Macross Frontier 25 (finale)

Macross Frontier 25 (finale)
マクロスF Episode 25 (end)
Macross F Ep. 25 (final)
Macross Frontier Anime

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:  

Macross Frontier 25Macross Quarter arrives to save what’s left of the Macross Frontier fleet with Captain Wilder (backed by Cathy) accusing Leon of assassinating the former president and stating that Grace had fooled them all. Leon is arrested as Alto is revealed to be alive and reports that the giant image of Ranka is not in fact Ranka. With that, Macross Quarter fires on the image, destroying it and revealing that Battle Frontier, the main warship from Galaxy Frontier, was not destroyed in the Vajra attack. Grace, joining her comrades (whomever they are), remark on the facade being revealed but it is no matter as they prepare to activate their new network.

Macross Frontier 25Alto pleads with Sheryl to sing to wake Ranka up since Ranka wants to be saved. Using Sheryl’s earring and combining with Sheryl’s song, Alto does make contact with Ranka, causing the harmonica she wears to break. Grace activates the Vajra network, revealing that the Vajra predate the Protoculture and are a super-dimensional life form. Grace wants the universe to bow to her and with the Vajra at her command, she orders them to attack everywhere, including the Macross 11 fleet and Macross City on Earth.

Macross Frontier 25With the Vajra united as never before, the Macross Frontier fleet loses a large number of ships. Ranka begins to sing a different song and Brera, who’d been injured and now is free from Grace’s control, encourages her to continue doing so. This causes the Vajra to stop their attacks. Ranka reaches out with her mind to Sheryl and the two begin singing, causing their own fold waves to counter Grace’s fold wave network. Alto is able to get inside the Battle Frontier through a breach in the hull and rescue Ranka in his fighter. Once outside the mecha-ship, they are joined by Ai-kun, which makes Ranka very happy.

Macross Frontier 25Grace attempts to have Island 1 destroyed but thanks to Ranka’s song, the Vajra form a protective wall against Grace’s attack. Grace only now begins to understand the true power of Ranka’s song and she tells the humans that her form is the next stage of human evolution, thus they shouldn’t be fighting her. Klan passes Micheal’s mecha sniper rifle to Alto so that he can take the killing shot at Grace after the Vajra open a hole in her defense shield. He does and she’s destroyed as is the queen Vajra she’s connected to. The surviving Macross Frontier ships land on the planet (including Island 1) and look at their new home. As Alto soars the skies in his jet pack, Ranka and Sheryl promise each other they won’t lose in song or love.

Thoughts/Review:

{singing}

So this series’s finally done
And the battle’s truly won
How I managed to make it through
Until the very end
So you know I won’t pretend
That I thought this was a great series

Macross Frontier 25Not that it was any great prediction or anything, but I was right about Sheryl and Ranka being the ultimate resolution to the series. Since Alto says both girls are his wings (and since he obviously didn’t die in the previous episode), that’s the ultimate resolution to the love-triangle and something Sheryl and Ranka cannot resolve. They can tell each other they won’t lose to the other, but let’s face it — they will be co-wives to Alto and there’s nothing you can do about it!

Macross Frontier 25Klan can get micro in a hurry, can’t she? One moment she’s in her normal, Zentradi form and she’s rescued in her damaged fighter. The next thing you know, she’s in micron-form, in Micheal’s old fighter and using his sniper gun. Well, at least she and Nene survived. I would not have been happy if Klan had died. She was one of the few characters I cared about for some reason.

Macross Frontier 25While on the topic of Zentradi, I remember reading somewhere that it was possible for Richard Bilrer to be old enough to have remembered Linn Minmei. I guess that is true since his locket had a picture of Minmei. However, his whole connection to Grace and Leon’s plot eludes me a bit. Maybe re-watching the series would make that clearer to me, but frankly, that is not going to happen.

Visually, the episode lived up to the previous episodes when it came to looking pretty. The battle scenes are well done and it made me think back to the original Macross. How times have changed, huh?

Macross Frontier 25I don’t remember “pinpoint barriers” being discussed before this episode but they were a big part of the original series. Seeing Macross City was a nice final tribute. I’m not sure what Macross 11 is from though. I did some looking and it seems that the original plan for Macross F was that the fleet would not be called “Macross Frontier” but “Macross 11.” If that’s true, then this is a nod by the production team to that original idea, which is pretty nice.

Macross Frontier 25There was the Macross Zero reference here with the Vajra being the original “birdmen” as it were which the Protoculture then imitated. Whatever.

Ultimately, I struggle trying to put together some thoughts about this episode but the only thing that goes through my head over and over is, “I’m so glad this is over.” Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a bad anime; it was merely average when it came to story but it was very pretty to look at (and the music was pretty good).

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3 Responses to “Macross Frontier 25 (finale)”

  1. Anonymous says:

    sigh to be honest I felt this series started on a real high and reached a peak around episode 7. Until that point, the animation was awesome, the story did not get ridiculous and the mecha fights were the best i’ve ever seen period. The combination of music and such beautiful animation was quite exhilarating.

    But thats where it ended really, animation began to repeat, deteriorate, story began to get ridiculous.

    Picked up a little at the end, but even what I expected to a real blowout was excessively rushed. There was a million songs, in a quick succession, the story line again was rushed and in all the episode feels like it should have been split into two.

    meh 1-7 are definately worth multiple re-watches!

    And ive been persuaded to buy my first piece of “mecha merchandise” ever. The Bandai VF-25.

    Success, right?

  2. AstroNerdBoy says:

    And ive been persuaded to buy my first piece of “mecha merchandise” ever. The Bandai VF-25.

    Success, right?

    *lol* Bandai would call it a success. ^_^ You’ll have to let me know how that merchandise is though.

  3. junior says:

    More stuff…

    What you refer to as “Battle Frontier” is actually “Battle Galaxy”. Each New Macross-class colony vessel is made of of the “Battle” ship and the “Colony” ship, and each is refered to by the ship type followed by the fleet name. Thus Battle Frontier is the large transformable warship docked to the front of Colony Frontier, Battle 7 docks to Colony 7, etc… Battle Galaxy was at some point docked to Colony Galaxy… which begs the question, what happened to Colony Galaxy? Battle Frontier DOES appear in this episode, and it’s the third transformable warship shown (generally the larger humanoid warship shown behind Macross Quarter). Leon and the Macross Frontier fleet commanders use it as their flagship.

    Brera’s injury specifically shatters the crystal implant on his forehead. You can see it happen when Macross Quarter folds into the battle. A few episodes prior it was shown that Grace was using his implant to control him. This is why the injury allows him to slip from Grace’s control.

    Regarding the end and the triangle…

    There’s a rumor that Kawamori had originally intended that Ranka would win (and another rumor that the triangle was supposed to be Alto-Ranka-Brera), but Sheryl’s popularity went stratospheric after episode 5 (Star Date, the episode in which Sheryl has Alto show her around the colony), causing Kawamori to modify certain elements of the story. No clue personally how true it is, but it’s something to think about with regards to the ending. From what I’ve heard, Ranka is the more popular character in Japan, and Sheryl is the more popular character in China and the US. I’ve also heard that Sheryl won a recent NewType poll as the most popular character of BOTH genders (NewType character polls are usually segregated by gender) from any series. Her popularity will wane over time, but that shows just how popular she turned out to be.

    Pinpoint barriers – Not explicitly mentioned, but they are shown from time to time if you know what to look for. They’ve been used on Valkyries as far back as Macross Plus (the YF-19 had one), and the knife carried by the VF-25 uses one to reinforce the blade.

    iirc, Macross 11 supposedly appeared in one of the Macross 7 OVAs (none of which I’ve seen). Supposedly either Lynn Kaifun, or a clone of him (there was a period of time when the UN Spacy cloned humans in order to bulk the population numbers up for the colony project) is located there. So far as I know, there’s nothing else special about that particular fleet.

    Grace’s plan – Grace was, first and foremost, a scientist. Thus while the plan will indeed give her complete control over humanity (as the most superior node in the network), my suspicion is that her actions are largely motivated by a belief that she’s doing just what she claims she’s doing – i.e. taking humanity to the next level. Of course, the side effects of what she plans to do also reveal that she’s either extremely amoral, or also likes the power that would result (or a combination of both).

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