin despite him having died decades before she was born, or an SMS crew from 2060 sh*tting a brick when the SDF-1 Macross from 2009 suddenly appears in their vicinity carrying a crew of legends.

For instance, that crowd of all the idols from past titles standing together at the end of the trailer is not something figurative... That is an event that literally happens in the story.

Cheers for this.

So technically, while this is all licensed, it's still not part of the canon storyline? Alternative universe then?

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

Cheers for this.

So technically, while this is all licensed, it's still not part of the canon storyline? Alternative universe then?

Hm?  No, Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy is a part of the official setting.

That's the franchise's equivalent of being "canon", meaning it's considered a part of Macross's overarching narrative and is in continuity with other official works.

Spoiler

Macross eschews the concept of a strict canon in favor of broad strokes continuity instead.  Essentially, stories that are a part of the official setting happened but for continuity purposes they only worry about the big important details and the generalities.  They don't get as granular as which version of which story is true.  They like to take the view that no one version of the story captured the whole truth and then mix and match the details they like best when the details become relevant to whatever new story they're telling.

For example, Macross Delta at one point gives a summary of the events of past titles and what it shows for Frontier is the ending from the TV version... but with a YF-29 and Sheryl and Ranka in their movie version costumes.  Or how Macross 7 shows a TV Quamzin and movie Vrlitwhai side by side in the docu-drama they're filming about Minmay during the series.

Macross 30 is at least indirectly referenced in subsequent works, as the YF-30 that developed on Uroboros and successfully tested during the game's story was later developed into the VF-31 that is the main fighter in Macross Delta.  Another Macross 30-introduced VF (the YF-29B) shows up in Macross Delta's second movie.

Edited May 14 by Seto Kaiba

[JB0]

On 5/13/2024 at 5:43 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

or an SMS crew from 2060 sh*tting a brick when the SDF-1 Macross from 2009 suddenly appears in their vicinity carrying a crew of legends.

Very understandable.

[kajnrig]

18 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

.

  Hide contents

 

Another Macross 30-introduced VF (the YF-29B) shows up in Macross Delta's second movie.

Is that confirmed? At least 3D model-wise, I thought it just reused the Alto -29 model. The -29B has a different... head...?

This is the first I've seen it referred to as the B variant. I've only ever seen it referred to as a plain ol' YF-29.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'll answer that one on the mecha thread to avoid getting too far off topic.

[Raikkonen]

23 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Hm?  No, Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy is a part of the official setting.

That's the franchise's equivalent of being "canon", meaning it's considered a part of Macross's overarching narrative and is in continuity with other official works.

  Reveal hidden contents

Macross eschews the concept of a strict canon in favor of broad strokes continuity instead.  Essentially, stories that are a part of the official setting happened but for continuity purposes they only worry about the big important details and the generalities.  They don't get as granular as which version of which story is true.  They like to take the view that no one version of the story captured the whole truth and then mix and match the details they like best when the details become relevant to whatever new story they're telling.

For example, Macross Delta at one point gives a summary of the events of past titles and what it shows for Frontier is the ending from the TV version... but with a YF-29 and Sheryl and Ranka in their movie version costumes.  Or how Macross 7 shows a TV Quamzin and movie Vrlitwhai side by side in the docu-drama they're filming about Minmay during the series.

Macross 30 is at least indirectly referenced in subsequent works, as the YF-30 that developed on Uroboros and successfully tested during the game's story was later developed into the VF-31 that is the main fighter in Macross Delta.  Another Macross 30-introduced VF (the YF-29B) shows up in Macross Delta's second movie.

Thanks. I looked into. But can only find the synopsis of the first chapter translated.

Is there a synopsis of the full story?

Looks interesting, pity the game never reached European shores... but perhaps will eventually become a Anime. 

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

Thanks. I looked into. But can only find the synopsis of the first chapter translated.

Ah, yeah... I'm not surprised.  The few of us doing translations are doing it in our free time, and each of us has a rather specialized practice.

It's on my to-do list, but I'm literal years behind on that list thanks to day job shenanigans that started back around the first COVID lockdowns.

 

3 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

Is there a synopsis of the full story?

I'm not aware of one, but the gist of it is...

Spoiler

2nd Lt. Reon Sakaki of SMS's branch on the planet Sephira is sent on a mission to deliver a YF-25 Prophecy to the somewhat secretive SMS branch on the planet Uroboros.  On arriving in orbit, he's attacked by a unit of Ghosts and then a NUNS YF-29B that shoots him down.  When he wakes up, he learns he's been rescued by the Uroboros branch's CO, Maj. Aisha Blanchett, who tells him she wanted the YF-25 for its control AI and that he's now stuck on Uroboros thanks to a flare-up in the Uroboros Aurora... a powerful fold fault that periodically cuts the planet off from the rest of the galaxy.

So Reon finds himself effectively dragooned into detached duty with the SMS Uroboros branch, having to get licensed as a mercenary in Uroboros's territory, and doing various odd jobs for clients "adventurer" style between expeditions into the planet's many Protoculture ruins.  He learns about the planet's problem with space piracy ("bandits") and encounters the self-enforcing Keep Out sign the Protoculture left in the form of the self-replicating bio-tech insectoids called Dyaus AKA "Guardians" for their tendency to live in and around ruins.  On one such outing into the ruins, Reon discovers a girl held in some kind of stasis capsule and accidentally frees her.  He discovers she's an amnesiac and that her name is Mina Forte.  So the three of them set out together to figure out the secret of the ruins, and along the way weird sh*t starts happening.  While dealing with an unexpected swarm of Vajra, they bump into Alto Saotome and Sheryl Nome of all people... who insist the year is 2059 (not 2060) and are surprised to be quite a ways from where they thought they were.  While fighting the planet's escalating bandit problem and investigating the ruins and their connection to the strange goings-on and Uroboros Aurora they bump into other temporally displaced people including Mylene Jenius and Isamu Dyson.  

Reon's group learns that the reason the bandits are so suspiciously well-armed and able to evade justice is that they're getting supplies and information under the table from the New UN Spacy VF-X Special Forces unit HAVAMAL, who've set up shop on Uroboros and more or less have free reign.  Havamal has also convinced or coerced a number of other temporally displaced people incl. Shin Kudo, Nora Polyansky, D.D. Ivanov, Guld Goa Bowman, and even Sharon Apple into working for them and used Sharon's mind control powers to compel others to assist them (incl. Max, Milia, Gamlin, the crew of the SMS Macross Quarter, etc.).  It eventually snowballs into the realization that HAVAMAL's own agenda on the planet is a bid to unseal ancient Evil-series weapon the Protoculture sealed on Uroboros in order to use it to literaly rewrite history.  HAVAMAL's leader, Col. Todo, wants to use the Fold Evil sealed in the ruins to go back in time and prevent first contact so that none of the events of Macross will occur and Earth won't be destroyed.  SMS's Uroboros branch marshals their forces and launches an attack to prevent the activation of the Fold Evil, with its destruction at the hands of the newly completed YF-30 fixing the space-time shenanigans that'd brought so many people to the planet from other places and times.

I'm sure the novelization is a more streamlined version of the story, since the game's version has a lot of side quests.

It never really addresses the question of where various missing characters are in the present day of 2060... since the versions of them in the story are from the middle of the events of their respective stories instead.

 

3 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

Looks interesting, pity the game never reached European shores... but perhaps will eventually become a Anime. 

Probably won't get the anime treatment... if that was on the table, they'd probably have given us an OVA for Macross VF-X2 by now, given how important THAT story is to both the Macross Frontier and Macross Delta series.

Edited May 16 by Seto Kaiba

[SebastianP]

2 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

Thanks. I looked into. But can only find the synopsis of the first chapter translated.

Is there a synopsis of the full story?

Looks interesting, pity the game never reached European shores... but perhaps will eventually become a Anime. 

There was a novelization, and someone did translate the whole thing. I'm not sure I'm allowed to tell you where I found it on account of piracy rules, though. 

Don't expect anything that wasn't an anime original to ever get the anime treatment in the Macross universe - Kawamori just doesn't work that way. All the stories are changed to suit whatever medium he's working with, which is why for example the Frontier TV series and Frontier Movies are mutually exclusive plot-wise. 

As for a plot summary:

 

Spoiler

Two years prior to the game's start, Leon Sakaki, his sister Mia, and Mia's fiancée and Leon's childhood friend Rod Baltmer were involved in the defense of the planet Sephira against a Zentraedi raiding fleet. Mia lost her life in the battle, and Leon blames himself for letting her join SMS as a pilot. Rod on the other hand takes off and joins the NUNS, ending up in a secretive taskforce called HAVAMAL.

The game prologue opens with Leon arriving at the planet Ouruboros on a routine errand to deliver an YF-25 Prophecy prototype to the local SMS branch, which is specialized in VF research. He's intercepted by a mysterious VF and shot down during re-entry. He wakes up in the sick bay of the SMS Gefion, a highly modified Northampton-class frigate with flight deck pods, under the command of Aisha Blanchett, half-zentraedi genius and VF collector. Aisha tells Leon that he's stuck on the planet for the foreseeable future due to the local fold faults flaring up.

After getting checked out on a spare VF (Aisha's prized... VF-0D replica, the weakest VF in the game), Aisha takes Leon to earn a merc license from the local guild, and they start hunting pirates and exploring ruins. On their first ruin exploration, the floor collapses under Leon's VF and he lands in a room with a weird stasis device containing a girl... and the device spits her out at him and he has to get back to the ship with a weird girl in hand. 

The girl turns out to be called Mina Forte, and that's basically all she remembers off the top of her head. She turns out to like singing and piloting a VF. Further exploration of the ruins uncovers one that is activated by singing, and Mina remembers after activating it that there's another several similar ones, but they need to be activated with different voices.

There's basically three main parts to the story - the first is exploring the Yuria Archipelago, which surrounds the World Tree. There's a bunch of ruins and a bunch of bandits, and weird stuff happens. During a ruin exploration, Leon finds a girl in a stasis pod; she doesn't remember much of anything except her name, but she can somehow speak modern language after having been stuck in a pod for probably millennia. They figure out that some of the ruins have song-activated devices in them; they must each be activated by a different voice; and they usually end up encountering a time-displaced songstress and their pilot guardian shortly after finding a ruin, starting with Alto Saotome and Sheryl Nome; then Mylene Jenius and Nekki Basara. 

After that the story moves to the desert, where they end up picking up Mao Nome, Isamu Dyson, Brera Sterne and Guld Bowman (who play the villain for a while first); Sarah Nome, Lin Minmei; Max and Milia Jenius and Gamlin; and finally Hikaru Ichijou and Misa Hayase (with the SDF 1 in tow!); and also play a game of "who's being betrayed this time?" with Khamzin Kravshera (who actually turns up in the archipelago first).

Brera and Guld let us know what Havamal's immediate plan is: Using the power of Sharon Apple (via Myung) to control the other time-displaced people. To find them, Leon and company search in all the wrong places (including going back to the Yuria Archipelago for a bit to look at old bases, where they're attacked by Nora, DD, and Shin, who hasn't been told that Mao and Sarah are with the player party now; he abandons the others and joins the party. Eventually we find out that Havamal's main base is in an ice field in the polar regions, so we relocate there, and fight mind-controlled Vajra, have a final battle with Kamzin, are attacked by the Macross Quarter and the entire rest of the SMS Skull Squadron (i.e Ozma, Michael, Klan, and Luca), break the mind control (causing all of them to join the party); and rescue Myung, which IIRC involves a battle against Leon's old friend Rod, who was the guy who shot him down at the start of the game. 

At which point the boss man of Havamal activates a secondary mind control technique and forces Aisha to kidnap Mina Forte, and take them to the final base, where they're imprisoned inside the monster that the big guy is planning to use to enact his master plan: To go back in time to the 2000s and prevent the Rain of Death from happening so that humanity can be the masters of the galaxy. The final battle involves busting Mina and Aisha out of their prisons on the monster; and depending on which order and how fast you do it, you can get three endings (not explicitly picking a romantic partner, but leanings in that direction) - either the "Mina" ending, the "Aisha" ending, or the "Both" ending if you manage to get back to the ship with the first girl, then back to the boss and busting out the other girl within 90 seconds. 

And all the while you are collecting blueprints for and building every VF that features in the anime shows, except the VF-4 and VF-17, continuously upgrading from the VF-0D all the way up to the YF-29 and YF-30; and flying pain in the ass time trials to unlock the super parts for a lot of the advanced VFs. 

 

[Raikkonen]

@Seto Kaiba and @SebastianP - Immense gratitude to both you!!! Thank you so much!!!

[SebastianP]

2 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

@Seto Kaiba and @SebastianP - Immense gratitude to both you!!! Thank you so much!!!

I forgot to mention the actual ending for the non-original characters, plus a few more things. Blame it being like 4 in the morning when I hit post last time.

Spoiler

After the final battle the crossover characters are all sent home, minus their memories of the events (to avoid screwing up the timeline).

There are a few strange oddities that make it difficult to pin down exactly where in each timeline or even what version of each timeline that everyone comes from.

From the 2000s, we have Mao and Sarah Nome, Shin Kudo, DD Ivanov, and Nora Polyansky. Presumably from before the final episode given that they're all alive. There's only one version of Zero so there's not that much ambiguity.

From the 2010s, we have Kamjin, Hikaru and Misa, but Kamjin appears to be the TV version (he didn't get much screentime in DYRL IIRC), whereas Misa, Hikaru and the SDF-1 appears to be the DYRL version IIRC; the strange thing though is that Misa is in command of the SDF-1, not Global, which would put it post-TV at some point?

From the early 2040s there's Myung, Guld and Isamu, but they're from somewhere in the middle of the final battle after they'd reconciled mostly and before Guld went splat.

From the late 2040s there's Mylene, Basara, Max, Milia, and Gamlin. Probably from the latter third of the series, since Milia's VF-1J and the Fire Valkyrie are intact, but Gamlin, Milia and Max are flying their VF-22s. Not a super high amount of ambiguity either.

But then we come to the 2050s, and the Frontier cast and things get *strange*.

Sheryl and Alto know the Vajra are friendly, and Sheryl is well, and awake - signs point to the TV show versions, post-series. 

Grace O'Connor is working with the good guys without trying to betray them - signs are pointing to the Movie version. 

Michael is still alive - signs pointing to the Movie version.

The Macross Quarter is the movie version.

The YF-29, while not available from the start, is an easily unlockable unit once you hit the third location - again, another movie hint.

And then there are copious dialogue references to things that didn't happen on screen in the movies, but did in the TV show...

Of course, an explanation could be that the whole "Alto went missing for several years and Sheryl didn't wake up" thing was invented for the short film that went with the Zettai Live movie, and that Sheryl was envisioned as waking up much earlier when the game was made. 

The *other* explanation I can think of is much more esoteric, and posits that the crossover characters were never *really* there at all, and the big monster is merely a Lotus Eater Machine or a Fate/Stay Night "summon the heroes from the collective consciousness" that got the idealized versions of everyone. 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, SebastianP said:

I forgot to mention the actual ending for the non-original characters, plus a few more things. Blame it being like 4 in the morning when I hit post last time.

To be frank, you're massively overthinking it.

As noted a few posts ago, Macross runs on Broad Strokes continuity.  The answer to "which version of <previous story> the new story considers canon" is always "none of them".  The creators pick and choose which aspects of design and stort they like best when referencing past stories, and freely mix and match between versions.

That's why, for instance, Macross 7 has a TV Quamzin and movie Vrlitwhai in its docu-drama of the First Space War and its in-universe version of DYRL? has scenes that aren't in ours.  Or why the Zentradi 33rd Marines in Frontier have a mixture of movie and TV equipment.  Or why the Berger Stone's historical summary in Delta shows a TV version of the SDF-1 Macross's launch with DYRL?-style Macross and the Frontier TV ending with movie costumes and a YF-29.  I could go on, but you get the idea... and Macross 30 is certainly no exception.