Macross Frontier 25 – Your Sound.

Like Sheryl this episode was WIN SAUCE (pic courtesy of Hubby-sama).

Well Macross Frontier was intended to be a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Macross and with the last episode they certainly hammer that point home. Episode 25 is an action packed, song filled, fan service extravaganza!

For those of you well acquainted with the Macross Universe I’m sure you’ll agree one element of this series that has been rather enjoyable is seeing all the little nods to the shows that have come before it.

It may not be the deepest incarnation of Macross out there, but it has certainly been entertaining, I’ve definitely enjoyed the music and the updated animation has just made the mecha even more sexy!

Okay now I’ve gotten that out of my system you’ll want to know what the hell happened right? XD

That’s right Luca, your Taichou is back!

Quarter to the resuce!

SUCK IT LEON!

And my faith was rewarded, of course Hime didn’t die!

So Ozma and crew arrive just in the nick of time to stop the Battle Frontier from being fired upon and hit Brera’s ship in the process.
They inform the fleet of their true enemy, Grace and Leon, the latter of which gets taken into custody. A rather banal outcome for a craptastic villain, lets face it he was never in Grace’s league when it came to being an evil Mastermind.

As we all expected Alto was alive since he ejected out of his ship and hid in some floating debris. During his fly through of the huge Ranka projection he was able to see through Grace’s deception. Once the image is shot at, it dissipates to reveal the Galaxy!

Grace takes her sado-masochism very seriously, no safety words for this fembot!

Grace unleashes her flying V9’s. Fly my pretties, fly!

Grace meanwhile has merged with the Varja Queen and sends out a squadron of Ghost V9’s who start to tear the crap out of Frontiers forces.

Luca and Klan tow Alto’s VF-25 over to him and he asks Sheryl for her strength so he can save Ranka. “Awaken her with your song.” is what he tells her.

GO SHERYL!

Even in battle Hime is graceful

Such finesse!

That’s right, Alto has been channeling his inner Sakura-Hime

GO SMS GO!

Michel-kun I just know you are with us in spirit.

Klan channels her beloved Michel-kun.

Alto connects to his ship channeling his inner Kabuki and Luca lets loose the Judah system to take on the V9’s. Klan asks for Mikhail’s strength as she take on his role of sniper and SMS and the Frontier forces go all out to the blasting vocals of Sheryl’s Northern Cross.

Alto reaches out to Ranka, telling her he’ll take back her true song and finally Grace’s hold on her is broken. But Grace is still in control of the Queen and she unleashes a massive fold wave, which forms a network structure over the entire Varja homeworld.

Ozma launches missiles at the Queen only to find she is protected by a dimensional rift, which is acting as a barrier. Grace sends Varja to attack the Macross 11 and Earth, whilst also attacking the Frontier fleet with a huge wave of laser fire.

The Battle Frontier takes a hit as does Quarter and Sheryl collapses to the ground apologizing to Ranka and Alto. As Cathy wonders if this is the end for them a voice is suddenly heard singing.

Ranka’s voice rings out across space and Brera tells her that he is now free from Grace’s control. Ranka’s song stops the Varja from attacking the Frontier Fleet and the fold waves from her song start to counteract those of the Queen.

Ranka slap!

Alto’s Wings.

Sheryl is saved.

Through the fold waves Ranka is able to connect to Sheryl, who appears to have given up. She says that her work is done and she has nothing left, prompting Ranka to quite literally slap some sense into her.

Ranka tells Sheryl she was able to fly because of her and that because of the strength she gave, Alto was able to fly too.
Alto is also able to connect to them both and he reminds Sheryl that she said she wouldn’t give up. He tells her that he won’t give up and asks her to come with him, telling her that both she and Ranka are his wings.

Ranka asks her to fly one more time and moves the virus from Sheryl’s brain to her stomach, so that now she is just like Ranka.

The Fleet BRINGS IT to Grace.

Queen Grace.

Hime rescues Ranka

And the Varja rescue everyone else

Quarter pushes forward and punches a hole in Galaxy allowing Alto to rescue Ranka and Grace launches another blistering attack. It looks dire for Island one but the Varja step up and use themselves as a barrier. They take the hit and save Island 1, this of course pains Sheryl and Ranka, but this time Alto is able to somewhat feel it through the earring.

Ranka thanks them and is greeted by Ai-kun who is still alive. Ranka begins to talk, saying that the Varja are different from them. Because of this they had wanted to rescue Ranka, who could emit fold waves, from the humans who they couldn’t understand and so to them were abnormal.

But Ranka says that after hearing the message of Sheryl’s song the Varja understood that everyone is different and that they must communicate in order to understand each other.

I want an animated gif of this! Out of all the cool shots in the episode, this is my fave.

HELLS YEAH!

Alto drops Ranka off on Quarter and heads back into the fray with a nostalgic salute reminiscent of Hikaru.

The Varja open up a hole in the rift protecting the Queen and Canaria races towards Galaxy striking a big blow to the ship. Following close behind the Quarter and Frontier deliver a nice one, two punch to finally put Galaxy down.

Friends no longer with us.

Here we come Grace!

Alto and Brera, FIGHTO!

Klan takes a hit and so entrusts Mikhail’s rifle to Alto in a nice little tribute to their fallen companion as Alto remembers him and goes after Grace. En route he almost gets taken out but is saved by a shot from Brera who tells Alto he’ll cover him.

Taking the advice of Brera and Ranka Alto aims for the head and unleashes his missiles taking the head clean off of the Queen.

Brera had told Grace that he learned from her all humans are alone, but Alto says “because we are alone, we love someone.”

Bai Bai Grace.

Macross 11

Earth

Aimo, or mating season for Varja.

Staring Grace down Alto unleashes the final shot to take her out of the equation. The Varja break away from Earth and Macross 11 and begin to sing Aimo.

Ranka explains that it is a love song and once every hundreds of millions of years they use it to gather and cross breed with other groups in the Galaxy.

Minmei

Bilrer sits alone staring at an image in a pocket watch, in a close-up we see the person in the picture is Minmei!

Fly with me.

The end is the beginning is the end.

On the planet Ranka greets Sheryl and they watch Alto eject from his wrecked fighter and glide through a real sky in his Ex-Gear. The real sky he says that Sheryl and Ranka opened up for him.

Ranka tells Sheryl that she won’t lose to her in song or love and Sheryl accepts her challenge.

Luca races towards the waking Nanase and Alto flies towards Ranka and Sheryl with his arms outstretched as Macross Frontier finally comes to an end.

Or does it? Since at the end of the episode we learn that we’ll be seeing Macross Frontier in the theaters in the future. Whether or not its a re-telling of the series or a continuation I don’t know. We’ll have to just sit tight and wait for more information.

It’s over! OMG its finally over! This show has done nothing but entertain me throughout its run. We got introduced to some great characters, although some like Ranka were lacking in growth. But Sheryl was absolute win sauce and her transformation from an arrogant pop idol to a selfless songstress giving her all for the people was riveting to watch.

The show was also about Hime’s journey and I very much enjoyed watching him discover what it was he truly wanted with his life. Sakura-Hime will always be a part of him, but our Hime has always wanted to fly in a true sky and now he has his dream. I’m only sad and I’m sure Klan is too, that my dear Michel-kun couldn’t be there to share in all the happiness.

The music was phenomenal and I would recommend that you check out the OST’s. They are well worth a listen, there are always songs from them in my playlist. And I’m not only talking about the pop music, there are some truly beautiful instrumentals there. But really that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, after all when has Yoko Kanno ever let us down?

There was some dodgy animation here and there but on the whole the CG for the mecha was just beautiful and the ships all looked damn sexy. I told hubby I want a 12 inch model of Alto’s VF-25 in salute pose ^-^ You have to agree that would be uber cool!

If you are going to watch a mecha show then do yourself a favor and watch Macross Frontier and when you’re done doing that.
Damn well go back and watch the Macross that came before it, if you haven’t already. This Sunrise, is how you do a mecha show!