@ Kintigire

I know what you mean. I re-watched SDF Macross a year ago and winced in pain as well. Nonetheless, Macross taught me how it is to be a fan. I’m talking about mind-bent, logic-hole-overlooking, never apologizing, always in love fandom.

I’m going on a journey to watch every single episode chronologically: from Zero to Frontier (including ALL of Macross 7 but not Macross II). I remember love!

After 25 years I think that what it seems to bring is a fresh face for a younger generation.

Sure you can sit through those 1980′s SDF Macross shows and feel a love long remembered from your younger years. But (and I’ve experienced this) try setting that DVD box set in front of a younger crowd and watch them wince in pain. Seriously…SDF Macross just doesn’t hold up.
Frontier is a fresh start for people who have never sat through a single episode of the older series. With Frontier, they can sit and enjoy all the things that we know and love about the old series. These things appear as nods to days gone by to the fanboys and as genuinely original moments to the newbie.
I could never get my 15 year old brother to sit through 30-some-odd episodes of 1980′s Macross. But he’s really interested in checking out Frontier.
In the end, maybe that’s all it has to do. Bring in more new fans so that they can celebrate 50 years of Macross down the road and not have all the fans be geriatrics.

I would rather see some of the big expensive space battles dropped in favor of a steady level of animation over all 25 episodes.

WHAT!? As long as I see thousands of Valkyries and reaction missiles flying around, I don’t care if the characters are still-animation and stick figures! Perhaps they shouldn’t have made two first episodes AND a re-cap. Maybe then they would have had enough time to Fit in ANOTHER battle (preferably involving more of those sexy Ghost V-9s)

Since I never saw the original Macross I actually kinda liked the nostalgic fanservice, But I understand how you “experienced” fanboys wouldn’t like it so much.

Crusader – I plan on responding on your post as well, but here’s a couple quick points. As far as production values, all really I wanted was a little consistency. I would rather see some of the big expensive space battles dropped in favor of a steady level of animation over all 25 episodes.

I’m not sure I’m getting the “dark side of NUNS” thing — UN Spacy certainly left the original SDF Macross out to dry, and they did try to weaponize music before with Jamming Birds, much to Basara’s dismay. Granted, it was nothing as sinister as what Grace did with Ranka, but it was still a perversion of “Macross values,” if you will.

I can say this — I was affected by episode 24, that ultra-dark moment of hopelessness when you realize that “Ai Oboete Imasuka,” the song that was humanity’s savior (at least in one telling) was being used to destroy it. I’ll admit, that was cool.

Given how Ranka ended up on the short end of the stick I suspect that Kawamori might have been trying to say something about this newfangled moe thing.

That is an interesting theory, I don’t know if I buy it exactly, but I like it. The fact that Minmay helped lay the groundwork for that phenomenon makes me think there’s something there.

Damn where’s that edit function?

I think that Frontier takes much of that old nostalgia and turns it on its head somewhat. I have stated this else where in a tl;dr post but I think that Frontier is a much darker Macross because it does cast NUNS in a rather negative light. The weaponization of music and Ranka’s betrayal of her song are note worthy departures from the tried and true positive power of culture and song. If there was one message that MF brought that was new was the folly of human arrogance, ambition, and greed. This is the first time within Macross where we see the humans being jerks to other groups be it the bugs and the Zentradi.

Given how Ranka ended up on the short end of the stick I suspect that Kawamori might have been trying to say something about this newfangled moe thing. More over like every other Macross Series Kawamori the tree hugger and music industry critic did sound off one some things. Even if things are not spelled out for us it still doesn’t make watching Sheryl and Alto-hime grow closer any less enjoyable based off what was presented. It’s easy to be ticked off over the Kawamori troll of episode 25 but that does mean that MF never left the shadow of its predecessors.

Just my 2 cents.