MACROSS MEGA MARATHON | EPISODE 10: BLIND GAME

What's Max's Valkyrie doing back there? A soft shoe shuffle?

Iconic Scene: Klingon captain KLANG!

Quotable Quotes: "Hey, is she prettier than us?" (RED ALERT QUESTION! Bail out Vermillion 1! Bail out!!)

 Best Character: Probably Max, for continuing to be awesome and fighting Britai hand to hand.

 Best Death: The poor schmuck pilot of Misa's Cat's Eye.

 Things that stood out about this episode: I think Hikaru's making meters out of microns here with Kakizaki's Valkyrie and arguing with Misa for the sake of arguing because that's pretty much their relationship right now. No wonder Roy had to step in. Also, this is where the show will begin taking on more of its own identity. They started that with Minmay's first steps to stardom and will continue it with Misa and the Vermillion team's capture by the Zentradi. Previous to this, Macross was a pretty standard sci-fi space opera.

MACROSS MEGA MARATHON | EPISODE 9: MISS MACROSS

Iconic Scene: the much beloved Armored Valkyrie... which only shows up twice in the TV series and once in the movie. And gets totally wrecked by Hikaru in this episode.
 Quotable Quotes: "I don't think a flimsy uniform [read: swimsuit] like that would be much use in combat."
 Best Character: Normally I'd say Minmay but this show isn't animated well enough for that, if you catch my drift... No, the award this time goes to Roy Focker, who shows much insight into the fact that the Miss Macross is rigged in Jamis Merin's favor... until Minmay wins of course.
Best Death: The Armored Valkyrie's dignity.

 So you might think that having a beauty contest on a warship in deep space, under constant threat of attack is somewhat strange but remember, the Macross started out with 58,000 civilians that they didn’t plan on having onboard. Despite the amenities that have been rebuilt in the city, you have to do something to keep people’s minds off the war and why not district them with titties? Even though a large part of the population is female? Eh, whatever, it works well enough and Minmay has now started her path to stardom… and according to My Fair Minmay there is a LOT of shady stuff going on in the background to get her there (and behind the Miss Macross competition as Roy helpfully points out.) Hikaru is acting here much more like he would in the Reconstruction arc of the series i.e. being really dumb and dense. Seriously, if I was his commanding officer, I would have had him busted back down to flight cadet for wrecking the Armored Valk, not launching with any backup, Ghosts or Valkyries or whatever and watching the Miss Macross instead of doing what he was supposed to. (also, shoutouts to gubaba for translating My Fair Minmay.)

OK, let's see her anyway.  :)

MACROSS MEGA MARATHON | EPISODE 8: LONGEST BIRTHDAY

Iconic Scene: The Aftermath of Vermillion Team's first sortie.
 Quotable Quotes: "Hey, lay off! It's hard being a team leader!"
 Best Character: Maximilian Jenius. Because he's a BAMF and he knows it.
 Best Death: All the poor Reguld pilots that Max shot down. Never new what they were getting into.

 And so here is where Max and Kakizaki show up. Unlike Roy, who is the old veteran and Hikaru who is the main character, Kakizaki is the lovable oaf and Max turns out to be an insanely good prodigy. Neither gets all that much depth to them though and I have to wonder if that's yet again a product of the series being cut down from 52 episodes to 48 then 39 then to 24+2 clips shows with an added 27. Of the two, I do like Max a bit better because Kakizaki seems like the kinda guy who talks a big game but doesn't have much to back it up. Still, he is far more tolerable and likable than a certain character that will be showing up soon.

MACROSS MEGA MARATHON | EPISODE 7: BYE-BYE MARS

Iconic Scene: A solemn farewell.
 Quotable Quotes: "Riber..."
 Best Character: Quamzin for his antics and coming up with an actual halfway decent plan this time. Too bad the Macross crew has the power of the Plot behind them, for his sake.
 Best Death: Riber Fruhling because... reasons.

 And so we come to one of the most famous episodes in the show. Here we get to see some of Misa's background and why she is the way she is. Like with Sheryl Nome in the sequel series Macross Frontier, I didn't particularly care one way or the other about Misa but after this look into her mind, I think this when I, and a lot of us, began to root for her. That being said, like Minmay before her, Misa demonstrates a strange suicidal streak here that never shows up again, even when she and Hikaru are lost in the bowels of Vrlitwhai's flagship. Ishiguro's influence perhaps?

MACROSS MEGA MARATHON | EPISODE 6: DAEDALUS ATTACK

 Iconic Scene: GET READY FOR A SURPRISE!
 Quotable Quotes: "How come I have to get bossed around by some old lady who's sitting somewhere nice and safe?"
 Best Character: Misa, for coming up with this crazy plan. And for putting up with Hikaru's crap.
 Best Death: Poor Zeril, never saw that Macross fist a-coming.

I think what struck me the most in this episode was something that I loved through all the early episodes of Macross, i.e. How the crew had to come up with all-sorts of ad-hoc plans to deal with all the situations they found themselves in. They didn't have to come up with an explanation for the bolting on of the Daedalus and Prometheus, for example. Those could have just been part of the Macross's structure.

MACROSS MEGA MARATHON | EPISODE 5: TRANSFORMATION

Carrier Operations... IN SPACE!!

 OK, posting multiple shots per episode is kinda kicking my butt, so just one per episode for now unless something really special pops up.
 EPISODE 5: Transformation
 Iconic Scene: The Macross transforms for the first time, of course.
 Quotable Quotes: So, this is the Macross's transformation.
 Best character: In this episode it would have to go to Global. He once again shows that he's and honorable man but is willing to do what's necessary.
 Best Death: I'm pretty sure I saw some poor sod get sucked out into space.

 One thing I noticed about this episode was how Hikaru had a scene that somewhat mirrored one in DYRL only this time its Hikaru getting awfully fatalistic. That seems to be a thing with SDF Macross and the 80s entries: Characters getting suddenly fatalistic. Also, I prefer the Macross The First's Gina Bartrow as the Macross's head science/engineering honcho whatever.

The SVF-26 Cavaliers Squadron onboard the Macross

I think this is the first time we see a Destroid in the show. About time, it's episode 5 already!

MACROSS MEGA MARATHON | EPISODE 4: LYNN MINMAY

Watch of the future!

Getting the civilians onboard the ship

Focker, you better be grateful you're a war hero. Not many could get away with this.

What is this? A school for giants?!

There's that damn fish truck again...

And then they couldn't get any more water for the coffee machine on the bridge.

If you're gonna be trapped for 12 days, might as well be clean.

Rats In Space!

Mmmmm, however-the-hell-old-beans-in-a-can, muh fav'rit.

demodemodemodemodemodemodemodemodemodemodemodemo

You know... I feel that I should point out that despite the precautions that Hikaru took, he still probably would have not been able to survive out in hard vacuum, but sometimes you need to forget a few details for the sake of drama.

Not how I would like my fish....

wait, when did that happen? The tuna's mouth was nowhere near there.

Minmay sings for the first time.

I could understand going a little stir-crazy after twelve days in the bowels of the ship but Minmay goes a mite TOO crazy in this scene. Dear heart, I don't know if anyone's told you but death by the vacuum of space is actually one of the worst ways you can go.

And then there was a city in the ship.

Abusing refugees: It's the Mayor's job.

MACROSS MEGA MARATHON | EPISODE 3: SPACE FOLD

So, episode 3 and... wait, when did that happen? Did the Zentradi pilot reflexsively grab VT-102 as Roy pumped him full of lead?

Oh, there's the Magic Hands again.

what a wonky attach point...

and so the animation errors begin...

so long VT-102

cockpit pod disappears and reappears at will!

Roy's Valkyrie somehow turns into a VF-1A!

OK, this illustrates something I've wondered about for a while now. The real-life reason for the Macross's docking is of course so it would have arms in Attacker mode. But in-universe... why bother? We know the Macross has huge amounts of room inside and the Valkyries don't even need to be in fighter mode to take off. They could pull a Galactica and launch the fighters on one side and recover them on the other. Also, isn't this another animation error?

A famous scene.

Um, Daedalus? Prometheus? What are doing in space? It's too early for that!

You'd think that Global and the other commanders would have figured out that the Zentradi would try something like this during the docking maneuvers.

I like these guys. Not much fazes them.

and then there's a ship that's floating around...

You'd think after 10 years and all the Overtechnology they've reverse-engineered, they would know enough about the Fold System to prevent this sort of thing from happening but like I said, even with the German rocket engineers, we still blew up a ton of rockets before we got good at it.

The only bigger OOPS I can thin og is when they didn't check the scientist's math and the Castle Bravo nuclear test ended up being 15 megatons instead of 5.

With only one motor and no manuevering thrusters, I would think that Hikaru would have a much harder time getting around at this point but that's just me nitpicking.

Hikaru and Minmay survive a fateful crash.

Aw come on ladies, it's not all bad. You'll have tons of time to get closer to each other this way. 

MACROSS MEGA MARATHON | EPISODE 2: COUNTDOWN

One of the few times we get to see the Ghosts in action.

Vanessa's first major lines? She'll also be at MacrossWorldCon this year. The voice actress Run Sasaki that is.

Yot-chan would go on to found a Nyan-Nyan chain throughout the galaxy.

Poor Sea Sargents...

The Gravity Control Room onboard the Macross

He may be a typical politician but he's got a point. The aliens are here guys, let's get up and get us some!

A faithful meeting.

This is not a good way to pick up chicks...

I believe this because hey, at one point we were losing every other Atlas ICBM we were launching.

I think this is the only time we see the Magic Hands mini-manipulators?

Damn alien rabbits... breed faster than the local predators can eat 'em...

Pull the G lever for a surprise!

I don't think they ever said what she was going back for. I hope it wasn't for something silly like a hand mirror... (actually we'll see that it's her audition acceptance letter)

Roy... you surely have much better things to do than go check up on jailbait. Even Maniac from Wing Commander would be frowning at you now.

Um... where are the Destroids? Isn't this what they were speciically designed for?

Ooooh... nasty.

Roy for the save!

I would think that Valkyrie pilots would use the head lasers more as you can empty the 55mm gunpod in about 10 seconds.

A famous scene.

A woman's hair is her life, or so I'm told.

Another famous scene.

Now you done pissed him off Hikaru. You just had to go and shake his tree, didn't you?

The Specter of Death