Often in anime, sequels are as much renewals rather than continuations, the same themes stripped down and retooled for a younger audience, sometimes retaining continuity with the original, but often ignoring it. Look at the many editions of shows like Sailor Moon, Bubblegum Crisis and Tenchi Muyo. Even the mighty Gundam franchise has been eating its own tail for some 13 years now. Macross Frontier seemed fated to follow this trend, as it was developed to mark the 25th anniversary of the franchise. Has it gone beyond that? And is it any good?

The Basic plot

Some fifty years after Space War One, Alto Saotome lives on the colonisation fleet “Macross Frontier”, and one day a series of chance encounters changes his life. First he meets Ranka Lee, a young waitress, on a way to a concert. At that concert, an accident introduces him to Sheryl Nome, the most popular singer in the Galaxy. At the same time, the fleet is attacked by strange mecha, known as the Vajra, and the mass evacuation cancels the concert. The fighting soon spreads into the inside of the main colony ship, Island 1, catching Ranka in the crossfire, and Alto commandeers a new VF-25 fighter. When the dust settles, Alto joins SMS, a private military company, and soon finds that both Ranka and Sheryl have an interest in him. But the question remains, why did the Vajra attack, and why now? 

Macross Hallmark 01: Love Triangles

When you get down to it, the Macross franchise is about three things, love triangles, transforming fighter planes and music. Any instalment of it can be seen and judged on these hallmarks. I’ll be on to the second and third themes in a moment, but it’s the love triangle that is of the most importance to the series, and should be discussed first. The  reason is simple, romantic aspects of any series depend entirely on the parties involved, and if the balance is not right you get can a character that people just love to hate. An anime can live or die by its characterisations. The obvious question is, if you’ve seen any of Macross before, has this happened? The answer is no.  Frontier has succeeded in doing something that its predecessors often got wrong, creating a love triangle that has three actually likable and equal characters in it. There is no Lynn “Airhead of the Galaxy” Minmay or Nekki “The Second Most Controversial Man in Mecha” Basara in this series. Thankfully. 

 So who are these three players in the game of love? Well, Ranka is immature and lacking in confidence, but grows up significantly over the course of the series as she pursues a singing career. Sheryl is slightly older, already a professional singer, and occasionally a bit of a diva, but handles herself with the kind of self-confidence and maturity that Ranka lacks.  By comparison, Alto seems to be in the best Macross tradition of a subtle piss take. Consider this: Alto probably has the best reason for being an angst-ridden prettyboy I have ever encountered in fiction. He comes from a family of traditional Japanese actors famous for playing female roles, and his genetics make him exceptional at it. However, he has rejected this and fallen out with his father as a result. That’s right, his dad won’t talk to him as Alto will not partake in ritualised cross-dressing. That’s brilliant, that’s hilarious, and neatly explains his unwitting success with girls. This “Let’s give them what they want, but not what they actually expect” thinking seems to have also resulted in Klan Klein,  a pilot who fulfils two entirely separate female stereotypes. You will understand what I mean when you see her. Unfortunately, anime convention demands that at least one person in a love triangle have the emotional awareness and decisiveness of a stunned test monkey, and Alto fills this role a little too often.  Its also worth pointing out that Alto’s theatrical background is more important to the themes of the show than most westerners are likely to realise; he isn’t intended as a joke character.

 Characterisation is good across the board, and series doesn’t rely on the three leads, sometimes to the point where Alto and co. become supporting characters. The main three are backed up by a mixed cast of teenagers and veteran pilots, most of them likable.  When Alto joins SMS, he’s actually subservient to two classmates Michael Blanc, a lady’s man and sniper, and Luca Angeloni, a baby faced boy who uses unmanned fighters. The pair brings their share of subplots and humour to series, Michael spending a lot of time deflating Alto’s ego. Things are rounded out by Ozma Lee, Ranka’s brother, and Alto’s squadron leader and the aforementioned Klan Klien. Honourable mentions go to Bobby Margot, the helmsman/make-up artist, and Canaria Berstein, a bomber pilot. While secondary characters, these two still manage to steal the show on several occasions. All-in-all, a good cast.  

Macross Hallmark 02 and 03: Music and Mecha

A lot of screentime is taken up with the musical careers of Sheryl and Ranka, which forms much of their character development. Already a success, Sheryl’s style of music is aggressive, and slightly westernised, giving special effects laden performances to packed concert halls. Ranka, starting from the bottom, favours a shyer, cheerful style of song, something more to the Japanese norm. It’s a reflection of their personalities, and its hard to pick a favourite tune.  Ranka’s mysterious “Aimo” is haunting (though overused) and Sheryl’s “Diamond Crevasse” is a minor classic. Similar quality extends to the background music, so there’s more to enjoy than the two singing teenagers. Attentive fans will also notice Ozma Lee is fan of Fire Bomber. The series has the multitalented and generally excellent Yoko Kanno (of Cowboy Bebop fame) directing the soundtrack and it really shows. However, the series probably missed a trick in never showing actually Alto do his thing, as the comedic potential was huge. 

While this music is good, it becomes exceptional when the assorted Variable Fighters come to into play, which is largely Alto’s time to shine. The uses of CGI are excellent, the combat sequences are both distinctive and eyeball straining fast. The new VF-25 Messiah (they shouldn’t have let fans select the name) is a sleek, elegant machine that’s a deliberate homage to the original VF-1, from the colour schemes to its bolt-on equipment. Like most Macross mecha, it’s a convincing machine that looks like it could actually have been built, and actually transform from plane to robot without invoking anime magic, something that is always a plus. There’s also a totally new type of Macross Carrier, the comparatively small Macross Quarter, which dominates the scenes it’s in. By and large though, the design staff seem to have been  happy to mine the franchises back catalogue. The most noteworthy is the VF-171, a stealth fighter inspired cannon fodder unit, while the assorted Zentradi forces get the Queadluun-Rea. This is certainly a surprise (most of us were expecting the VF-19 en mass, or something totally new), but by no means bad. If this series does anything right, its mecha design, and anything which brings the VB-6 Koenig Monster to the small screen is good in my mind.  While we have seen these mechas before, the series has innovated too. A new addition is the “Ex-Gear”, an exoskeleton/control harness, which opens the door to more personal forms of combat, and some pretty memorable moments. A bigger surprise is the presence of cybernetic technology, which has been only lightly touched on before. However, while there are some fairly good set piece battles, the series isn’t quite as action packed as you might expect. I suspect part of this was budgetary constraints, but there is another reason, which I’m about to go into. 

Hang on, is a sequel trying something new? Get out of town.

Ok, so the series includes the three Macross Hallmarks, does it do anything new?

Yes, at first, there is some passing resemblance to Full Metal Panic to begin with. Most of the peoples we see go to the same school, and belong to an independent military organisation with better kit than the regular forces. While this does give us one good comedy episode, the similarity soon disappears in favour of animes dramatic side. Frontier differs from its forbears in that it has a storyline based on conspiracies and mysterious pasts, rather than the fairly straightforward plots of its elders. The Vajra are a military secret at the start of the series, and have no discernible aims or personality, other than blowing stuff up at irregular intervals. The focus is resolutely on the human characters, and it gradually becomes clear that they are not united and are instead following their own agendas. It’s something of a minor theme in Macross not to reveal the ultimate villain of the series until fairly late, and Frontier takes this to new extremes. Suffice to say, the Vajra aren’t the only candidate for the position of “Big Bad”, and muddies the water by giving four or so suspicious people. The series manages to keep everyone guessing, and this is especially true of those hardcore fans that have seen all the previous instalments. As a result, the anime becomes a collection of burning questions: Who/what are the Vajra? What’s the deal with SMS? Exactly what happened to Ranka? How will music play a part? And of course, who will Alto ultimately end up with? The series effectively pairs likable characters with an interesting story, splitting time fairly equally between two, with the high octane action used sparingly. 

On the downside, Frontier takes a long time to answer these questions, and this is due to certain conceptual weaknesses. Love triangles by their very nature are slow burning affairs, as are conspiracy plots, and the anime doesn’t have quite the  amount of action needed to balance this out. Surprisingly though, it’s not the love triangle that’s the problem here, it’s the whole Vajra mystery and the factions fighting over it. While the ultimate pay off to the countless scenes of plotting is good, it’s still a long road there, marked with some frustrating delays, unnecessary detours and some very obvious revelations. Much time was spent on this aspect, but often the series did things I’d dismissed as too obvious, or stalled for time, which was a little disappointing.  Then I remembered something about the Macross franchise.  It’s worth stressing that Frontier is a series that can be viewed at two different levels, the actual bulk of the story, and the many subtle in-jokes, and subverted clichés which forms its foundation. While Frontier is not a Gundam style remake, the series does have a number of characters and elements that seem deliberate homage to earlier instalments, (notably Ozma, Klan, and Michael) only for this to be turned on its head, meaning that long term fans are either giggling or just as mystified as the newbies. With this in mind, the plot becomes very ironic, with the flaws essentially being double bluff.  The final episode is at first cheesy and spectacular, and then what it all means sinks in, and your opinion of the series changes. It’s a big strength of the series, but it’s also weakness, as the sub-text often gets in the way of the text-text. I don’t want to give spoilers, but often juicy plot points are forgotten, most notably in episode 17, where a key plot development is delayed for what is essentially a prank on older fans. Frontier spends a lot of time looking lethargic and in need of a swift kick up the bum as a result, and the clichéd parts can’t entirely be written off as in-jokes. Even then, the plot isn’t that important per say, or actually bad. The series is more about how the series affects the cast, not why the circumstances exist in the first place. In that respect it succeeds.  

Conclusion

After several sub-par and sometimes controversial sequels, Frontier represents a return to form for the franchise. With good characters, some solid animation and a good story, this anime has much to offer, though not without flaw. It’s probably too clever for its own good, suffers from bad pacing and slightly formulaic plot. However, compared the increasingly tired Gundam, and most of the current crop, Frontier seems a fresh and surprisingly mature mecha anime. That’s a fine achievement considering that this sequel comes more than 25 years after the original.