After 25 episodes, Macross Frontier has finally ended. Let me get one thing across right now, because it's important: it was much, much better than Macross 7, the last full Macross series (which was a horrible piece of work barely lifted past mediocrity by the presence of Max and Milia).
That said, it must also be mentioned that it was not better than the original Macross. Even comparing it to the OAV series, Frontier still ranks below Plus and Zero. But that still makes it good, overall.
Was I entertained? Yes. Especially during the first two-thirds of the series. After that, the story quality dropped, and I can tell you why. The pace felt too fast, character development stalled with some characters while it was rushed in others, and some technical aspects of the story lacked exposition or justification.
The reason behind this is the 25 episode limitation the makers of the anime placed upon themselves. In an effort to exagerrate the whole "Macross 25th Anniversary" theme, they placed numerous 25s in the series, both within and without. This included the 25 episode limit, which, quite frankly, SUCKS.
The original series was great, and though it had flaws of its own, had a fully developed plot and character development. Despite the relatively simple plot, it spanned a glorious 36 episodes.
Frontier was hamstringed by limiting it to 25 episodes, depriving viewers of desired subplot coverage, closure on multiple elements, and action scene length. I wasn't expecting another 36 episodes, but they could have surely increased the number of eps to 30+ if they hadn't gone with the stupid 25 theme.
The combined traditional + CG animation elements, especially for mecha battles, was a wonderful touch, but the times when I wanted to see long protracted dogfights felt like paying for a bucket of popcorn and getting a bare cupfull instead. Ozma versus Alto? One single kharmic pass. Brera vs Alto? Let's blow the guy up please, ASAP. NUNS and SMS vs. Ghost v9.0's? No. A few scenes, but nothing definite.
Ugh.
Lost potential. It could have been so good.
On other things, the ending was actually good, ignoring the fact that it was rushed. I liked the maintenance of the Archie-Betty-Veronica triangle between the three lead characters, and the fact that Alto was no longer a TOTAL wuss. Leon's dying horribly was denied to me, but at least Grace got annihilated. Damn. Do I HATE clones. I hate borg clones even more. A lot of things were left hanging, but the closure on the Vajra-Birdman-Protoculture metaplot was nice.
If I were to rate this I'd still give it a 7 of 10. That's a pretty good rating considering I'm so critical.
Time to look forward to the movie. If they make it a pseudo-continuity retelling of the series, like they did with Do You Remember Love?, I'd be overjoyed. That would mean it gets chance to correct some of its errors.
