Chris: Plus was one of my favorites too.

If you’re interested I posted some comparison videos of episode 10 and Zero.

It’s probably not fair to compare a high-budget 5 episode OVA with a 26 episodes TV show but in my opinion Zero’s art and animation easily beats the crap out of Frontier’s. First of all, Zero’s use of colour is very pleasing. The backgrounds are exceptionally beautiful – obviously the settings helps a lot. The characters have a rather realistic style, almost un-anime-like.

On the other hand, Frontier looks like bubble-gum colour-wise, the character designs are more unrealisticly anime-like and drawn heavily inconsistent. Also their behaviour is more inline with typical anime characters. Even in Zero you could tell what scenes made use of computer graphics but it was used more cautiously. In Frontier most of the computer graphics stick out like a sore thumb and while it looks okay, I can’t see 6 years of progress in computer animation in there. Granted, especially the first two episodes had some scenes which looked really good and much better than the rest of the show, quality-wise up to par with Zero despite a rather different style. In the end, the best animation doesn’t help if the plot is pretentious or fluff stuff. I wouldn’t apply this to Frontier (yet) but to other shows that may look great but are otherwise just cheap and silly (GEe I’m such an ASS).

The fight scenes in space look rather random and their choreography is nowhere near as impressive and beautiful to watch as those fights in Zero. The classical orchestra BGM for fights in space isn’t my thing either.

Of course, Frontier doesn’t want to be like Zero, it’s based on Macross 7 after all.

Plus would be my second favourite Macross. As it’s from a different era, it takes a bit getting used to but it looks rather excellent for something from the early 1990s. The noses could have been less pointy maybe. Again I like that the character designs are more on the realistic and adult side. Though I found the plot more harder to get into than Zero’s. I admit I’ve never watched the original Macross TV series except for a single episode.

My vote for best Macross series has to be Macross Plus without question, followed by DYRL. Plus had the best music, most memorable songs, awesome well written and exciting storyline wrapped up with an top rate ending. Zero’s wacky story really did nothing for me especially the last episode which was a completely letdown.

Otou-san: Don’t worry about it… when it came out Zero was mostly noted for ridiculously good animation. But I’d say that Frontier’s first few episodes were about the same quality… Zero’s story is pretty odd to say the least.