SUPER DIMENSION FORTRESS MACROSS
EPISODE 34: PRIVATE TIME
ICONIC SCENE: Alone again, naturally.
STORY DATE: November 2011
BROADCAST DATE: June 12, 1983
1. This episode, this episode, this FUCKING episode… Seriously, everything was kinda okay before now… Hikaru was sort of a dick, but Misa could look past that, but HERE…
2. Okay, so Hikaru and Misa ended up together last time (just as they did in Episode 27). Misa has made sandwiches for their picnic together. Hikaru gets a call. It’s Minmay. She wants to meet up. Hikaru has already planned the date with Misa, but decides to break it for Minmay. THIS IS NOT HER FAULT. THIS IS ALL ON HIM. He calls Misa to cancel, but she’s already left her barracks. He shrugs his shoulders (metaphorically).
3. Oh, hey… Hikaru arrives in the good ol’ Fanliner. I guess that was a gift from Minmay…? Huh. Then she greets him in disguise… does she know he’s hooked up with Misa? No. Does he tell her? No.
(I will say this… Minmay seems flirtier than usual, fixing Hikaru’s tie and clinging to his arm. But still… she doesn’t know that he’s going out with Misa now.)
4. Again, I love the interiors of the cafés and restaurants in this show. The always look so invitingly ’70s. This one seems to have very few tables for the amount of space there is, and Minmay says that a lot of celebrities come here, so I’m guessing it’s pretty pricey (and pretty empty… how many celebrities are there on this post-apocalyptic earth?). Again, this isn’t Hikaru’s world, and his reactions demonstrate that pretty clearly.
I like the bit where he asks where Minmay’s manager is, and her face suddenly falls.
Then she gives him the fateful present, a scarf. It’s monogrammed, but he doesn’t know that yet.
5. And just as things are starting to heat up between them, Kaifun shows up and ruins everything. (And I also have to fault Hikaru for just sitting there when Kaifun throws water in Minmay’s face. C’mon, man, at least SAY something…!)
Anyway, it seems like a blessing in disguise, because he says farewell to Minmay, and now he can still get back to his picnic with Misa!
But, no… he just stays in the restaurant and gets drunk at the bar, while Misa is still waiting for him way over in Macross City. This, needless to say, is a terrible choice.
6. Soon, we see him driving… I’m not sure when in the day this is supposed to be, because the bartender already cut him off for having too much. Has he sobered up yet, or no? And suddenly NOW he’s concerned about making his date with Misa. Where was this resolve an couple of hours ago?
7. So some Zentradi are attacking the airport, and Hikaru commandeers a Destroid Spartan to fight them off. There’s a great bit when one of the Zentradi fires a gunpod into an office at the airport, and one guy is clinging to a woman, and he basically SHOVES HER AWAY, RIGHT INTO THE LINE OF FIRE to get out of there. I guess chivalry IS dead, huh?
Although my favorite bit is when Hikaru defeats one of the Zentradi by slapping him on the ass. Admittedly, a spank from a Destroid is probably painful, but… really?
8. So Misa gets a little bit of affection from a cute little dog (named “Shane”), and then Hikaru shows up, acting quite relieved that Misa is still waiting there. And Misa seems thrilled to see him. She ALMOST seems angry, but not quite.
So they go for a stroll, arm in arm, and he puts the scarf that Minmay gave him around Misa’s shoulders. And, in a moment of well-deserved karma for Hikaru, she sees the monogram., and realizes that it’s a gift from Minmay, and suddenly grasps why he was so late.
Okay, this is already EXTREMELY dickish of Hikaru. Misa manages to gather together the self-respect she’s been ignoring for the past year or so, and walks off. Hikaru runs after her, making matters worse with a “This isn’t what it looks like!” protestation, even though it’s EXACTLY what it looks like. She leaves him by himself as it begins to snow.
Are we supposed to feel sorry for him…? I sure don’t. He has strung Misa along mercilessly for a couple of years now, fantasizing about Minmay the whole time. He has shown Misa no consideration whatsoever. And she’s finally had enough, and who can blame her?
And yet, we can’t let her off the hook, either, since she’s been sitting around and TAKING HIS SHIT all this time, expecting something to change. As I said before, she’s a total doormat. Walking off here is the best moment she’s had in these post-war episodes.
(Are you, uh, beginning to see why I’m not overly fond of these episodes…?)
9. As for Minmay, she’s come out the best, so far, just by being away from all the drama and having no idea that any of it has been happening. But that’s about to change, and she’ll soon have her turn to be completely awful.
It starts here, where she has her concert, but refuses to sing and walks off stage.
Kaifun follows her, and gives her a smug lecture about how selfish she is and how hard he’s worked for her. It would be easy to hate how self-satisfied he is here, except that he’s not entirely wrong. She IS being childish , and deserves everything he says to her. Then, after telling her that she’s wrecked everything, he walks off and out of the show.
While it’s great that Kaifun has finally left the cast, never to be seen again (except in Do You Remember Love, Macross the First and as the producer the awful Fire Bomber American album), one wishes he hadn’t been able to walk off with such a sense of superiority.
But life’s like that, isn’t? Conceited jerks like Kaifun rarely realize how conceited they are, and can’t make an exit without pulling other people down. Anyway, good riddance, asshole.
10. So: two good things happened here. Misa finally got fed up with Hikaru’s dithering, and Kaifun’s gone. Additionally, this episode has the final Star Pro scenes in any episode, and for Star Pro, they’re honestly not terrible. Nothing like episodes 25 or 32, that’s for sure. It helps that the OTHER scenes here all look excellent.
I remember Renato saying once that he couldn’t really get involved in the characters (or as he put it, “lost in that world”), because these episodes are so clearly makeshift. Me, I can’t help it. Hikaru totally pisses me off here, and I think Misa is pretty pathetic. Again, Minmay comes out the best here, but we’ve still got two episodes left.
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