Macross Frontier 09: Microgirls and Micropants
Why is Alto so grumpy with Mikhail? Yes, he is a “bitchy pretty boy”, in the words of ghostlightning, but is there more to it than this?
Since the first Frontier-related thing I ever came into contact with was a Mikhail-Alto doujinshi, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that Alto was actually getting jealous of Mikhail’s flirting with Sheryl’s manager. But that can’t be, obviously. So I guess he’s really upset that Sheryl is interfering with his life yet again, which forces him to think about his feelings and stuff he doesn’t like to think about. Sure, he himself says he’s upset because his training time has been cut and I believe he believes that but I don’t think that’s it.
The verbal back-and-forth between Alto and Mikhail is rich. Mikhail keeps calling Alto a princess and jokes that’s he out to play at war. Alto gets really irate. The richness IMHO is in how the whole debate can be recast with Sheryl in the role of a princess. If there’s a princess-like being in this show, at least on the surface, it’s gotta be Sheryl, right? And Sheryl has just interrupted SMS operations seemingly “to play at war”. Therefore in a parallel universe you could see Mikhail’s accusation directed at Sheryl, and then Alto’s response shows quite a bit of understanding. “Don’t be fool! No one plays at war!” meaning he totally gets the fact that what Sheryl is doing is waging war against the Vajra the one way she knows how. You see how it can work both ways? A Tale of Two Princesses, this could be called. And then Ranka with her green hair could be the cute little frog. A Tale of Two Princess and a Cute Little Frog. Excellent.
By the way, why does Mikhail have elven ears? If anyone knows the answer please tell.
EXCURSUS ON LEGAL MATTERS OF THE HIGHEST IMPORTANCE TO MIKHAIL
This miclone technology thing makes the Mikhail x Klan thing kinda tough huh. As Mikhail says, if he touches micronized Klan he’s a criminal. Sex with a giant is not a crime on any law book that I know of, since the issue is age and not size so I guess that would be the way to go. (There is a good story Bukowski very much related to this though I don’t think I would recommend it to Mikhail [see here].) Ultimately it depends a lot on whether Klan’s mental state is altered when she has been micloned or not. There’s another question for Macross experts! If micloned Klan behaves just like regular Klan then we have another example of what I like to call the paleololis (Dalian in Dantalian no Shoka, Acony Lanchester in the manga Acony, etc, etc), that is, characters who are older than the lads around them but who look much younger. I don’t see how marrying a paleololi would be illegal under any current law, but at the same time I imagine legislators would immediately begin making laws against marrying people that look like children even if they’re 20, 50 or 1,000 years old. Such relationships would be too much of a sensory challenge to public morality.
SUB-EXCURSUS INTO THE WORD “MICLONE”
Japanese has a very limited number of sounds. One positive side-effect of this is that homonyms abound and puns are ridiculously easy to make. The word in Japanese is 「マイクローン」, phonetically “maikuron” with a long “o” sound. “Kuron” is the word for “clone” in Japanese, so “miclone” is a good rendering, but it obscures other possibilities. For example, “micron” is also possible, with the “micro” element for small. Also, “myclone” is a good one, playing off of the way Japanese love to say “my car” and “my wife” (“maika”, “maiwaifu”). Maybe in the future that’s what every Japanese will aim for in life: to have my car, my wife/hubby and my clone.
BACK TO THE EPISODE
And we land right at the point when Klan is asking Alto if he likes Mikhail. The writers of the show were definitely playing up to the doujinshi market there 😉
<Why does Alto look like an old man in the pic above?>
I can’t help but feel the outcome of the battle was pretty darn disastrous for the S.M.S. They have three mecha against one and they not only allow the enemy to fulfill its mission and leave unscathed, but they even get one of their own wrecked?! Darn. They better shape up soon or bring the Macross Quarter along next time or something!! I mean, ghostlightning in his post makes a good case for firepower abuse creeping up in this show (single-shot devastation and so on) so the only way to beat the overpowered foe is with your own overpowered weapon.
ABOUT LUCA’S PANTS
The only explanation for Luca wearing shorts that I can see is that junior high students at the school wear them and high school students don’t. This would break down into 12-15 yr. olds wearing shorts and 16-18 yr. olds wearing long trousers (Alto, Mikhail).
If I remember correctly, most schoolboys in Japan wear shorts up to 12 yrs. of age, and then switch to long trousers. In Thailand schoolboys wear shorts until they’re 18…
Kritik der Animationskraft 
I love how you completely ignored episode eight. More later.
Hold on. Now I’m mighty confused. I blogged episode 8, but I can’t find a post for episode 7. Did I watch that episode?? Must check.
EDIT: OMG, I think I watched 7, but mistakenly titled my post Episode 8, and so when I want to watch the next episode I skipped over episode 8 and watched 9 instead. I must watch 8 today then!!
EDIT 2: Yup, that’s what happened. I renamed my ep. 7 blog post and I’ll watch the real episode 8 today (though I see from browsing through your post on it you didn’t like it). I’ll have to release a post on it tomorrow then. What a mess.
Episode 8 is utter nonsense and horribly animated to boot. The low point of the series hands down
Good to know the rest of the episodes are all better than that.
Miclone = Micron… as in Micronized
Perfect.
The Klan Klang x Michel Blanc love story will answer your questions inevitably, albeit probably raising new ones.
There’s this anecdote at how the script writer (who also worked on Code Geass R2 and now Guilty Crown) suggested to Kawamori that Klan have a lolified miclone state, to take the miclonization to the extreme.
True or not, the result is the kitchen sink thrown level of concentrated fanservice in one character. Before the end you will believe me. Klan Klang is generous to all.
Re Elven ears…
I can only speculate that Mikhail is part Zolan (planet Zola) visited by Basara in Macross Dynamite 7. The humanoids there do have the pointy ears, but have very hairy forearms, which Michel doesn’t have. So like, Ranka who is supposed to be part Zentraedi, Michel is part Zolan.
What powers does this result in? Nothing. At least Ranka can claim she can withstand space vacuum environments like Zentraedi are known to have done.
Interesting. So far she hasn’t been that much more fanservicey than say, Sheryl.
Pointy ears and hairy forearms. Egad. That’s a dwarf-elf cross then!
I agree that thus far Klan hasn’t been more fanservicey than Sheryl, but this also has to include her “comic relief” mode, wherein in loli form she becomes hyper-aggressive and “genki” which is a database check box in itself. The twin tails is another box checked, and the dere-dere mode (peeking from behind the trees ineffectually because her twintails are showing) is like a compound checkbox ticked. Di you notice her uniform uses a garterbelt? In miclone form it has lace trimmings on her stockings. That’s crazy.
There WILL be more.
In Thailand:
18 year-olds wearing short pants in school… nuts. In the Philippines there is no middle school but by age 11 (4th grade) we were wearing long pants already.
Creeping firepower abuse:
I limit this to beam weapons carried by attack craft. Macross has been pretty good to keep its giant lasers on the Macross class ships. I mean it hardly makes sense not to arm battleships and other carriers something attack craft can carry.
The good news is, only Brera’s VF-17 Lucifer ends up bringing this kind of heat, and the use remained reasonable throughout the show and the films. Macross will be delightfully ordnance based even if the enemies begin to bring bigger and bigger lasers (as do the large type Vajra soldiers).
A note on the fleet composition and ordnance:
The Frontier escort fleet (unlikely with the Galaxy fleet) has mostly reconfigured Zentraedi war ships. These ships have a decidedly alien, enemy-looking design: see the shipwreck that was being used as a Vajra colony IIRC.
The reason you don’t notice this is that the production committee, fully committed to making Macross Frontier an introductory show, did not want to confuse viewers by making such a heterogeneous-looking fleet.
Otherwise, there are really so much more Zentran ships (and soldiers) that the UN Spacy simple just cannot ignore. This doesn’t always translate to good results, but you’ll have to wait for episode 12 to see how.
I was looking at the narrower definition of fanservice (cleavage and such) but you’re right, they’re putting all the otaku fetishes on her.
I really feel sorry for the Thai 18-yr. olds. Sometimes you’ll see huge dudes with mustaches walking around in their bright blue shorts. It makes sense in terms of the heat though!
So…what percent of the Zentraedi were destroyed/defeated? Was it a minority of them that attacked Earth, was it the majority?
The big battle of Space War 2010 involved an entire Bodol-class fleet of 4.8 million ships. Yes, in one battle. Yes, it was glorious. Yes, singing was involved.
There are estimated to be up to 2,000 such fleets in the Galaxy. All of them considered “rogue” which is strange since only the survivors of Space War I who defected to the Miclones are not rogue.
—Universe Notes—
The first beings in the galaxy were supposedly the Protoculture, though Macross Frontier suggests that they were in awe of the Vajra. In Macross 7 it is suggested that this Protoculture suffered an Atlantean fate. Nonetheless their main enemies were the Galaxy-eating Protodevlin (verily, Space Vampires; I wish I were kidding, they are also susceptible to the power of rock).
The Protoculture “cultured” the Zentraedi to fight the Protodevlin, who responded with abducting both Protodevlin (human sized) and Zentreadi (giants) to form their own forces (there are just about 7 or so actual Protodevlin beings). This is called the Supervision Army — the longstanding enemy of the Zentraedi.
The SDF-1 Macross is a Supervision Army gunship that crashed on Earth in 1999.
I don’t get one thing: you say “the Protodevlin, who responded with abducting both Protodevlin (human sized) and Zentreadi (giants) to form their own forces”. Why would the Protodevlin abduct themselves??
Also, has there been procreation between Protodevlin and Zentraedi?
ooops I meant abducting Protoculture and Zentraedi.
Zentraedi have never procreated, until the Miclones got them with “culture.” They have been a cloned race with the relative intelligence of primary school children, albeit filled with military prime directives.
I doubt if Zentraedi mated with themselves much… as the sexes have been segregated ever since the creation of their race. Again, the Miclone culture changed all that.
All this, plays out in the original series.
I see. Thanks.
What is never sufficiently explained is if Klang will always look ‘loli’ when micronized. Could it be that she only looks 7/8 years younger than her true age when in that state? It opens up some interesting possibilities for Mikhail in the future.
It’d set up a Tale of Genji situation, where the 20 yr. old Genji gradually leads a 10 yr. old bride (Murasaki) into maturity. Considering how mature little Murasaki was in some ways, I’m actually starting whether Murasaki was actually a micronized adult?!