Macross Frontier ep 8
Ok, erm, someone’s stolen my MacF and replaced it with some Jump highschool hijinks anime. It’s like I’m watching a crossover between Ranma and Eva, where Happosai’s small and green and Asuka has pink hair. Excuse me while I go scrub my eyes and ears clean.
Well, I guess it would be hypocritical if I didn’t admit to laughing through a lot of the scenes. I mean, yeah it was kinda whack slapstick. But really, almost one whole episode devoted to Sheryl being a first-class pampered bitch? A little too much, even for a fan as me. BTW, I really didn’t like Sheryl in this episode.
Granted this episode had some important plot points. First and foremost it reveals that the mysterious pilot from ep 7 is now on Frontier, and Mr Sleazeball aide has some slimy connection to him. Next, it tries to set up Ranka as the underdog in both idol- and Alto-dom. It’s this part which I found contrived and clumsy. I mean, geez, can you get anymore obvious about how put down Ranka feels compared to the high flying Sheryl? Beat me on the head with a stick again, will ya?
I don’t mind that Ranka is supposed to be the underdog. I do take issue with badly written teen drama. Of course, compared to oldies such as KOR this isn’t bad at all, but just because something was okay 20 years ago doesn’t mean that I will stop having hopes and expectations for anime to show more mature storytelling.
To top it off, the whole setup where Sheryl comes to school and joins everyone is just so… cliche anime. Would the biggest star in the galaxy suddenly start going to school, just because she feels like it? Well, perhaps, but it still feels like a terrible thing to do to a character that started with quite a bit of potential. She was smart, strong-willed, stubborn but practical. A girl who grew up too fast, but still a kind girl at heart nonetheless. Now she’s just pig-headed and idiotic. I guess it was too good to expect that we’d escape the annoying-idol syndrome this time around.
At least next episode looks to be good. We find out something about Max ^H^H^H Michel, whom I am interested in, and we have some fight sequences to whet our appetite.
