Random Curiosity

Summary:

While Sheryl is holding her goodbye concert, the Macross Frontier fleet arrives on the battlefield with the mission of rescuing the surviving ships and collecting data on the Vajra. The SMS pilots quickly launch into battle, and despite Ozma wanting him to stay back, Alto is ready to engage. As the pilots split up, Kuran Kuran jokingly tells Mikhail not to cry again if he doesn’t see her, and Mikhail gets angry that she’s bringing up things from their childhood again. Nevertheless, he takes his VF-25 into a sniper position behind an asteroid and starts calmly picking off the incoming Vajra. Ozma meanwhile unleashes a volley of missiles, and Kanaria lands on the deck of one of the ships in her König Monster’s GERWALK mode and opens fire with all cannons. Back on the Macross Frontier, Sheryl heads backstage to change outfits between songs and gets an update on the battle from Grace. As Sheryl watches the video feed, Grace comments on how Sheryl’s favorite pilot is doing his best too. This causes Sheryl to blush and assert that she was actually worried about the Macross Galaxy. She also believes that if it’s a pilot’s job to fight, then it’s her job to sing. By now, Ranka has made her way into the concert hall and finds Alto’s seat empty. Right as she’s wondering where he is, she gets a message from her brother saying that he can’t come home today because he has work. She realizes that this means he’s out flying in battle and that Alto is too.

As the fight rages on, a huge Vajra ship suddenly defolds and opens fire with its main cannon, annihilating one of the human ships. Luca tries to get closer so that he can analyze it, but he gets caught in the process by a Vajra, and his VF-25 is thrown into the mouth of the giant ship. The concert meanwhile nears its end, and Sheryl addresses the crowd to talk about how she’ll remember this. She then starts crying and is at a loss of words until she hears Ranka call out to her. After seeing Ranka in the crowd, Sheryl decides to tell the audience that she wants to sing her last song for the people who are risking their lives in a far away place right now. This makes Ranka realize that Sheryl knows what’s going on, and she feels like Sheryl is talking directly to her when Sheryl says that she wants to sing together. Ranka thus sings along as Sheryl begins her final song, Infinity. Back at the battle, Alto charges towards the Vajra ship to try to save Luca and manages to enter it through a hole he blew in the ship’s armor. He makes his way down a tunnel and eventually finds Luca’s VF-25 being held in a tangle of tentacles. Before he can do anything though, Alto is attacked by two smaller Vajra, and though he manages to destroy one, the other grabs onto his Valkyrie’s cockpit. During the ensuing struggle, Alto suddenly starts to hear Sheryl and Ranka’s singing, and this motivates him to push forward and destroy the Vajra, though he loses his VF-25 in the process.

Before his Valkyrie explodes, Alto ejects in his EX-Gear and connects it to Luca’s VF-25 so that he can remotely control it. He attempts to free it from the tentacles holding it, but he’s stopped by a rifle shot from a mysterious magenta-colored Valkyrie that was also inside the Vajra ship. Moments later, the mouth of the ship opens up, and the transforming Macross Quarter rushes towards it. The Macross Quarter holds the mouth open long enough for Alto and Luca to escape, and it then charges up and fires the Macross Cannon directly into the Vajra ship. This succeeds in completely destroying the enemy and effectively ends the battle. In the aftermath, Alto thinks about the magenta-colored Valkyrie and how it had quickly flown away before the Macross Cannon was fired. At that moment, that very Valkyrie is traveling via space fold, and its pilot begins playing Aimo on his harmonica.

Preview

An entire episode filled with music accompanying a major battle was like sensory overload for me. Granted, they did use reuse some concert footage in the beginning when Sheryl was singing Iteza☆Gogo Kuji Don’t be late, but that didn’t keep the rest of the episode from being amazing. I loved the entire latter part with Ranka and Sheryl singing (the new song) Infinity together while the Macross Quarter transformed and kicked some ass with the Macross Cannon. Infinity actually sounds really familiar to me, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it reminds me of.

On the topic of that song, the new character (Brera Stern according to the credits) seemed to react to it, and though that isn’t really a shocker given how music plays such an integral part in Macross, I was a little surprised that he wasn’t a bad guy since his character design makes him look like he could be. Or rather, I should say that it’s still hard to say what his intentions were. When Alto was trying to free Luca, Brera’s Valkyrie appeared to shoot Luca’s Valkyrie’s rifle, and though I’ve rewatched the scene several times now, I still can’t tell whether that was to help free them or for some other reason. The fact that he also knows Aimo means that he’s likely linked to Ranka’s past, and that just makes him even more suspicious to me.

What really surprised me though is the fact that Alto has already lost his VF-25, and maybe the earring with it. The earring seems too key to disappear after just one major outing, but I didn’t see any indication that Alto grabbed it when he ejected. I imagine neither Sheryl nor Ozma are gonna be happy with him come next week. Speaking of which, the preview hints that next week will be about Ranka transferring in to Alto’s school, and it looks like Sheryl will show up too. The character designs look off in the preview, but since they probably spent a good part of the budget making this week’s episode great, I can understand why there’d be a dip in quality.