Summary:
Leon tells everyone that Vajra carrying machine guns must have killed President Glass, and so is able to become the new president. Outside, Klan Klein dons a ton of heavy weaponry while Luca tells Alto about Little Girl, the small MDE bomb on Island-3. The plan is to have Ranka sing and lure the Vajra to her before all of Island-3 is purged. Brera tells Ranka she doesn’t have to sing if she doesn’t want to, but Ranka is still bitter about the Rainbow Carrot gig at the Zentradi Mall and so goes along with the plan. Island-3 is blown up, and Macross Frontier is safe again.
At the mass funeral, Leon asks Ranka to sing and she surprisingly exclaims that she won’t sing anymore. As Ranka runs off into the forest, she is ambushed by manta-ray Ai-kun who proceeds to get all up on her. Ai-kun then molts off his furry form, and convinces Ranka to elope with him to Vajra-opolis where they can let their love unfurl and get cheap health care. Ranka meets with Alto one last time to convince him to go with her, but when he is too intent on putting a cap in Ai-kun, Ranka has Brera give her and Ai-kun a lift instead.
Reaction:
I felt more sympathetic towards Ranka this time. All along she thought her songs could be the pathway to Alto’s heart. Instead, it was the pathway to piles of dead bugs and serious diarrhea afterwards. I wonder how Brera knows where to Fold Jump to, but I suspect we are moving on to Grace’s main plan now. It’s not quite clear if Leon is done helping Grace now, since it looks like he’s gotten what he wanted and he is finally single again. I suspect he’ll try to betray her at the last second either for massive profits or a change of heart.
So now we are probably going to get some goofy journey-anime episodes of the adventures of Ai-kun, Brera, and Ranka. It’s like Samurai Champloo, but in space. Perhaps now we can find out what happened 11 years ago and whether Vajra health insurance covers V-type infections. I look forward to the aftermath as Ozma and Nanase find out Ranka is gone, Sheryl tries to grab some of the vacated screen time, and Leon renames the whole place Mishima Frontier.
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This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1940 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.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
The Vajra are adapting soon they will be able to pilot Valkyries…
I didn’t fell much sympathy this time for Ranka because she spent most of it crying and acting in a very “woe is me” manner. Next time things should take a bit of an up swing since Northern Cross will finally debut on Frontier.
Grace is probably the one pulling Brera’s strings into making Brera Ranka’s ideal prince. Leon is a fool Grace will never marry him even if he is prez.
Well Grace is definitely giving Brera his orders with FORCE MODE (as opposed to Quartz Mode ;P ), but Brera’s brotherly love is probably also motivating him. It’s getting pretty late in the series, and I suspect he will figure out his past right before he gets killed in battle.
I’m looking forward to Alto trying to fly his VF-25 through the Vajra Death Star trenches to fire missile spam into the exhaust vent.
Brera vs Alto-hime will probably be the last great dogfight in the series. If Ranka cheers for Brera I will hate her forever.
This reminds me… the last 3-5 episodes better look pretty freaking awesome, cause the recent production values have been really bad compared to what this show looked like in the first few episodes.
I doubt Kawamori would disappoint for the finale…
Incidentally, this is the first time I’ve noticed that the suits loli-Ranka and shota-Brera don’t seem to be, well, Macross-influenced. Or maybe they’re really just Zentraedi-influenced in design.
@Myssa Rei
Well Ranka did say she was 1/4 Zentradi…and we do know Zentrans have their own clothing lines. Going to miss Formo though such a wondrous shopping experience forever gone.
Samurai Champloo has already been invented: Cowboy Bebop.
WTF? I clearly wrote “in space”. Someone’s intercepting communication. ECM switch on!
Kabitzin > They always try to make good first impressions.
Also, Ai-Kun. WHY. ;__;
This really was Ranka’s episode – I’m guessing we’re getting to the explanations now, which is probably when I’ll start to find Ranka more engaging. I feel sorry for her of course, but recent episodes have brought out my inner Sheryl Fanboy.
I’m seeing similarities between the Vajra and the Space Monsters from Gunbuster actually…maybe we’ll see Sheryl and Ranka team up and detonate another fold bomb in the Vajra nest or something.
After starting to re-watch Macross Zero I’m starting to wonder if it’s Ranka who has the Nome ancestry and inherited her ability from Sara – I know taming Vajra is a bit different from making rocks float but Kawamori seems keen to make links to earlier series in the franchise.
I’m starting to actually have a hard time focusing on the story when the animation is so terrible. Even if they do manage to pull it together for the last few episodes, the average is really below what a Macross series should be (not that 7 was great, but it was better than this).
Martin, I am totally with you on the Gunbuster-Macross link. In my mind, I see Ranka showing up with Vajra friends ready to attack Grace, with Ranka’s ahoge ready to give orders. Warp desu!
That scene with Ai-kun in the park begs to be made into an inappropriate animated gif avatar. C’mon baby, I love you, you know I’m going to molt soon, why can’t you just love me?
As for the animation, it actually does bother me during every episode. I feel it the worst whenever Ranka is on screen, because I feel her look is rather inconsistent. I think it’s the way her hair is drawn, because she always looks different to me.
One of my commenters delivered this:
http://i35.tinypic.com/a2tehi.jpg
I guess QUALITY animation is something that will forever haunt Macross for some time, at least other aspects of the series are not suffering as much.
Oh to be young again…
Leon really is third rate. I mean gunning down the president in cold blood in a hallway? Did he really expect no one to run into that and be able to get away with it? He’s so dead.
I was strangely aroused by Ai-kun’s pre-emptive insemination, but I guess this means that Ranka has to finally realize her role as the Vajran Hive Queen.
Vajra do it MANTA-STYLE
Wait, what?
31 seconds onwards.