Minmay is the worst female in the entire Macross series - she's a complete airhead and her songs are terible (with the except of DYRL, of course)
Sheryl, on the other hand, has solid character development and good songs (May'n as Sheryl is probably the best stuff she's ever done)
and oh god Macross Plus, worst thing in the Macross series by far - unlikeable characters, random plot that sputters along, bad music, uninteresting mecha fights, and horrible character design
as for Ranka - I can't stand her voice, she's an incredibly cliche character archetype, and pink hair > green hair
SDF has the best side character (ALL HAIL CAPTAIN BRUNO J. GLOBAL)
Macross Frontier has the best animation, the best fights, a better main character than SDF, the best female leads, the best music, and the best plot
as for the shorter stuff, Macross Zero is solid overall and Plus is an abomination
-- thelefty for analysis crew 2008 imo -tranny I have a third degree burn in flame-o-nomics -Sir Chris
I haven't beaten the Frontier Movies so I can't comment on those.
Plus does have a bad triangle, and typical garbage 90s character designs. Isamu said it best: SHUT UP I DON'T WANT TO HEAR YOUR CREEPY SONGS. But the mecha porn is glorious. That was solid animation.
Satelight's use of cheap CG to animate Zero and Frontier's mecha killed the shows for me. Not to mention the LOL MAGIC that was introduced when they stepped in. No songs before Zero had mystical properties. The songstresses where not witches. Basara shook the galaxy with his passion. There were no power IN his songs, it was his heart, it was himself that moved the Protodeviln.
I hated what Zero did to the franchise. They added a layer of mysticism to what is considered scifi space opera. Really? Birdman = protoculture = people with the power of songs that can destroy? That is bull****. That is just plain dumb. **** Satelight.
Minmay is just a spoiled girl. She may not be likable but DYRL is quite possibly the greatest gift the galaxy ever had. Sheryl isn't much deeper. LOL me love you long time because you don't treat me differently! Gee what development. I can at least understand why Ranka liked Alto. He inspired her. The triangle is utter garbage.
Sheryl needs to wax her eyebrows. Maybe then she would fit the description of fairy of the galaxy.
I've watched Aquarion before Frontier and I hated absolutely hated their character designs.
Oh and Mylene's singing sounds like a dying walrus.
7 is rated so low because of the excessive stock footage. Zero was just garbage. Frontier gave birth to Nakajima Megumi and TRY UNITE, not even Sheryl's ugly mug can ruin that.
Songs:
DYRL > 7 > Frontier > SDF
Frontier above DYRL if we include all the homage songs.
I have all of the Macross Frontier albums, and I skip Ranka's songs more often than not!
as for the girls, I rank them as characters - musically, the only difference is that I'd move Minmay up because her voice is second-best (can't fault her for the awful music she had!)
as for the mysticism, that's only really present in Zero - Frontier's "magic" is effectively the same as 7's
and I liked the CG in Zero/Frontier >_>
-- thelefty for analysis crew 2008 imo -tranny I have a third degree burn in flame-o-nomics -Sir Chris
SDF - 7 (dragged on too long) DYRL - 6 (dat plot) 7 - 7 Plus - 5 Zero - 8 Frontier - 9
I've come to realize recently that the cast of a show has a significant influence on how much I like a show - while I detested the characters in Plus, all of the others had strong supporting casts, and only SDF/DYRL's main cast irked me (augh awkward love triangles)
-- thelefty for analysis crew 2008 imo -tranny I have a third degree burn in flame-o-nomics -Sir Chris
Yea I'm not big on Ranka's songs. AIMO AIMO is very very bad. But her rendition of DYRL gives me chills.
Sheryl's song voice, it's good. Her character voice is bad >_>
Yea I understand the hate for Minmay. I would have slapped her too, but I understand her character. Can't fault her for being a dumb idol. She is what she is because she's young.
I'll do a proper song ranking after I beat the two Frontier movies tomorrow and look up the names.
I feel like SDF has a very strong cast. Only 7's tops it for me. Sure I hate Mylene because of her song voice, but GAMLIN THE BRO, and Gigil and SIBIL, and the BEAUTY OF EVERYTHING, they cannot be topped. Not to mention LISTEN TO MY SONG. Godlike cast, absolutely loved them.
I like the triangle in SDF/DYRL the most, it seemed to be the most "serious" one. 7 kinda brushed the triangle aside and focused on the music. Plus I like Basara x Sibil more than Basara x Mylene x Gamlin.
Frontier has the weakest cast and triangle and story. Alto was just there, they felt the need to give him a background so he could be compelling, but he was not. The triangle doesn't get resolved, which I assume is what the movies will do. It was too happy. Story was just everywhere, the villain had weak motivations and not enough exposition to fully explain those motivations.
I'm a huge Gundam fan and I am too used to the mecha porn being 2D I guess?
I think I'm being unfair to Frontier. I just feel soooo disappointed by Sheryl. She is absolutely gorgeous outside of official art. She is the main reason I burned through the entire franchise in a month. I watched everything, endured 7's stock footage to get to her. Then she turned out to be ugh.
If Frontier had SDF's character designer, and Plus's 2D mecha porn, and Sheryl had a more youthful character voice, I would probably give Frontier an 8/10.
Here's hoping 30th anniversary will be high quality OVA about Misa and Riber. That's what I assumed Zero was going to be about >_> and that turned out to be completely different :(
Hopefully this latest stuff in Reborn will lead to Chrome getting her own 1 on 1 fights...who am I kidding she'll probably never get one again, but I can still hope.
A little over half way through the False Songstress. The triangle is already better than the TV series. They managed to squeeze more of the triangle on screen than the 25 episodes they originally had, and all in a little over an hour. At this rate I will begin to like Sheryl, she is damn good in the movie! Let's hope for the best.
Macross 7 is pretty light on the triangle aspect anyway. They lightly touch on Mylene's mixed emotions between Basara and Gamlin, but for the most part it's just Basara shouting at people to listen to his song.