Macross Zero concludes with the excellent Valkyrie dogfights we would expect, along with a major contribution to the still limited knowledge of the Protoculture that humanity possesses. And on a more personal level the lives of figures who would make their mark later in life are further fleshed out. While Shin and Sarah and Aries and Roy are briefly reunited, they’re split up again as the Anti-UN forces attack and the head of the birdman activates, carrying off Sarah and Aries. As the ancient Protoculture artifacts begin activating events start to approach disaster while the human factions make their final plays for control over the alien technology. Some elements of the story will come to conclusion, while others are left as mysteries to the viewer. In the end the OVA doesn’t directly answer most of the questions it raises, but it does further enrich the Macross universe and shed a little bit of light on history of the Protoculture and it’s role in shaping humanity.
Mao begins to sense those in the presence of the head artifact, letting Shin and Roy know where Sarah and Aries have been taken, though sadly for her she can also understand her sister’s feelings.
I can’t decide if this reminds me more of the start of the first Gundam 0083 opening or the scramble sequence from the original Wing Commander game.
VF-0′s equipped with what looks kind of like a Ghost strapped to them functioning as a FAST Pack kind of add-on.
Nakajima salutes GAR.
And Edgar knocks out the guy manning the catapult controls. That’s a little strong, isn’t it? I’m pretty sure he would have let them go if they tried to convince him, he didn’t sound very adamant about not launching them.
The VF-0′s get their extra equipment, and so do the enemy SV-51′s that they’ll face later.
Onboard the Anti-UN forces submarine, Sarah and Aries are held captive while Dr. Hasford and Nora (I finally remembered the wench’s name!) try to convince Sarah to activate the Birdman to fight for them, employing pressure and vile lies and distortions about the UN forces but making no progress. Hasford tried reminding her of how her father was disappointed that she betrayed their laws regarding contact with outsiders, but even his low attempts at causing guilt do not achieve his objective. Sarah’s distress does start resonating with the artifacts though, causing both the Anti-UN submarine and the Asuka to begin levitating as their respective artifacts become active. As Roy and Shin approach the SV-51s are launched from the submarine to try and fend them off. A larger air battle ensues above the ocean between both sides of the war, but for Shin and Roy it becomes a complex, back and forth duel between the two enemy aces. Shin tries to outmaneuver Nora with a Cobra Maneuver, which she copies, and eventually gets enough room to make a run for the carrier. Roy splits off and fights it out with Ivanov in the midst of the larger air battle.
Somehow I think more people would be killed if the Anti-UN forces got their hands on that thing than would be killed in one more battle.
Shin being pursued by Nora, while Roy attempts to engage her only to be tailed by Ivanov.
Lesser Selvaria assumes that Shin is going for a transformation, so while she mimics the Cobra, her flying is just a little behind Shin’s due to her false assumption.
The double Cobra, followed by Shin’s slide, transformation, and then Death From Above attack (animated .gif).
Even though she didn’t take his side, I’m a bit confused/disappointed with Aries for still moving to stand next to Hasford.
Shin closes with the submarine and punches a hole through it to where Sarah and Aries are, but just as he reaches for them his Valkyrie’s head is shot off by Nora and he begins falling into the ocean, blacking out for a moment. Sarah thinks that she just saw Shin die and her grief and rage calls out to the Protoculture artifacts. Both rip free of their restraints, the head taking Sarah with her, and combine over the ocean. After a trippy restructuring sequence where the machine looks like a flower, it emerges as the Birdman that the Mayan islanders depicted in their drawings and fires a Macross main cannon-sized blast into the escort ships of the UN fleet. While inside the machine asks if she called for it and then asks a series of questions about humanity. When she answers that they haven’t stopped fighting each other it decides that they must be destroyed before they spread chaos into the universe and begins attacking all the nearby fighters and vessels. Sarah’s vision is distorted by being plugged into the machine and each fighter that flies by ends up looking like some sort of creature in her eyes. Shin recovers during this and regains control of his VF-0, returning to his duel with Nora, who bites it when she’s trying to get a good position on Shin and ends up in the path of another main weapon attack from the Birdman. Ivanov sees this and breaks off his dogfight with Roy to make a headlong and fatal attack on the artifact, freeing up Roy to rescue Aries from the collapsing submarine.
The machine seems to know her specifically. Perhaps only those from the island, or only their priests/priestesses, can control it.
Apparently the Protoculture wasn’t looking for rivals, or at least had no problems killing whole populations that might disrupt their order.
An end of game boss if I ever saw one. Could’ve sworn I fought this thing in a Xenogears/Xenosaga game…
Good, just as I had hoped last post, he died gasping on the floor, though having Aries next to him while he did so was too kind a fate for him. With his talk about destruction being necessary to create anything new, no wonder he joined Celestial Being.
Seems she had target fixation. Rather fitting that her hateful way of fighting would be the thing that did her in.
With his human enemies dispatched, Shin turns his focus on the Birdman that has Sarah somewhat controlling it. He’s angry and determined to destroy the machine and free her, but suddenly Mao senses what’s going on and calls to him from the Asuka, her link with the Protoculture artifact allowing her to send some sort of holographic image and voice to Shin telling him that he can’t save Sarah with anger in his heart. He lets go of his anger and is able to hear her song emanating from the machine, and after jettisoning his weapons and stores (just some SUBTLE symbolism there) he manages to avoid the Birdman’s missiles and other attacks, reaching Sarah. She’s overjoyed to see him alive, and this helps her exert more control over the machine. Unfortunately for them, the captain of the Asuka has been ordered to destroy the machine now that it is out of UN control, and has a Destroid Monster fire nuclear artillery shells at it. Sarah says a goodbye to Shin and thanks him for believing in her, then pushes him and his Valkyrie away before the shells hit. Just before they impact she envelopes the Birdman in a shield, containing the blast and radiation within.
Also, “what is thy bidding, my master?”
Despite Mao’s crush on Shin being a non-starter, you could definitely hear the genuine love she had for him in her voice at this point.
Death never looked so pretty. Reminds me of a flower I’ve seen but can’t recall the name of.
Destroid Monster cloaked in shadows next to Mao as it prepares to fire. Not sure if this is a neat visual technique or beating the audience over the head about the matter. Both, I guess.
For such a short series the writers really did an excellent job with Sarah. She ended up having just as much or more depth and richness of character than characters from much longer series.
As the forcefield absorbs the nuclear explosions it radiates outward, catching the aft section of Shin’s engines and part of his tail in the blast and sending him unpowered towards the sea. Once the explosion is over the forcefield contracts to a single point that then flies off into space. Roy succeeded in rescuing Aries from the submarine, but unfortunately not before she was mortally injured by the collapsing hangar deck. Since the doctors could not do anything for her, Roy lands on the beach with her for her final moments. Now we know what Roy had to hide behind his cocky attitude and womanizing before he met Claudia, as Aries tells him that she loves him shortly before her death. Interestingly she says “see, saving the world is easy” in reference to her words, perhaps hoping to prevent some of the feelings that Roy would latter lapse into. In the end he did meet Claudia, was honest with his feelings, and got over his past through that love, but that would take time as we saw in Macross. Shin, still falling towards the ocean with his controls dead and ejection seat not working eventually begins to be guided by Sarah’s ephemeral hands into a glide and he tells her that now he can hear the ‘song’ of the Mayan islanders. Mao watches as his VF-0 still ends up sinking into the water, only to emerge following a school of flying fish, enveloped in blue light that takes him and his Valkyrie shooting up into space in the same manner that Sarah disappeared.
Poor Aries and Roy, though at least her death served to enrich the narrative of Roy’s life.
Sarah is my co-pilot.
It seems that there was still enough power left in the Birdman for Sarah to save Shin, who was hopefully off to join her in whatever part of the universe she went to.
And thus began the storied career of Dr. Mao Nome.
Final Thoughts: – The series as a whole definitely doesn’t answer any questions per se, but it does confirm the genetic manipulation of humans by the Protoculture and very much enriches the background of that race and of humanity. It also gives some more technical and personal detail and laid the foundation for characters and concepts in later series (later meaning later in the Macross timeline.)
- Seeing Roy back before even Claudia’s memories of him was wonderful to see. I’m always a huge fan of series, franchises, and games that develop and change characters over time. Seeing characters being promoted, getting ‘perks and flaws’ to use roleplaying game terminology, and peering into established characters’ pasts always gets points from me, and seeing a younger, somewhat less confident and more serious Roy, who still clearly holds feelings for an old flame of his in almost a lovestruck way, was a perfect prologue to his time in the original series.
- I commented on Sarah as a character before briefly, but to expand on that, even from her first appearances she had complexity. She was a priestess but she wasn’t just ‘the priestess character’ in the ways that she acted towards Mao and Shin. Like an actual human being she was a person who was a priestess but also an islander, an older sister, confident and insecure, caring and abrasive when the situations warranted. While Shin, Roy, Mao, and Aries all had moments of brilliant characterization, I really think that Sarah was the most complete and the most well done of all of them.
- On another thought, the programming of the Protoculture Birdman machine is continuing a thread that at least I perceive as showing that the Protoculture were not exactly the nicest people. Their Birdman was programmed to destroy if humans were to become a threat to them in Zero. From the original series we know that they created an entire race just to fight their wars for them, and possibly even a second race if the Supervision Army was in fact not some part of the Protoculture itself. At the point I’m at in Macross 7, I wouldn’t put it past the Protoculture to have created the new vampiric enemies that the 7th fleet now faces, perhaps as some sort of desperate bid to preserve themselves in the face of destruction. While I’m still gathering all the pieces myself, from what I know at present (original series, DYRL, Zero, first 20 episode of Macross 7, Frontier) they seem more threatening than friendly.
18 Comments
It was a fun ride though a little trippy with floating rocks and shit, but the mecha was nice. You brought a interesting view point to the series since I was distracted by dogfights for the most part. I just rectly noticed how the Bird man with wings spread looks like an angry set of eyes scowling at the primitives below it.
If only Alto-hime got the role of Sara instead of Meyrin…
Spoken like a true broken, beat and scarred member of the Ai Ai Alto-hime brigade.
The one thing I like about macross are the answers aren’t forced feed. If anything they create more questions about an ancient race that may or may not be dead. This give them a lot of room to create in their universe because so much is still unknown.
Back to my theory on pop culture and macross. To me Kawamori actually isn’t about pop culture. He acknowledges that it will always be there, but in the end it will always ring hollow unless there’s true feeling about it. Of the macross series I felt that he was really trying to push that in M7 and a bit in MF.
Over all M0 was a great experiment in CG making all his wet dreams about Valkyrie dog fights come true. Throw in some back story that didn’t really have much impact on the other series and the obligatory “love” triangle and it was probably easy for him to get funding.
Just a tie in to MF, I still don’t get how/why Grace said that the protoculture copied the Vajra. They did a little flash back to the birdman when she mentioned it. It looks nothing like the bug guys (besides the spirals), not to mention its function as a genetic seeder / “project” ender was completely different than how the Vajra behaved. Hopefully this will get a better explanation in the movie. Kinda like what they did in DYRL.
It’s been a great ride going through your retro blog of M0 as it reminds me of how I felt on my first viewing. Looking forward to your opinions of M7
I think it’s mostly because Protoculture used an organic-looking technology.
The Birdman is seems to be a bio-organic weapon, as was the artificial Vajra Queen Grace hijacked at the end of Frontier.
Just wanted to chime in and say the Wing Commander reference was pure gold. First pc game I every beat, and watching that youtube clip brought back a flood of old memories of heading out with Spirit on that very first mission.
Interesting…I never interpreted the Bird-Human’s rather pointed questions as trying to determine if mankind wold be a threat to the Protoculture, I always just thought it was trying to see if they’d gotten their shit together before spreading out into space…Hmm…
But yeah, strange ending, huh? Most posts I’ve read about it absolutely hated it. For some reason, it didn’t bother me. But then, neither did the floating rocks and flying trees and extended nature shots…so maybe I’m just weird.
More like the Protoculture who created the Birdman is worried that Humanity is another mistake and left the Birdman as a failsafe. Which in contrast to the ruin on Rax which can be activated by a hybrid of the subspecies the Protoculture created.
Interesting thing is that the Protoculture was supposed to have forgotten Earth. With the seeding ship blown up by Anti-Stellar Republic forces along with its records. That was 500,000 years ago , a year or more before the Protodevlin. Yet in Aries carbon dating the Birdman it has only been around 10,000 years on that reef.
Yeah the Protoculture could have found Earth again. Kinda like DYRL with that city.
I don’t think the Anti-UN mercs knew Hassford’s real goal. Extermination of the human race with the Birdman starting all over again. Of course despite being the proponent of the Protoculture theory Hasford does not have the whole picture. The Protoculture’s Birdman did not create humanity but only influenced an island tribe. Hassford’s viral theory does hold merit in the Macross universe. There is another miclone race which evolved with the help the Protoculture. The Zolans of Macross Dynamite 7. Who evolved from marsupials while Humans evolved from primates. Macross Frontier’s Michael is said to be a Zolan hybrid descent.
Macross Dynamite 7 is precurssor to several themes in Macross Zero. Namely enviromentalism and how man should be in harmony with nature. Not to mention sisters of a tribe influenced by the Protoculture. In Macross Dynamite 7 it was Liza, Elma and their father Graham. In Macross Zero it is Sara and Mao.
Oh another common theme besides nature is that Zola has its own flying fish like Earth. According to Macross Zero Mayan myths Flying Fish are the children of the Birdman and the Fishman. I’m proponent of the theory that the Protoculture were animists and the mythical Birdman and Fishman respectively represent the Vajra and the Galactic Space Whales. Both naturally space folding creatures.
In the end, they likely didn’t want whoever their successors were who would inherit the Galaxy to be another race of warriors who would only ruin everything in the end the way they did.
The whole thing connected with me on an emotional and thematic level as opposed to a world-building and narrative level. I appreciate the speculative work you’ve done here.
As Yot-chan mentioned, many of us when we first saw this ending hated it. It took me a rewatch over half a decade later before I really just fell in love with it the way I can fall in love with Macross shows.
The Destroid Monster on the deck with Mao looking on is definitely a highlight for me; kind of like the Apsalus firing its main beam weapon — only more awesome.
Actually, if you consider that the humans were created near the end of the protoculture era – right when the Zentraedi and Supervision Army had just about wiped them out, it’s more likely that the “bird human” was designed to wipe out any Protoculture developed races that showed signs of being warlike/militaristic. This makes sense when you consider that the Protoculture Stellar Republic was wiped out in a civil war with both sides using Zentraedi and later the Protodeviln.
Now for more technical facts, the thing on top of the VF-0 Phoenix “Angel” Special Attack configuration is a QF-2200A Ghost unmanned fighter. It was basically a makeshift variant cooked up by the Asuka’s techs to increase the fuel and ammunition that the valk could carry. Unfortunately, it was an unwieldy thing to fly, very much reliant on the skill of it’s pilots of which only 2 are known to have flown it; Shin and Roy.
This last episode had impressive dogfight.
As you said, the Protoculture were never nice people. IIRC correctly, I’ve read Protoculture modified the genes of prehistoric humans to make them similar to Protoculture people, for the preparation of a future colonisation of Earth (which never happen), probably enslaving humans as cheap labor.
For all we know, Protoculture were ultra-militarist, with a knack for W.M.D. weapons (the kind which explode to the face of their owner). They also had a narcissistic trait and very high opinion of themselves, always modifying humanoid species to make them looking like them. Seems the only species capable to really have the capacity to threaten them were the Vajra and the Protoculture itself.
You’re also right for the “vampire” of M7, I don’t want to spoil, but there is a link to Protoculture, but with Macross, almost every series have a link with some Protoculture gizmo going wrong.
Well technically, we never get to know what exactly the Protoculture’s reasons for all the genetic meddling they did. All we know is that they created us and the Zentraedi and there’s enough of a genetic link between us three that we can be considered the same species. There is also some evidence that points to us being closer to Protoculture genetic makeup then Zentraedi which I will not discuss further as it leads to spoilers for Macross 7.
@ Crusader
Thanks. All the naked singing and rocks and stuff was definitely weird, but with powerful Protoculture artifacts around it makes sense technologically, to a degree. That and I refuse to see any la-la wacky spiritual stuff to it.
@ Square
Yeah, not explaining everything gives the creators room to work with in the future and it gives the fans things to speculate about according to their own interpretations. That creative space really helps if it’s a large franchise too. One of the things that bugs me even as I enjoy more UC Gundam is that they just had to make the original conflict a war that only lasted one year. If it were just the original series and 08th MS Team it would be fine, but there’s so much UC stuff that it doesn’t seem plausible that all these various events and technologies were all part of a single year, and that they didn’t affect older parts of the franchise.
On pop culture, feeling is emphasized a lot in the production of pop culture (at least, the music). Minmay lost her reason for singing at the end of Macross so she went away to discover why she continues to sing, and in DYRL she had to find a reason to sing for the big finale of Ai Oboetemasu ka. Frontier emphasized that too, though at this point in 7 I’m not seeing it as much. But I think that on the consumption end he still promotes it as a unifying common ground, that it’s hope for humanity to come together over simple/cheap things that on their own have little value or depth, but as a means to social cohesion and the resolution of conflict have worth.
@ Kasrkin519
I loved the Wing Commander games too, though I played the original and Secret Mission on the SNES back in elementary school. This past year I replayed the game on my computer though, and it was just as much fun playing years later. The branching missions and ending, the variety of characters, and the combat were amazing. I just wish there were more games like it today (or like X-Wing and TIE Fighter.)
@ Yot-chan and ReddyRedWolf
I see two potential interpretations for the same action by the Birdman. The less nasty but still pretty nasty one is that they wanted to prevent a warlike species from breaking out into the galaxy and disrupting their order. The worse one is that they wanted to destroy anyone who might eventually threaten them, whether or not that species would be the aggressor or not. But either way it’s eliminating a species just because they might cause problems.
@ Ghostlightning
Not having to wait so long between episodes likely contributed to my having a more positive impression of the show than the first impression of a lot of people. Together as a series it was a very cool contribution to the setting and universe of Macross with some really amazing dogfights to boot. But if I viewed it in the disjointed manner that it was released I might not have been able to appreciate it as much since some of the experience would fade between episodes.
@ d3v
Where does this more detailed information on the Protoculture and its wars come from, btw? Is it in the series that I haven’t seen yet or is a lot of it in novels/manga/etc?
Ah, I thought that was a Ghost. I was waiting the whole time for it to detach and start flying around on its own to cover Shin or Roy as they did something else.
@ Der Langrisser
I didn’t even think about how the Protoculture were manipulating species to make them look like themselves, you’re right to say that they seemed to be narcissistic. And they’ve left quite the collection of unpleasant artifacts and weapons around for everyone else to deal with, creating some species just for their purposes along the way.
[manually delete/edited myself, I'm still not sure what the issue is with the edit function. -EO]
@ExecutiveOtaku
Most of the backstory of the Protoculture is revealed in Macross 7, although some bits I mentioned aren’t directly stated – rather deducted/theorized based on the information given. Other data comes from multiple source books, later compiled in the Macross Compendium (macross.anime.net – now in wiki format).
As for why they made so many races based on their DNA, the Compendium entry seems to indicate that it was for colonization purposes, creating a protoculture sub-species suited to the environment of s certain planet. The fact that the “bird man” came at a later date then when they started genetically developing humans (around 500,000 BC) seems to indicate that this was a last minute failsafe to make sure that any descendants of the Protoculture did’t develop a militaristic/warlike culture.
You have to put things into context in that at this point in time, the galaxy was in a dark age that had lasted for hundreds of thousands of cycles dominated by warfare between bands of Zentraedi and Supervision Army without any central controlling government. Whoever created the birdman was probably trying to make sure that any new civilizations that developed from the descendants of the protoculture would not continue the cycle of war. In humanities case, this may have worked in our favor since outside of the Zentraedi, we have yet to encounter another protoculture descended race that has militarily opposed us.
Here’s the kicker while Humans got a doomsday weapon Zolan’s got biological language pet interpreters, the furry snakes around their neck.
I’m not saying those Protoculture who left relics on Rax, Earth and Zola are the same group. More likely these are different groups of Protoculture descent left after the Protodevlin got imprisoned. Each with a different agenda. Rax’s message views Hybrids as the sign of peace. The Birdman is a failsafe with the Mayan’s myths as a cautionary tale. Zola well don’t mess with the wildlife.
In Macross Dynamite 7 Zolans can’t read the script written over the bones of Galactic Whales on the whale graveyard. But the furry snakes like Elma’s called Kyaapi can read the scirpt. Most Zolans did not even know the graveyard existed. Galactic Whales have a 7000 year life span with exception of the White Whale which has lived for millions of years. The Protoculture appears to have a healthy respect for the White Whale calling it god-like because it cannot die. A similar reverence to the main Vajra Queen. The space around Zola is not only spawning ground and graveyard for the Galactic Whales but a source of solar energy and regenerating Spiritia from planet Zola for the Whales.
With Galactic Whales and the Vajra it becomes clear why the Protoculture chose the Spiral as their symbol. The structure on the Vajra homeworld is spiral. On Zola a spiral storm of life energy is formed around the Whale graveyard when a Galacttic Whale’s die. Also like birds which we copied the principles of flight both species are natural fold capable species.
It is interesting to note that in Macross Frontier Ricard Bilrer, owner of SMS, dreams of uniting the Children of the Protoculture via Fold Quartz. So far we know only three races that comprise the New UN. Humans, cultured Zentradi and the Zolans. For the Zolans we don’t when first contact was made or when they joined the New UN. Only thing we are sure of they joined probably years after 2012.
It is not as if UN Spacy or NUNS actively seeks out uncultured Zentradi groups or the Supervision Army. That would be suicidal. The fact they haven’t encountered one Boddolle fleet in 50 years is lucky. (Rebel Zentradi did however find and operated an abandoned Mobile Fortress on the fomer UN colony planet Elysium in the PS game Macross Digital Mission VF-X. These Rebel Zentradi developed their own Valkyrie analog the Feios and modern versions of their mecha with Stealth added to their description.)
UN Spacy does however seeks out former Proculture planets. Some with Black Ops written over them. In two instances blowing up on their faces. In Dreamcast game Macross M3 UN Spacy had to send Max and Millia to clean up a mess they made on the planet New Asia, a former Protoculture planet. UN Spacy with the technology there created giant biological weapons Bugs. These insectoid weapons went out of control, they even have a queen bug. In Macross 7 Plus Spiritia Dreaming the Varauta Research Fleet investigates the 4th ice planet unleashing the Protodevlin.
In the Macross Dynamite 7 side story manga Mylene Beat renegade UN Spacy officer Colonel Barton tried to recreate the Evil Series. He hid it from the Macross 7 government. Lucky for Macross 7 it grew attuned to Mylene and likes music. It was unwilling to become a weapon.
To put it short UN Spacy and Protoculture technology bio weapons don’t mix.
@ReddyRedWolf
It’s more likely IMO that the groups for Rax, Zola and Earth are different from each other since there was no more centralized republic at that time and it seems unlikely for a small group to go out to multiple planets so distant from each other with the danger of fleets like the Adolcas lurking around them.
As for the lack of any encounters with any Boddolle fleets (nor any original Supervision Army fleets), makes you wonder if we’re truly lucky or if there’s a deeper reason for that. Possibly that the conflict between them is at a decline (with both groups suffering due to age and attrition). It’s an interesting thought, one that I wish Kawamori and co. would explore in future Macross productions.
@EO
It seems that the pages/scripts that the “Edit” and “Delete” links link to are missing since I keep getting a 404 message when I try to use them.
Death from Above! Ah Battletech, if only the Macross licenses weren’t such a tangled mess…
Out of all the various Macross shows, I found that Zero does the best in terms of using the GERWALK mode, such as how it got used for the DFA attacks as well as hull-down sniping. It really seems a lot more elegant and perhaps even slightly practical (well, relatively speaking in a show about transforming robots) in motion that still pictures of it would suggest.
I believe the flower your thinking of is the lycoris radiata, or the ‘red spider lily’. A beautiful but deadly flower that’s the basis of many legends in Japan. I figured it was symbolism when I first saw this scene, but I could be looking to deeply in to things. Anyway great review as always, can’t wait to read your Macross Plus review!