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REVIEW: Macross Delta: Gekijō no Walkūre


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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 11:06 am Reply with quote
I haven't seen the movie yet, but while I liked the TV series a lot, its final conflict ended up being a little too much of "been there, seen that, at least twice" so if the story and the main villain are stronger in the movie that's already something I look forward to.

That said...
Quote:
Freyja and Hayate's relationship was especially cute, and they seemed to click as friends from the moment they first met. Again, I am told that this is quite different from how they're portrayed in the TV series. The love triangle was downplayed, but I found the lack of relationship drama refreshing in a film that was mostly about an ensemble cast.

I don't know who you were talking to, but this is exactly what happens in the TV series as well. Freyja and Hayate connect immediately, and even regardless of any romantic development they're really good friends during the whole story. And the TV series downplays the romance as well (at least for the lead characters), especially the triangle aspect - to the point that when it gets triangle-y it feels shoehorned in and pointless, considering how close Freyja and Hayate obviously are.
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Stampeed Valkyrie



Joined: 10 Aug 2014
Posts: 825
Location: PA
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 11:55 am Reply with quote
I guess eventually I will need to see the movie to see what was changed.

It took 3 attempts for me to completely get through the TV series.. and the whole reason why I did was because I am a Macross fan. I would have completely bailed on this series otherwise.

So a B-? That's a step up from this Dumpster fire..
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
Posts: 13224
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 11:57 am Reply with quote
SHD wrote:
I don't know who you were talking to, but this is exactly what happens in the TV series as well. Freyja and Hayate connect immediately, and even regardless of any romantic development they're really good friends during the whole story. And the TV series downplays the romance as well (at least for the lead characters), especially the triangle aspect - to the point that when it gets triangle-y it feels shoehorned in and pointless, considering how close Freyja and Hayate obviously are.


Exactly what I was going to say. They both tease each other constantly but it's always good natured.

You're also right about the love triangle aspect. Mirage was never really on Hayate's radar.
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Wrangler



Joined: 11 Nov 2007
Posts: 1346
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 2:26 pm Reply with quote
The television series was dumpster fire. It had potential, but it was trying to do too much.
Fan-service selling Idol music group that can save the galaxy was disguised to sell the actual music to make money. Focus was on that not so much the story of revenge minded leader pushing his people into destroying Neu Spacey.

spoiler[Another aspect was them trying to sell the handsome male pilots to female fans. The action was so insane unrealistic at times during in television series it wasn't funny, it was boring in later part of the series. I was pretty annoyed that cruical needed music group was the key to save galaxy from dominate genies from enslavement because of dna of the citizenry of the inhabited galaxy had.]

I've not see the movie, but sounds like it hodge bodge like the television show. I will end up watching it, but i don't think my feelings that Macross's franchise was underminded little bit by this entry into the franchise.
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tootbrush



Joined: 31 Oct 2009
Posts: 230
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 2:40 pm Reply with quote
Sounds like the movie has some of the same flaws as the TV series (e.g. Mikumo getting no attention until she's suddenly the most important character in the story), but as long as it doesn't have the ridiculously slow second half of the show, it's probably an improvement.
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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5521
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 2:47 pm Reply with quote
SHD wrote:
I haven't seen the movie yet, but while I liked the TV series a lot, its final conflict ended up being a little too much of "been there, seen that, at least twice" so if the story and the main villain are stronger in the movie that's already something I look forward to.

That said...
Quote:
Freyja and Hayate's relationship was especially cute, and they seemed to click as friends from the moment they first met. Again, I am told that this is quite different from how they're portrayed in the TV series. The love triangle was downplayed, but I found the lack of relationship drama refreshing in a film that was mostly about an ensemble cast.

I don't know who you were talking to, but this is exactly what happens in the TV series as well. Freyja and Hayate connect immediately, and even regardless of any romantic development they're really good friends during the whole story. And the TV series downplays the romance as well (at least for the lead characters), especially the triangle aspect - to the point that when it gets triangle-y it feels shoehorned in and pointless, considering how close Freyja and Hayate obviously are.


Kinda? The TV went full-on romance, though. There was no debate about it. They made it EXTREMELY clear. Using the words "good friends" makes me think you didn't see the obvious romance.

-----------

As for the movie, this headline alone made me laugh. I'm surprised fans even exist for the actual anime. Vocal songs are solid, but there was really the only good thing. Well, Freyja was good too but almost everything else was extremely lackluster. Undeveloped side characters got an odd amount of focus, the other girl in the triangle all but disappeared half way through the show, and the overall plot was extremely dull. This review really suggests not much has changed.

I would love if Kim would watch the TV show and do a comparison.
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
Posts: 13224
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 2:56 pm Reply with quote
I guess I'm the only one that felt Delta was the best iteration of Macross yet. Macross idols have always reflected the trends of the time, so Walkure being the type of idol group that exists today is keeping with tradition. The music was great, the characters were fun, and the action was exciting. It also broke franchise tradition and had the sweet, younger girl win the triangle as opposed to the older tsundere girl. That's something I wanted to see for a long time.
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H. Guderian



Joined: 29 Jan 2014
Posts: 1255
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 6:52 pm Reply with quote
Just like the show then. the TV Anime set up tons of potential, maybe even hinted Dance would build upon music as part of Humanity's glorious culture. But by the 2nd half it becomes a dumpster fire mess. Now I'm someone that loves nearly everything in the franchise. Even Zero was merely a snore. Delta's 2nd half was frustrating. Bring back Basara! If Delta ended in the middle we'd have a good entry, but they insisted on plowing forward and making this entry an embarrassment. I was hoping this movie would fix that.

And yes Junna's singing voice is so good.
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Cardcaptor Takato



Joined: 27 Jan 2018
Posts: 4787
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 7:09 pm Reply with quote
I'm a big fan of the Macross franchise but I haven't seen much of Delta yet so I'm out of the loop on the fandom consensus, but why has Delta gotten so much criticism anyway (spoiler free please)?
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Hobbie



Joined: 29 Jan 2017
Posts: 30
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:36 pm Reply with quote
For me it was mainly because of underdeveloped characters on both side.
The show throw in a lot of them and try hard to make you think they are important but never take the time to really do so.
The dogfights aren't really interesting because they never feel decisive most of the time.
Story-wise, if you take out the music and the 'fantastic' elements, it's more of a Gundam show than a Macross one, with a lot of political stuff.
What I always liked in the main series was the oppostion of fairly différents species (humans vs giants soldiers, humans vs bioweapons, humans vs space creatures,etc) and the way they try to overcome their divergences through culture.
Windermereans aside for a shorter lifespan (something that was really underexploited in the show imho) are basically human. They act very much like them so it's not that interesting.

But the music is pretty good ! I think that the thing most of people agree on ! ^^
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GeorgeC



Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Posts: 795
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 10:42 pm Reply with quote
Cardcaptor Takato wrote:
I'm a big fan of the Macross franchise but I haven't seen much of Delta yet so I'm out of the loop on the fandom consensus, but why has Delta gotten so much criticism anyway (spoiler free please)?


Because it's like Macross 7 and NOT Macross Plus or the original series.

If you actually like shows based around Idol singers and stupid romantic plots and lack of conflict, you'll like Kawamori's later Macross. I wish it were not called Macross. It's very superficially Macross.

The way Macross is now, it might as well be "Gem and the Holograms in Space." That's how much it's fallen. This is NOT the show I was introduced to in 1985. That show had an idol singer, too, but it wasn't as blatantly about selling records and appealing to current teen fads. There was an actual story there.

If you want an actual story with meat that goes somewhere or have fond memories of the original Macross/Robotech, you'll HATE most of what came after Macross Plus.

Gundam, for all the problems with at least half the divergent/alternate reality series, has never completely lost sight of what the original show was about. They periodically return to the original UC storyline and do good things with that. There's a reason the UC shows have generally held up better than most of the alternate reality Gundam shows.

Shoji Kawamori has become much like the current filmmakers and producers in Hollywood taking on major franchises -- they have NO CLUE about what the original shows were about and seriously do their best to make the new shows and movies appeal to the kiddies and tween girls and in the process are throwing away most of the good things and ANY MEAT the original shows and movies had.

He's NOT on my short list of good Japanese anime creators. Not anymore!

He made good shows in the past but hasn't produced anything really good since Escaflowne in the opinions of a lot of people.
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Zeino



Joined: 19 May 2017
Posts: 1098
PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 1:56 am Reply with quote
Macross films tend to always be messy even Do You Remember Love? basically drops you into the action with not much explanation and with the assumption that you've already watch the TV series before. It's pity that the Delta movie wasn't two of them instead like the Frontier movies were before because that would fixed the unfocused narrative and given the story a bit more time to breath. (While the problem with the Frontier movies was that nearly everything they changed from the TV series tended to be a choice for the worse.)

Cardcaptor Takato wrote:
I'm a big fan of the Macross franchise but I haven't seen much of Delta yet so I'm out of the loop on the fandom consensus, but why has Delta gotten so much criticism anyway (spoiler free please)?

It's basically because it does everything that Macross 7 and Frontier did times 10 and the very vocal and old-school portion of the fanbase that wants Macross to be a "serious mecha war drama" that just happens to feature idol singers and love triangles hate that direction as seen by Exhibit A above me.

GeorgeC wrote:
If you actually like shows based around Idol singers and stupid romantic plots and lack of conflict, you'll like Kawamori's later Macross. I wish it were not called Macross. It's very superficially Macross.

The way Macross is now, it might as well be "Gem and the Holograms in Space." That's how much it's fallen. This is NOT the show I was introduced to in 1985. That show had an idol singer, too, but it wasn't as blatantly about selling records and appealing to current teen fads. There was an actual story there.

If you want an actual story with meat that goes somewhere or have fond memories of the original Macross/Robotech, you'll HATE most of what came after Macross Plus.

Gundam, for all the problems with at least half the divergent/alternate reality series, has never completely lost sight of what the original show was about. They periodically return to the original UC storyline and do good things with that. There's a reason the UC shows have generally held up better than most of the alternate reality Gundam shows.


I found recent UC Gundam offerings like Unicorn and Thunderbolt to generally be indulgent fan service (albeit with very pretty animation) that hasn't really added anything fresh to franchise and seem only to really exist to pander to utter fanatics like yourself. Macross at least tries something new and different with each entry. (And that to me seems to be the real root of your problem with it.)
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BlueAlf



Joined: 02 Jan 2017
Posts: 1493
PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 2:03 am Reply with quote
Thank you Kim for the great review.

Just to clarify, unlike the Macross Frontier compilation movies which had two parts, does this movie really cover the entire TV run? I guess this means there won't be any follow up movie to this, right?

I was also wondering about the paragraph the others talked about above. I assume Kim was told about this from someone else. But really, IIRC Hayate and Freyja's relationship was kinda like that in the original TV series too. So it was a bit confusing.

Anyway, it's great to know they did something different with the show's second half. If they really did deliver on the mech battles and the songs during the climax, then that's more than enough for me. I had my own complaints about Macross Frontier, but I'll never forget how satisfying the TV series' climatic battle was.

Cardcaptor Takato wrote:
I'm a big fan of the Macross franchise but I haven't seen much of Delta yet so I'm out of the loop on the fandom consensus, but why has Delta gotten so much criticism anyway (spoiler free please)?


During the second half, the series loses its spark, making viewers difficult to stay invested. The battles were dull. The story jumped around, making sudden developments from out of nowhere. This was especially disappointing since the characters were actually great and the music was strong.
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Marzan



Joined: 29 Mar 2009
Posts: 514
PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 2:32 am Reply with quote
Cardcaptor Takato wrote:
I'm a big fan of the Macross franchise but I haven't seen much of Delta yet so I'm out of the loop on the fandom consensus, but why has Delta gotten so much criticism anyway (spoiler free please)?


2 things in my book.

1) The storytelling and characterization in the second half of the story are a mess. You jump from random occurrence to random occurrence and at the end it just copies Frontier all over again.

2) the antagonists are really cheesy and annoying, obviously there to please a certain demographic, but without any consequence. Other Macross installments had more serious antagonists that really scared you (Vajra, Zentradi, Marduk). The knights are just so...flat.
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Frog-kun
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 10 Jun 2017
Posts: 118
PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 5:24 am Reply with quote
BlueAlf wrote:
Just to clarify, unlike the Macross Frontier compilation movies which had two parts, does this movie really cover the entire TV run? I guess this means there won't be any follow up movie to this, right?


Yeah, it covered the entire TV series.

As for Freyja and Hayate's relationship, I think the difference stemmed from the fact that Hayate's backstory isn't explored at all in the film. He starts off as a pilot from the beginning. So there's no character arc for him, and he's not initially depicted as kind of a jerk.
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