[cerrian]

Originally Posted by ani_d

Mind listing them all down the way I did? All the things about her that you see as neither normal nor down to earth. From how I can see it, she's just as normal as any real life teenagers out there.

I consider any comparisons with real life to be a very slippery slope when discussing an anime, especially an anime that has mecha, giants, aliens, and uses music as a weapon of war.

Down-to-Earth
For Ranka to be down-to-earth her actions, decisions, and expectations need to be practical and sensible. Our first big problem when analyzing this is that our source of data is very limited because Ranka's character makes very few decisions or actions during the last 15 episodes and what is left is heavily biased towards singing/idol issues. Therefore we have a very small pool of data whose spectrum of issues is fairly narrow which we must judge if they were practical and sensible.

In an attempt to not make my posts look like an OD piece of work, I'm going to keep my justifications brief.

Spoiler for Major Actions/Decisions by Ranka::

1. Participating in Miss Macross pageant.
2. How Ranka handled her fight with Ozma.
3. Responds to Michael's challenge and sings at Folmo's Mall
4. Ranka sets up Alto to lie about being alone at the mall.
5. Signing up with Vector Promotions.
5b. Transferring schools.
6. Rejecting Sheryl's offer of work
7. How she handled Sheryl's and Luca's knowledge of Alto's past.
8. Accepting the role of Mao
9. Birthday present - cookies
10. Defusing the Galia IV hostage crisis; ignoring Ozma's pleas.
11. Fights Sheryl for Alto in the sing off.

In my opinion, only actions 3, 5, 5b, 6, and 11 were practical and sensible for the given situations. That leaves 7 other actions that were irrational, unpractical, and unrealistic for any "normal" teenager. If you threw out any actions/decisions that are singing and idol related you'll see that there is very little left to work with.

Kawamori and team may have intended for Ranka to be a down-to-earth character, but they failed to provide her the opportunities to demonstrate those traits and what remained were mostly impractical and unrealistic responses. Hence the reason I argue that Ranka is far from being a down-to-earth character.

Normal

Spoiler for Response to Ani_d's list of relatable teenager traits:

Originally Posted by ani_d

Even her personality is very relatable to teenagers her age out there. Allow me to rant since we're on topic.

1. Ranka's no good. (Typical)
2. Useless when put in a battlefield--an absolute screamer. (Feel free to criticize her once you've proven you can take on a Vajra by your own hand. ^_^)
3. Fangirls over her idol. (Typical)
4. Immature. (Who isn't/wasn't?)
5. Gets completely motivated by her crush. (Typical)
6. Lacks self-esteem. (Typical)
7. Rebels (Ty.pi.cal)

What else? Can't live without her cellphone? lol Ranka's character is your average high schooler thrown into a Vajra battlefield unaware of her own potential. (I can say the same for Alto but that's not the point here.) I believe this is also why Ranka is so prominent in the storyline.

1. Disagree. She's bad at what? Baking? Unfounded assertion since the series has yet to show us what Ranka is bad at.
2. Disagree, not a female teenager specific trait. This one applies to all age groups and genders.
3. Agree
4. Agree
5. Disagree, this applies to all age groups and genders, but I'll give you this one.
6. Disagree, this applies to all age groups and genders. A more appropriate trait would be the lack of direction.
7. Disagree. Unfounded assertion since Ranka has not demonstrated any rebellious actions. The closest we have is when she takes on Michael's challenge at Folmo mall.

For Ranka to be a "normal" teenager, the series needed to show us what life is like for the typical high school student. Unfortunately it failed to do so and now we need to pull from other animes and real life experiences to set the standard of what is a normal teenager on Frontier.

I would expect a normal teenage girl to:
1. Be a high school student.
2. Have some normal friends and classmates.
3. Have an after school activity (hobby, club, part-time job)
4. Experience love, probably for the first time.
5. Find direction in their life, be it university or career or something after high school.
6. Behave like a teenager.
7. Dress similar to other students around her.

Kawamori and team totally failed at depicting Ranka as a high school student. You wouldn't know she was a high school student if she wasn't wearing a school uniform. How many scenes do we have of Ranka at school participating in a school activity? Practically 0. It would be a stretch but we could include her introduction to the class and Sheryl's introduction to the class and we would have 2 scenes. Ranka as a high school student is completely undeveloped.

To further the point, Ranka does not have any school friends from St. Maria (??) and Mihoshi aside from Nanase, Alto, Michael, and Luca. Of those 4, only Nanase can be classified as "normal" because 1 guy is famous for dressing up as a girl, another guy is the heir to an manufacturing empire, and the other guy is the hottest piece of meat on campus. In addition, all 3 guys are pilots of an experimental fighter and members of a private army all at the tender age of 17. Either Ranka does not have any friends from school or she mostly socializes with people that are the furthest away from normal as possibly can be.

Now having an after school part-time job might be the most normal thing about Ranka. But when she ditches the job for a career in singing and idol entertainment everything about her ceases to be normal. Ranka's first experience with love might also be another normal thing.

As to whether Ranka appears and behaves as a normal teenager, that's pretty much a resounding no. If you compare Ranka's appearance with those of other high school students in Frontier then it's clear that Ranka does not look like a normal teenager. Her choice for book bag (the VF backpack), sleeping attire (hippo-cow suit), and scarf & dress weekend attire all suggests that she's a middle school student at most. If it wasn't for the fact that Ranka wears a high school uniform and that we're told her 16th birthday is soon, we'd never know that she was approaching adulthood.

The Ranka shown to us in the last 15 episodes is a far cry of what a normal teenager in Frontier should probably be. If Kawamori and staff intended to show us that Ranka was representative of a "normal" teenager on Frontier, then I'd have to argue that they screwed up by first failing to establish what a typical teenage girl is like and then failing to show that Ranka has similar traits.