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Macross Frontier Premiere Episode Review

Anime, Mecha

Macross Frontier, the official sequel to the original Macross 7 series brings a fresh new look to the long established Macross franchise. Will M:Frontier mark their return to greatness?

M:Frontier begins in the year 2059 with a prologue of the colonization of the human race into the far reaches of space. We are then introduced to the arrival of pop idol “Galactic Fairy” Sheryl Nome on the newly launched space colony named Frontier for her first performance on the colony.

The story then cuts to a group of students practicing with their ExGear, a type of personal jet pack(think SkyGirls), for their performance at Sheryl’s concert. Here we are introduced to Alto, our angst ridden hero who yearns to fly a real Valkyrie instead of ExGears. Unbeknownst to them, a new enemy has just breached near their space colony and initial efforts to stop the enemy has failed. The new enemy has an insect inspired design(Aura Battler Dunbine anyone ?) and the new Valkyries appears more organic too. Ranka, a big fan of Sheryl, who works at a local restaurant bumped into Alto when she got lost and drenched while taking a short cut to the concert. Alto who was just preparing to get into his gear for the concert decided to help her out by drying her clothes with his ExGear jets and showed her the way to the concert.

With the enemy action getting too close to the colony, an elite team of Civilian Military Provider who pilots the newly developed VF-25 were dispatched to the battlefield. These pilots fared much better against the enemy but one of the enemy fighter managed to slip past their defenses and penetrated the colony. As the enemy approaches the city, Sheryl’s concert was being evacuated with Alto staying behind only to yell at Sheryl for leaving her fans behind.

As he stayed behind to assess the situation, the alien fighter attacked him, damaging his ExGear thereby forcing him to land. One of the pilots managed to pursue the enemy into the colony but in the end he was no match for the superior alien fighter as he was forced to eject and killed by the enemy. The creature then set its sight on Ranka who’s trying to escape from the concert hall. As it approaches Ranka, Alto made a quick decision to pilot the downed VF-25 and distracted the enemy fighter by firing cannon rounds at it. So there you have it, the pilot episode of Macross Frontier.

From the first few minutes of animation, it is clear that M:Frontier has a high production value as a lot of detail has been put into the animation and CG effects. CG imagery is used effectively in almost every scene to highlight the technological advancement in the Macross universe. Scenes with 3D rendering of starships and space colonies look very realistic and the overall artwork and effects are very detailed and rich. The songs in M:Frontier are catchy Jpop tunes but I’m still holding my breathe for some Yoko Kanno brilliance.

For a pilot episode, M:Frontier does a good job of introducing the main characters and setting the premise. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this would be a worthy sequel to the Macross universe. M:Frontier is definitely in my must watch list of the year.

Genres: drama, science fiction
Themes: Mecha, Military, Real Robot
Age rating: Teenagers
Running time: 26 minutes

Chief Director: Shoji Kawamori
Director: Yasuhito Kikuchi
Music: Yoko Kanno
Script: Hiroyuki Yoshino
Storyboard:
Shoji Kawamori
Yasuhito Kikuchi

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