Macross Delta Part 1 Episodes 1-5

2067AD.  Mankinds expansion into the cosmos continues but a dangerous new threat has arisen: Var Syndrome.  It’s ability to cause random citizens to become bloodthirsty berserkers is causing chaos on several planets.  To combat this outbreak, a special unit is created: The Tactical Sound Unit Walkure.  Only their music seems to be able to quell the effects of Var Syndrome.  It’s this group Freiya Wion wishes to join more than anyone and backing her up as her protective pilot is drifter Hayate Immelmann, a young man seeking his own dream.  Music and Metal take to the skies once more. 

Been a minute since we’ve visited Macross eh?  Well you can blame the near fatal idea I had to make Macross 7 my Extended Series Review which was such a bad experience I pushed Macross Frontier back a few weeks to recover, not knowing that Frontier was just the feel good experience I needed.  Well break time’s over and Macross Delta is now on deck for review.  I haven’t heard much about this series going in.  I’ve only noticed that this is, as of this writing, the most recent Macross franchise entry and that was back in 2016.  Also this show has a greater emphasis on the idol side than the mecha side.  Is that second part true?  Is there a reason we haven’t heard a peep from Macross since this series?  Guess we’re gonna get to the bottom of that mystery this month so what’re we waiting for.  How’s the debut of Macross Delta?
 

T5W#563-Top 5 1970’s Anime I’d Like to Check Out (and maybe even review)

While Macross Delta is on deck and ready to launch Next Monday, I’ve finally begun work on this years Extended Summer Series Review: The Rose of Versailles.  It’s a bit of a change of pace in terms of the shows subject material but holy crap, I’m enjoying what I’ve seen so far.  Wont get too into the particulars since they’ll be discussed a lot when we get to it.  But ngl, part of my enjoyment comes from this being a seminal Anime title from the late 70’s/early 80’s.  It’s a time period of Anime I haven’t visited much outside of maybe the occasional first impression and the original Mobile Suit Gundam.  But Rose of Versailles is having such an early impact it’s making me wonder about looking at titles from this time period I’ve either overlooked or have been curious about but haven’t opted to look at.  Heck some might even become subjects for review themselves.  So let’s take a look at the Top 5 1970’s Anime I’d Like to Check Out (and maybe even review) on todays Top 5 Wednesday.

 

Lazarus Part 4 Episodes 10-13

The final countdown has begun.  As the world braces for its inevitable doom, Team Lazarus finds its search for Skinner impeded by a rival intelligence group with ties to the very heart of this mystery.  And theyre a group that will stop at nothing to ensure Lazarus doesn’t learn their dirty little secret.  The final clues lead Axel, Chris, Doug, Elaina, Leland and Hersch across the globe and into the line of fire of deadly enemies with Skinner waiting at the finish line.  Will Humanity be saved or is it too late to make a difference?

Even by the lowest of low standards, I wasn’t looking forward to the finale of Lazarus.  By the end of last weeks penultimate chapter, the search for one man suddenly became cluttered with conspiracies, assassins and infighting among the intelligence community that seemed petty when the end of the world was less than a week and a half away. Suffice to say, Lazarus had a lot to wrap up with only four episodes left and, well, it did.  It brought it’s story to a close in a self contained 13 episode series.  However, that’s not much of a compliment when the finale is probably the worst part of a series that hasn’t been great from the start.  In fact, I had to double check a piece of information from the final episode, just to be absolutely sure I heard what I heard so I could pull up a specific meme that sums up my thoughts on not just the revelation, but Lazarus as a whole.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s see how Lazarus managed to tie up all loose ends after it collided into a wall at half speed.
 
Honestly, where to even start?  Let’s start with this shows length.  Lazarus clocks in at 13 episodes which has become a mostly standard practice in this day and age, only Shonen Anime seems to get double the length if not more.  Lazarus’ story presents itself as a nail bitting race against time to prevent a cataclysmic event but it also wants to spend time building up its world and its cast.  And hey, a lot of Anime can pull this off nicely.  However, Lazarus isnt one of those shows.  The amount of last minute revelations and plot twists thrown into the mix never feel built up or even earned.  And some of these are “have you been paying close attention to this little detail” level reveals.  Lazarus thinks it’s being clever with what it reveals but it’s not.  It feels more like they ran out of time after wasting most of the first 9 episodes on pointless action scenes and dead ends for the team and now theyre trying to wrap everything up like this was the plan all along.  Now here’s my solution: Lazarus should have been 30 episodes long.  Watanabe should have treated each episode as a countdown.  Run with the 30 day timeline by showing maybe one major happening in each episode.  This way you can even allow for downtime with the cast, exploring backstories, giving them depth and allowing for a more natural build up to the rivalries and final bombshells about Skinner and Hapna.  I don’t care about current Anime broadcast trends but 13 episodes was not nearly enough time to do what Watanabe thought he was doing.  Cause if you’ve toughed out this show like I have, I doubt any of what was presented was satisfactory, it really wasn’t.
 
Alright, let’s get into it.  Hapna.  Skinner.  I always knew that this was going to be a Samurai Champloo situation where the destination was gonna be worse than the journey.  Only in this case the journey absolutely sucked but not nearly as much as what was waiting at the end.  In a huge info dump that felt compiled in little time at all, we learned that Hapna was originally going to be used by INSCOM as a bioweapon and Skinner wanted to expose them.  However, the attempt to smuggle it out caused an incident with a lot of casualties, including the Lazarus team itself (hold that thought).  Skinner was so broken by the experience he decided the best way to expose INSCOM’s crimes was to expose Hapna to the world by making it a cheap drug for the world and then put this 30 day doomsday plan into motion.  The man risked the whole worlds existence just to prove a government agency was up to no good.  I had to listen to this scene twice to make sure I heard what I heard.  Annnnnd now I can quote Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: “It’s just…so dumb.”  “Yes it’s so dumb it’s brilliant.” “NO…IT’S JUST DUMB!!!!”
 
Ok, um, hmmmm.  Why were people calling this guy the next Einstein?  Even if he sealed his own fate by not taking the Hapna cure that should not let him off the hook for being the biggest idiot in all of history.  Schineder and INSCOM definitely had their comeuppance coming but Skinner risked everyone and everything just to bring them to justice?  I mean he knew Hersch.  She works with the government.  Pass the info onto her.  Have her start an investigation which leads her to Abel which leads to INSCOM’s eventual downfall.  Speaking of Abel, the man who’s the original founder of Lazarus didn’t really need the team at all after he found the footage of the Airport incident.  He basically brought down INSCOM with a couple of quick ask favors from the President…which made Lazarus’ existence all the more useless in the end.  Point is, there were plenty of other ways than risking the lives of every man, woman and child on Earth.  The fact that they try to play Skinner’s death as sad in the end only pisses me off more.  All of this and then he dares to ask if mankind is worth it?  Ugh…I really hate this ending, so freaking much.
 
Oh yeah, the founding of Lazarus.  Turns out Axel, Doug, Chris, Leland and Elaina were all there when the proto Hapna device went off and all died but suddenly recovered.  I had a feeling this was a possibility since Chris’ backstory of how she left Russian Intelligence.  But then they kept piling on and on everyone talking about hospital visits after that “incident” or that “one time”.  And how did they suddenly return from the dead?  Yeah that’s not explained beyond “oh your cells mutated, awesome.”  I mean we had to name them “Lazarus” for a reason, right? RIGHT!?  Soooo…does this make Team Lazarus immortal?  Axel took a spear through the gut and somehow shuffled out of bed for one more highly acrobatic battle with Soryu that he should not have been able to do in his condition, much less walk.  Elaina survived the initial fever that meant Hapna was about to kill her.  It would also explain why Axel survived the prison bio weapon trials conducted by INSCOM.  Honestly, that last part makes the whole “Axel is the key to all of this” kind of mute since you have four other candidates with Hapna immunity blood that could make a case for bringing down INSCOM and seriously, I’m putting more thought into making this story work than Watanabe did.
 
BTW what was INSCOM’s end goal sending Soryu to kill Axel, and presumably the rest of Lazarus once that was done?  Were they really gonna take their bio weapons crimes to their graves?  For an “intelligence agency” it seems sorely lacking in intelligence.  But at least we always knew they were douchebags.  Soryu went from being a potentially awesome addition to the show to a quickly complex tragic figure in the span of an episode and also threw in secret Chinese assassin program because why the hell not.  Even Soryu’s connection to Axel felt less compelling the more screentime they shared together.  Again, this is something the 30 episode approach could have strengthened, especially if they were going to make Soryu the Vicious to Axel’s Spike.  But no, Soryu ends up dying taking down an INSCOM chopper, bringing less to the overall proceedings than he already did.  What a waste.
 
That sentiment is a nice segue into my Final Thoughts on Lazarus.  The show is a waste of 13 episodes of hard work and animation and a rare disappointment from Shinichiro Watanabe.  The characters never grow beyond their roles (heck I don’t think Doug even got a backstory compared to everyone else and the only reason I didn’t rag on Axel as much in this review is because there were worse things about the finale than him), the situation never feels truly dire even at the final episode, and the motivations and machinations of the villains range from nonsensical to “why was this even introduced in the first place?”.  Again, had this been maybe 26 instead of 13 and the writing were tighter (develop the villains, tone down Axel’s ego, make the reveals more natural than forced) this could have been a passable offering from the man who brought us Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo.  As it is however, Lazarus isn’t befitting of its namesake and I hope that this is the end of it.  No Season 2.  To quote Thanos “No resurrections this time”.  Case Closed.
 
2/10

Next Week, we return to the universe of Macross.  Will Macross Delta soar as high as Macross Frontier or crash and burn as hard as Macross 7?  The need for speed is back Next Monday right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe

Universal Century 0105.  It is a time of turmoil as the terrorist group known as Mafty plots a strike against a prominent Earth Federation conference.  But they’re up against impossible odds as the power of Kenneth Sleg’s Circe unit grows, cutting off avenues of attack and approach.  As for Mafty’s secret leader, Hathaway Noa, he’s still deeply shaken by his encounter with Gigi Andalusia, the girl who could either destroy him or guide him to his ultimate destiny.  Against doubts and guilt, Hathaway must settle these feelings to become the leader he is meant to be before his revolution fails.

It’s been a long 5 year wait for the next chapter of the proposed Gundam Hathaway Trilogy.  I was split on the first film with it’s visuals being amazing and action some of the best Real Robot action I’ve ever seen in the franchise.  But making the story, based on the Hathaway’s Flash novels, work was always going to be up to your tolerance for Hathaway himself and I’m not really a Hathaways fan after Char’s Counterattack.  Still, Part 1’s final act showed promising potential by introducing more of Hathaway’s crew and I was at least curious to see how that progressed.  Unfortunatley, it feels like much of that 5 year wait time was spent on the animation and not so much anything else because The Sorcery of Nymph Circe is a boring middle chapter that’s happier to spin it’s wheels, pontificate and show off it’s poster girl while not doing anything else exciting until way too late in the run time. 
 

T5W#562-Top 5 Announcements from the Gundam 50th Anniversary Project

We’re three years out from it but come 2029, Mobile Suit Gundam turns the big 50.  Not bad for a franchise that began with a show that was cancelled before it’s intended ending.  Yet here it is, one of the mightiest Mecha franchises of all time proving its staying power and influence five decades later.  Seeing how big of a power it is in the world of Anime, looks like Sunrise is getting the ball rolling pretty early with a whole slew of announcements and plans for the 50^th.   There’s a lot going on but we’re here today to talk about five of the big ones on todays Top 5 Wednesday.  These are the Top 5 Announcements from the Gundam 50^th Anniversary Project.