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「残痕 レクイエム」 (Zankon Rekuiemu)
“Scarred Requiem”
Well, that didn’t work out at all did it? Following last week’s haphazard infiltration and a bit of Metal Gear style sneaking, the entire cast (minus Kaname and Arad) is caught shortly after, and it’s a fitting result to a plan that had a lot less going for it than expected. I mean, did they really expect to just waltz into the capital, find the ruins, and get the chance to run a tactical show to maybe destroy it? Certainly seems like a short sighted plan more than anything, but I suppose it was a miracle in itself they even got to Windermere in the first place.
That said, things do ultimately work out in their own way—just not in the way one expected it to. Due to the grand ”
recollection of misery and anger justification” tour led by Bogue, Keith, and Roid, our lead trio not only get to see the dimensional weapon’s destruction with their own eyes, but also the VF-22 that supposedly carried Hayate’s late father as well. In this way, Hayate gets some confirmation in regards to his father’s fate, which is certainly a plus given how little he’s been able to find out up until now.
Interestingly enough though, for all their flaunting of the VF-22, none of the above actually provides the answer that Freyja and Mirage were asking for in regards to “the truth”. The presence of a VF-22 merely proves the NUNS were there, and at best, the special forces squadron that Hayate’s father was a part of. Assuming they did find his father’s body, there’s also no definitive proof given linking his plane with the launch of the dimensional weapon that can be seen at first glance, and even then there’s the question of what the circumstances were surrounding the weapon’s launch, especially in regards to the launch either not being intended or being carried out against the will of the pilot. Granted, it doesn’t change the fact that the weapon was launched and many Windermeres lost their lives, but knowing the whole truth is an important part of the equation, and prior suspicions about the Aerial Knights not actually knowing everything that happened seem all but confirmed with this exchange.
Either way, our cast also ends up benefiting from being brought closer to the ruins than they likely would’ve been able to otherwise, which could pay dividends in the near future. The fact that Roid hasn’t reported Mikumo’s capture brings another uncertain factor into things as well, and at this point, any additional uncertainly helps the cause more than anything—even if it’s not entirely clear what Roid meant with his comments about dedicating his wings to the Star Singer. There’s also the question of whether or not the Star Singer refers to Mikumo herself or the other part of her that seems to pop up when she’s around Protoculture ruins, and there’s certainly no shortage of mysteries as the series approaches its final episodes.
At the very least though, Roid’s all but openly opposing the Windermeres now that he has Mikumo in his grasps, and it looks like it’ll be a three faction struggle between him, the Windermeres, and the Delta Platoon to finish things off here (although the latter two could ally with one another before it’s all said and done). Aside from that, it was a nice touch seeing a young Freyja sing Ranka’s debut single in Seikan Hikou (they’re not shying away from showing off their similarities), and Mikumo’s epic offensive usage of her skirt boosters was an interesting twist on what’s been a typically defensive tool as well. Until next week!
Preview
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This episode somehow give me hope for KeithxMikumo, with Keith being white knight who will rescue her from Bounce-Roid. Whose with me here XD
I’m disappointed to say as a long time Macross fan that I find Delta to be uninteresting. There’s no real intrigue, there’s no real pull that pushes you into caring about the characters and the plot is practically nonexistent.
I think the problem for Delta is the story stagnanting, yes there actually plot development if you ask
Messer death, Ragna fallen, Cassim Death but none of the recent action entirely affect the casts. Messer death came up salty with his good bye ritual episode, Ragna fallen practically only taken for one episode with the people refugee and the unknown Chuck sister fate that frankly need to be concerned, Cassim death not really left a mark except a few sad and rage.
Windermerean king death probably what really affect story with Heinz assume the king mantle but the rest just not much.
Back in SDF the story was slow but engaged to the plot that the story affect the character growth, and love triangle also did well.
maybe 26 episode just not enough, if Delta is 49 episode or split cour we maybe can get better delivery from Delta.
So many unanswered things from Delta that impossible to be answered in 3 episode.
Berger and Epsilon still in air question, i begin to suspect if Kawamori intent to make Epsilon as recurring villain org in macross universe like ouroburos in kiseki game with how few the information we obtains about Epsilon from Delta.
@if Delta is 49 episode or split cour we maybe can get better delivery from Delta.
Thankfully we’ve only got 26 episodes and that’s that. Also, you shouldn’t need 49 episodes to produce a coherent story, there are plenty of excellent well written shows out there that do it in less.
Just to echo Omnisword, there’s certainly a story here that you can see them try to develop, and there are plenty of events you see happening that normally would’ve had a tremendous impact. Sadly the execution’s been lacking and the writing’s been inconsistent with strange breaks/lulls in the action where there shouldn’t be, and the Valkyrie combat hasn’t been on the same level as something like Macross Plus or Macross Zero.
The soundtrack’s certainly still here (and still great), but the above just takes so much out of the series’ sails so to speak, and the former can only do so much if the other portions don’t match up to their predecessors.
Part of me wonders if part of the reason is that they tried too hard to get bits and pieces of the other series mixed in and just made something that turned out to be a clump of parts rather than a series with its own unique, cohesive narrative.
—
Also, I agree with Lyfe as well. It’s always a challenge getting a series to fit the amount of episodes you have to work with, but that’s ultimately not an excuse, as some of the best series I’ve ever seen managed to introduce and execute wonderfully with only 12 episodes.
Great post. But I will say that giving someone who has failed to produce a coherent story over 26 episodes more episodes is absolutely ridiculous. If someone can’t produce a decent story over 26 episodes, they’ve clearly failed as a writer.
There’s an argument to be made in that regard yeah. But I’d personally cut a little slack here and there because it’s really a fine balance between getting a show that was too short and one that ends up too long.
When you think about it, it’s absolutely amazing when someone can actually execute a tremendous story in just 12 episodes, and I think part of their charm comes from the fact they managed to do that. At the same time though, you could probably count on one hand the number of shows that’ve really done this successfully in any given year, which makes you realize just how difficult it is to get the timing right.
It also doesn’t help when you have to book broadcast schedules well in advance of the episodes being produced, as that occasionally forces you to end up making things for like 25/26 episodes even when you may not need it and so on and so forth.
That said, I am admittedly surprised at the execution here given Kawamori’s vast experience with the franchise and genre, but at the same time I do understand the difficulties that come with his position even if it doesn’t ultimately excuse it.
Even the fighting falls short. I was re-watching the dogfight in Macross Zero and it is leagues better than any of the fights we’ve gotten in Delta. There’s a real physicality and intensity to the fight that has been lacking in Delta’s, it’s just a real shame.
Speaking of the dogfights, they’ve had plenty that didn’t really result in anything. I mean, when two sides are engaged in battle using advanced tech, surely more people would die? Sure, Messer was super sad, but both sides should have lost more people. Plot armor has kept characters around longer than they’re needed.
It made most of these dogfights pointless because you know no one important to the plot will die. When there’s no risk, theres no enjoyment.
Don’t know which is better, kung-fu mikumo or blushing mikumo. Also I hope I’m not the only one who felt a bit disturbed watching them eat spiders…
Eh it’s Mikumo either way so why the need to pick? XD
And yeah, I don’t know if I would’ve eaten that personally.
https://randomc.net/image/Macross%20Delta/Macross%20Delta%20-%2023%20-%20Large%2035.jpg
Someone decided to try out rope bondage without checking the Galactic Internet for instructions I see.
Now we know why Roid needed so many pairs of glasses.
Aerial Knights: YOU DESTROYED OUR PLANET!
Delta Squadron: Yes We did! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Every Single TIME they meet! Why is the Delta Squadron the good guys again?
Yes, because one bomb destroyed their ENTIRE planet. They don’t live anywhere anymore. No apple farms. No grand castle. They have no planet anymore. Oh… wait…
Because delta squadron didn’t do shit? Delta squadron is part of Chaos, a private contractor, not a part of Nuns, the official space navy. The aerial Knights are extending the blame for the damage to their planet to all humans, not specifically delta squadron.
The interesting/sad part is it seems like the majority of the Windermeres don’t even know the entire truth of what happened.
Alas, the thing that’s potentially more disturbing is how accurately reflective this is of the real world in some respects. There are some out there that will merely believe something just because of circumstantial evidence and someone saying words they wanted to hear. In a rush to get an answer some accept a half truth, and apparently that’s all that matters for some.
True, I mean in war you see the propaganda that makes your side look like they’re fighting on the side of justice and peace and the other side are super evil mean people who have to be defeated.
Do you know what bugs me? That in all that exposition about the evils of the bomb and the poor civilians nuked, our protaognists never, ever point out another important fact: THAT THE NUNS WAS NUKED TOO.
In fact, the bomb ensured WINDERMERE’S VICTORY in their independence war. Very, very suspect. After all, why would the NUNS sabotage themselves? Yet everyone, from the villains to the heroes, only care about whether Hayate’s father dropped the bomb or not. Why doesn’t anyone mention this?
The Idiot Ball is strong in this series.
Very nostalgic hearing Seikan Hikou :), can’t believe it’s already 8 years since Macross Frontier.
Stahppppp. I’d rather not be reminded of that. Haha.
I find Roid really creepy after this episode. There’s always gotta be that one hentai creep in an anime. >.<
Hey, Japan. Get the FUCK over your nuclear bomb martyrdom.
What the fuck was this episode? This anime ends in how many episodes? At MOST 3? This is the dumbass story they tried to tell? I think I laughed the loudest when Hayate said “Show me proof” and then one scene transition later was shouting “WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?!”
Okay, you had a city bombed by a big-ol bomb. You have an ENTIRE PLANET. You can still grow your apples. Folks seem to be living a pretty decent life. What the fuck is your huge problem with everyone else? Honor? Fuck your honor. Does your honor being stained suddenly mean it’s okay to enslave countless planets and kill innocent people? How the FUCK are you any better than the NUNS? And this fetish with the attack… you seriously rebuilt the fucking plane? For what reason?
Yet another episode wasted on stupid shit. Hey, let’s moeify Mikumo. Oh, let’s also tie her up in bondage rope. Let’s pretend that Mirage and Freyja are on equal footing in terms of character development, and then give Freyja yet ANOTHER flashback and story. Know what would have been cool? Maybe an episode where Hayare teaches Mirage to dance. Remember when dancing was a thing in this show? Remember?
I should have learned my lesson after Aquarion Evol. I should have remembered how horrible Kawamori is at pacing and telling a story. Can he design bitchin cool mech designs? Totally. Can he do ANYTHING ELSE? Nope.
2d villains with no logical goal, inept main heroes who screw up for the stupidest of reasons, mysteries that exist to be teased and never solved, and horrific pacing. My god, and I used to want Harmony Gold to die so we could get Macross brought over here. Now I just don’t care. Both sides are horrible and I want my 11 and a half hours back.
The anime ends in 3 episodes yeah. Hopefully when they do another Macross project in the future they don’t use the same writers. You can’t really excuse the writing at this point, it’s not Mayoiga bad, but it’s getting close.
At least Mayoiga was meant to be ludicrous according to some theories. Delta does not have this excuse.
To make it worse, nobody in the show whines so much about all the mind-control that the Windmerians are doing, which itself is an extremely atrocious crime. Just about the stupid bomb which, as far as we know, was dropped by Ingelman because Windmerians mind-controlled him.
And I can’t even start sympathizing because the writer forgot about the holy “Show, don’t tell” principle of story-writing. There are no proper flashbacks, no planet-wide sufferings… everything seems to be going fine on Windermere. If I’m supposed to sympathize with all the lost lives, then SHOW me the lost lives and the city (or cities) that were blown up. You telling me that a bomb fell on some patch of land means nothing.
Well said, you typically have to show the fallout from a disaster for maximum effect. No ones asking for 1000s of dead bodies, but to show suffering on some level to make the audience emphasise with Windermere would be better writing.
To make it worse, nobody in the show whines so much about all the mind-control that the Windmerians are doing, which itself is an extremely atrocious crime.
Indeed. They make a point of showing Hayate and company the disaster caused by the bomb before they are taken for trial, but will the opposite happen? Will Windermereans be taken to witness the destruction caused by their campaign and their previous Vars terrorist attacks that ravaged several planets even before the war started? And will their leaders stand trial for war crimes? You know, like what happened in real-life after WWII?
Surely, that would be a fitting end to the WWII parallelisms here. But it would make the Imperial Japanese Space Nazis look guilty, so I don’t think it will happen.
Now now, I get not liking how they did things here in the series up to this point, but you do have to keep in mind the tremendous impact nuclear weapons have had on them as a nation and how it pretty much changed their nation forever, both physically and from a mental perspective in regards to its utilization.
Even now, despite the country’s heavy reliance on nuclear power plants to survive, there are still many that would rather not use them regardless, which illustrates just how much their dislike for anything nuclear permeates their line of thinking, and rightfully so given all they’ve dealt with historically. The fact that they’re still dealing with fall out from the meltdown of years past also puts the issue front and center again.
That said, there have been shows that have included this issue (or similar issues) while also executing the plot extremely well, so in the end those two are admittedly separate things. Zankyou no Terror (interestingly another series I covered) from a little while back was one example of a series that did this, for instance.
Also important to keep in mind us that it’s not just that the bomb was dropped, it’s that NUNS brought it onto their planet in violation of the treaties they’d signed. (Which would have been inspired by another sore point in US-Japan relations during the Cold War…)
The issue is much less “using nukes is wrong” and more “we were nuked so we are the victims” bullshit. You can very easily draw the parallels between Windermeer and Japan. They are a country/world of ‘honor’, and their ‘honor’ was tainted by these outsiders coming in and dropping a single bomb on them. So from that point on, the end justifies the means. Enslaving large groups of people for peace? Sounds a hell of a lot like the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere doesn’t it?
The WW2 allegories in this show are thick as molasses. The only difference is the order of events are flipped a bit. Either way, a single bomb does not justify all the atrocities that Windermeer has inflicted gleefully. I have yet to see any of the aerial knights, or any of the main Windermeerian cast have any reservations about these. And yet, we are expected to sympathize with them. They were greatly wronged, and are only trying to reclaim their honor. Fuck that. They are straight up space nazis, and the show is dancing around the issue. It’s fetishizing of imperial Japan and all that it stood for.
@Zephyr
“you do have to keep in mind the tremendous impact nuclear weapons have had on them as a nation and how it pretty much changed their nation forever, both physically and from a mental perspective in regards to its utilization”
That’s true. The problem is that such impact is often used to overlook the equally tremendous impact Imperial Japan’s conquests and war crimes had on their neighbours. It’s still a contentious issue today. At best, the war is treated as something akin to a natural disaster with no individualized human responsibilities. At worst, whitewashing happens.
Delta is grating in this regard because it repeats the same themes. And that’s with it being a fictional universe; they chose their events. The creators probably thought that the NUNS’ fantasy nuke was enough to make the Windermereans sympathetic and didn’t seem to realize how bad their way of waging war looks in comparison. Exactly the same problems people notice with the Japanese version of WWII. Moral Myopia, Values Dissonance and Unfortunate Implications (tropes!) kick in.
I enjoyed Mikumo being slightly awkward, but while I didn’t hate the blushing I felt it was a little forced.I wanted to hit the smug Roid when he was hugging Mikumo (okay fine, he was supporting the unconscious her, but argh).
I stopped watching macross delta some time ago because it got less exciting, but a few days ago I watched the last ten or so episodes at one go, and really enjoyed it. Despite the weird pacing and things that often don’t make sense, I find I am enjoying this show quite a bit.
I don’t think this is better than macross frontier, but somehow I’m enjoying this more. I guess I just didn’t like Ranka that much, so however much I liked Sheryl Nome wasn’t able to make me love it. Freyja though, is one of my favourite anime characters in a long while.
By the way, was anyone worried when they were fighting/shouting at each other at the edge of the crater? For a moment I felt like he would push Freyja down the cliff and forcefully resolve the love triangle, even if that’s not likely because she’s a pretty important character. My worry later changed to him pushing Mirage off the cliff (which is more likely but nooooo please don’t). Anyway I’m glad neither of them fell, but it got me wondering about how likely it is for the main characters to die in this series. (though I doubt they will)
Not related but… please grant me an ending where Hayate and Freyja hold hands while walking through an apple orchard on Windermere ;_; I’m not sure the anime will even conclude the love triangle 🙁
Is Mikumo the Sister of “Big-bada-bum” Leeloo from The Fifth Element?
example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB2fsHhUpEU
Watched the part of little Freyja singing and one of the pilots looks like an older version of Hayate and could be Wright. It wouldn’t be far-fetched then for Wright to be the one to have given Freyja the music player and that interacting with Freyja and children like her is what caused him to use the dimensional weapon.
I can’t imagine how bad the story for Delta. I enjoy Frontier much than Delta.