Reflections on Macrophilia Appendix 1: Further Reading

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Macross Frontier: The False Songstress

So, I walked myself backwards and decided to watch the first Macross Frontier film, a move I was not expecting to want to make. As I said, it was only the second film's promise of surreal concert visuals which got me up off the couch and willing to give Macross Frontier another shot.

However, I enjoyed the second film enough to try the first one. The real proof of this enjoyment is that it's been over a week since I saw Wings of Goodbye and I can still remember it, still think about it. This probably means it's become a non-SDFM Macross that I've truly enjoyed, moreso than Zero, which I enjoyed, but did not feel like talking about.

The False Songstress is not as engaging as Wings of Goodbye, but nonetheless feels like something that's going to stick with me, if just as a companion piece to get the "full" story embodied by these two movies. Like the second film, it managed, in some way not quite definable, to tone down the aspects that put me off the first series, and make them seem organic. Ranka isn't so cloying, Sheryl's artistic passion is more memorable, Klan Klang's role is so reduced you almost forget that crazy lolicon crap, etc.

Klang is a little worse here because she takes just one childish action: stealing the fishcake from Michel's ramen and running away with it. But, you know, I'll take that over the much longer version of Klang's story, with its failed attempts to wring angst from her position.

There are lots of scenes directly ported from the TV series here, and I couldn't tell which of them had actually been re-animated. None of the concert scenes were as striking as those of the second, and I was a bit uncomfortable with the virgin/whore roles that Sheryl played in one of her songs, though the robots were pretty cool, as was the ending where she is one person with elements of both characters. Ranka in her bikini at the construction site was also a little suspect, too.

While characters usually need conflict, I didn't really buy that Alto wanted to stop being an onnagata because he was losing his identity in his female roles. It makes it seem like piloting was not an individual desire for flight, but just for a fear of not having that most thin and capricious of concepts, "manliness". Come on, Alto…you're better than that. The conflict that rose from doing something different than his family was far more effective. It also wasn't very fleshed-out in the TV series, either, so I guess I don't miss much of Alto's story arc either.

(And Alto still don't look all that girly when not dressed up, either…I think the teasing's more about the roles he played, rather than his looks off the court)

Yay, the Folmo mall scene is still there! (Don't care that it's called "Folrmo" or somesuch thing…Exsedol fans get screwed enough without losing this). I like the way that Michel told Ranka to "come on, prove yourself, instead of moping," which is almost anti-moé in its sentiment, although I think Michel did the same thing in the TV series. Mr. Kridanik is still hilarious, though the animation when he sticks his face in Ranka's and starts chattering at her is a little bit disturbing.

(I still wonder whether that oni-looking Zentradi who also works for Mr. Kridanik has a name or not. He shows up several times here.)

I'm pretty much spinning my wheels with the commentary here, but I did like it. Most of the time I don't think a TV series can be improved by trimming it down to its barest of bones, but in this case, Macross Frontier was so one-ear-and-out-the-other for me, that I find myself going after the film version with a new vigour. I don't really miss anything that was lost, and that's only out of what I can actually remember of the TV series.

It doesn't change how I feel about the rest of Macross (and I still wince whenever someone says "Deculture!"), but it's nice to have something to enjoy. I think I'm even getting ready to declare myself a fan of Sheryl Nome.

Macross Frontier: The Wings of Goodbye

Okay. Okay, okay. Before I go on and say what I feel about Zentradi characters created after SDFM, and thus depress myself, I have to point out that I enjoyed Macross Frontier: The Wings of Goodbye, which puts it next to Macross Zero as the only non-SDFM Macross I enjoyed, though never for lack of wishing there were more.

Wings of Goodbye was pretty to look at, and toned down many the things which put me off Macross Frontier. Furthermore, without any deep emotional investment in the original series, I wasn't bothered by seeing it stripped down to its bare bones, then sometimes choppily recapped through admittedly fantastic animation.

I was open to Macross Frontier, eager after the very pretty and very exciting first episode. Yet, it started to feel so…slick and so calculated, with this choking saccharine quality. So much didn't feel organic, but simply manufactured for a certain appeal. Yet there were story aspects that I thought I could have liked, under other circumstances, and The Wings of Goodbye made me remember some of those things.

Sheryl Nome, is one of those characters who leaves me wondering why I don't like her. She was pretty fanservicey, but again, it felt toned-down enough to be natural and tolerable. But more than that, I realized she was a very passionate character. Not obnoxious like Nekki Basara, just…she knows what she wants, is playful, smart, and focused, but it's not as a loudmouth Canon Stu/Sue. Cool, in short. She's not just here because a Macross casts "needs" an idol...it's a fundamental part of who she is. She's writing song lyrics on the prison wall with her own blood---now that's hardcore!

Her previous concert sequences are also impressively, wonderfully surreal. It starts with a wedding where Sheryl is both the bride and groom, and turns into Sheryl as a nurse, surrounded by giant test tubes, flasks, and…vines? And more holographic Sheryls grown in these huge test tubes. There's even a Pink Floyd moment where both bride-Sheryl and groom-Sheryl's heads turn into flowers and twine together. Between the weirdness, the flowers, and the cross-dressing, I was seeing some Utena here, and that can only be a good thing. I was never expecting an anime concert sequence to be this imaginative and exciting.

Alto Saotome, another character I thought could be a jackpot, is less bland than I remember him being in Macross Frontier proper. Sadly it's missing much of his conflict over transitioning from a Kabuki onnagata (performer playing female roles) to a pilot, which was a very Macross concept: a character moving beyond their pre-ordained role to get what they want.

He's about as passionate in Sheryl in his desires, which is part of the reason why, though I wasn't tremendously invested in the story, I was in favour of AltoxSheryl. (Though having them meet as children was pretty cheesy)

AltoxRAnka was merely the typical romantic pairing where the man only falls in love with the woman because of her fairy-like qualities, rather than anything they actually have in common. Sheryl asking Alto to stop flying thus seems entirely contradictory, when their mutual passions could be a source of their strength, and when she would balk at being asked to give up her own dreams. The story needs conflict, but….it doesn't work for me. It's also a callback to the original Macross.

Ranka was one of the things I disliked about Macross Frontier. I believe everything bad about moé despite never seeing a moé series, and so Ranka has always been pretty stomach-turning. Yet here, though Ranka was still pretty cutesy, she seemed…organic. Her sugary sweetness was brought to tolerable levels, and felt "natural" to the character rather than just going overboard to reach a demographic. Also, I liked her fairy tale-inspired concert sequence, especially the design of "dapper" Ranka with her pastel waistcoat and top hat. The concert's English catchphrase "Open Ranka!" still sounds like creepy innuendo, but it can't spoil the whole thing.

Naturally being a film adaptation, the roles of the secondary characters are truncated, some to the extent that they would seem pointless to a viewer who didn't know about the TV series (and even so...). Once again, this trimming actually works for me, because I see less of Michel and Klan Klang, and Michel doesn't die.

Not that I had any particularly strong feelings for Michel, but at least no one's trying to make a poignant character out of creepy fanservice character Klan Klang. In fact, we see so little of Klang here, that at least in this second film, her transformation to a childlike version of herself when micloned seems like a more neutral quirk, rather than a source of lolicon. Even seeing her in a bikini, one can imagine she's just short rather than childlike. I don't know what exactly makes the difference here, but it does...somehow.

I did miss Richard Birler, but he's just a C-lister for me, and nothing to get too upset over. Elmo Kridanik would be harder to get rid of, and I'm glad that he's there for a few scenes. I really thought they we going to kill Luca off, but I guess not. No big deal.

I can't think of anything else to say much about the secondary cast. Mishima was as graspingly evil as before, so that I cheered when  his head was blown off, not being of the school of thought that it's wasteful to actually dislike characters so obviously designed to be disliked. It also struck me how much his hairstyle looks like it could belong to a Yu-Gi-Oh! character.

I was surprised that the film attempted to humanize Grace. It worked a bit better, mostly because it toned down that silly "cybernetics are evil" theme. I was surprised how much gore went into her destruction, and how creepy the "tank" holding her co-conspirators was, kind of techo-Lovecraft.

I must also add that Ai-Kun is still the cutest thing on six retractable legs, especially because he never moults. While it's still questionable that giant space bugs would start life as tiny marketing-friendly monsters, I can't deny the result is effective.


I did love the image of Macross Quarter in battroid mode "surfing" its way to the ground. While there are certain times when Macross takes its absurd aspects too far, this scene went down easy, because the franchise is, at best, a mixture of the absurd and poignant in the smoothest fashion.

Because I did not grow to like Alto enough, I wasn't bugged by the unexpected ending where he disappeared. The same with Sheryl in the hospital, though her fate was even less ambiguous. I, at least, feel safe in believing that both characters are likely to return at the end, because otherwise it would be too bleak.

Among the other plot points I don't miss are the high school angles, and the panty-chase, which I'm told have also disappeared from the first film. Joy of joys, instead of "Fastest Delivery" we have the prison scene, where Ranka stages a concert with some other characters who are dressed as Fire Bomber, in order to provide cover for Sheryl's rescue. It's that kind of blatant callback to earlier series that usually make me wince but here it was…unnecessary, but tolerable. It's not Fire Bomber that I had a problem with, after all, but Nekki-friggin-Basara, the frontman.

A purple-and-blue coloured Zentradi appears for a minute, watching Ranka from the prison crowd, and he's obviously meant to be Temujin, a one-shot antagonist from the original series who was an apparent clone of Kamjin Kravshera (Khyron) and acted almost exactly like the original character. Here, as just a random prisoner enjoying a concert who happens to look a bit like an older character, he's palatable.

In fact, I liked the whole removal of the "Fastest Delivery" episode. More on that before this, and after this, but I don't want to clog up this particular review. Suffice it to say, it's now not about Zentradi being disposable victims/comic relief in a way that makes no sense, but just mixed-race prisoners enjoying a concert, and that's good.

(Klan asking the Zentradi in the crowd to "stir up [their] blood" is probably only something a young whippersnapper like her could say--it'd be easy to think of modern Zentradi as having some special fighting quality when you've only seen them fight voluntarily and perhaps then with true passion. Silly girl.)

Although I only picked up this movie for the promise of cracked-out concert scenes (and boy, did it deliver!) I ended up enjoying it on a larger level as well. It still feels rather clunky, not fully surrendering itself to the pacing and stylistic conventions of a film, but I've enjoyed it more than I have anything Macross in a long time.

I think…I will try to watch the first one, too.

Halloween Image Macro

Halloween 2011

My Halloween costume: an elegant Turkey Vulture

It Cannot Be Sweetened

The Nostalgia Chick reviews The Lion King

Now, normally I love The Nostalgia Chick, and the rest of this website. But c'mon…it's not that she inadvertently disagrees with part of my critique of The Lion King, namely the hyena-based bits of that whole "the natural order cannot be changed" thing, but that she does it in that particular way. It's the theory that the legitimacy of complaints about a film's unsettling subtext is measured by whether or not said subtext actually drives people to commit similar actions.

Naturally, that would make The Lion King SOL, since of course nobody was driven to support racial segregation because of its positively-portrayed analogue in The Lion King, or to dislike hyenas even more than they already would. But discussing the progressive values of films, or their lack thereof, isn't about literal goals or literal expressions…it's a discussion for its own sake. If it serves any political purpose, it's about calling attention to tropes which reflect rather than create the attitudes of society, and these tropes often don't reflect things literally.

Hence why I agree that pointing to the hyena's VAs as evidence of the "racial segregation" subtext is pretty flawed, because Simba's parents are portrayed by black actors, too, and Jim Cummings was white. Instead, the hyena plot is part of the film's larger theme that there is a natural order that should not be changed, and the hyenas living where they did, and apparently being unable to better themselves, is part of that natural order--it's the unspoken dark side of the "Circle of Life". These kinds of themes aren't expressed maliciously, or intended to refer to anything in the real world: this is all about subconscious, nigh-universal themes that are, sadly, expressed in stories all over the world. Nobody at Disney wanted to use this as racial propaganda.

However, I was in a different way uncomfortable for what's basically an argument from popularity. Hyenas aren't as liked by the public, so nobody would go to see a movie called "The Hyena King" (or wouldn't it really be a "Queen"?). …and? So? It serves as a justification if you're asking why a film that wanted to make tons of money went with "majestic" animal protagonists, but this argument seems to be more about storytelling--that if an animal stereotype exists, there's no complaint to be made against using it.

Even if this logic is restricted only to animal stereotypes, it's still trying to justify a formula solely by its longevity, and often these issues are just a matter of presentation. After all, look at Ratatouille. It took mammals that were as much maligned as hyenas and made something that was a mainstream success out of it. This fits with the video's notion that Pixar is more risky, but the issue isn't discussed in terms of the stuido's willingness to take risks, but just that no one would be interested in a film about hyenas. Come on, what if the hyenas looked like this? Or if you want to just go to Disney, think about Gaston from Beauty and the Beast--he was an intended subversion, and it didn't hurt the film at all.

Also, also, also, my interpretation was that Scar's reign was meant to have caused the drought somehow. Over-hunting by the hyenas (it would fit the rest of the movie so well if their desire for food was from greed rather than starvation) or whatever you want to say, it's meant to be symbolic. This isn't just the dry season, this is Fisher King territory.

Timon and Pumbaa are still annoying.

The Kimba thing isn't just about rhyming protagonist names and lions on cliffs. It's the fact that many of the TLK characters have Kimba counterparts in terms of species/role/appearance, and that Disney is keeping its lips zipped about the idea. Still quite a shame.

Dammit, Scar, you used to be so cool, slithering around and snarking on the pomp and circumstance of the kingdom, but you turned out to be a moron.

I've gone over and over on it in my head, and I still can't accept that the later plot hinges on the entire cast doing absolutely nothing until Simba grows up.

Finally, I did see the film in 3-D, too, out of nostalgic value. But I had watched it just prior to making my blog post, and of course nothing changed between that viewing and the theatrical one. My heart soared at the beginning, but my rational mind soon set in. Things have changed with me.

Hill House, Not Sane

Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has become a personal icon of mine, one of my all-time favourite novels. It is unconventional in a way that I like, restrained admirably but layered with irony and still genuinely creepy, and overall a wonderful piece of literature. I'm a fan of Jackson's work in general, but this is the top.

However, I had the grave misfortune of seeing Jan de Bont's 1999 film version of The Haunting of Hill House before anything else. Fortunately, it didn't stick with me, didn't colour my later interest in the novel and the first film.

In fact, it's a pretty blessing that I forgot about 1999 version, because this recent review by The Nostalgia Critic shows me what I couldn't recognize before: not only is it a genuinely bad movie (all I remembered that the house looked bitchin' cool and nothing else was memorable), but it is horribly contradictory to the spirit of the original book, having big scares and a main character who becomes an actual heroine.

Besides that unknowing blunder, my history with Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House began when I took an interest in Stephen King's non-fiction book Danse Macabre, a book I'd picked up in the tornado of King obsession when I was a kid, but never read because I had discovered it was non-fiction. As an adult, though, it's a great read, an overview of the horror genre that is part informal criticism, part memoir.

King makes much of Shirley Jackson's book, coming back to it several times when discussing haunted house stories. Yet what stood out to me above everything else was his excerpt of the book's first line: "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." It's such a wonderful line, expressing, in Jackson's excellent style, that fantasy is intrinsic to existence. It also composes part of one of the most effective openings I've ever read, engaging the reader while giving away so little. We are left to wonder how this relates to Hill House, which then is described as "not sane".

The entire book is fascinating. Firstly, it is an interesting take on the haunted house story: slow and introspective, but it works so well, better in that form, in fact, because it is more unusual. I'm not a big horror reader, but I love brooding stories if the characters are compelling. The Haunting of Hill House is also layered with irony: while the scares are genuine, there is little real sympathy for the mousy protagonist.

The Haunting of Hill House offers no such easy paths, of course, but if we were to measure things in degrees, Eleanor just feels like she is less meant to be loved than simply pitied, or even perhaps hated. She is a child in an adult's body, and easily taken (figuratively and literally) by the house, which she is convinced loves her. Her immaturity and her giving into the house is not tragic but blackly comedic. It is clear that her personality is the result of her terrible home life, but nonetheless, she is at fault, and cannot escape. We just watch Eleanor, a bug inside the terrarium, with a clinical tilt of our heads. I don't love Eleanor, but I enjoy watching her self-destruction.

It's a fascinatingly different way to handle a protagonist, and it's what makes the 1999 Eleanor's transformation into passionate heroine so painful to see. It's completely a misfire, turning her into something crass and...uh, "common", especially when nobody seems to realize the stupidity of a woman who's been crushed by her own family unironically using the force of familial love to banish the horrible father-demon.  Jan de Bont can't even make Eleanor's spine-growth convincing, either. This is why we have people who hate adaptations, folks.

Robert Wise's original 1963 version, however, is far better. It is elegant and effective, complementing the book perfectly, not only through faithfulness, but in simply being good. I've been able to track down a DVD copy, and look forward to watching it, in the spirit of the season.