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Old 2012-09-09, 11:05   Link #1730
magnuskn
Senior Member
 
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Age: 48
Oh, boy. I actually have an exam coming up on Friday 21st, one which is very important. As such, please consider that I am taking time away from that to discuss Macross Frontier minutae. I won't keep that up, because I can't risk my future because of old BS like this.

That being said, here's a timeline of important events regarding Ranka, extrapolated from watching the relevant parts of the episodes right now. I find those events are crucial in understanding what Rankas inner motivations were, often opposed to her stated motivations:

- Episodes 12-14: Ranka gets abducted by Vajra, yells a lot "Save me Alto-kun!", has an important encounter with a Vajra queen where she learns that the Vajra queen can communicate with her and show human illusions... and forgets to tell anyone else about that. The only explanation I have ever found which does not assume overwhelming stupidity on Rankas part is her disassociative amnesia. It was never really spelled out on the show, however.
- Episode 16: Ranka lets herself get bulldozed over by Graces management, changing up her songs. She agrees to use her music to protect Frontier against the Vajra.
- Episode 17: Ranka manages to completely torpedoe her chances at a relationship with Alto by behaving like a pre-teen kid. Alto obliges by totally treating her as such. She is shown as being insecure about her commitment to using her music against the Vajra.
- Episode 18: Ranka helps the fleet escape a big Vajra attack, stating clearly that by her own will she wants to protect the fleet.
- Episode 19: Ranka decides that, no, she actually doesn't really want to sing for her home, but only for Alto. Misinterprets Altos flying team making a heart as a personal love declaration from Alto.
- Episode 20: Ranka flips her shit about Sheryl and Alto having a moment and nearly destroys Frontier by exciting the swarms of Vajra larvaes which had hidden themselves in the sublevels. Can't control her negative emotions to calm the Vajra, can't work up any show of friendship when her best friend gets severely hurt right before her eyes, gets Michael ( and thousands of other people ) killed.
- Episode 21: She finally manages to get herself enough under control the bring the Vajra towards her and get Frontier saved. Then ditches her responsibility for protecting Frontier and flees the fleet, after entreating Alto to throw his live away on a mission which, to the best of his knowledge, would be a complete suicide mission. Because, hey, Ranka just demonstrated in the last episodes that she can not always make the Vajra love her. Nope, she runs off with Altos biggest rival and leaves the fleet in a ditch.
- Episode 22: Feels Sheryl and Alto making love. ^^
- Episode 23: Gets to Planet Vajra and, thankfully for her, contact works out. Until it doesn't and she gets abducted by the Vajra. Hey, I wonder what would have happened to Alto at this point, with him not being the super haxx cyber ninja that Brera is? Or even Brera, if godmode Grace would not have shown up. Well, anyway. Ranka also states that she wants to persuade the Vajra to make peace with Frontier, which at least gives her a better outward motivation than what she stated to Alto, about just wanting to take Ai-kun back to his family.
- Episode 24: Ranka gets super-easily turned toward evil purposes by Grace screwing with her mind and begins using her powers against her home.
- Episode 25: Things perfectly fall into place for Ranka to allow her to return home and not be hung from the highest tree as a traitor. She also saves Sheryl's life, redeeming herself somewhat. She then petulantly refuses to be graceful and not pursue Alto anymore, wasting that redemption. Le sigh.


I now could give a point-by-point rebuttal to your post, but that will lead to more time-consuming nitty-gritty, and I'd like more to establish some fundamentals here about how I believe Rankas motivations were constituted.

So, to summarize, three main motivations seem to have guided her actions.

1.) Her stated intention of making peace between humans and Vajra. Not much to elaborate on that point, although I think that you are overstating her connection to the Vajra. At the point she made the decision to leave Frontier, she only knew that they responded to her. And not always positively. Direct communication on the "talking" level still was waaaay beyond Rankas means. Making her mission one taken on a hunch, with extremely low survival odds.
2.) Putting some distance between herself and Alto. She very obviously believed that Alto had chosen Sheryl, which resulted in her emotional breakdown. Which was Rankas own damned fault for a.) misinterpreting the relatively benign "embrace" on that rooftop and b.) suddenly focusing all of her own motivations on wanting a romance with Alto.
3.) Getting away from the responsibility of protecting Frontier. She said it herself. Multiple times. She could not deal with the pressure anymore.

So, basically Ranka convinced herself that, yeah, 100% surely the Vajra would totally welcome her and not kill her when she'd suddenly would show up at their home planet. Grantedly, that would have worked out, but the basis on which she took that decision was pulled right out of her ass. Factual evidence, as seen in the episodes just prior, showed that she could not be 100% sure that everything would work out. I'd personally say it was a total crapshoot. That things fell into place for her was not assured (realistically seen, of course in storytelling terms things were pretty much guaranteed to).

And, unless someone can present me actual evidence from the show to the contrary, Ranka totally left Frontier in a ditch. I repeat from my last post: She had no evidence that Luca had built better communication countermeasures, no evidence that the new munitions were available to Frontiers pilots, no evidence that Sheryl would suddenly develop singing powers equal to her own. She left people to their deaths and just hoped that her suicidal mission would work out.

Ranka is immature, true. But she must also be monumentally stupid to not ascribe her motives of maliciousness or at least severe neglect in how she treated her own responsibilities to her home, friends and family. And that is the kindest thing I can say about her in that regard, which is truly sad.
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Last edited by magnuskn; 2012-09-09 at 11:26.
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