I just saw a raw of 20 and as far as I can tell Ranka failed to seize a crowning moment of awesome for herself.

And you know what happened to the character who did get a crowning moment of awesome….

@Paris
You were right on the money for the most part.

@D.J
I saw a raw of 20 as well and coupled with 19 am very upset with Ranka. I am hoping that Yasaburo at least gets Alto-hime to perform once more. Alto-hime may want to be a pilot, but hime still loves to perform.

@Swampstorm
While the content of the Alto-hime and Sheryl conversation was mostly lost on me what was significant was that this time there was no anger and no snark, just an all round peaceful atmosphere. I am not sure if themy might have kids at this point but it does seem that at least for now Sheryl and Alto-hime have made a step forward.

@Ricaryx
From what I can tell Ranka just made a huge step back in ep 20. Sheryl seems to have found the strength to stand tall on her own again, but Ranka well…

@d3v
It turns out that it was a tender moment though Ranka didn’t pull a Guld on Alto-hime and Sheryl.

@fw2k1b
I doubt Ranzo had anything to do with Miyo-sama’s death and he probably felt her loss more keenly than Alto-hime.

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Sheryl 4 eva

As for Alto-hime, I think Yasaburo won’t be successful in getting Alto to return to the stage, because I don’t think acting is Alto’s first love.

Given how we so often see that paper plane he makes, and how it ties back to his past and his mother. I think piloting has always been his first love but he hasn’t quite realized that yet.

And Mikhail and Klan are awesome as are Ozma and Cathy, such cute couples!

Mikhail in particular is totally awesome for calling Hime out like that.

Also, someone at the Macrossworld forums pointed out that the last scene was similar to the flashback in Macross Plus where Guld caught Myung and Isamu sharing a tender moment.

If you look at that distant shot of Sheryl, it really does look like she’s fallen over to the side and Alto’s caught her. Her face was fairly stern when she faced Alto on the roof, and you can see that it was painful for her to try to bring up the subject of her impending death. But I think the first moments of next episode will reveal the truth behind the misunderstanding.

Once Alto finds out about Sheryl’s condition, she will remind Alto of his mother and he’ll end up consoling her instead of Ranka. The story does not end here though. Ranka may be faced with an important decision near the end. Once Ranka hits a dead end, that’s probably the time where Alto will finally realize Ranka’s importance to him, and he’ll stand by her. Yeah, sounds like a wishful thinking, but I don’t think Alto will leave her alone for anyone when push comes to shove. He’s been like this to her ever since the beginning. There’s also Ozma’s plea to Alto, and the fact that Brera is Grace’s pawn. He doesn’t know that he’s doing harm to Ranka by letting her sing to the Vajra. It’s really just Alto in his VF that can save Ranka from her twisted fate. As for Sheryl, my bet is that Ranka is the one that can save her from her twisted fate also.

Sheryl’s talk with Yasaburo about fame and glamour hit something in her. The stage is her calling, unlike Ranka, so she definitely won’t stop singing.

@Swampstorm
Why are we talking about offspring of Sheryl and Alto already? And the chances of contamination and Alto sacrificing things in order to be with Sheryl. That scared me a little. ^^

Sheryl’s face when Ranka found her and Alto on the roof looked…stern. She doesn’t look like she fainted, or pleading. Ranka was made to look pitiful in that certain scene, so it’s more likely Ranka that will be shown to step aside here. But who knows? Maybe some explosion will happen and things get interrupted so all the drama we’re expecting to see will be cut short.

Given the nature of Ranka’s interruption on the roof, at the very least, I’d suspect that Sheryl will be less likely to tell Alto about her situation if she hasn’t already (which she probably hasn’t; the interruption is much too convenient for that). To add to that, if she feels like her presence is interfering at Alto’s chances at happiness, she’s likely to give him that push (given that she was already planning on pushing him away so that her death wouldn’t troubling him as much).

(Besides, the previews show Alto talking to Ranka on the stairwell, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Sheryl tells him to go after her to resolve the confusion.)

@Haesslich:
You’re approaching the scene where Alto sees his mother from the standpoint of his character, while I’m addressing it from the standpoint of a storytelling device. We see a clear shot of “Miyo” well before Alto opens the door (I’m not just talking about a silhouette, either), and I’m guessing that Alto doesn’t have X-ray vision.

The scene is aimed at the audience as much as it is for Alto, so the whole thing is somewhat stylized. Forget mistaking someone for your mother; aren’t visual hallucinations abnormal? Again, this is a story, and the writers have the freedom to wax poetic with their scenes.

But even with your more literal approach to the scene: what conclusions can you draw from it? Aside from “That’s abnormal!” of course.

The issue of whether Sheryl’s success is her own is up to your own interpretation. When you look at it, both Ranka and Sheryl had marketing on their side at some point in their careers. So you’d be hard pressed to laud one for succeeding on her own efforts while bashing the other for relying on marketing.

The notes from Nyan Fro indicate that Sheryl has a proven track record in terms of her successes. Her strengths and weaknesses reflect that it’s in her nature to be successful at what she does. She’s ambitious, competitive, and extremely hard working. Right at the start of episode one, she pushes herself to go ahead with interviews and greeting her fans, even though she’s extremely tired and Grace gives her the option of skipping out and resting. She’s keenly aware of the effort that she’s put into her job, and she refuses to neglect her duties towards it. She doesn’t simply show up at a concert in the last minute and perform; as we saw in episode six, she runs through the entire thing ahead of time and sets up every last detail down to the lighting. She works out to stay in shape for her concerts, as we see in episode nine, and you can see how intense she is when she comes up with song lyrics in episode five. And during the sing off in episode fifteen, you can see her flash a quick grin when she sees that Ranka’s also singing and jumps in to challenge her – she thrives off of competition. These are all qualities of successful people.

Even her flaws reflect this. She’s very uncompromising and exacting on both herself and others when it comes to doing the job at hand. She’s a workaholic; even during her date with Alto or her love of flying, her job as a singer always seems to find its way to intervene. She has no idea of her own limitations, either; even with her illness, she always tried to push herself to work even when she should really have been resting. Everything about Sheryl’s attitude shows that she’s hungry for success, and it seems inevitable that she was destined to make her way to the top, support or no.

With regards to pride and humility: while it seems that the latter is undeniably better than the former, the two exist on a continuum. Someone who lacks pride in what they do is just as bad as someone who has too much pride. Where Sheryl often has unreasonable expectations of herself, it’s more the result of being overly hard on herself than it is of being certain to succeed. In episode ten, for example, Sheryl openly admits that her song is unsuitable for the movie. This shows that she’s concious of her own weakness. But she isn’t willing to settle for that, either – she tells the director that she’ll write him a new one. While she is prone to making grand gestures and bravado (she is an entertainer, after all), these are more meant for the sake of others than for her own benefit. In episode eighteen, she acts strong because she doesn’t want Klan and Michael to worry; but when she’s by herself, she has no reservations about acknowledging her pain and letting her emotions run out.

Of course, many of these qualities that make her self-sufficient can also make her very unapproachable and occasionally abrasive. But where her character is very well developed as far as her career and personal success is concerned, the place that she stands to grow most is by softening some of the harsh standards by which she puts herself to and reaching out to others.

Oh hey did anyone notice that Ozma ate the wrapper of the chili dog Cathy fed him? hahaha

I think Sheryl is pretty good, and since Grace has no hand in Northern Cross I say Sheryl still has some fight left in her. In any case all music these days is of inferior quality for the greatest band that there ever was has come and gone, I speak of course of Earth Wind and Fire.

Yeah music these days wasn’t what it once was, at least we still have the oldies like the Police, Earth Wind and Fire, and many others from the ye olde days. Still there is from time to time that one artist that does impress.

I think that since Sheryl was in tears after trying to say that She was “Sheryl Nome” that it will be probably the last time she can say that with a straight face until she gets a last laugh on Grace assuming they can nail Grace in the first place. It would be rather funny if way back when Sheryl loved Alto-hime before that, i.e. Sheryl was also a fan of Sakura-hime Azuma Bunsho and that her quest for fame was to impress that lovely Princess who overawed the audience.

Ranka despite having achieved SDF Cinderella status seems to have gotten her glass slippers from the wrong person. I just hope that when Ranka finally says no that she will not back down or be polite about it. At least while Ranka has been spoiled and forgotten the hard times with Elmo at least she still has Nanase to give her a link back to her old life. I just hope that win or lose Ranka will out grow her childish behavior and stand tall on her own. Interesting how Sheryl needs help and Ranka suffers from too much help I wonder how Kawamori is going to end this though, if he and his team were willing to defy the pineapple curse there is not telling what they might do now.

I also like how in the last scene Ranka seemed to be channeling Misa a bit, though in truth it seems like both Sheryl and Ranka got some traits from both Minmay and Misa. Perhaps it was to Ranka’s detriment that Bobby was not allowed to help raise hre. After all it is hard to argue with how successful Bobby was at caring for Mina, Ram, and Monica.

I would also argue that you can have a bad singer and a great manager, and do better than someone who has a great singer but a piss-poor manager or no manager at all; have you HEARD the crap that’s on the radio these days passing for popular music? Seriously, most of those people need to take singing lessons rather than dance around in scant clothing while striking dramatic poses, or need to stop posing naked with their fake pistols to look cool and ‘gangsta’. Only AFTER you’ve gotten enough star power do you have any room to negotiate – that’s why the recording industry’s gotten big enough over the past 50 years to dictate terms to up-and-comers and why they’re so afraid of the Internet; by cutting out these middlemen and the structure of the current music business (which seems to be the structure that survived into the Macross universe), this need for ’super managers’ with contacts in the music biz is reduced… and thus these parasites who make $5 million paychecks while artists get like 2% of the royalties would be out of work.

Sheryl has started to learn some humility, which will help her more in the long run; she’s been arrogant and unwilling to ‘accept’ any help, which has in turn stunted her social life and personal life. Remember that she said she started talking to Alto as a person primarily because he wasn’t impressed by her “I’m SHERYL” attitude, and was willing to yell back without apologizing for it. Ranka, on the other hand, has WAY too much humility.. which is why she’s been unable to cope with fame successfully and why she’s losing contact with all her friends; she went from being nobody to being the Super Dimensional Cinderella (complete with courtiers and yes-men)… which hasn’t helped her grow up at all, not that Ozma’s spoiling let her do all that much growing up.