macross zero

xiao_p SG

wat can i say... can't wait to get my hands on part 3 Mr. Green

xiao_p SG

Episode 1: The Ocean, The Wind, And...
Review by Chris

December 29, 2002

In 2008, Shin Kudo and Edgar LaSalle's F-14 Tomcat squad launch from the U.N. Spacy aircraft carrier Illustria. As the F-14's patrol the skies near South Ataria Island, they pick up several MiG-29 fighters belonging to the Anti-United Nations. Shin's squad engages them in combat over the ocean. Shin manages to destroy several of them, but he nearly hits one of his wingmen in the process. Edgar tells him if he keeps doing that no one will back them up, and Shin says he's never needed anyone to watch his back. They relax for a moment before receiving a distress call from the Illustria that it is under attack. Anti-U.N. forces attack the ship and blow away its bridge. Missiles appear out of nowhere and destroy the other F-14's flying with Shin. Shin barely dodges the missiles before spotting the SV-51 variable fighter piloted by Nora Polyansky. Shin dodges Nora's attacks and then chases after her to attack from behind. As he is about to fire, she transforms into Gerwalk mode and evades his attack. She then transforms into Battroid mode and blows away most of his F-14. On a nearby island, an elderly man named Nutuk tells his fellow natives the legend of how bird humans came to the Earth and turned fish humans into men. Shin wakes up in a strange hut decorated with strange primitive art. He sees a drawing of a bird creature that is similar to the SV-51. He grabs a stick and goes outside to find Edgar, but he only finds Nutuk. He asks where he is, and a woman named Sara Nome tells him he must leave. She says she has seen that blood-soaked soldiers will bring misfortune to their island of Mayan. Shin asks where Edgar is, and Sara's little sister Mao says the current probably took him elsewhere. Sara listens to the wind and tells Shin he can stay until his wounds heal. Shin runs to the beach and only finds wreckage from the F-14. On the U.N. Spacy aircraft carrier Asuka II, a scientist named Aries Turner gives a briefing and says that the Overtechnology from the ASS-1 allowed them to develop a new radar that discovered a 10,000 year old alien birdlike artifact named AFOS. She goes out for a smoke and finds her old friend Roy Focker waiting for her. He asks her if she is investigating the human-Protoculture interference theory, and she tells him that is a secret.

Mao scares away a group of kids that are following Shin. He sees strange bird things planted in the ground and asks Mao what they are. She tells him that they are the bird humans that traveled across the stars and made mankind. Personally, Shin thinks they look more like planes. Mao asks Shin about trains and shows him a picture of a city. He says that her island has nothing until he spots a house with a satellite dish. Mao tells him that the generator broke during a storm and no one has fixed it because those who were capable left for the city. Shin sees a young man showing a girl a stick and asks what's going on. Mao tells him that men carve out love sticks and show them to the girls they want to go out on a date with. Shin laughs when he realizes that he threatened Sara with a love stick. Mao says she is glad to see Shin laugh, and he wonders when was the last time he laughed. On the Asuka II, Roy tells his men that they have received word that the Anti-U.N. is planning a sneak attack with their new SV-51's. Roy plans on taking them out with the U.N. Spacy's new VF-0 variable fighter. Mechanic Raizou Nakajima tells him that the VF-0's engines have been tuned to the max but won't be as powerful as the new thermonuclear reaction engine that will be used in the VF-1 Valkyrie series. He laments that so many young people are being sent out to fight, and Roy promises that he will bring back all of his pilots. Sara scolds Mao for listening to the radio and says that she shouldn't follow outsiders like Shin around. Mao says without outsiders like Shin they wouldn't have things like pictures of their dead parents. The next day, Shin goes underneath a house on the beach and finds Sara carving love sticks. He sits down next to her to carve a love stick and thanks her for saving him. Sara tells him that long ago the bird humans came to Earth and made Mayan out of a turtle shell. She suddenly panics when she has a vision of a battle over the island. Roy's VF-0 appears over them and attacks an SV-51. Roy dodges the attacks from the SV-51 and transforms to Battroid mode to blow it away. He then flies over Shin and Sara and heads for another battle. Sara sees that they are fighting near where Mao went to get water, so Shin runs through the forest to help her.

This is the first new Macross we've had since Dynamite 7 was released five years ago to mark the 15th anniversary of the franchise. Overall, this OAV is far superior to that one so far. Instead of going forward, we get a look to the past before the original series. The animation here is stunning and is the best I've seen in Macross; it even surpasses the quality of Macross Plus. I was a bit apprehensive about CGI being used for battles, but it is very well done here and is some of the best I've seen in anime. As for the story, we've got a few mysteries. We've got Shin and his friend Edgar, who is obviously related to Claudia in some form. We've also got Roy Focker from the original series, and he mentions a human-Protoculture interference series. Coincidentally, that sounds a lot like the Mayan legend of the bird humans from space. Shin notices that their bird humans look like the SV-51, and then there's also the mysterious alien AFOS. There's an element of mysticism here, and Sara's visions of disaster are reminiscent of Hitomi Kanzaki from Kawamori's Vision of Escaflowne. Thankfully, the mysticism here isn't preachy and didactic like Kawamori's Earth Maiden Arjuna. The episode ends with a cliffhanger, and I'm curious to see where it goes next.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

xiao_p SG

Episode 2: The Star On The Ground
Review by Chris

June 3, 2003

In a cave, Nutuk tells Mayans a story about the fish and bird humans, and Sara prays for the God of Wind's protection. Nutuk says in his story that the bird human came from far away and cut off the fish human's fins, causing legs to grow out of them and make the first human, Rooy Kanu. In the air, a damaged VF-0 is destroyed next to Roy. The attacker moves in closer, and Roy sees that it's an SV-51 piloted by his foe D.D. Ivanov. Roy chases Ivanov in the skies, but he loses track of him quickly. Ivanov hides in a canyon and fires at Roy as he passes by. Roy picks up Ivanov's tail and chases him through the canyon. Ivanov dodges most of Roy's attacks, but his fuel begins to run out. He fires at the rocks above and causes them to cave in on Roy so that he can escape. Nutuk continues his story and explains that the bird human dropped a turtle on a rock and formed the Mayan islands with the broken pieces of the turtle's shell. Roy emerges from the rocks and returns to the sky, but Ivanov is gone. In the skies, Nora chases a VF-0 and critically damages it. Shin reaches the lake where Mao is and knocks her aside as the damaged VF-0 crashes. He looks at the VF-0 and suddenly has a flashback of watching his family executed in front of his eyes as a child. Nora flies by and shoots at the pilot as he gets out, blowing him to pieces. Shin jumps into the VF-0's cockpit and begins firing wildly into the air. He damages Nora's SV-51, and she turns around to finish him off. She knocks the gun pod out of his hand and moves in to kill him, but she is forced to escape when Roy attacks her. Nutuk's story continues with the bird human cutting of it's own head to form the first woman, Rooy Waka. After having children with Rooy Kanu, Rooy Waka returned to the stars and said she would return when a song of destruction is sung. Shin is airlifted to the Asuka II, where the AFOS artifact is being studied by Aries. She discusses her findings with a colleague and wonders why the head is missing. She thinks it might have to do with Dr. Hasford's Protoculture theory, which states that an external force accelerated the evolution of humanity. Shin examines his new VF-0D, and Roy asks him if he can handle it. Shin doesn't want a two-seater, and he is shocked when Edgar shows up in bandages. Later, Shin and Edgar begin training with their VF-0D against Roy and perform poorly. Roy shoots their VF-0D with paint bullets and drop kicks them into the water. Afterwards, Shin wrestles with a female marine named Katie, who beats him soundly. She tells him the reason for his defeat is that he understands neither his opponent nor himself.

Shin and Edgar conduct more training with the Battroid and Gerwalk modes, but they again lose to Roy's VF-0S. Shin complains that he didn't become a pilot to crawl on the ground, and Roy tells him that he'll have to do more now than just fly. On the Asuka II, Raizou yells at Shin about his unit's engines and says the mechanics will have to work all night to fix it. At night, Shin stands alone outside looking at the water. A drunken Roy comes up to him and tells him Raizou was happy that a pilot pushed his engines to their maximum potential. He tells Shin that the next day he and Edgar won't be training anymore. The next day, Shin and Edgar fly escort for several helicopters carrying Aries and a group of marines. They land on the Mayan island and are told by Sara that they can't bring weapons into the village. Nutuk tells them they are welcome to enter the village if they leave their weapons behind. Edgar camouflages the VF-0D while Shin returns to the village to fix the power generator. Mao asks him why he came back, and he says it's because he made a promise and was given orders to. On the Asuka II, scientists study AFOS and discover that it has the same fold system as what was found on the ASS-1. They theorize that it can fly through time and space. In the village, Aries takes blood samples from the villagers to examine their health. Sara objects and argues that Aries is trying to steal the essence of the Mayans. Shin and Mao run over, and Aries asks Shin to convince Sara. Sara says that there are snakes entangled in blood, and Shin asks the villagers to decide. Sara tells them not to break the rules, but Aries offers them all Appale Genki juice, which they all take. At night, Shin finishes work on the power generator, and Sara accuses him of trying to steal the stars. He turns on the power and tells her she can close her eyes if she wants to enjoy the darkness. She snaps back and tells him his heart is dark. On a submarine, Nora yells with a mechanic about repairs to her SV-51. To demonstrate what it's like to put her life in someone else's hands, she grabs his privates and squeezes them. Ivanov asks her what she thinks about the UN Spacy's VF-0's, and she says that all it does is rip off the SV-51 transformation system. Ivanov tells her that 'it' is being moved and kisses her. Aries finds that she can't sleep and calls Roy on the Asuka II. She asks him why he's here if he hated the war so much, and he says it's because his friend Michael was killed in the first wave of bombings. Shin wakes up and finds Sara singing in the water naked. He is shocked when flowers come to life and rocks begin to float. The cells in Aries' microscope come to life, and blood drips out of the neck of AFOS.

The second episode picks up on the cliffhanger from the first and starts off with a thrilling dogfight between Roy and Ivanov. They seem to have some connection, since Roy calls him 'Instructor'. Perhaps Ivanov was his flight instructor and betrayed UN Spacy for the Anti-UN forces. Either way, he's the more experienced pilot and Roy the rookie by comparison. This is a nice contrast from the original series, where Roy was the big man around town and was the hotshot pilot. Here, you can see he's actually frightened while fighting Ivanov. We also get to see more of Roy's background and find out why he joined the army and didn't go back to Hikaru's family business. It also seems like Aries was one of his many former girlfriends, at least from the way they talk and because he grabbed her butt. Shin also takes to the skies and has another confrontation with Nora. He doesn't seem to be able to adjust to a variable fighter and has a lot of trouble. The Mayan legends about the bird human appear to tie-in directly to the facts learned about AFOS, and Sara's singing has an effect on it. It looks like singing in this series will have some spiritual effect, much as in Macross 7. We'll see what happens as more episodes are released.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars