Summary:
Alto’s birthday is coming up, and everyone wants to get on his calendar. At Nanase’s urging, Ranka realizes she has to get more serious to deal with the Sheryl threat. Ranka takes a few hours out of her busy schedule to leave a rambling voice message for Alto to meet her on Spark Hill for some burnt cookies and a ticket to her first live concert. At the same time, Alto’s adopted step-brother Yasaburo tries to trick Alto into coming back home in time to be recognized as the true Saotome successor.
Leon feels something is up on Gallia-4, which just happens to be where Sheryl’s next concert will be. Since Ozma isn’t available for bodyguard duty, Sheryl asks Alto if he’d like to accompany her on his birthday. Forced to choose between a needy girl with zero free time, a dad who disowned him, and an interstellar celebrity offering to get Alto in on some sweet flying action, Alto has no problem choosing door number 3. I guess the rumors are true; Sheryl’s chest really does make hopes and dreams come true.
Reaction:
It was interesting to learn that Leon and Grace are working together, but it seems like someone else is giving them orders. I wonder who the “Fairy” that Leon mentioned is, and why Leon is cracking LAI’s specs for a mysterious package. How this involves Luca’s family (instrumental in LAI, which manufactures everything), the divas of the human-hating Zentradi 33rd Fleet, a feverish Sheryl, and Brera is also unclear.
Fortunately, the themes of family duty and bitterness are much easier to understand. It seems Cathy chose filial duty over fame and fortune, and she is really bitter (like Ranka’s burnt cookies) about it. I’m glad that Alto isn’t making the same mistake, although I can see him compromising later on and agreeing to act in movies where he portrays a pilot. I felt kinda bad for Ranka, but Sheryl is totally flanking her. It seems that Sheryl understands Alto better than every other character on the show, so I have no problem with how things are going right now.
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This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1935 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
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Wow, I never realized “fairy” was mentioned in this episode XD
And I wish you’d be a faithful Alto x Ranka fan lols
The fairy is Sheryl, she is nicknamed “the Galaxy Fairy”.
Didn’t want to reopen old wounds, but I felt like I was watching True Tears again ;__;
That makes sense that Grace and Leon would refer to Sheryl as Fairy then. As for True Tears, it’s not quite as bad since Ranka is not as weird as Noe (aside from the Vajra song thing). At least Ranka has some friends and a budding career. Also, there is no Ai character.
Sheryl doesn’t only know what Alto wants (I CAN HAS FLY IN SKY?!?!), she also knows what I as a viewer want without going overboard. She put the GAINAX bounce to shame. Then again, what’s wrong with Alto? Is he in the DFC club or truly skysexual? He didn’t only complain about he outfit – which would be suicidal under nomal circumstances – he looked incredibly bored during the bounce. You could say, standard harem protagonist loser attitude?
Alto is the embodiment of that Minmay song: “He’s head over heels for his plane, instead of me.” Fortunately for Sheryl, she’s smart enough to figure that out and managed to push the right buttons.
It seems to me like Brera must have something to do with Grace and Leon, unless I missed or forgot something. What their plan is, though, beats me.
They’re probably all trying to get a date with Alto as well…
Looking back, it is surprising that Alto didn’t use his kabuki-hime charms to get a VF of his own from day 1.
I thought that the LAI engineers were the ones breaking open the VF-27, I could be wrong but I think that LAI is part of the military industrial complex and given how Luca is tech geek and engineer it comes as little surprise that his brothers as eager to see top of the line stuff.
Sheryl clearly has the initiative, but one miss step and Ranka can still make a come back. After all Ranka has over ten episodes to become the woman that we all know that she is capable of. Sheryl noted that Ranka could make it big, I doubt Sheryl would be wrong.
@Chris
Alto-hime has already seen them (episode 3), he doesn’t need to fawn over the bounce, I am sure that the memories of the tuna buns has not faded from his mind.
If this is True Tears, then squinty eyed onii-san is actually the BALD KID.
This must be the only blog I’ve read that isn’t completely Ga-Ga over ranka and hatin Sheryl. Good stuff
My theory is that the Vajra are run by people who hate culture, and thus activate at powerful spirita (aka SONG ENERGY BLAST). Since Leon is a jerk and what’s her face is a cyborg, I guess they hate culture deep down.
@Chris
Alto-hime is unaffected by Sheryl’s buns because
shehe knows that one day,shehe’ll have a lovely pair ofherhis own. Or at least that what it looks like with yuri-goggles on.More power to Alto doing whatever it is he wants to do. But I find it increasingly difficult to give a damn what happens to him because he keeps acting like a child. Not to mention his callousness to those who care about him. Whenever he decides to come out of Perma-sulk mode and stop being a dick to everyone around him, maybe I’ll start to care.
Looking forward to the next ep though. Seems like a nice battle plus the possible intro of the Macross Frontier counterparts of Breetai and Khyron.