September 23rd, 2008 
AstroNerdBoy Macross Frontier 24
マクロスF Episode 24
Macross F Ep. 24
Macross Frontier Anime
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
The captive Ranka is manipulated to believe that she caused the Vajra attack on the 117th Research Fleet. Meanwhile, Macross Quarter returns to the scene of that initial Vajra attack to do some investigating. Cathy, Ozama, and the others find massive amounts of information, including the fact that Dr. Mao Nome had been working with Grace (Mao as a child having been played by Ranka in the episode 10 movie based off of 
Macross Zero) and Ranka’s mother Ranshe Mei, who was the first person infected with the V-type virus. She unknowingly passed the virus to her offspring, which is the source of Ranka’s powers. Grace was working on an implant “hyper-dimension” network, using fold quartz, to end up controlling the galaxy. Since she needed to remove those who would resist her control, she had the very adaptive Vajra do it for her. Also, the crew learn that Sheryl is the descendant of Mao and the earrings were a gift from her.
The captain of the Battle Frontier gives a speech to the fleet and troops before the battle to take over the Vajra home world. Alto goes to see Sheryl, promising to return. She kisses him and tells him not to say anything else lest she be unable to sing. She then tells him to go save Ranka-chan after giving him her other fold quartz earring. The battle starts with Sheryl doing her concert routine. This causes the Vajra to waver, allowing 
the Frontier forces to make gains. However, Grace and Brera manipulate Ranka into defending the Vajra home world as part of her redemption for summoning the Vajra that destroyed the 117th fleet. So Ranka sings and the fleet is mostly wiped out. Alto tries to get to Ranka but is stopped by Brera. Brera tells Alto that he’s protecting the Vajra from those who would invade, ignoring the facts that the Vajra started it. He then who shoots and apparently destroys Alto’s fighter. Meanwhile a vengeful looking Grace makes her way to where the Queen Vajra is.
Thoughts/Review:
We should call this the “explanation episode” because that’s what we finally received — explanations. How nice that the 117th Research Fleet battle site had all that information still sitting there for the crew of Macross Quarter to obtain. Both Leon and Grace deserve to die for that kind of stupidity to allow information to sit out there for anyone to grab.
OK, Grace wants to rule the galaxy as Queen Bee Grace. Sorry, but that kind of motivation just bores me. Call it a factor of being my age I guess. There’s also a revenge factor since Grace seems motivated to prove Mao and Ranka’s mother wrong. What was Grace’s motivation back before she became a cyborg freak though? Travel without lag? Instant communications? Some sexy Protoculture stud?
Ranka being controlled and manipulated is pretty cliched too I have to say. In my final review, too many cliched shounen moments are going to be a serious negative factor. For you younger watchers, I’m sure it is all good but after you’ve seen a large number of these types of stories where the innocent girl (or guy) is being manipulated into doing evil, there has to be something different about how it is done to make it overcome that “been there, done that” feeling I have.
The whole bit with Alto coming back to see Sheryl before the mission started kinda surprised me. I had thought the love-triangle thing was resolved, but this was the writers’ way of saying, “we can’t let that element go just yet.” I’m sure they thought it would be more touching if the audience felt that there was a chance that Alto was going to choose Sheryl in the end, his “death” would have more meaning. It did not.
And speaking of Alto’s supposed death, there’s no way I believe that he’s dead. If he is dead and he doesn’t get brought back in some fashion or form, I’ll give the writers big kudos for doing something unexpected, even if I didn’t care if he died. Klan is the only real character I care about outside of Macross Quarter. I guess I have a tiny bit of feeling for Sheryl and Ranka, but I never have had any for Alto.
Well, only one more episode to go through. Macross 7 is on my list of anime titles to watch, but frankly, the terribleness of that first episode combined with the mere average story of Macross Frontier gives me very little motivation to come back to the world of Macross for a very long time.
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Found your posts and just wanted to ask you… do you ever feel the writers gave Ranka a HUGE pass when it came to the crimes she committed? She directly caused the deaths of many people (her own planet and people in/near Frontier). Personally wanted her to be held accountable for the deaths. And later when Frontier w/pirate ship in tow went to “stop” evil-mindless-Ranka, she killed more people! So it is too much to ask for her to be treated like a criminal or murderer?
And completely agree her being a controlled victim was too cliche. This anime has many nice nods to SDFM but lacks the personal accountability and growth displayed in the SDFM characters (Misa, Hikaru, Claudia, Roy, Minmay). Somethings that really turned me off from loving Frontier was Alto and Ranka. Alto was largely a tool throughout Frontier. Agree with you that he whined (like a girl) about being treated like a princess, but he repeatedly failed to demonstrate he was a man (decisiveness, responsibility); and of course he didn’t cut his hair too. His whole pity me “overly emotional” expressions and role as a family kabuki performer was boring and utterly didn’t help his character. I personally did not care for his character at all, Ozma and Michel were much more intriguing to watch. For me the most well-rounded character in terms of growth and interest is Sheryl. She matured a lot (from spoiled entitled princess to a grounded selfless woman) and gave 110% to her career and later to protect the man she loves. Ranka? Lets not even go there she was a complete joke.
IDK, your mileage may vary but I’d like to read your thoughts on Ranka and the poor character development for many of the Frontier series characters. Mecha, music and animation over all were great. However the core of the series to me was the character development ; I feel the writers just could not make the characters well-developed and worth connecting to emotionally.
Thanks!
Whew! I gotta do some recalling there. 2008 was so long ago, you know. 😉 (And I may as well fix the images here while I’m at it.)
Anyway…
The writer’s out is the “she was manipulated” thing. In the next episode, Ranka wants to be saved. Clearly, the writers want the audience to have sympathy for Ranka. Since I am several years separated from when I watched this, I don’t have an emotional response to this any more. With that in mind, if someone is being controlled by an outside source (cliched or not), are they responsible for those actions?
I think back to the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the episode Skin of Evil, Armus takes control of the android character Data, causing him to point a phaser at one of his crewmates, trying to produce an emotion in Data. When Armus talks of having Data kill the other character, Data responds that he would not be responsible for the death of said character since Armus had control over him.
Without having rewatched the episode, I think this is how the writers wanted the viewers to see Ranka. She was not in control, thus the deaths she caused weren’t on her, but on those controlling her.
Yeah, that was the very real problem — stock characters and cliched moments. Klan was pretty much the only character I remember liking. (I see I wrote something in my final review about the crew of Macross Quarter and liking them, though I don’t remember them.) As I recall things, I think the biggest problem with Macross Frontier was that it wanted to be the original Macross. There’s a fine line between giving a tribute/nod to an earlier series and just trying to mimic them. Here, MF tried to mimic Macross and failed.