Macross Frontier is a new anime series by Satelight that is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the original Macross series. I’ve not actually seen all the original series, nor all of Macross 7 and Macross Zero. And I think I’ve only seen the movie version of Macross Plus. Nonetheless I can pick up on a lot of the nods and references to the earlier shows in this first episode.
The show makes use of the number 25 straight out the gates. The series follows the 25th fleet, and features a new Valkyrie (the trademark transformable jet mecha of the Macross franchise), the VF-25. Strangely the timeline doesn’t seem to play with this number in any obvious way, being set 50 years after the start of Macross, 14 years after the start of Macross 7 and 19 years after Macross Plus. Maybe they just decided to double the number as they had already covered events 25 years after the start of the original show?
The first episode, for the most part, delivered. It was certainly a step up from the general standard of post-Noein Satelight shows. Valkyries, a pop star, a potential love triangle, Itano circuses, and grizzled pilots who look to be doomed were all present and correct. The story and the mecha action side of the show definitely felt like Macross. However there’s a couple of niggling issues.
Firstly, the character designs aren’t by Haruhiko Mikimoto. Which isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, Macross Plus and Macross Zero’s weren’t either. However, the character designs here are fairly nondescript and just sort of bog-standard mid 00’s sci-fi anime designs. ANN gave two designers in the credits neither had anything of note in their c.v. (one only had four credits and two of them were porn OAVs under a pseudonym).
Secondly, the enemies in this first episode set off alarm bells. They appear to be organic, almost crustacean and insectoid in appearance, and I’m hoping this doesn’t mean we are in for a heavy handed Shoji Kawamori environmental lecture further down the line. I respect the man for having such a strong theme behind much of his work nowadays, but too often the message smothers the art and grinds the whole shebang to a halt. I never made it to the end of Macross Zero for this very reason.
Those two reservations aside, this first episode was very promising. The CG was especially strong for a TV show, even when you take into account the usual debut episode budget/production time boost. And it was nice to get some more Macross Universe electropop compositions from Yoko Kanno again for the in-show pop star character Sheryl Nome.