This anime is easily the worst I've ever seen and forced myself to sit through, merely because of the weight the name of its forebear carries. And like every epic disaster, a bit of postmortem is in order.
First I'd like to point out that that two positive reviews skew right to 10 despite glaring and obvious weaknesses across the board, and shouldn't be taken seriously by any means. 10 means a masterpiece, and even were a reviewer lobotomized, this wouldn't make that grade. Now, on with the review.
Animation [5/10]: Despite the apologists noting what era this was produced in, many shows that were contemporary to it have far better animation, and in fact this production loses out in most scenes to shows produced in the 80s including, say, Dragonball. While it is a step up from the original SDF Macross, particularly in the mechanical bits (the original SDF transforming was painful to watch), this is by no means smooth. Set design is weak and generic, and the mech design, which should ostensibly be of high caliber in a story that to some degree is mech-centered, is flat and uninteresting, which is a shame considering how its forebear managed to, with a few tweaks of signage on Skull Squadron, make units stand out. The custom units were especially poorly designed, particularly the faces which were ridiculous. In addition, with the exception of Gamlin and Mylene, everyone basically wears the same outfit throughout the entirety of the series.
Sound [4/10]: The seiyuus for Maylene, Max, Milia, and Ray did an excellent job with the script that was afforded them. However, dialogue was overall wooden and both uninteresting and unconvincing otherwise, and the repetitiveness of set pieces ('Listen to my song!!!', 'My name is Gepernich') grew tiresome very, very quickly. In addition, while the music is meant to be the mainstay of this series, I found most of the songs, while well-written, to be produced badly and performed really unacceptably by Fukuyama, Basara's singing seiyuu, who has trouble keeping pitch in any upper register, and applies a truly awful artificial vibrato which takes him an extra 5-10 cents off key. This combined with the mediocre timbre of his voice makes for an unpleasant experience. This is a shame, because the seiyuu responsible for Maylene's singing was quite good, and I wasted the better part of an hour looking for a version of Holy Lonely Light that was Maylene-only. When I compare the production value of these tracks against music which came out several years earlier (for example, Breaking Heart from Kimagure Orange Road, or any of several excellent tracks from Bubblegum Crisis) I find myself quite disapointed with their arrangement, soundstage, dynamics, and more or less every part of the recording.
What really forced me to lower this score, however, was the incredible repetition of the few core songs over the course of the series. What made the music in the aforementioned KOR and BGC good was that the sole plot device wasn't centered around music, so the overall density of the songs was acceptably low. But when you watch 49 episodes plus three OVAs plus a movie, etc. etc., and hear 'Planet Dance' sixty times, it makes you want to hurl something at the screen. This is only compounded by the poor quality of the sound engineering mentioned above.
[I'll leave the Story and Character sections for last...]
Value [2/10]: The entertainment per unit time for this show is entirely too low. I'll explain why in a moment.
Enjoyment [1/10]: See below.
Character [1/10]: The character development in this series is nothing short of abysmal. The two reviewers who gave this anime a 10 and an 8 respectively must not read very much, or watch any form of entertainment which has a character-driven plot. I'll break this down character by character for clarity.
Max- The captain is past his glory years, and in the first few episodes it is revealed that his erstwhile happy marriage to Milia is on the rocks. The two interact seldom during the course of the show, and the strokes that show they still have feelings for each other during these instances is rather heavy-handed. Still, nothing develops - they don't get back together, and aside from leaning on each other once at a concert, shows of affection between the two are thin on the ground. He ends the series in exactly the same position he began it in. Growth/change: zero.
Milia- Similar to Max, except that she has the benefit of interacting more with Mylene during the course of the story. Still, her story is not developed, her motivations are obvious from the first few episodes and aren't explored in any meaningful way. She's technically a side character, so this is to be expected. Growth/change: zero.
Rex- Head of the biker gang who serves as a romantic foil for Mylene's relationship with Basara. Possessed briefly and tries to seduce Basara - nothing happens. She returns to silent pining. We learn nothing about why it is she's interested in Basara, or any of her other underlying motivations. Growth/change: zero.
Various Pilots- Total ciphers. Aside from one maudlin and banal aside about a family and a music box, these are cannon fodder and the viewer feels no emotion for them as they are casually mowed down by the Protodeviln. Growth/change: zero.
Ray- We learn a little about Ray's backstory and how he meets Basara - and it's significant to note that he is the one character who has some kind of underlying rationale for what he's doing. Still, that one fact is all we ever learn about him, and again, another single heavy-handed demonstration of his character in aiding Basara despite heavy wounds (though he could as easily have simply told him where to go) is supposed to get the viewer on his side. Growth/change: minimal.
Veffidas/Flower Girl- These are effectively the same character, and reinforce the paper-thin character development of this story. Zero is known about their motivations, feelings, thoughts, or attitudes - their very silence is a running gag on how dispensable all the characters except Basara are to the storyline. Growth/change: zero.
Mylene- Mylene is a likably designed character, and it's a pity the story wasn't written around her. In the first few episodes we learn about her relationship with her parents, and over the course of time her love interests develop - but these are painted with broad strokes and flow very unnaturally. In addition, while we are shown how things are, we never learn how things came to be that way, or why; for instance, we see in a later episode the events surrounding Mylene joining Fire Bomber, but we never hear why. We never hear why she objects to living at home, or why she becomes initially interested in Gamlin. We understand her, but it's because we've seen characters constructed like her before in better-plotted anime and draw from that. Growth/change: some.
Gamlin- Gamlin is another character who is developed - to a degree. We see his angst over the death of his comrades, which is always a good quick-fix; yet despite this he remains chipper and upbeat for the remainder of the series. He's an ace pilot and apparently relatively attractive, but there are no parallel women to foil his relationship with Mylene as there are in the case of Basara. Essentially he's just there as a spoiler for Basara; a contrasting juxtaposition of the warrior versus the pacifist.
Basara- Basara is, in my opinion, the single worst character I've ever seen written in any of the hundreds of anime I've ever watched. This is saying a lot. He's barely one-dimensional as a character, made of pure irrational id with no superego to mold him into a decent person, and yet nobody seems to take serious enough issue with this to hit him or leave. His character is developed in an incredibly difficult to beleve manner insofar as in any situation approaching reality, he would either live in complete solitude having abused and annoyed every acquaintance he had, or been killed several times over for the same reason. His skillset (ace pilot, rock star, motorcyclist, brawler) is never explained, and the acquisition of at least two of those skillsets runs directly counter to his supposed pacifism. His motivations are also horribly written and fleshed out - he believes in his song to the exclusion of all else, including people being drained of life left and right, and he only questions in episode 33 of 49 for the first time why he sings. In short, he's a farce - too serious to be camp; Kamina without any of the cool or manliness.
Story [1/10]: I really wish I could give this a negative number. The story is essentially like Haruhi S2's Endless Eight, but extended to 35. Concert, Enemies Attack, Military is Ineffective, Basara Sings, Repeat. Without the burden of character development or new songs to deal with, this could easily have been an eight episode anime. But the repetitive nature of the story is not the real problem - the real problem is the plot.
Basara starts out in episode 1 with a custom Valkyrie which is a prototype that not even the military has until halfway through the series. It is later revealed that this was part of a plan to have him be a member of Sound Force, a team of soldiers who would combat their enemies with music. But none of this holds water - why choose a pacifist? Why choose an unknown musician when there are clearly other, more popular musicians available? Why is Basara special and how did they know that in advance? What about the fact that sound doesn't travel through the vacuum of space? Why is the control mechanism a guitar if the pilot merely needs to sing? How did they know they'd encounter a new race of aliens that reacted to music when it had never happened before the Zentraedi and they didn't even know they existed until SDF Macross?
The entire plot is shot through with this kind of imbecility. Ray's old squadron was called the Pink Pecker squadron, which is an obvious, if somewhat outmoded euphemism for male genitalia. Basara flies out and starts singing in the middle of a firefight against an unknown enemy and is not shot at. In fact, despite being an ace pilot he never demonstrates any real talent in maneuvering. And if he's merely broadcasting his singing over the radio, why can't he do it from the safety of the colony ship? What is the point of being 20% closer to the action, particularly as he doesn't move once he's launched? Sivil eats Spirita, so why is she repelled by it as well? And then subsequently revived by it? How does this music suddenly affect spacetime, though Lynn Minmay had no such powers, and neither does anyone in subsequent Macross works (thank goodness)? How did they know they wanted to start Sound Force when the theory was just being developed? Why did they sing as they were escaping from the enemy base rather than sneaking?
Certainly the worst element of the story is Basara himself. While apparently written as an attempt at a camp caricature of an antihero, he succeeds in just being a douchebag. Mylene says it best in episode 15: 'If you'd really wanted to protect City 7, you wouldn't have been singing songs!' His chronic lateness in situations where such lateness means more people are killed and drained, his falling asleep on the battlefield in episode 20, his lack of effort to make himself better, particularly in better sync with his bandmates ('Stop whining and play along with me!','I'll sing what I want, and you all can handle the rest'), his nursing of a protodeviln back to heath by singing to it on a totally unsubstantiated hunch while the city burned around him, etc. etc. all point to severe narcissistic personality disorder.
In the end the series is 50+ episodes of Basara's masturbatory magical girl fantasy in which a reasonable idea about a cultureless race being shocked by things they hadn't ever seen is coopted by music becoming a beam laser for no good reason. It fails to achieve the epicness of scope that the Zentraedi conflict had, and the lead character's total self-absorption, with statements like 'Once I'm out there, I'll sing whatever my feelings tell me!' draw the narrative ever tighter around his ego. After all, it's one thing to be willing to die for your principles and another entirely to let a whole bunch of other people die for your principles - his music is portrayed as obviously more important than all those people getting shot down, despite there being no evidence of this until much later on. Every other character is totally superfluous; it could just be Basara floating with a guitar in the vacuum of space and the narrative would be identical.
Ultimately, the gravest insult is delivered to the viewer when it becomes obvious that Basara is correct in thinking that he's the messiah.
