It’s Wednesday and that means Macross. We have two somewhat less eventful episodes this week but we do get an introduction and much screentime for Minmay as well as a bit of information on the capabilities and structure of the Macross. Fighting continues on South Ataria Island as the Macross lifts off under the power of its human built rocket backup thrusters and Roy heads back to look for Hikaru and Minmay. After pulling off another rescue all three return to the Macross, now in Earth orbit.
The last of the Zentradi platoon fighting it out with the retreating UN forces.
Roy tells her who Hikaru is. Misa’s reaction shot are priceless.
Hikaru’s VF-1 being chained down by Earth’s gravity a dead Zentradi.
Roy Focker to the rescue once more.
After dodging several enemy units and animation SNAFUs Roy, Hikaru, and Minmay ascend to orbit and land onboard the Macross. There is some nice banter between several characters at this point, starting with Hikaru’s distrust of Roy’s suave ways when he offers to return Minmay to South Ataria Island after the immediate crisis has passed. Misa contacts them as well, chastising their laxness to which Hikaru replies “who’s this old lady?” for another great Misa reaction shot. Even old Captain Global can’t help but laugh.
Aren’t we forgetting something? That cockpit pod was secured to the centerline hardpoint last I checked.
Well now you’ve got something there, too bad it’s the rifle/gunpod that Roy dropped earlier.
I’ve always loved cockpit based shots like this one, or the one they used in the ‘final flight’ scene during the last episode of Battlestar Galactica here (first 35 sec.)
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
Saigo ni waracchau no wa Global-kancho no hazu! To paraphrase Motteke! Seeraafuku.
Once onboard Roy shows Hikaru that he managed to pick up his stunt plane before the ship launched, but then has to depart as the Macross sounds battle stations. The Zentradi fleet is closing in while the Macross attempts to rendezvous with the ARMD I/ARMD II battlegroup. They make quick work of the human-built spacecraft and Global attempts to get the Macross away from the enemy by engaging its fold drive near Earth, expecting the enemy to not anticipate such a move. Hikaru is acting emo and decides to try and fly away in his plane with Minmay just as the fold happens, warping the Macross, South Ataria Island, the Prometheus and Daedalus, and everything else within a large sphere around the Macross to somewhere near Pluto instead of the intended target of the Moon. Hikaru is damn lucky to have, for some reason, a completely pressurized and airtight acrobatics aircraft and manages to use its rocket boosters and ricocheting off of debris to get back inside the Macross. There the two are lost amid the massive interior of the ship. Back on the bridge, the crew finds out that the fold engines are now also missing.
It…it’s not like I like your plane or anything…I just didn’t want it cluttering the ground, that’s all *blushes*.
They’re playing really upbeat music while the hundreds of people not in shelters and on the Prometheus and Daedalus are dying of asphyxiation.
Hikaru’s plane just drifts away with the rest of the garbage.
Be happy you’re still alive after that. Minmay is. That or she’s too dense to see the danger you’re in.
Now the fold drive is gone? Who built this thing, Chrysler? Now the bridge bunnies (as I’ve heard a similar crew in Frontier referred to) are all worried.
Somewhere between WTF and cute.
The bridge crew sits down to have a quick coffee break while the computer figures out their location and Hikaru and Minmay try finding their way to the occupied parts of the ship. This is the beginning or a pretty difficult endeavor for the two since the ship is huge and likely undercrewed at the moment. Their first day below deck they break open a water pipe to create a shower, start eating some of Hikaru’s plane’s rations, and share the night with some rats. Just be glad you’re not lost belowdecks on an Imperium of Man warship, there are far worse things than rats.
Taking a break after their flight from the Zentradi
Indeed. I’m glad the Macross crew also appreciates this.
Good job. That water could be cooling something important like a nuclear reactor. And how do you know it’s not waste water?
Mmmm dogfood
Survivor: Macross.
Several days pass and Hikaru and Minmay start getting worried about their prospects for being found before they run out of food. Hikaru decides on a great plan to go outside the airlock they found and try to signal for help. Oh, wait he doesn’t have a SPACE SUIT. He somehow insists that his flight helmet is airtight (I don’t see any seals or even a complete face covering) and that he can hold his breath ‘just like swimming’ for a few minutes. As he goes to a window to decide which direction to go, they spot a huge tuna transported and flash frozen when the Macross space folded. After I stopped playback for a couple minutes to laugh uncontrollably at the Tuna slowly drifting through space and the closeup on its eye, Hikaru and Minmay decide to catch the Tuna and bring it back in for sashimi. Unfortunately for them Hikaru only brings it head through the threshold of the airlock on his scientific-facts-ignoring spacewalk when he signals Minmay to close the door and they only get the head of the fish.
This scene needs some Strauss.
Chicken of the void.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Oh yeah. If your suit, gloves, boots, and helmet all seal airtight. And are pressurized. And are heated. And something from all that space fold debris doesn’t puncture it. At least they gave the physics of Hikaru throwing the weights to move some show.
Meanwhile the crew eats in style. DO WANT one of those SDF-1 tray/cup sets.
That night, after cooking their unsettling prize and going to sleep, Minmay starts to sing. Hikaru is quite impressed and asks her if she’s had lessons, to which she replies that she’s has taken lessons in singing, dance, and other arts. He then asks her what she’d like to be in life. Setting women back several years she says she wants to be a bride (though I guess since this is an old series the formula for how far is: several years minus (2009 minus 1982) = exactly how far she’s set women back.) The next day she then goes into pessimism overdrive and suggests that they throw themselves out of the airlock to end their ordeal. But going all Makoto Sawatari on us, she says that she wants to wear a wedding dress once before she dies. In a scene that the Kanon writers could not have been unaware of Hikaru puts his kerchief over her head and looks like he’ll go through with the mock marriage ceremony.
*sigh*
So you’re a fox spirit in human form?
You don’t say.
But before this lovely ball of emo-wedding-kitsune spirit-suicide pact-crazy can resolve itself, and just as they are about to kiss, a dud alien missile crashes down through the ceiling above the two. Opening up to the street above, they find the buildings and people of the city that surrounded the Macross set up on the deck above. After being brought to the upper deck they meet the townspeople and Minmay is reunited with her aunt and other relatives. Now she seems perfectly fine, having gone from suicidal to cheerful in a few moments. Hikaru is understandably confused, but probably not smart enough to stay away from a girl who by all evidence seems to have a pretty big case of ‘the crazy.’ Concluding the episode, the Macross docks with the two aircraft carriers that warped in with them and Captain Global notes that their crews are dead. Hopefully their sacrifice was not in vain.
This moment is so sweet. But crazy. But sweet. But crazy.
Apparently the Zentradi use Honorverse-sized missiles.
That’s some quick rebuilding. Also, more physics ignored as I doubt so many buildings would have survived the pressure change and the physical forces of being uprooted like that.
SDF-1 Macross docking with the unfortunate terrestrial carriers.
Final Thoughts: – Hikaru is starting to grow more tolerable and reasonable. Or maybe it was just that he looked better in comparison to Minmay.
- That spacewalk scene made the scientist in me cry.
- I can see the beginnings of the singing element of this show that was at the center of several characters’ lives in Frontier. But who will be Minmay’s rival?
- I still can’t get over that Tuna scene.
- Hikaru keeps using the pronoun ‘otaku’ for others instead of more common ones (like ‘kimi’, ‘anata’, ‘omae’ or just their names.) I wonder if this was more common decades ago or if he just speaks oddly. I’m not a linguist so the only things I know about the word are that it isn’t used commonly as a pronoun nowadays (I’ve never personally encountered it in any conversation I’ve had or textbook exercise) and that it was an old pronoun and then became used to refer to otaku in the fan context after some animators used it when refering to each other.
- Still very much enjoying the ‘doesn’t always work’ aspect of the technology with both the Macross and the Zentradi missile.
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20 Comments
“I’ve always loved cockpit based shots like this one, or the one they used in the ‘final flight’ scene during the last episode of Battlestar Galactica here (first 35 sec.)”
I love cockpit-based shots as well, what you might not have noticed is that in his character stats, Roy Fokker is listed as a 7-foot tall humanoid. Think about it how many 7-footers do you know are badass pilots.
“Meanwhile the crew eats in style. DO WANT one of those SDF-1 tray/cup sets.”
If I’m not mistaken the cups do exist in the real world. Don’t know sbouy thr tray though.
“Search your feelings, you know it to be true.”
How dare you insult my waifu!!!!
In retrospect she was only 19 when the war started.
Is this the first time you´re watching Macross? Then you have some good moments ahead of you. The origin of Macross is a bit old, but still good.
What kind of Rival are you after? Depending on what kind or rival you´re after I might answer or not :p It would spoil to much to say it straight out.
Actually, apparently, Macross marks the first time ever that the word “otaku” was used in an anime. Of course, Hikaru’s using it in its proper sense of a polite way to say “you,” but still…pretty historic, don’t you think?
You see it IS a comedy. Them space tunas’ good eatin’, too.
Hurray for civilians… mmm, hawt shower scene 80’s style…
“Search your feelings, you know it to be true.”
Cruel you are…
I enjoy reading your comments but am concerned that your science will cause you severe headaches in your future. On Wednesdays, specifically. Good luck!
Oh God, Tytania ninja’d its way into this post.
@ grss1982
Damn, 7ft tall? They must have made the VF-1s pretty spacious. All the better to carry your love interest in, I’m guessing.
I hold no grudge against Misa. In fact I prefer characters that act their age or older (see: my love for Fumie in my Sora no Manimani posts.)
@ Manga
Yeah, this is my first time with the original Macross, having only seen Frontier before it. Thanks, but no spoilers please, I want to get the original experience of watching the series. I’m sure I’ll enjoy finding out when the time comes
@ Yot-chan
First time in anime you say? That is pretty historic, it might have been the first time that the honorific pronoun form was taken up by the fans and turned into the noun we mostly use it for now.
@ droptest
If Roy and Hikaru strike Misa down with teasing she shall become more powerful than we can ever imagine (I’m hoping, she seems like a character with potential.)
The science missteps will get my attention, but I just kind of laugh them off and don’t let them affect my enjoyment of the show.
@ schneider
Would you like some tea?
I loved Tytania, and the tea/wine scenes where just the icing on the cake. Or should I say the milk tea to go with the cake?
fish heads fish heads eat ‘em up yum
Uggh. The tuna scene.
That’s for recalling that for me.
But suck it up. The loopy space sciences only proceed to get worse from here, and on in to several other Macross series…
This saga has a very strange cel painting…i don’t know nothing about the production details of Macross but it seems that this guys worked very fast at production stages…or something like that..
Oh Minmay…I rmember her days as a no body all too well. Still you have to admit Misa is quite the cougar…
gotta love giant floating fish in space!! lol xD
One moment you are sharing an intimate moment and the next pouf it’s all gone and back to happy go lucky. Damn you teen girls and your bipolarness
Be kind guys, this is a 27 year old show we are talking about here…
Misa is awesome XMAS CAKE, even if she is a bit of a martinet. Those ladies, btw are THE ORIGINAL BRIDGE BUNNIES (No, Sayla, Mirai and Fraw Bow don’t count)…
Executive Otaku, I am pretty sure that there were at least some people from Key who had watched Macross in one form or another, so the inspiration for the mock wedding is plausible.
btw, that’s no tuna, it was a sardine which expanded from the lack of pressure…
@ Kherubim
“btw, that’s no tuna, it was a sardine which expanded from the lack of pressure… ”
Haha, I like how you think sir.
The first time Minmay took that piece of steel and cut into Hikaru’s fan racer you can’t help but feel sorry for the guy. I absolutely loved the fourth episode and the interaction between those two was quite memorable. It’s part of the reason why I love this series so much. Besides, going on a spacewalk to snare a GIGANTIC tuna? That’s the stuff made of legends.
@Executive Otaku:
I think you may be putting a little TOO much influence on Macross. I *believe* that “otaku” became the synonym for “nerd” sometime in the late ’80s or early ’90s. After that point, people looked back and realized that Hikaru was the first character to ever use the word in an anime.
Anyway, I’m glad you’re liking the show…and what the tuna catch lacks in realism, it makes up for in PURE AWESOME.
Got to love SPACE TUNA. But shouldn’t it have been frozen stiff or even destroyed from the vacuum of space? (Decompression).
Misa is 19 years old. LOLOLOLOLOL
Oh yah that Tuna was awesome. I remember looking up on the NASA site a while back about people in a vacumn. Turns out people don’t explode like they do in Total Recall as long as you let all your air out you can survive for a period of time. So perhaps this scene was plausible, he at least had a suit. At least where they were, there wouldn’t be much solar radiation either. I think as long as he wasn’t outside for too long, it’s somewhat plausible.
If you thought Frontier character animations were choppy, you’ll soon see people looking different every scene in Macross! Of course it was 1982 but well…
@Epi
That scene was actually discussed in detail some years ago in the Macross World Forums. If I recall correctly, he was in greater danger of asphyxiation than blowing up Hollywood style.