Macross Frontier Episode 1 is out!

[Nutsy]

Sorry thats HD? you ffing kidding me? It looks like SD blown up... ITs blury to hell and has next to no visible details.... :/

[chrono]

Which version are you talking about? Or are you talking about some of the images? Because their are HD, scaled up, and smaller sizes out there.

The LOL! thing about anime and HD is that the poor visual quality will only be more evident. Suddenly something that wasn't bad looking at all style-wise on older sets will look like huge horrible blobs on the hd screens. Especially since the detail levels will not be increased because it'll cost 2-4 times as much.

[Zhor2395]

i just saw it too. was kinda worried when that gal from the resturant was doing her thing, but the pew-pew made up for it

[juanxer]

Macross Frontier regular series' episodes one and two have been released already. Strangely enough, Ep. 1's editing and pacing is quite inferior to the preview from months ago (excised footage, poor rearrangement of what's left… it feels like a compilation OVA)

[chrono]

Yeah the regular series started last weekend. I was going to post that here but didn't.

As for Episode 1 it's re-edit was done by another because the pacing in the first airing was paced quite well. But how this one looks doesn't & won't matter for some of the Macross fans because the DVD releases will also see further editing.

I'm only gonna watch maybe 4 episodes, because the initial premise hasn't done enough to make me want to put the effort into watching it. That and after being a HERO and watching the completely HORRIBLE Macross 7 series, I'm less a post SDF fan than before.

[Shinohara]

The new series is actually pacing out pretty well so far, the new edits changed some of the focus of the show (and some just had to be done due to time, the preview version back in December didn't have the Opening and Ending themes yet though I did like the extended back story sequence) the biggest edits I've noticed were trimming down the lead-in on Sheryl, there's no longer the couple shots of her in the transport and you first see it coming out of foldspace. The scene when the unmanned Ghost fighters are sent out after the aliens has been cut and it's now just mentioned that they were destroyed, the biggest change is a pretty heavy reworking of the concert sequence from the original (which actually makes the following episode make more sense so it was a solid change.) If anything the show's not cliched so much as it appears to be a reimagining of the original series while staying in the same continuity (and to whoever mentioned it looks like it's in Macross 2's continuity... nope, Macross 2 is alternate universe and wasn't done by any of the creative team involved in the other Macross series).
That said I absolutely loved the references to the DYRL movie that show up just before the opening (the shot of the Bodole fleet and Hikaru, Roy, Minmay and company with Minmay being picked up by Britai)

[chrono]

*cough*

Kawamori has ret-conned a goodly amount of Macross material to umbrella most of Macross. Including M2, even though he was not attached to the project he can, and from some of the design change, & has brought M2 into the Macross umbrella in some fashion. It's his anniversary edition, so most of everything in the Macross universe will show up in one form or another.

M:F should be considered a different universe from the SDF universe for all viewing purposes.

[chrono]

Well I finally got done catching up and.... bloody hell!

If the show makes it to 12 episodes they'll be lucky!! Crap loads of 3D everywhere! Their burning money like crazy on this. Also it's a solid example for a case study of just how far behind 3D is in Japanese cartoons. Ye Gods! 1 LOD models everywhere! :\ The animation is very, very MEH! and is often hit & miss and integration between 2D & 3D is spotty. And this is from material that is 4-6 months old!

Macross Frontier can be in no way compared to Macross ZERO. View at your own risk.

[Helius]

Originally Posted by chrono

Well I finally got done catching up and.... bloody hell!

If the show makes it to 12 episodes they'll be lucky!! Crap loads of 3D everywhere! Their burning money like crazy on this. Also it's a solid example for a case study of just how far behind 3D is in Japanese cartoons. Ye Gods! 1 LOD models everywhere! :\ The animation is very, very MEH! and is often hit & miss and integration between 2D & 3D is spotty. And this is from material that is 4-6 months old!

Macross Frontier can be in no way compared to Macross ZERO. View at your own risk.

Macross Zero is a mini-series with only 4 episodes, obviously it would've had a bigger budget for VFX than a standard 20+ episodes series such as Frontier. So you can't really compare the two based on the quality of their respective CG works - there's no comparison.

But even then, I have yet to see any "Western" animation series or any other anime for that matter exhibiting the kind of CG that Frontier has!

[juanxer]

I am kind of intrigued by the story (or lack of any of consequence, for now ), specially by Saotome Alto's character, but I think the reworking of Ep. 1, even if clarifying his personality, watered the energy way down (the first concert/dogfight edit was brief and brilliant. The regular series' one reminds me of Macross Plus' Sharon Apple's first one, eminently bland).

I see this series will appeal to our memories of Macross: Do You Remember Love plus go the Macross Seven route a bit, and not try too hard to be too brilliant for its own good, I am afraid (which arguably happened to Macross Zero).