Sachiko is not amused

Doremi, you guys are walking way too fucking fast, while I lag a bit behind. But I still beat lolikit to a proper entry.

The school festival has arrived and everyone is having a grand ol’ time. Yumi and Yoshino man the gates of some shrine restaurant. Yoshino goes at it with particular enthusiasm since it’s her first school festival since she almost died, while Yumi would rather be in the throes of pleasure, writhing in bed with Sachiko tending to a vending booth.

Outside, Sei and Youko catch a girl trying not so inconspicuously, about 5 meters from the main entrance, to hop the gates into the festival. After some interrogation they get that the girl, Yuuko, claims to be a relative of one of the students, but does not have a ticket as she ought to, and isn’t on the guest list either…hmm…rather fishy, or maybe that’s just the usual scent of pheromones that wafts about Lillian.

Back inside, Yumi takes a quick break from her post to greet Kanako, who perpetuates her loner status by standing around wistfully holding the tickets that were supposed to be passed on to her family members. They chat for a while until Touko comes along, causing Kanako to bolt away. Yumi exchanges pleasantries and meal tickets for free weiners with Touko, but is suddenly dragged back to Yoshino and the photography club, who are taking pictures of the roses at work for the next edition of the newspaper. Yumi returns to find Touko has excused herself, but ended up accepting Yumi’s offer of gratuitous sausage, leaving her thanks.

After finishing up at the restaurant gate, Yumi heads inside the school where she meets up with Sei and Youko, who suddenly realizes that Yumi and Yuuko are strikingly similar both in appearance and mannerism. The three make their way to Sachiko’s classroom to see her, but she happens to have been called to the nurse’s office, so they opt to fool around in her class’s candy grab games to kill the time until she returns. In the midst of their crusade for chocolate, however, they’re interrupted by Kanako, who comes running in begging Yumi to hide her, having met someone she’d rather avoid.

Sachiko returns soon after, gives Kanako a stare that would make me shit myself if I were ever hit with it, and orders her and Yumi to come with her to the nurse’s office. She explains that she’d been called to the nurse’s office because her father was there, but found that odd since her father left for New York the night before, she went to check it out anyway and instead found Kanako’s father there. Kanako is reluctant to see him at first, but Sachiko coerces her to do so with relative ease.

What follows is a touching reunion where Kanako confronts her father about being a lying adulterer and blames him for breaking up their family and coming between her and her best friend, who he slept with. But her friend, who unsurprisingly turns out to be Yuuko, follows soon after and explains that Kanako’s father did not ruin her life, and that she genuinely loves them. They laugh, they cry, they hug, and Kanako finds out she has a little sister!

Teen pregnancy, bringing families together again. D’aww.

The festival winds down with the bonfire folk dance, where Yumi and Sachiko traditionally find each other idling around by their lonesome. Sachiko takes Yumi for a walk to the statue of Maria-sama and delivers a touching speech about how the two have been sisters for a year now and how despite her best efforts, Sachiko couldn’t come up with a way to celebrate it because having Yumi as her soeur seems so natural that this day feels like any other. Yumi is brought to tears by Sachiko’s spiel, but her bliss soon turns into shock as Sachiko then tells Yumi to choose a soeur of her own.

Thoughts

FWOO FWOO

Ah the dramatic wind, an anime staple that tells meteorologists to shove it, because high pressure system be damned, a dramatic revelation needs to be followed by a strong gust of wind.

Maybe it’s because I’ve long since forgotten Marimite’s time line and any events that preceded the fourth season, but this came out of nowhere to me. Was this hinted at at all before now? I was always under the impression that Sachiko was rather protective of Yumi and didn’t really want to share her with anyone else. In retrospect, that may just be a result of the “Crazy Sachiko” persona that all Sachiko fans seem to push onto her.

I’m going to assume that Sachiko’s reasoning is that after experiencing the joy that having une petite soeur has brought her, she wants Yumi to follow suit. But I could have sworn she was really possessive of Yumi before. Even the look she gave Touko and Yumi as they ran off together reeked of “If anything happens to my little sis I’ll tear that girl’s head off, dip her twindrills in the resulting fountain of blood and paint my kitchen with it”.

…am I just imagining things D:?

A wild Touko appears.
FIGHT          BAG
PKMN         >RUN

As for the race for Yumi’s rosary itself, things seem pretty one sided. Kanako can’t stand the competition, and doesn’t seem to really like Yumi anyway, still unable to completely detach herself from the ideal of Yumi that she had built up in her mind. That, and she’s only using her as a means to get over Yuuko. While it looks like Kanako will resolve a lot of the issues she has with Yumi and humanity in general and becoming less of a nihilistic bitch as the series progresses, I’ve still got my money on Touko. Largely thanks to the in your face symmetrical docking shot of the two in the ED. *bitter*

Yup, still a dyke.

~ Shirukii ~

A wild MissingNo. appears

First of all, FUCK YEAH I’m blogging again! Feels good to be back and slightly less lazy, just slightly. Second of all, many thanks to lolikit, whose post informed me that the .avi raw of this episode was made of artifacts and fail. Incidentally, I’ll be blogging this series in tandem with him, so look forward to that if you’re at all remotely interested in either of our ramblings.

We start off by getting a reintroduction of the Roses and whatnot. Just in case you forgot who Sachiko is. But you didn’t. No one forgets who Sachiko is. It’s Sachiko.

The Rose mansion is aflutter with talks of the play which they will be showing at the upcoming school festival, for no apparent reason but to illicit one of her petite soeur’s funny facial expressions, Sachiko decides on one whose main characters fit Yumi and her little brother perfectly.

By now, a staple presence in any school event, the guys from Hanadera head over to Lillian to help out with the play. As everyone seems to be settling in and the play looks to be taking form, Sachiko (again, for on apparent reason) tells everyone to forget all their roles and arbitrarily dictates new ones at her discretion. Instead of being irked at the wasted time spent memorizing roles and preparing costumes, everyone seems to take the suggestion in good humor.

After rehearsal, Yumi, Yoshino and Shimako are heading home when Yumi stops in front of Maria-sama’s statue and begins to nostalgia bomb about when she became Sachiko’s petite soeur, she outright denies her reminiscence to the other two, but her lie is written on her face.

As rehearsals continue, Yumi begins to notice that Kanako isn’t exactly in high spirits about the play. When she confronts her about it later at the rose mansion, Kanako reminds her of her disdain for all being with a penis and how displeased she is by the fact that she has to portray one in the play. However, she does not break the promise to be in the play that she made to Yumi, despite voicing her desire to.

Later that day, during cleaning duty, Noriko stops Yumi in the halls to tell her about Touko, who has been skipping drama club activities for some reason. While it’s reasonable to assume that the school festival play is taking away some of the time Touko has for the drama club, she shouldn’t be completely absent from their meetings. But nevertheless, after some discussion in the Rose mansion, everyone agrees that Touko should be dismissed from her duties in the school festival play to free up time for the drama club, sending Yumi to give her the news. Instead…

Confrontation.

Confusion.

Accusation and first lie.

Presentation of evidence refuting first lie.

Defensive bantering and second lie.

Pointing out of flaw in second lie and demand for truth.

Admission of lies and concession of truth.

Make up sex.

So from what I understood, Touko first tells Yumi that she just doesn’t have the time for the drama club, or that it’s on hiatus or something. However, Yumi’s done her research and presents a copy of the drama club schedule. Touko then explains that she’s just gotten bored of acting, a pretty stupid lie since she’s skipping the drama club to practice for the school festival play. Yumi finally drags it out of her that one of her upper classmen got pissy that Touko got the lead in the drama club’s upcoming play, so Touko shoved the role back in her face and quit. Yumi’s puppy dog face manages to convince Touko to go back and give the drama club another chance.

Preparations for the school festival continue and everything seems to be ready with time to spare on the eve of the festival.

Thoughts

You’re a wizard Harry Yumi

I-I’m a what?

Wow, an actual OP, that kinda caught me off guard. Whatever happened to walking slowly?

Marimite season 4 looks to be more of the same, Sachiko’s still insane in the membrane, Yumi still wears her heart on her face, Rei’s still a dyke, Sei…we haven’t seen, but she’s probably still a dyke too. Which is all well and good, Marimite has kept the same feel with few deviations from day one, and it’s worked! I’m a little disappointed that the characters come off as static, showing no sizable growth in personality, except perhaps Yumi, Sachiko and Touko. However, the character dynamics are laid back and fun to watch, so meh.

Rape is imminent.

Oh Sachiko, you so crazy. I look forward to many more of your dere moments with Yumi. The relationship between these two has become rather predictable, anytime there’s any conflict between them, it will undoubtedly be caused by come stupid misunderstanding that could have been cleared up in seconds if either of them had just voiced their concerns instead of playing mind games on themselves. You think they would have figured that out by now, but alas. Still great fun to watch Yumi’s facial expressions though.

This, however, was a dick move. I could have done without being blatantly told the result of the Touko-Yumi-Kanako soeur triangle. The mystery is gone D:

But on the bright side, victory to the loli! Sieg heil.

Isn’t it sad Kanako ;_;

~ Shirukii ~

Aside: As usual, any summary flaws as a result of watching this raw should be noted in comments and will be promptly correctly. Also, keep an eye on notdotq, where lolikit promises to do a real post when he actually watches the episode.

Gokigenyou.

Yet another call to arms, this time by my better half with an XY chromosome (sorry lolikit, title reserved, 3 x 0.5 =/= 1) lolikit. Having blogged my fair share of absolutely nothing for the past few months and winter break not too far away, I figure it’s time to jump back on the episodic bandwagon. Unfortunately the damn thing rode so far into the distance that I have no clue what’s going on anymore. But I do know that Maria-sama ga Miteru is primed to return for its fourth installment, the third season being thinly veiled as OVAs despite really being a full length 12 episode series divided into fewer, but chunkier releases.

Maria-sama ga Miteru follows the lives of the students of Lillian School For Girls, a prestigious, and therefore pretentious all girls school. Delving further into pretentiousness, the abundant and unquestioned proliferation of lesbian undertones in this school serves a gigantic middle finger raised to the opposing gender, whose appearances are so few and far between (save a few key characters) that they may as well not exist. Within this school exists the hierarchical “rose” system wherein three seniors and their personally chosen apprentices rule the school with an iron fist, using its resources at their whim for personal glorification and amusement. Yet they are so unpretentiously pretentious about it that the student body not only tolerates them, but reveres them as gods of sorts, their mere presence sending a trickle of warm female excretion down the side of the legs of their respective fan camps.

So in not so many words: It’s pretty awesome.

The plan is to blog this raw, but something tells me that I’ll fail in this regard, all in the spirit of the show of course, walking slowly is preferred and etc.

EDIT: I’m an idiot, and it’s not 2009!

EDIT2: Oookay…so apparently it is 2009!

~ Shirukii ~

With the new broadcasting season starting properly this week I have the honour of starting of AniAri’s writing season with the latest series from J.C.Staff, Toradora! Named after the lead characters (more on that later), Toradora is a romantic comedy adapted from the original light novel series by Yuyuko Takemiya. I saw the first episode with little more to go on than the premise and I was pleasantly surprised by the simple yet endearing plot and the character design that backs it up.

Ryuji Takasu is your average highschooler where it not for his intimidating eyes, a gift he inherited from his runaway father. While he’s actually a caring and gentle guy, his constant glare gives him a bad reputation. Apart from some hinting to the yakuza, little else is said about his father while his mother seems to be a complete airhead who works as a bar hostess. Ryuji is now the one taking care of the household, cooking, cleaning and removing the mold caused by the enormous skyscraper next to his house.

Keikaku Doori

With the first day of the new school year starting, Ryuji finds himself isolated until his best friend Yusaku Kitamura shows up, one of the few who managed to look past his threatening appearance. One of those few is Minori Kushieda for whom Ryuji has developed quite an impressive crush over the years.

On the way to class, Ryujii has a run-in with Taiga Aisaka, a short girl with a fierce temper and a reputation to match his own. She has been given the name “Palmtop Tiger” due to her short stature and brutal behaviour. Quick to anger, she sucker punches him to the face without even saying a word. In class we see that Minori is one of her only friends. (plot device anyone?)

Unlimited Desk Works?

After being called to the teacher’s office, Ryuji goes to fetch his bag where he interrupts Taiga. Possessing inhuman speed, she rushes into a cabinet in a not so subtle hiding attempt, knocking over half the desks in the room. She seems obsessed about Ryuji’s bag, only conceding the fight over it after her illness starts to act up. (Going through ten handkerchiefs a day with my cold, I can certainly relate.)

When he gets home he finds a love letter from Taiga to a Kitamura Yuusaku in his bag, which she mistakenly put in there. Not only that, the letter even turns out to be empty. She really does seem to be the clumsy type.

Ryuji is awoken that night by Taiga who has broken into his home with a bokken. Bent on killing him for reading her love letter, but willing to settle for amnesia she chases him around the room. However, upon hearing that the letter was empty she collapses out of exhaustion and hunger. Not knowing what to do, Ryuji decides to fix her a meal.

After trying to teach her some table manners, he puts her embarrassment into perspective by showing off his secret obsession for Minori. Ryuji has everything planned from poems to music, lacking only the resolve to actually confess to her. After a brief introduction the Inko, a sickly though not quite dead parakeet, Ryuji tries to work Taiga out of the house before his mother gets home, going so far as to promise to obey her like a dog.

The next day, while cooking breakfast, Ryuji’s interrupted by a phone call from Taiga, ordering him to look out the veranda. There he finds her staring back at him from her apartment next to his house. Going over with breakfast, he finds her place in a state of total squalor. After noticing the total mess his cleaning Ryuji’s Cleaning Power kicks in, tidying up the room and indirectly curing Taiga of her runny nose by getting rid of all the filth.

[insert preferred meme here]

So far Toradora seems to be a promising series. Rie Kugimya’s voice acting is once again exceptional, fleshing out her character without falling back on her typical Shana voice, even with the occasional Urusai thrown in. Rie is probably the best voice actress out there for tsundere characters and she puts down another excellent performance here.

We haven’t seen enough of to be sure, but Taiga seems to be set up for the typical “Tsundere with a troubled past.” stereotype while Ryuji is certainly the more interesting of the two. He’s reminding me a lot of Genzo from Cheeky Angel for some reason. Just a quick note, the series’ Title is taken from the names of the two leads: Taiga is the phonetic equivalent of Tiger, which when translated back to Japanese becomes Tora. Similarly, Ryu is Japanese for dragon, pronounced doragon in Japanese.

Urusai! Urusai! Urusai!

There are certainly some character similarities to be found to J.C.Staff’s earlier work, notably Zero no Tsukaima and of course Shakugan no Shana. What little we’ve seen of the plot so far seems to put it in the romantic comedy or slice of life genre which I think would work perfectly by keeping things simple yet charming.

I’ve yet to see any information on how long it will run, but I’m guessing it will clock in at your standard 13 episodes. I will certainly be following this in the following weeks to see where they take the story.

  Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream

Implied secks ftw

A relatively boring episode compared to the previous two weeks, not much was learned in terms of character and plot that we didn’t already know or that we couldn’t have inferred from recent events. The SMS’s rebellion was the only significant event of the episode, along with alliance pledging, Alto and Luca deciding to abandon Ranka and the SMS and stay on Frontier with Rossiu Leon.

Usurpation of the throne, campaign based on fear mongering and preservation of way of life and ugly as sin? Rossiu 2.0

Leon’s a really weird character, he’s meant to be the penultimate bad guy of the series, the Vajra supposedly being at the top of the chain, however, he just isn’t doing a good job. While everything he does seems to be out of pure malice, he’s just isn’t a very threatening force. Perhaps it’s because he’s made his objectives known, his motivations are so typical of villains that I no longer find them the least bit intimidating, you have to get a little more creative than money and power these days. Than again, maybe it’s just his RIDICULOUS hair that’s making it impossible to take him seriously.

I have to admit though, he’s smart enough to cover all his bases with this coup d’etat, going as far as taking out Grace…or at least trying to.

This scene would have been a lot more menacing had she not started to fondle herself

But regardless, FUCK YEAH, GRACE!

Grace remains my favourite and the most interesting character in Macross Frontier, unlike Leon, who has pretty much laid his cards out on the table for us to see, Grace remains lurking in the shadows, inching out ever so slowly, revealing her motives bit by bit. Her reasons for being so damn evil continue to remain in the dark, mostly. This episode we learned that her goal all along was to have Ranka lead her back to the Vajra home planet, but what she plans on doing with this information is up to interpretation.

Will Grace manipulate Ranka’s fold waves, tame the Vajra and use them as her personal army to take over the universe? Does she also want to harvest Fold Quartz for some reason beyond monopolizing the transportation and communication markets? Is she looking for a new homeworld for her and her mysterious voice only friends? Or is she really a good guy and plans on eradicating the Vajra to ensure the survival of Frontier? While unlikely, the last of those would make me rage uncontrollably and relegate Macross Frontier to my “complete waste of time” pile.

As for our little Vajra queen, I’m still wildly confused over her choice to up and leave Frontier to search for the Vajra homeworld. I understand that the pressure of being the Songstress of Hope got to her and that she no longer wanted to be used as a tool for warfare, especially since it blew up in her face and ended up causing the very invasion she was supposed to prevent. However, you’d think that the massacre of Frontier and the deaths/injuries of several people close to her would make her despise the Vajra, not defect to them.

There had to have been some other trigger for her “betrayal”, Ai-kun may have been a good pet and all, but for Ranka to not have a backlash when he turned out to be a Vajra and furthermore run to the Vajra’s aid suggests she knows something no one else does. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if maybe the Vajra aren’t bad guys at all, a la first generation Space Monsters in Diebuster. I guess we’ll find out in the coming episodes, probably via expositional flashback to Ranka’s past.

As for Sheryl, I found it hilariously out of character that she, who had lived such a pampered life prior to her fall from grace, would be content doing underground (well, by Frontier standards) charity shows. However, I suppose it is somewhat fitting with her new found motivation to sing for the sake of the people, not to mention that after hitting rock bottom, she probably isn’t being too picky these days.

With regards to Sheryl becoming the new Songstress of Hope, I’m a little torn, on one hand I find the mere fact that she succeeded Ranka’s title far too convenient and more of a plot pushing move than a situation you could honestly believe would happen. However, the plot does need to move forward and this just so happens to be a necessity, that being said, I like the way they handled it. Sheryl gaining fold wave powers like Ranka could have easily been attributed to her new attitude and genuine emotion in her recent singing, that would have been horribly cliche, instead they opted to tie it into her illness, making her situation bittersweet, which is almost always preferred as it leads to better drama and conflict.

The relationship between her and Alto is also progressing at a believable rate, the only gripe I have being the speed at which Alto has all but forgotten about Ranka, especially given that she hit the guy with a parting confession. By all rights, this should have torn him in two, but it didn’t seem to phase him much. I guess his deep seeded hate for the Vajra overwhelms his feelings for Ranka, which is odd since much of the hate he harbors towards the Vajra is because they were responsible for her traumatic childhood.

Alto’s behaviour since Ranka’s departure raises some questions about how attached he was to her in the first place. As I just mentioned, his hate for the Vajra stemmed largely from what they did to her, to see that outweigh the determination he had to protect her is odd, to say the least. At the beginning of the episode it looked like Alto had turned off the emotional receptors in his brain and turned to full combat mode, relentlessly ordering rookies around and pouring all his concentration into some good ol’ fashioned Vajra ass whooping. But then he turns around and has an extremely emotionally driven moment with Sheryl, arguably the beginnings of him actually falling in love with her, especially when you consider Klein’s pep talk. I wonder if I’m the only one who thinks that Alto-hime and the Galactic Fairy may have comforted each other in more than one way that night…

Lastly, Macross Quarter’s rebellion, which, in hindsight, was inevitable. Leon was eliminating all threats to his newly acquired power, and an independently contracted military trained group with weaponry that outstrips NUNS, not to mention their highly individualistic ideals, certainly qualifies as a threat. Alto and Luca choosing to side with the government was a bit surprising, but I suppose it makes sense, given that both Nanase and Sheryl aren’t in any condition or position to become fugitives.

I can’t believe they dug up the whole “Why do you fly?” thing with Alto again though, I thought that was a dead horse. On that note, for someone who was so deathly opposed to going back to the Saotome mansion the first time, Alto didn’t show much aversion to waltzing in this time around. By the same logic, it’s weird that the rest of the household hasn’t tied the bastard up and waterboarded him in an attempt to get him to act again, since they were so gung ho about it before.

I’m not sure if it’s just me not looking deeply enough into these things, but Macross Frontier seems to have a lot of continuity issues when it comes to how characters act. It seems like certain characters will act in certain ways only when it’s convenient or necessary to do so, but will later on contradict their actions in order to bend the plot in a certain direction. A perfect anime is one that bonds character and plot development together seamlessly, whereas Macross Frontier seems to be keeping them in separate rooms divided by a concrete wall with a peephole in the middle.

Obligatory Klein ;_;

~ Shirukii ~

Good night sweet prince ;_;

The post Sherylfags have been waiting for, it’s time for some Ranka bashing!

Prior to this episode I hadn’t put much effort into picking apart Ranka, not nearly as much as I put into picking apart Sheryl, and as such have come across as quite the Ranka supporter (don’t think I don’t see you animesuki goers talking about me in your forums :3). The reality is, I was never trying to put Ranka on a pedestal, I was just trying to drag Sheryl down from hers, Ranka has been a brat throughout the entire series, but a cute loli-brat, so she got my support. However, the events of episodes 20 and 21 simply can’t be justified.

BAAAW more Ranka. What the hell? She finally makes up her mind to tell Alto how she feels, terrific, but then she sees him with Sheryl and suddenly she has an emotional “I can’t take it anymore” breakdown? Ranka has always known that she was locked in a battle for Alto’s heart with Sheryl, and she’s done a pretty good job holding her own against the Galactic Fairy, given how much of a head start she got. But when she just happens to be there when Ranka decides to confess to Alto all the courage she built up, everything she’s done to lead up to that moment disappears? BS. She should have confessed anyway, sure it would have been a slap in the face to Sheryl and confuse the hell out of Alto, but if she truly had the resolve, that’s what I’d expect her to do.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, her emotional hissy fit almost causes the downfall of Frontier. The resulting Vajra shitstorm led to the deaths of thousands of civilians and immense physical damages, including the destruction of an entire colony island. By extension, I’m going to guess that the exact same thing happened 11 years ago when her previous colony was attacked and destroyed by Vajra.

The one thing in these episodes that I don’t fault Ranka for though, is refusing to sing anymore. While this sort of falls in line with the brattiness that I’m beating her up for, there’s more to it than simple selfishness. The pressure that was put on Ranka by Frontier was an unreasonable burden to bear, branded the Songstress of Hope and Frontier’s future being put on her shoulders is all fun and games while it’s smooth sailing, but when shit hits the fan, it’s no fault of Ranka’s that she cracked under the pressure. Being unable to protect those who believed in you, let alone being responsible for putting them in harm’s way, Ranka can’t be blamed for wanting to run away from the responsibility…

…however, abandoning everyone completely and defecting to the Vajra, confessing to Alto on her way out, was a pretty dick move.

By contrast, Sheryl did pretty well for herself these past couple episodes, as I figured she would after running to Alto. She finally gets over her stubbornness and accepts help and sympathy from others, as well as getting over Ranka beating her in record sales and going back to singing for the people and not for the people’s money and adoration. Furthermore, she gave Ranka the good ol’ slap in the face to snap her out of it, as well as a slightly misguided pep talk on her obligation to perform because she’s a pro, in my opinion a talk about doing what she wants (Brera’s point of view) would have done much better. However, given that the Vajra were tearing apart Frontier and that they thought that Ranka’s song was the only thing capable of stopping them, it makes sense that Sheryl chose the former.

GOD DAMNIT.

I remember saying that Mikhail would be my favourite character if he would just take the sweet loli bait dangling in front of his eyes. Figures that when he clears that condition he dies a couple minutes later, Japan haet lolicon D=? It sucked seeing these two come together only to have them ripped apart moments later, it was painful seeing Klein go berserk after Mikhail’s death.

I didn’t like Mikhail’s stupid explanation of why he waited until now to admit his feelings for Klein. While it fits his character that he fears commitment, with the death of his sister and all, I hate when that card is played because if you truly love someone you can’t help but get involved with them, even if uncertainty looms over the horizon, one truly in love would grab their partners hand and run blindly into the unknown. It’s strange that Mikhail left saying “I love you” rather than “I like you”, yet took so long to admit it. It also angers me that Klein would have had confirmation of his feelings for her if she had just sneaked a peak into his cockpit (if you know what I mean).

BOKU ORE NO TURN

Leon’s coup d’etat succeeds and now I wonder where he plans on going from here. If I recall correctly his plan is to harvest Fold Quartz from the Vajra for massive profits, but the method by which he’d do this is something worth pondering. The fighting has descended to the point where it takes a planet eater bomb just to effectively fend off a Vajra attack, and Leon plans to what? Somehow rush their main hive and enslave them for harvesting?

I still maintain that Leon is a mere pawn and that Grace is the true mastermind behind all the chaos, if this ends up being wrong I’m going to be extremely annoyed. Aside from the Vajra, Grace must be the final boss, she just has to be, she’s so evil I bet she excretes pure malevolence.

Plot wise I’m not sure exactly what to expect, Ranka’s defection to the Vajra will probably spread fast, and I can’t see the public nor military’s reception to that news being very good. From the preview, the only notable thing I noticed was Luca looking at what seemed to be a blood sample with tiny Vajra, all having a piece of Fold Quartz at their core, scurrying around. I’m not sure how they’re going to explain that if it is indeed a sample of Ranka’s blood, she doesn’t shed Vajra eggs or anything. I’m guessing next week will give us a lot of information as to what exactly the Vajra are and who/what controls/drives them, perhaps with a side of Ozma and Cathy gathering evidence to oust Leon.

Obligatory, and pissed off, Klein

~ Shirukii ~

]]> http://animearimasu.animeblogger.net/2008/08/31/macross-frontier-2021-ffffffffff/feed/ 20 http://animearimasu.animeblogger.net/2008/08/18/macross-frontier-19-school-days-06/ http://animearimasu.animeblogger.net/2008/08/18/macross-frontier-19-school-days-06/#comments Mon, 18 Aug 2008 05:23:35 +0000 Shirukii http://animearimasu.animeblogger.net/2008/08/18/macross-frontier-19-school-days-06/

Uso da…

Ugh, I hate when built up relationships are reset to square one thanks to some stupid misunderstanding like this. It wasn’t dramatic when School Rumble did it god knows how many times, and it’s not dramatic here! It’s just a half assed plot device to drag out the relationship dorama where it would have otherwise been more or less resolved. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF…

You know the drill, another Macross Frontier post, another seemingly futile attempt at reasoning with the Sheryl shippers. Hey, I’ll stop doing them once you guys start admitting that she has no more character depth than the kiddy end of your local community centre swimming pool.

Here’s the thing, Sheryl is your typical supersillious badass female lead, the kind you see in Hollywood action movies, reacting to male advances and genuine concern with coldness and violence. While this was interesting for, oh, maybe the first five minutes, it just got old after that. Having the same stock reaction to every single interaction from a cordial hospital visit from Alto to the news of her death does not depict a woman who does not compromise on her pride, it’s just plain poor characterization. Yes there were isolated incidences like that date episode or that time Alto returned her earring where she displayed vaguely human emotions, but in the grand scheme of things, she’s as stock and predictable as many other of the characters on the show.

Considering the events of late is all the proof you need that she doesn’t exhibit any vaguely humanistic traits. She was told that she’s dying and refuses to accept the help of those around her, not because she’s in denial or anger stages of DABDA, but because of a foolish sense of pride. Real people do not act like this, real people go through DABDA, because it’s the psychological response to grief.

Preemptive rebuttal: yes, Sheryl is a superstar and thus has a lot of pride, she’s a human being before that and thus shouldn’t be impervious to the psychology that affects the rest of us. No, you cannot excuse this by saying that Sheryl is an anime character and not a real person, because then you have to concede that she lacks depth.

Also, I post this knowing full well what probably happened in that last scene, where Sheryl did go to Alto for comfort and help. Yes, that means that she will finally have attained some level of depth and characterization past that of the aforementioned supersillious badass female lead stereotype. No, that does not nullify everything I’ve said up to this point, it just means the ice queen has melted.

On that note…

I pretty much said my piece about this scene in my opening paragraph, it was stupid for them to have thrown it in. Things were going well between Alto and Ranka, and Alto and Sheryl had just had a touching moment where Sheryl finally opened up to him. There’s no reason why Alto couldn’t have had time to think things over and come to a decision on his own, instead they chose to stage this grand misunderstanding that will send Ranka, Sheryl and Alto into the depths of angst for the better part of the remainder of the series.

The above is made especially true by the scene that preceded it, Mikhail has a blunt conversation with Alto, making it absolutely clear that he has two girls vying for his heart and he has to act or lose both of them to indecisiveness. Alto realized this and was going to make a decision anyway, why was it necessary to force his hand and up his angst by making him look like a two timer?! The only thing that came out of this scene was the furthering of Mikhail’s place as a voice of reason and a really good friend.

And what a great friend he is, even offering a reassuring nod to Luca, reminding him that they’re all friends, that they’ve been together this whole time and that everything will be just fine as long as it stays that way. How Mikhail came to be in tune with Luca’s nervousness of late as he had to deal with the L.A.I. and pressuring from Leon is beyond me, or at least beyond the scope of what the anime has shown us.

Now if only he’d take the sweet sweet loli bait that dangles in front of his face, he’d be my hero.

Wonder what Leon’s grand scheme is anyway. The guy seems really shallow and power hungry, he probably just wants to climb the ranks as high as he can and reap the financial rewards. From the looks of it, he set up the assassination of Frontier’s president and will announce his planet eater bombs as a countermeasure against the Vajra to skyrocket his popularity in the public eye, assuring his succession to presidency. I still surmise that he’s just Grace’s pawn though, and that she’s the real final boss of this series, she’s just so evil, she can’t be a lackey!

Finally, as expected, confirmation that Ai-kun is indeed a baby Vajra.

Weekly crybaby Ranka shot

~ Shirukii ~

Much like that feeling of guilt you get when you call someone retarded only to find out that they really are mentally ill, I can’t help but feel bad for ragging on Sheryl in my last entry, especially the bit where I told her to be a good little girl and stay in bed. However, my assertion that she’s just as shallow a character as the rest of the Macross Frontier cast still stands, no terminal illness is going to change that.

Grace is an evil, cold hearted bitch, and I’m loving every second of it! However, while it’s awesome to see her true colors, I feel disappointed that the mystery behind Grace is all but gone now. The mystery that surrounded her has been more or less cleared up and it’s safe to throw her under the “batshit insane” classification of villains. While her motives remain unknown, they’re for the most part irrelevant, because as with all characters who exhibit the traits that Grace does, she will undoubtedly crush herself under the weight of her own aspirations. But hey, that’s not to say that her rise to and fall from grace (har har har) won’t be a fun spectacle to watch.

On that note, Sheryl’s free fall is going at an alarming rate. There’s no sure time line for the events of Macross Frontier, but if I had to take a guess, the events that have transpired so far have played out over the course of no more than a few months. In that time Sheryl has gone from a galactic wide pop idol to bargain bin trash. Here’s where I’d insert a witty pop culture reference comparing her to the teen sensations of the real world, but I abhor pop culture and the majority of mainstream music, so my intent to do so will have to suffice.

Begs the question though, how widespread is Sheryl’s decline in popularity. I can somewhat understand why Macross Frontier would be so quick to replace her with Ranka, as the Songstress of Hope is one of their own. But what about on other colonies, have her CDs crashed in sales across the universe? Sure she’s been off tour for a while, but surely she’s not completely forgotten. While I’d like to believe that the transient and fickle nature of celebrity popularity isn’t that bad, in the scene depicted above not a single person recognized Sheryl. Previously she had to wear a disguise and walk around in the dead of night so as not to get mobbed in crowds, now she walks around Shibuya and not a single soul so much as approaches her? Wat.

The whole deal with Sheryl’s illness was an interesting and admittedly unexpected twist which in hindsight makes a lot of sense. It explains the medicine Sheryl has been popping, one of which Mikhail stole to give to Klein for analysis. I’m still not sure what the reason behind Grace switching the vial of Sheryl’s blood in the hospital was though, my guess is that she either didn’t want Sheryl to know she was dying just yet, since at that time the effect of Ranka’s voice on the Vajra had yet to be confirmed, or she didn’t want traces of the V-type infection inhibitor to show up on Sheryl’s blood work, or perhaps both.

And of course there’s the whole issue of Mao Nome, pictured above, who, based on appearance, looks like Ranka’s mom, but based on family name, is Sheryl’s mom. Should prove interesting to explain.

Edit: So, apparently the woman in the middle is Mao, not the green haired one on the right, not that the scene was structured to make it look that way. Given her old age, it’s safe to assume that Grace just gave Sheryl the Nome namesake as a nod to the head doctor she worked under.

As for Ozma, he continues to paint the picture of his own death, relinquishing the duty of protecting Ranka, the very purpose of his life, to Alto, leaving only his relationship with Cathy to tie up before he can pass on without regret. Not that Alto is doing such a great job protecting Ranka though, being upstaged by Brera most of the time, in the eternal struggle between overprotective brothers and the dude who wants to bone his little sister.

As for Ranka herself, stagnant character development aside, her significance to the overlying plot of Macross Frontier is much more interesting to consider. Her reaction to the Vajra is growing more intense as the series progresses, this episode it looked like she had a chunk of fold quartz inside of her. The first time she had this reaction was when she and Sheryl sung a duet during Alto’s first deployment, and again when she was inside the macross infested with a Vajra nest that Brera wreaked havoc on. The physicist in me wants to believe that Ranka really does produce fold quartz inside of her and it reacts in tandem with the fold quartz produced by the Vajra, it would also be a convenient explanation of the Vajra hivemind.

SIEG HEIL!

Plot aside, the fight scenes in Macross Frontier are beginning to bore me. While the whole evolution thing on the Vajra side made things slightly more interesting, all it did was reverse the problem that Macross Frontier suffers from, largely one sided battles. Even in Code Geass R2, which I rag on for submitting to Gundam style battles wherein all mass produced units are essentially cannon fodder, the tide of battle ebbs and flows, whereas in Macross Frontier one side lays the beat down on the other until someone pulls out a quantum cannon. Well that’s all well and good for plot advancement, but a one hit kill (a.k.a The “Fuck You” Button) has and always will be a cop out battle device.

Not like it did them much good anyways, seems like Macross Frontier has a little bug problem.

Finally, an odd turn of events Yasaburo coming to Sheryl’s rescue is. I hope this doesn’t throw us into another round of Alto angsting over his purpose in life and dealing with the acting blood that courses through his veins, that dead horse has been repeatedly beaten, burned to ashes and pissed all over.

Obligatory Klein ;_;

~ Shirukii ~

Modem failure makes loli Ranka cry ;_;

One final time, sorry for the lack of presence in the aniblogosphere as of late, quite the eventful summer this one turned out to be. I haven’t gotten around to watching any of the new summer shows, but I figure I should at least keep up with our old favorites, so here goes.

Aside: Would it have killed you guys to mention the meaningless endeavor that was my summary section just a tad earlier ;_;?

Because I know how much everyone LOVES to talk about this, let’s start off with the shipping war, which conveniently has a quantifiable measure in the form of a poll now, Ranka ftw!

It pains me to say this, but Ranka’s character has remained largely stagnant for the past few episodes (and by extension, the series as a whole). While she does exhibit what may be interpreted as a heightened sense of self and along with it a rise in motivation, she hasn’t come a long way from the person she was at the beginning of the series. Admittedly, there have been isolated cases where she acted of her own accord to achieve something she wanted to and came out of it a better person, like going to Gallia-4 to rescue Alto or standing up to Sheryl in the hospital duet. However, for the most part, Ranka’s actions have been predicated by others and in the end boil down to “Just shut up and sing”. Going back as far as Sheryl telling Ranka to enter the Miss Macross Frontier contest, Ranka has been ushered along by those around her, most recently, Grace, whom Ranka clearly feels is an unnecessary escort, not only being more content with her previous management but also feeling as if she’s betraying Sheryl, yet she sits silently and obeys her orders anyway.

On the romance front, Ranka has made significant headway in terms of being able to admit to herself that she has thing for Alto, and will even act upon it when forced to step up by Sheryl. However, the little starlet just isn’t ready for a relationship with the guy yet, the dynamic between the two still reads siblings more than love interests and Ranka still shows signs of the dependency on Alto, which is no basis for any sort of romantic relationship.

Sheryl’s not doing much better herself, she continues to boast the haughty “holier than thou” attitude, and it’s gone past old, it’s just annoying. Her defiance of the rules and her semblance of heightened entitlement isn’t endearing, it’s stupid. When your friends, doctors and colleagues tell you to stay in bed and get some rest, stay in bed and get some rest ffs, not doing so is what’s causing the frequent collapsing, it’s not Alto’s girlish good looks. Sheryl is spiraling into despair as Ranka’s presence in both Alto’s heart and the galactic music scene threatens to overshadow hers, yet she refuses to sit still for a day so she can recover and launch a counter attack.

Blah blah, mixed messages, indecisive help/hurt game with Ranka, inability to come to terms with feelings, etc. etc. My stance on Sheryl’s approach to winning Alto’s heart isn’t even worth fully reiterating, as the lack of progress would only lead to a rehashing of trodden ground.

As for how the Ranka vs Sheryl issue with respect to fan reception, it continues to baffle and amaze me. The general trend I’m seeing is that most of the Ranka shippers, myself included, like Ranka almost solely because she’s cute, because truthfully there’s nothing much more to her character that goes beyond her “energetic green haired loli” archetype. Consequently, the people who hate Ranka, do so BECAUSE Ranka shippers like her on account of her cuteness.

Wat.

I can understand people liking Ranka because of her cuteness, furthermore I can understand people hating Ranka because of her cuteness. What I don’t agree with is people hating Ranka because of people liking her for her cuteness. By the same token, I can see why certain people like Sheryl because of her haughty attitude, the very reason I abhor her. However I dislike her because of the trait itself, not the fact that others like her for said trait.

tl;dr: Like or hate the character because of the character, not because of the fanbase of the character.

Aside: First to point out the hypocrisy of my liking of Ranka based solely on her cuteness while I bash series like Lucky Star and/or previous cases where I have picked on a character or series because of its idiotic fanbase gets my old modem shoved down their throat.

Far more interesting a character than either of our leading ladies is their backstabbing manager, Grace. This woman is, in my opinion, the most interesting character in Macross Frontier, her character and motives are shrouded in a slowly unraveling mystery which I was ready to chalk up to “she’s doing it for the money” until Leon came out and said that they’re above such things, leaving them to lesser minds like Bilrer. Leon, incidentally, should be standing next to Grace on the podium of most interesting character, however I maintain that he’s just Grace’s plaything in the grand scheme of things. Plus his hair is ugly as sin.

Moving on from characters to plot, quite a few things have happened over the course of the past few weeks. After Grace tore a chunk out of Gallia-4, we were treated to a conference call of her co-conspirators speaking cryptically of plans and operations, I tried cross referencing the voices of the conversation with existing characters in the series but came up blank, aside from Grace obviously, did anyone else do the same with better results?

Sheryl’s earrings come back and take centre stage, now revealed to be Fold Quartz, some rare gem that is produced internally within Vajra, allowing them to smooth out fold dislocations. The implications are instantaneous travel and communications technology, much like the booster pack that the LAI gave Mikhail on his Gallia-4 mission. Such technology would revolutionize the universe and a monopoly on said technology would mean a virtually infinite supply of money. My guess is that at the end of all this we’ll get some thinly veiled “some things aren’t meant to be controlled” moral, seeing as the origin of Fold Quartz is inside the bellies of mankind’s greatest threat.

Ranka’s significance in the show continues to skyrocket over Sheryl’s, in addition to being the hip new songstress on the block, her voice is a military grade weapon against the Vajra. Along with more Ranka screen time comes the unraveling of her past, a brief scene showing her moving in with Ozma, initially nothing more than a shell of a human being, but surprisingly quick to recover after some crappy pineapple cake.

Lastly, it’s more or less confirmed that Brera is Ranka’s supposedly late brother, or at the very least, his consciousness implanted into a cyborg body, a la Grace. It’s hilarious to see how overprotective he is of Ranka, especially when it comes to Alto, seizing every opportunity to humiliate or show him up, as any caring brother would do in lieu of their little sister falling for some strange guy.

As far as PEW PEW LAZORS action goes, the past few weeks sure have had an abundance of it, so much so that it was beginning to get a little boring after the SMS started to use reactive missiles to tip the scales. However, things are looking up now, the Vajra displaying that they’re not complete pushovers and have the ability to adapt evolutionarily to protect themselves against the attacks that are bringing them down. Hopefully this means that we’ll see more interesting and involved dogfights, perhaps with even *gasp* strategy and formation playing a role. Although, more likely is that this is just going to lead to a whoring out of Ranka’s hax ability to stop Vajra in their tracks.

Another thing that has been made blatantly clear, most poignantly in episode 17, Ozma’s a dead man. They’re just teasing us now, the fake death scene surely just to keep us on our toes as to when it will actually happen. But rest assured, it will, everything anime has taught us about lengthy battle speeches, continual promises -not- to die, reckless fighting, and loss of primary motivation for existence dictate that this guy is going to kick it.

Lastly, Grace is such a bitch, haha. The smug look on her face when Sheryl confronted her, awesome.

Oh, and if this guy’s unknown biological make up, and little tentacle arm thingies weren’t evidence enough, his propensity to swat at things with even the slightest semblance to aircraft is. This thing is a Vajra.

Obligatory Klein shot

~ Shirukii ~

Loli Ranka!

I don’t care what you naysayers out there say, I think Ranka is ridiculously cute, character design wise anyways.

We’ve hit Macross F’s halfway point (and consequently the start of the summer anime season, I haven’t forgotten) and it seems like this show is finally ready to start. And by start I mean stop beating around the figurative bush and finally start explaining just what the hell is going on. Hopefully this puts a stop to the True Tears-esque fancamp war and spurs some meaningful plot and character discussion.

D-pulse waves, which seem to be the Macross equivalent of EMP, have knocked Alto’s valkyrie out of the air and are causing periodic white outs to all electrical systems on Gallia-4. After a controlled crash landing, Alto and Ranka stumble upon a downed Macross ship, a first generation Macross which seems to have been sitting there decades. The familiar silhouette triggers Ranka’s dissociative amnesia and she has a panic attack in front of Alto. Alto later reassures her that if the memories of her past are causing her so much pain, it would be better to forget them and stop dwelling on the events of the past, focusing instead on the here and now.

After another white out, the two trudge through the forest in the blistering heat until they stumble across a water source where they have the opportunity to rinse their bodies off and reminisce about the time they’ve shared together since meeting. Alto notes how Ranka was self critical at first but since then has gained a lot of courage, which Ranka says is all thanks to him protecting her and giving her a push in the right direction whenever she lost her way or got cold feet. As the two get ready to head back to the valkyrie, Ranka runs off to go to the washroom when she’s suddenly kidnapped, the only clue a trail of downed forestry leading directly to the downed Macross.

Back on Frontier, the SMS is beginning to worry since they haven’t received a transmission from Gallia-4 in quite some time, the last one being a confirmation that Ranka and Alto had taken off and begun to make their way back, which they obviously didn’t do since they’d have been back already. Klein suggests once again using the LAI’s fold technology to get to Gallia-4 to assess the situation, but given the trouble Luca has gotten in for doing so once already, that’s not an option.

Back on Gallia-4, Alto scouts the Macross, preparing to go in and rescue Ranka, when he notices that the serial number of the Macross matches the one which Ranka had previously been stationed on, the one which was supposedly attacked and destroyed by Vajra during her childhood. Nearby, Brera continues to receive orders, but the sender is revealed this time around, as most of us thought, it turns out to be Grace pulling the strings, this time telling him to watch over Ranka, an important research subject, however she’s only secondary to their objective here on Gallia-4.

Alto infiltrates the Macross to find that the data in the research labs has been completely erased, and just recently as well. In the same lab he finds a sealed Vajra specimen, and more curiously a photo of Ranka as a child. As if on cue, Ranka wakes up from her kidnapping in what appears to be a Vajra den, contacting Alto asap and giving him her location. However, before Alto reaches her, the Vajra overseeing the den wakes up and begins to rampage, Brera barging in to protect Ranka. Soon afterward, Alto arrives on scene to see Brera fighting off the Vajra and flies around him to Ranka’s side, only to be blocked by a force field put up by the Vajra. Suddenly, a flash of purple light erupts from Ranka, pushing both Alto and Brera out of the den as the Macross awakens to give rise to a Vajra fleet led by one of their motherships.

Amidst the commotion, Alto tries to head back in to save Ranka, only to be engaged by Brera, who by virtue of superior piloting skills, a better valkyrie, or a bit of both, pins Alto down. Luckily for the princess, Mikhail and Sheryl took off earlier to see if they couldn’t figure out what exactly what was going on with this planet. Alto tells them to head inside the Vajra mothership to save Ranka while he takes care of Brera.

However, before anything else happens, Grace steps in and closes the curtain on this act, standing by an ominous machine she coins the “Dimension Eater” she tells Brera to retreat for now. Activating the machine, it turns out to be a planet eating weapon, opening a massive fold distortion that destroys everything in its path, including her, not that she seems to mind that much. Mikhail and Sheryl get away by piggybacking on the Vajra who fold out, while Alto has to rely on guts and a stereotypical courageous pilot scream in his attempt to outrun the wave of death.

Thoughts

I guess the biggest story following this episode is Grace, who we all knew was up to something behind the scenes, but who we probably weren’t expecting to destroy an entire planet. With this WTF twist, Grace now occupies the spot of most interesting character in my mental Macross hierarchy, not that she’s my favourite character, Ranka still holds that, but most interesting by far. On the surface she looked like nothing more than a side character, Sheryl’s organized secretary lackey, that quickly faded as we continually saw her prowess in information manipulation and her intrigue has now exploded after having swallowed up an entire fucking planet.

She did get sucked into the fold dislocation she caused and has technically “died”, but I certainly hope that we haven’t seen the last of her. Given that we weren’t told her past or motives, I’d expect that she’ll return later on, as no character in anime dies without being either completely and utterly useless or until after they’ve vomited out their entire life’s story in a couple episodes of expositional dialogue, neither of which fit the bill.

Secondarily to Grace absolutely wrecking Gallia-4, whose political and military stability we had spent an entire, now useless, episode restoring, is Ranka. The mystery behind Ranka continues to grow, just exactly what is she and why is she of such great interest not only to the Vajra, but to the military and various other independent organizations as well. Currently, she has the Vajra, Leon and now Grace all vying for possession of whatever it is that she can do. The ability to glow and emit forceful waves of colorful light isn’t anything new in anime, so I’ve got absolutely no idea on where to begin formulating a theory on her purpose, so I guess this one will be up in the air for at least a week longer.

Bitch in one hand, rifle in the other. Savin’ the day.

Ranka and Alto’s relationship grew ever so slightly this episode, the two sharing a bonding moment until interrupted by a tiny nonthreatening bug…thing. At this point I believe it’s safe to say that Ranka has broken Alto’s little sister image of her and is at least poking around in the “I might want to date her” circle of his mental Venn diagram, if not right smack dab in the middle of it. The two are now blushing profusely in each others presence and launch away from each other after prolonged physical contact like two like poled Neodymium-Iron-Boron magnets.

As for Sheryl, not much development on her end this time around, as she remains dishonest about her feelings, as was bluntly pointed out by Mikhail. I’m still really confused about Sheryl, who shows continuing interest and concern for Alto, but won’t admit it to herself and others and always leaves a certain ambiguity to her actions around him. It’s as if she likes Alto but is afraid of what that would mean, like loving him would somehow undermine the confident and independent woman she has built herself up to be.

Animation was really good this episode, the fights were fluid and the scenery relatively well drawn, as if somebody had applied a trace layer to the Crytek engine. A little shiny at times though.

Next week looks to be an interesting and action packed episode as the Vajra bring the hammer down full force and attack Macross Frontier.

Obligatory Klein shot.

~ Shirukii ~