Macross F Movie Review

The following was provided by a friend presently living in Japan.

Macross Frontier The Movie: The False Songstress wildly exceeded all expectations and established itself as the best mecha theatrical motion picture since 1984’s Macross: Do You Remember, Love. I would have been pleased with a TV footage recap movie with a handful of new cuts, but instead I was presented with a new remake of the TV series with 95% brand-new animation and the remaining 5% coming from small tidbits of in between TV animation which already looked very good. And the animation is spectacular: once again Macross proves it shall always display the most fluid and exciting sexy mecha action in all of animedom. The concert footage of Sheryl and Ranka is unique and extremely vivid. Ranka’s string of promotional events, including a botched one for natto and Akiba in Macross Frontier was very amusing, though I confess some disappointment that Family Mart paid advertising money to have their store be the location of a key scene yet did no real life crossover Macross promotion.

At 130 minutes, the film is long, but it has to strip much of the story and marginalize the supporting cast, choosing to focus heavily on Alto, Sheryl, and Ranka. The moé-parody Zentradi girl really gets the shaft here, as she’s only in two scenes – the first as a background character with no lines and the second looking for her boyfriend on the battlefield. I hope they give her a new scene on the home video version because it doesn’t make sense for her introductory scene to be an emotional one that assumes viewers know and relate to her. Though the film is loud and exciting, I foresee some fans complaining that the only real mecha battles occur at the beginning and end of the film – this film is primarily a character drama with an added mystery of whether or not Sheryl is a spy from Galaxy included to buoy the dramatic tension. But I loved this DYRL x Eva 2.0 and eagerly look forward to its sequel: The Wings of Goodbye.