[LoveMeKags]

Saving space once more.

Spoiler for to magnus (reply when you like :) ):

Originally Posted by magnuskn

Actually, it does. They had some time to resume their work if they had wanted to.

But even if we take your timeline at face value, you are inferring interest out of nowhere. They didn't show any further interest in digging deeper into the whole scenario and while Macross Frontier didn't spell everything out what was going on beneath the surface, the show was pretty strong at showing at leasts hints and small character comments when people were going to do something... even if they were stopped later from doing it.

That ends up saying they weren't interested in investigating it. And perhaps there was a reason. Perhaps they found all they were looking for. Michael and Klan set out to investigate the drug Sheryl was taking and once finding out about Sheryl's illness, they stopped because their investigation was over.

At that point in the story, I think the last thing on Michael's mind was Brera. But he did grow suspicious of Luca in that episode, being called by the government, though we all know why (the audience at least).

Given that he is a rather private person, my guess is that he wants to give other persons the same right to privacy and expects that they can stand on their own, just as him. When he does get a clue that people around him are suffering, he is quick to help.

Oh, I never said he wouldn't help when realizing it, but poor Nanase is in a coma and his help could possibly wake her up. He should've at least shown some significant attention to her, given that Luca was busy, Michael was dead, Klan and Sheryl didn't really know her, and Ranka was either too busy or had already left. That's where I put Alto in the OOC zone for the remaining episodes, with the exception of 23, but even then he doesn't show much concern for her but rather Ranka.

Eh, for me the movie felt too sanitized. Grace, who was hell of an awesome villain, was totally removed from the picture, Leon did not get nearly enough of an upgrade to make up for it and the Galaxy conspirators really kinda out of nowhere.

Besides Michaels death, I like that the series was more messy.

For the conspirators: they kinda spoiled that in the series. The voices talking in Grace's head in the episodes are those conspirators. They were never introduced formally in the series but you could hear their voices. If you need proof, just watch 25 back when Grace makes her statement about Alto breaking Ranka out of her hold. There are other voices there, the same ones from the movie. So they're not out of the blue since they were already in the plot, but that part hadn't been covered in the series.

As for villains: Leon was never a good villain. Yes, he could be a bad guy, a person you could kill off - like some random rapist - but he couldn't be a main villain in a show. Never. He was too expendable. I disliked his character and how it tried to grow into being a villain even in the series. However, I like Grace as both a villain and protagonist. There's something about her that is so good that it could play both roles. And Brera could play a good villain too.

If they'd introduced new villains, perhaps the plot wouldn't be so "destroyed" in the movie, for what they were trying to do - rewrite the plot so some characters would change and some would develop more - they screwed up a lot of the facets of the characters, including Brera. They were trying to change a lot of the mysterious or villains into protagonists. A good example is Grace. A bad example is Brera, because he gets like fifteen minutes max as a good guy before he blows up Galaxy's control room and dies in the process.

Yeah, but saying that it was plausible doesn't mean that it really happened, that's my point. As I said above, the show was pretty good at giving the viewers information when things were going down. Lack of evidence doesn't mean that one can just make up whatever one thinks is most convenient, but rather that the thing in question probably didn't happen.

I'll say right now that television has never exactly been fond of following the "reality" part of life. Take for example, I just watched a movie tonight where they were driving a bus with a bomb on it and it had to stay at 50mph. I was wondering when they were gonna run out of gas, considering it had been traveling for 2hrs without stopping, and quite a few miles. Finally, the main character punches a hole, by accident, in the fuel tank. THEN they address it. But the tank is half empty after seven circles around the free way, airport runway, and through many major streets in the city. How is that logically possible?

So, to sum it up, when you take things at face value in series and movies, you have to question why they don't think of certain things like that. And it's simple: it's the writers doing it to sped the plot along or avoid more conflicts to otherwise harm the plot. However, it just makes the plot look worse because they don't address those possible issues.

In this case, Mishima doesn't investigate his close bodyguards but instead men he knows are Grace's. So someone was bound to be left behind to leak information. Last I check, Mishima wasn't a cyborg and he didn't call in reinforcements from the N.U.N.S.

He didn't have to give up his life in the series. How does that make him less honorable than the movie version?

He didn't have a choice. He was asked by Sheryl to rescue Ranka. But that's just icing on the cake. Had he turned tails and decided not to fight, he would be killed either way. Had he decided to run away from Frontier, he would be an open target for other units that would consider him a traitor or pirate. He had no choice but to fight and die. As did all the soldiers. Did you really think they (as well as him) looked like they wanted to truly fight or die in 24's briefing? No. They didn't. They don't have a choice. When the army calls you, you get no say in the matter in emergency times. My dad could even vouch for this, for he's a retired soldier.

His movie version, however, is given the choice by multiple people, for Alto hasn't joined per se, the army. Listen to Ozma's comments very carefully: "you can leave whenever you want to, no one's stopping you." However, in the real army, when in times of peril, you are on call no matter what, even if you're on leave. So Alto choosing to give his life up selflessly in the movie is noble.

I'm not saying his series persona did not do things that were noble, but given the situation and state Frontier was in, it was hardly him "choosing" to do so unlike the movie where he WAS given a choice.

Well, if she was very suspicious, she surely had a strange way of expressing that, by aquiescing to every demand Grace made of her.

I noticed that was something significant about 16 and 17. Ranka is often seen looking away as if thinking, especially when about to enter the studio to test Aimo O.C. out. It is obvious that she is either suspicious of Grace or the whole project together. I think Ranka has a right to be given that she's in the middle of everything unlike others who brush it off.

Once again, the actual question becomes "How aware were those characters that Grace had disappeared in the first place?"

I guess we've reached a stalemate then?

I always preferred Gamlin. The true stars of the show were always Max and Milia, anyway.

And what stars they were.

Maybe they would have. But she at least should have tried to tell them.

Again, I prefer my explanation of her having another disasociative amnesia attack due to the stress of the situation.

I'll let this drop. I think this has gone as far as it can go. We both have very different views and so we'll forever clash on this.

My only word to your response is that she wouldn't have been believed either way, and therefore we'd be right back where we were.

Anwar Al-Awlaki. US citizen, assassinated via drone strike on an executive order without any judicial review.

Eh, sorry. I probably shouldn't bring real life politics into this.

Yeah, you shouldn't; cause given how the Frontier movies went, Sheryl should've been put in the electric chair the day after she was put in prison. I'm shocked she was allowed to see Ranka and also stay alive for at most two maybe four days at most. So regular politics don't apply here. We go by what they say Frontier's rules are. And Glass said them. During a state of war, spies are to be executed without trial. Look back at the movie again before you reply to this.

Grace needs her. She has power over Leon and Leon essentially runs the government by manipulating President Glass. It's highly, highly unlikely that they would have harmed Ranka.

Then blackmail.

I will give you that it would have given them an excellent tool to take her into custody and deny her friends and family access to her, however. That would have made it very easy for them to manipulate her.

Oh, I doubt they would've held her friends and family away from her because they'd likely find out that stunts her powers. However, they might do something else like find the person Ranka loves the most (Alto) and say if she doesn't do what they say, they'll murder Alto and make it look like an accident, then go down the list. Though I doubt Macross would ever get that dark, it would've made her a prisoner and a much easier person to control. (I'm sure the government did not like her skipping out on the parade. )

She is more human in the series, that is for sure. But she is also still the better person, because Sheryl from the movies still has that "harvesting Rankas organs" thing going against her.

Well, that's what I mean when I say "selfish" for her series self, because that makes her human. And so she is far above her movie persona which came off as too selfless and a bit God-like in my opinion.

All in all, Sheryl from the movies felt less like a real person to me. Still an awesome character, though.

Like I said above, Sheryl came off too God-like for me in the movies. That's why, when she won the triangle, I was going "huh?" She seemed too different from her series self. Maybe once or twice before she realized she was ill, she showed her series self of teasing Alto and being playful with both main characters, but that was it. She rarely showed it. (And I'm talking about full scenes, not just moments.) The change to Sheryl was drastic, which is why I believe most AR fans are upset. She has become more like Ranka in a way (and you could take that as either persona) with the way she interacts with other characters around her. That is a significant difference from her series persona that took all characters at face value and never really got to know them like she does Ozma (whom, in the series, didn't know Sheryl one bit).