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The ending to the original Madoka series, as well as the first two in this film trilogy was incredible. It was fantastic and moving and impossibly grand in scale. It ended an amazing show in the most amazing way possible.

It really didn't need a continuation.

This film didn't need to happen.

It's a great attempt, and is probably the best you can possibly do if you absolutely had to follow up the great ending that the original Madoka had, but that doesn't mean it was for the best. It shifts the tone of the entire series and pushes everything further into the weird...

While I can't say I'm ... disappointed this film happened, I just really don't think it needed to.

That said, I have to complain about the sound design...while that was hardly ever a strong point of the series, the extended actions sequences in this film really bring to the fore how mediocre it really is. It seems like they put in sound effects as an afterthought. Considering the robustness of the art design and visuals overall, listening to the same sample be used for every gunshot was jarring.

Oh well.

For me the true ending will be that of the original series and of the second film. This third film, while good, just will never live up to what the original ending accomplished.

What a terrible, terrible waste. A-1 took a fascinating story and utterly ruined it with terrible production. The animation after episode four took a nose dive into low budget garbage and took the entire series down with it. It was nearly perfect in episodes one through four. From five and thereafter, though, it just becomes depressing.

The first anime to come along with such an interesting story since Madoka gets ruined by trash can art.

A part of me died with the art in this series.

This review is spoiler free.

I was excited when a fansub of this film was finally released. The first film remake of Macross Frontier was actually not that bad. It was enjoyable, and the changes they made from the original anime were interesting. This film follows the first.

It's immediately clear that a considerable amount of money went into the production of this film. The CGI effects are a step above what we saw in the original anime. There's more detail, the fights are faster and more frenetic, and the animations are all much more convincing. The battles are fantastic. The music's quality continues to be near ... the top of anime music. The characters themselves suffer from the same inconsistency in their drawings that's plagued this series since the TV anime, but it's become part of its style at this point, I suppose. I'm not a huge fan, but it's digestible.

Everything is so far so good.

Then the movie continues its narrative, and things immediately starts to go downhill. The story continues where the first film left off. More details are revealed about the characters' origins. They're different from the TV anime, and in some aspects more interesting. In others, they're horribly convoluted and feel contrived. The conspiracy to control the Vajra returns, but with immense amounts of absurdity and contrivance added to ensure this film fails.

That's the part I don't understand. The writers jammed so many twists into this film, and featured so many unkillable characters making surprise reappearances, I had to keep myself from fast forwarding between battle sequences. The unkillable characters reach Sunrise anime levels. The story barely ends up making sense at the end. The end itself is fairly interesting, but they take the most inane and unintelligible route to get there.

Even for Japanese anime, which is notorious for ambiguity and stories that end terribly, this film manages to reach its own depth of utter nonsense.

There's a scene where the main cast from the SMS dress up and play instruments on stage with Ranka. Michel plays a guitar. Kanaria plays drums. Clan plays what I presume to be bass. She shoots darts loaded with tranquilizers from the neck of her instrument. Near the end, the Macross Quarter surfs into the atmosphere of a planet on an enormous piece of ship hull. The main characters all "die" at least twice each throughout the course of the film.

Words cannot describe how let down I was by this movie. If you're a fan of Macross, it's worth watching at least once for the battles. Personally, I can never get enough of Macross-style action with the missile trails and transforming fighter planes. This movie, though, managed to get me to delete it as soon as the credits hit. It's amazing.