Er ahem. Yea super late.
Anyways ratings;
Direction/Narrative; 7/10
Overall fairly well done. Macross has always done things big, flashy and with style and much like the original and Plus they pulled that off here. The Plot flowed nicely wasn't overwrought but not too lean either. Characters were fairly fun to watch if somewhat uninteresting on their own. I consider Frontier to be stronger in it's plot as opposed to characterization. I find it akin to Star Wars in while the characters are fun to watch, they aren't deep or really all that rounded.
Still the three were handled fairly well. However, I actually kinda liked Alto he wasn't really gunning for anyone girl. The girls were after him sure but there wasn't any needless catfighting, I liked the friendly relationship Ranka had with Sheryl. They were the only characters who were fairly interesting. The rest of the cast really doesn't matter aside to move the plot along.
Sound: 9.5/10
(note: I am a music retard so all this is really subjective)
I don't think this was Kanno's most appealing orchestrational score (I say Plus was more appealing) and it's really just middle of the road hollywood blockbuster stuff, like James Horner or John Williams. Still it kicks the crap out of most other anime OST easily and really adds punch/gravity to scenes. Plus she has enough non-orchestrated music in there to keep from sounding one note, Aimo Aimo tune is really catchy.
On the pop front, the show kicked ass as expected. Megumi Nakajima managed to be a great succesor to Mari Iijima, both in terms of character performance and singing. I actually prefer May'n though. Not much you can really say about the pop except that it's hella fun to listen to.
Seiyuu; All were good, nothing extraordinary though. Favorite was probably Aya Endo's casting and performance of Sheryl, I think her voice and inflection really captured Sheryl's holier than though persona.
Visuals; 8/10
Im grading on a curve with the visuals. Satelight is to be commended for their great use of CGI in the battle scenes especially, but everywhere in general. The scenes had such fury, scope and excitement to them which was also aided by great storyboarding (especially in the last ep by Kawamori). The environments were really interestingly designed both 2d and 3d. The painted backgrounds were sumptouous.
Now the bad; I'm sorry but Ebata's character designs were rather generic at best (Ranka) and gaudy at worst (im looking at Lt. Klan). The color design is also really gaudy for characters at least, that's the wrong way to use digital colors, with all those unnatural unappealing neons, blech. Also the 2d was downright amaturish. With the exception of a few Ranka shots (when she sang Watashi no Kare wa Pilot at the Miss Macross pagent was a big exception) really the 2d was shitty. Characters were boringly and sloppily drawn MOST of the time. Most tv shows have A and B grade animation episodes, Frontier had B most of the time and C sometimes (episode 10 is a big culprit). Sorry but you can't gloss over that.
Overall 7 out of 10
Macross Frontier is like Star Wars to me
TONS OF HYPE, but theres really nothing that well done about the series narratively that's really worth yelping about. What makes it engaging is the larger than life battles and generally good direction that ties all the crazyness together. It's really just OK, space battles aside but much like Star Wars you wanna get it cause if it's huge ass flashiness and generally easy going storytelling. It's really too bad that Macross is in such a legal quagmire cause this would KILL on R1 release and I personally think would be a nice fit for Sci-Fi's ani-monday's block. I know I would buy it on R1 if only to watch the damned thing on a high def tv.
