hugh_booth I've seen a fair bit of Macross, understand the back story, and was looking for some new stuff to watch. I was sorely disappointed. The bag guys they brought in were clichéd and unbelievable, and the central plot descends from a great Sci-Fi story into sub par fantasy.To understand why the bad guys don't work, you need to know a little about the original series. Alien ship crashes in 1999 ending a global war and uniting the world. Some anti-unification dissidents make a little trouble, and then in 2009 the aliens arrive. This takes place between 1999 and 2009.With little else to work with, the anti-unification guys get tasked as the main bad guys for this. While Macross is known for variable fighters, here we learn that it was these bad guys that came up with them first. Theirs also seem to be better than the United Earth versions which are just coming out. So without any access to the alien technology on the ship, they have better variable fighters first, that actually work. Right, and what they're not telling us in the real world is that Al Queda was really the first to deploy the F-22 Raptor.Otherwise the central story revolves around an island with remains of an alien culture that influenced our evolution. This is standard Macross fair, but they manage to take it to ludicrous ends. On this island, singing by the shrine maiden can induce spontaneous high level mutation in nearby life. I can just see the cautionary warnings now. Be sure not to teach the shrine maiden any Britney Spears, it causes cancer. Now music has always played an important part in Macross, but I'll buy it having an emotionally debilitating effect on a group of emotionally sheltered giants long before this makes any sense. In the end this is all to support an unnecessary claim that life on Earth evolved way faster than it should have. It's like the makers saw some of the more clichéd Disney fair of the princess dancing around and singing while the animals rally and decided they needed to throw it in.It's a real shame, but Macross sequels and spin-offs have been extremely hit and miss. If you want action this is okay, but if you want a logical storyline, stick to the original Super-Dimensional Fortress Macross, and Macross Plus.

heero_yuy2 I've been waiting for another Macross series or movie coming up to reinstate its own strong genre in the anime industry, but i found it disappointing in this new prequel.1999. The year when an alien craft from space fell on earth, nations tremble upon knowing they are not alone in the universe, and different factions wage war upon the search for the ultimate weapon related to alien technology. Shin Kudo, a Un-Spacey pilot of an F-14-like aircraft fell to an island after having being shot by anti-UN fighter plane/mecha. He met the ancestral villages of a certain island led by Sara Noome as a girl with mystical powers that enable to float organic rocks through a song. After Shin's discovery of the mysticism, certain UN-Spacey troops landed on the island for related underground research that led also to more attacks and casualties by the anti-UN...and an unearthing revelation of a massive organic weapon 10,000 years buried beneath the island that may wipe out the whole human civilization.There were some points on the need to expand the Macross saga (amidst the non-inclusion of Kawanori's Minmay-Hikaru-Misa trilogy due to the copyright restraints) but it still cannot save the fact about the more details pertaining to one of the most viable weapon used in the whole Macross saga...the SDF-1. There is still no conclusion as to where the detailed origin of the space fortress being inclusive and informed in the prequel, and how the whole world had united to form the defense attacks prior to the first encounters with the Zentraedi. Furthermore, the good points goes to the relation of Protoculture origin through relations with the Mayan Civilization, and to the adaptability of evolving designs that leads to the famous VF-1.The prequel answers the crave for wanting to watch a new Macross saga, but after watching it, it's still lacks relative detail to the original story.

Dan Henwood Once again Shoki Kawamori-San has given us something that rivals the complexity and sheer beauty of Macross Plus. Seeming to follow a Lucas-esque trend he has chosen to do a prequel instead of a sequel in an attempt to show us a key point of the Macross 7 series. Spiritia.This strange, mystical, yet apparently inherent part of us all all, force. Stirrings of the Force from Star Wars abound, but you won't be seeing people leaping 50 feet in to the air. Its more nature based. With episodes 1, 2, 3 & 4 out, and only 5 to go we are all still a little confused as to spiritia and more important the 'birdman' alien device, for which the head is running around whilst the body is sat on a Stealth Aircraft carrier. Hopefully all will be explained in the final episode as its set one year before the original series, (set in 2009, but released in 1984.)The artwork and action is amazing in some places, (during fight scenes mostly,) and a little lacking in some others, but overall is pretty good. Better even than Macross Plus. Unlike before however characters are not predominantly Japanese but American or European. An attempt to play to the large US and European fan bases that have had immense difficulty getting hold of Macross material due to legal constraints over distribution rights. Shin is an often confused character, much like Hikaru Ichyjo in the original series, (NOT Rick Hunter his americanised version in the stolen series.) The stories have progressed and are more mature, although still comprehensible and enjoyable by the kids.All in all an excellent buy, if you can find a copy outside of Japan.

chris_scherer A prequel to tthe eighties "Macross" series ? It could have been junk, but asides of some lackluster animation and stylistic differences between the traditional cell animation (characters, bgs) and non-ILM-quality CG (dogfights, mecha) it´s quite probably one of the finest first episodes I´ve seen in some time. Rumored to be a 5-part series, it deals with several interesting issues: UN forces unifiyng the world under one government to oppose alien invasion, anti-unificationists rebelling with superior mecha, anthropological research beginning to suspect mankind is genengineered by aliens, Roy Fokker (hero of the original series) testing the first production run VFs (modernized decently and visualized with one of the most beautiful transformation sequences ever)...and our hero is stranded not only on an island, but also without any distinctive political opinion.Technically great stuff, good writing, decent humor, interesting characters bearing some resemblance to the original "Rick Hunter" character, a youth shaped by the conflicts around him.