Star-Crossed has a good post on this episode -- that is, one I agree with, lol -- but he/she didn't give a full summary, and I have one I made for a forum, so I thought I'd just post it here, with some screencaps.This show continues to blow every other spring show (except maybe Macross Frontier) completely out of the water, for me. Summary first, then some comments. summaryNJM (Nijuumensou = Twenty-Faces) and Ken have a motorboat and follow White-Hair and Chiko. Their boat isn't fast enough to catch up. WH takes Chiko on board a big zeppelin. She tells Chiko: "Isn't it beautiful? This is the place of your death." The zeppelin is supposedly for publicity for a film -- the film they were making on the island, when the director was killed -- and they are letting people on board for a celebration. WH watches NJM and Ken board the airship and is pleased they have fallen into her trap.The guests are given wine to toast the event. It is poisoned and they all die, coughing blood, except NJM and Ken, who didn't drink. WH reveals herself to them and disappears. Ken wants to chase her, but NJM says she's his, and he has other work for Ken. Meanwhile, NJM has found WH in her cabin. We find out that she was a researcher working under him and they were in love. At a certain point, however, NJM decided that their work on super-weapons was wrong and decided to burn the lab down. She was shattered, since the lab was what brought her together with him. She continued to get operations to give her the super-body she now has, despite the incredible pain it caused her, in part because she instinctively felt he would praise her for her devotion to research, as he did before. But he ends up calling her a "monster."She asks him why he chose Chiko instead of her, and he says he didn't choose Chiko, Chiko chose him. She asks what would happen if Chiko didn't exist, and starts to plunge a knife into a large suitcase beside her, as if Chiko is in it. He shoots her dead. But when he opens the suitcase, he finds that the real (naked) WH is inside it, not Chiko, and he has been conversing with a fake. She says that Chiko is in the sky, like them -- and we see that Chiko is trussed up and hanging from a rope beneath the zeppelin. And the expression on her face is viciously angry. Great image, like her expression when she started after WH in ep12.Ken finds the many bombs WH has rigged to destroy the airship. He starts defusing them, but there are too many.Meanwhile, Akechi has shown up in the cavern and gets the fat detective, Tome, and Shunka back to shore. Then he takes off to find Chiko and NJM. He realizes they must be in the zeppelin and with binoculars he sees Chiko dangling there. WH wants NJM to go back with her to the way things were, and to join her in death. While NJM and WH fight, with WH gaining the upper hand, Chiko remembers the gang, how the Skipper said never to give up, how Muta said it was useful to be able to dislocate your joints sometimes, how her fighting trainer said her strong point was her lightness rather than the strength she doesn't have, and how the plump guy said when you are tied up, you try to release one finger at a time.Chiko gradually works her way out of the ropes. Just as WH is about to kill NJM, she appears in the cabin behind her. WH is shocked she got there, but Chiko says, with pride: "I am the daughter of Twenty-Faces." She picks up a gun and is about to shoot WH, but NJM stops her.The fight continues, and WH gains the upper hand over both of them. She is about to kill Chiko, but NJM says she has him, Chiko isn't part of this. Then WH (conveniently) dies from her body-modifications just as she is about to kill NJM. NJM takes her body to the exit ramp, walks down it and lets her body fly off, falling into the ocean. Chiko comes down the ramp to embrace NJM and ask him to let her be with him always. He is replying to this carefully when explosions rock the ship, and they are thrown off into space together. NJM pushes Chiko back onto the gangway, where Ken comes up and catches her. NJM asks Ken to look after her as he sinks out of sight. We see WH's body underwater, with her thoughts that she is alone again -- then she realizes that NJM is coming too, and is happy.Next week is still in the airship, as Ken tries to pilot it to safety. We see Chiko in a hospital bed, so she survives (duh).Can NJM survive? If this were reality, no, but in this show, you never say never. He may have found a parachute before he entered WH's cabin.commentsA number of scenes really hit me. The expression of pain and hatred on Chiko's face as she swung there under the zeppelin. The romantic scene between NJM and WH when they were researchers together. NJM walking away from her through the flames. The brief but intense and creative fights in the cabin. The scene of White-Hair on the operating table. The way her body lightly flies away when NJM lets her go from the ramp. Chiko with a gun pointed at WH, saying "I am the Daughter of Twenty-Faces."There were two great screams: Chiko's when she saw NJM falling toward the sea, and WH's when she was being operated on. I was also struck by how much Satou Rina (Shunka) sounded like Hirano Aya in her brief scene early on. The seiyuu are learning from each other.I thought the CG zeppelin worked well with the 2D backgrounds.This show continues to give us the gift of minor errors by the protagonists that lead to disaster. Ken didn't tell NJM and Chiko about the coming explosions right away when he saw them. That might have allowed them to avoid being thrown off the steps. Chiko rushed up to NJM on the steps and embraced him, meaning that neither of them was holding on. These are amazing people, but always with faults.My understanding has been that the first half of this series would be based on the manga, but that we would get anime-original "detective girls" stories in the second half (or so). I'm glad to see that we will have at least one more episode to get Chiko back to safety, rather than ending an arc at its crisis.I just hope the new episodes will have as much oomph as the ones from the manga have had. How many times do you see a roomful of extras just suddenly offed like the guests were on the ship? How often do you see people dangling from aircraft and performing Houdini acts to get free. How often do you see one of the main characters keep appearing to die? And how often do you see the kind of determination -- portrayed in animation and voice-acting -- that Chiko shows here? And how often do you see such a vicious enemy, or feel such sympathy for her?
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This news just reached my ears, after surfing around a few doujin circle webbies.Tony Taka at T2 Art Works will be releasing his C74 doujins based on Macross F.Image from T2's webbie. I STEALS IT NOT.His booth will be at the East District, A-61ab. On the 3rd day of C74, where true loot is gleaned.Rei's room will be there too, and so will Cradle. YAY.Also, according to the latest updates at the Comiket site, the catalog will feature a 4-piece set of Zero no Tsukaima artwork by artists like MATSUDA89. THIS IS GREAT NEWS. TO ANYONE WHO IS GOING, I WILL BUY THE CATALOG OFF YOU. NO SRSLY.
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I realized after a while that you run out of insightful things to say about anime after a while. All I do nowadays is just rant and rave about how amazing a series with no real meat to back up what I’m saying except for my ephemeral feelings, the ones that you can’t hold on [...]
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Sheryl enrols in Alto et al’s high school mostly to prove some kind of point with the most inconsistent art style imaginable. Well, it’s the best Hiroyuki Yoshino ridiculous-pants-based episode yet. Despite the horrible, horrible character designs - it wasn’t as if Satelight made up for it with amazing animation or anything, it just looked [...]
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Summary: As expected, Alto grabs Luca’s pack and escapes the bomb. Luca is about to confess his love to Nanase, but has to scramble as the Vajra defold right in front of Frontier. As the Vajra advance in the Flying V, Sheryl finds Mikhail is unconscious and takes the controls. Unfortunately, she sucks. [...]
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The true face of the Vajra? Let’s make a conjecture on how Ranka is 1/4 Zentrali. Her father was probably half human, half Zentrali; her mom, on the other hand, given her absence in the photo at the lab and the revelation from this episode, was probably neither human nor Zentrali but instead a pure [...]
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This episode basically distills Macross Frontier down to two of its core components - there is fighting, and there is singing. And the fighting is good (aka Satelight blew their budget on the CG here), and the singing is good (as it always is). Although it was great fun to watch, there’s nothing [...]
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Whoa, suffice to say that Macross isn’t your run-off-the-mill mecha show but episode 14, an episode totally focused on the battle, was just awe inspiring. I’m still recovering from the sounds of stuff blowing up, Alto’s screams of passion and the rainblow-esque spectrum of colours my computer unleashed on my unprepared self. Now, being new to [...]
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Snapshots from Omni since I didn’t want subtitles in my images (damn .avi files). Superb. This episode was really awesome, although at the beginning I couldn’t stop wondering when Alto-hime would finally rescue Ranka. I like the new side of Luca — ’twas very manly indeed. [...]
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OMG! OMG! OMG! Seriously, each week I just end up loving this show more and more, and oh if you thought it was impossible for Alto-hime to get any hotter, you were wrong… The action in this episode is just kick-ass and our Alto-hime is in the thick of it, weapons ablazing. [...]
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