SDF Macross Episodes 03 and 04 – The Great Indoors
August 27th, 2009
It’s Wednesday and that means Macross. We have two somewhat less eventful episodes this week but we do get an introduction and much screentime for Minmay as well as a bit of information on the capabilities and structure of the Macross. Fighting continues on South Ataria Island as the Macross lifts off under the power of its human built rocket backup thrusters and Roy heads back to look for Hikaru and Minmay. After pulling off another rescue all three return to the Macross, now in Earth orbit.
The last of the Zentradi platoon fighting it out with the retreating UN forces.
Roy tells her who Hikaru is. Mise’s reaction shot are priceless.
Hikaru’s VF-1 being chained down by Earth’s gravity a dead Zentradi.
Roy Focker to the rescue once more.
After dodging several enemy units and animation SNAFUs Roy, Hikaru, and Minmay ascend to orbit and land onboard the Macross. There is some nice banter between several characters at this point, starting with Hikaru’s distrust of Roy’s suave ways when he offers to return Minmay to South Ataria Island after the immediate crisis has passed. Mise contacts them as well, chastising their laxness to which Hikaru replies “who’s this old lady?” for another great Mise reaction shot. Even old Captain Global can’t help but laugh.
Aren’t we forgetting something? That cockpit pod was secured to the centerline hardpoint last I checked.
Well now you’ve got something there, too bad it’s the rifle/gunpod that Roy dropped earlier.
I’ve always loved cockpit based shots like this one, or the one they used in the ‘final flight’ scene during the last episode of Battlestar Galactica here (first 35 sec.)
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
Saigo ni waracchau no wa Global-kancho no hazu! To paraphrase Motteke! Seeraafuku.
Once onboard Roy shows Hikaru that he managed to pick up his stunt plane before the ship launched, but then has to depart as the Macross sounds battle stations. The Zentradi fleet is closing in while the Macross attempts to rendezvous with the ARMD I/ARMD II battlegroup. They make quick work of the human-built spacecraft and Global attempts to get the Macross away from the enemy by engaging its fold drive near Earth, expecting the enemy to not anticipate such a move. Hikaru is acting emo and decides to try and fly away in his plane with Minmay just as the fold happens, warping the Macross, South Ataria Island, the Prometheus and Daedalus, and everything else within a large sphere around the Macross to somewhere near Pluto instead of the intended target of the Moon. Hikaru is damn lucky to have, for some reason, a completely pressurized and airtight acrobatics aircraft and manages to use its rocket boosters and ricocheting off of debris to get back inside the Macross. There the two are lost amid the massive interior of the ship. Back on the bridge, the crew finds out that the fold engines are now also missing.
It…it’s not like I like your plane or anything…I just didn’t want it cluttering the ground, that’s all *blushes*.
They’re playing really upbeat music while the hundreds of people not in shelters and on the Prometheus and Daedalus are dying of asphyxiation.
Hikaru’s plane just drifts away with the rest of the garbage.
Be happy you’re still alive after that. Minmay is. That or she’s too dense to see the danger you’re in.
Now the fold drive is gone? Who built this thing, Chrysler? Now the bridge bunnies (as I’ve heard a similar crew in Frontier referred to) are all worried.
Somewhere between WTF and cute.
The bridge crew sits down to have a quick coffee break while the computer figures out their location and Hikaru and Minmay try finding their way to the occupied parts of the ship. This is the beginning or a pretty difficult endeavor for the two since the ship is huge and likely undercrewed at the moment. Their first day below deck they break open a water pipe to create a shower, start eating some of Hikaru’s plane’s rations, and share the night with some rats. Just be glad you’re not lost belowdecks on an Imperium of Man warship, there are far worse things than rats.
Taking a break after their flight from the Zentradi
Indeed. I’m glad the Macross crew also appreciates this.
Good job. That water could be cooling something important like a nuclear reactor. And how do you know it’s not waste water?
Mmmm dogfood
Survivor: Macross.
Several days pass and Hikaru and Minmay start getting worried about their prospects for being found before they run out of food. Hikaru decides on a great plan to go outside the airlock they found and try to signal for help. Oh, wait he doesn’t have a SPACE SUIT. He somehow insists that his flight helmet is airtight (I don’t see any seals or even a complete face covering) and that he can hold his breath ‘just like swimming’ for a few minutes. As he goes to a window to decide which direction to go, they spot a huge tuna transported and flash frozen when the Macross space folded. After I stopped playback for a couple minutes to laugh uncontrollably at the Tuna slowly drifting through space and the closeup on its eye, Hikaru and Minmay decide to catch the Tuna and bring it back in for sashimi. Unfortunately for them Hikaru only brings it head through the threshold of the airlock on his scientific-facts-ignoring spacewalk when he signals Minmay to close the door and they only get the head of the fish.
This scene needs some Strauss.
Chicken of the void.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Oh yeah. If your suit, gloves, boots, and helmet all seal airtight. And are pressurized. And are heated. And something from all that space fold debris doesn’t puncture it. At least they gave the physics of Hikaru throwing the weights to move some show.
Meanwhile the crew eats in style. DO WANT one of those SDF-1 tray/cup sets.
That night, after cooking their unsettling prize and going to sleep, Minmay starts to sing. Hikaru is quite impressed and asks her if she’s had lessons, to which she replies that she’s has taken lessons in singing, dance, and other arts. He then asks her what she’d like to be in life. Setting women back several years she says she wants to be a bride (though I guess since this is an old series the formula for how far is: several years minus (2009 minus 1982) = exactly how far she’s set women back.) The next day she then goes into pessimism overdrive and suggests that they throw themselves out of the airlock to end their ordeal. But going all Makoto Sawatari on us, she says that she wants to wear a wedding dress once before she dies. In a scene that the Kanon writers could not have been unaware of Hikaru puts his kerchief over her head and looks like he’ll go through with the mock marriage ceremony.
*sigh*
So you’re a fox spirit in human form?
You don’t say.
But before this lovely ball of emo-wedding-kitsune spirit-suicide pact-crazy can resolve itself, and just as they are about to kiss, a dud alien missile crashes down through the ceiling above the two. Opening up to the street above, they find the buildings and people of the city that surrounded the Macross set up on the deck above. After being brought to the upper deck they meet the townspeople and Minmay is reunited with her aunt and other relatives. Now she seems perfectly fine, having gone from suicidal to cheerful in a few moments. Hikaru is understandably confused, but probably not smart enough to stay away from a girl who by all evidence seems to have a pretty big case of ‘the crazy.’ Concluding the episode, the Macross docks with the two aircraft carriers that warped in with them and Captain Global notes that their crews are dead. Hopefully their sacrifice was not in vain.
This moment is so sweet. But crazy. But sweet. But crazy.
Apparently the Zentradi use Honorverse-sized missiles.
That’s some quick rebuilding. Also, more physics ignored as I doubt so many buildings would have survived the pressure change and the physical forces of being uprooted like that.
SDF-1 Macross docking with the unfortunate terrestrial carriers.
Final Thoughts: – Hikaru is starting to grow more tolerable and reasonable. Or maybe it was just that he looked better in comparison to Minmay.
- That spacewalk scene made the scientist in me cry.
- I can see the beginnings of the singing element of this show that was at the center of several characters’ lives in Frontier. But who will be Minmay’s rival?
- I still can’t get over that Tuna scene.
- Hikaru keeps using the pronoun ‘otaku’ for others instead of more common ones (like ‘kimi’, ‘anata’, ‘omae’ or just their names.) I wonder if this was more common decades ago or if he just speaks oddly. I’m not a linguist so the only things I know about the word are that it isn’t used commonly as a pronoun nowadays (I’ve never personally encountered it in any conversation I’ve had or textbook exercise) and that it was an old pronoun and then became used to refer to otaku in the fan context after some animators used it when refering to each other.
- Still very much enjoying the ‘doesn’t always work’ aspect of the technology with both the Macross and the Zentradi missile.
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