FIF#152-Macross Zero

One year before a cataclysmic war with a vicious enemy from the stars, the Earth was nearing the end of another long war.  UN Spacy pilot Shin Kudo encounters a mysterious enemy and is shot down over Myan Island.  Here, Shin is nursed back to health by the natives who have a strange connection to the Alien vessel that crashed in the region over a decade earlier.  Determined to learn more about the new enemy that shot him down, Shin joins up with Skull Squadron, led by legendary ace Roy Focker, outfitted with the next generation of fighters that will change the face of air combat.  Little does Shin know, the Mayan Island holds greater significance than he realized and soon the final battle will find that once peaceful island caught in the middle.

 
Welcome back to First Impression Friday.  If you’re new, this is the segment where I take a look at the first one or two episodes of a series and give my initial impressions before deciding whether to continue on or not.  Basically it’s like watching a random two or three episodes at a con and deciding if you want to buy the show or not (which is exactly how FIF got started in the first place, thanks Katsucon 2016).  Anyway, we return for a new season of FIF’s with Macross Zero.  Released in 2002, Macross Zero is the 20^th Anniversary of the Macross franchise, which began in 1982 with Super Dimension Fortress Macross.  In the years in between we had One Original Movie (Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?); Two OVAs (Macross II: Lovers Again and Macross Plus) and One follow up TV Series (Macross 7).  Macross has never been as busy as Mobile Suit Gundam churning out a title or two every one or two years.  So when a new title comes around, it gets a lot of attention because Macross is just as beloved as Gundam when it comes to Mecha Anime Pioneers.  Plus, Macross Zero is a celebratory title, set a year before the original Macross series…so that’s even more pressure.  Does the first episode show promise?
 
I learned after watching that the OVA’s animation is done by Studio Satelite, who would take over the reigns of the Macross franchise for both Macross Frontier and Macross Delta.  I saw Frontier a long time ago so seeing a mix of 2D hand drawn and 3D CG animation fused together isn’t a shocking thing for me to see in a Macross feature.  And let me tell ya, the Mechs look AWESOME!!!!  I’m kind of surprised we don’t have more aerial combat Anime that aren’t Macross related out there with how good and fast paced the dog fights were.  Then, of course, you have the first emergence of the VF-0 Phoenix, piloted by returning fan favorite Roy Focker.  This could easily be the highlight of the entire OVA, watching the step by step, move by move transformation of the Phoenix from Fighter to Battleoid mode in such detail we’ve never seen up til this point.  This is a heckuva way to celebrate such a treasured franchise with a fresh new look that would come to be associated with it for years to come.
 
As for the characters…well theyre a mixed bag.  I don’t remember the character designs in Frontier being so strange, idk it’s hard to describe but something about how theyre drawn doesn’t work for me.  It’s not helped much farther by a lack of interesting characters.  Shin is very hot blooded and a loner who refuses help or general kindness, though he does ease up on the island.  Then there’s Sara and Mao and wow, you can already tell theyre trying to setup a familiar Love Triangle between them and Shin, it’s Macross after all, Love Triangles are pretty natural.  There’s also a more supernatural/spiritual angle to Zero that I don’t remember being so prevalent in Macross before.  Granted this was long before Earth would suffer a catastrophic war with an Alien species that wiped out most of the planet and humanity too.  Much of what we see on the island was probably lost by the end of the Zentradi War…which is sad but for a series more in tune with technology and media, throwing in Island Native beliefs feels like too different a take for Macross.
 
When it comes to the action, Macross Zero is killing it with the first episode.  The story needs to improve if it wants to score a win in my book though.  But I’ve been here before with Macross II, which started kind of bad but got better in the back half.  Like so much else I’ve looked at over the years, Macross Zero has been on my radar of reviews for a long time and I’ve looked at plenty of Macross over the years (Pretty much all of the titles I mentioned in my intro save for Macross 7).  So I can see this getting the full series treatment at some point (either in 1 or 2 parts, easy to cut down Macross 2 and Plus cause they were an even 6 and 4 episodes each, Zero is 5 episodes).  I just hope the island stuff doesn’t hamper a good celebration of all things Macross…then again you don’t hear a lot of people talking about this one the way they talk about Do You Remember Love or Macross Plus…oh boy.