I’ve been diligently keeping up with this season’s anime line-up, and even added a few more to my list: Toshokan Sensou and Kurenai. Kurenai is especially good, in an artsy kind of way. But by far the best one of the bunch, further reinforced by this week’s fantastic episode, is Macross Frontier. I would’ve thought that their somewhat shallow but heavy on the production values first episode hinted at this season’s incarnation of Gundam 00, but I was very wrong. The writing is fantastic. Gundam’s weakest link is one of Macross’s greatest strengths.
Now I’m not saying that Macross is on par with Serial Experiments Lain or Ouran. But for a mecha anime, it has a surprisingly amiable cast of characters, none of which (so far) annoy me to the huge extent that Gundam 00’s Gundam Boys did. Even the supposedly snotty brat archetype, Sheryl Nome, is quickly becoming my favorite female character of the bunch. Even above loli-favorites Ranka and now Klein Klein (Klan Klein?).
The last 5 minutes of episode 6 reinforced my love of Macross. It shows that even without the glorious mecha battles, which from episodes 1, 2 and 4 we know they can do a fantastic job at, Macross can still create an episode that I could rank at the top of the season.
