Macross 7 Trash (2001)

[マクロス7 トラッシュ]

Volume 8

Author/Artist: Haruhiko Mikimoto
Publisher: Kadokawa Comics A

Synopsis:
Enika skips out on her surgery to see Shiba before his match with Jebiru.

Story/Characters:
So here we are, at the end. There's a decent amount of spectacle to the final match and the Enika plot is used to up the stakes for the finale, but I can't help but feel dissatisfied overall. Most of the initial setup in this series gets brushed aside and Vacheron's plot was never fully developed enough to carry much weight. Ironically, I was thinking of how to make the plot better and as far as Vacheron and the Mind System are concerned, my idea was actually pretty close to what's supposed to be going on. It just wasn't built up to have any punch to it. The handling of Shiba and Enika's relationship wasn't great either, so it's hard to root for them. Shoot, you just see a few pages of Movado and Jebiru together and that gave their plot more impact.

I can appreciate that as a spinoff this story isn't supposed to have the same sort of scope as the main series and I'd be fine with a smaller-scale story if the character drama worked better. The main problem is that I didn't like Shiba from the start and he never really improved. I wasn't that enthused by Enika either and Mahara fades into the background at the end. What does that leave us with? Frickin' Pasha? Dagnab Pasha... >_>

Art:
You know the score. The art is first-rate and Mikimoto goes all-out for the climax. If only the story could match the visuals...

Other:
We get one more intermission where Pasha makes Valentine's chocolate for Shiba and he receives them about as you'd expect someone as dense as him would.

Conclusion:
While what we get is perhaps the best that could possibly have been done with the material, I still feel that the potential of this series was wasted. We tie a neat little bow on everything to wrap it up, but it makes everything that happen feel rather trivial and I guess in the grand scheme of things, it is. Readers will want to finish this, but on the merits of the volume alone, it's a solid take it or leave it, which is how I would rate this series as a whole. I won't call this trash, but it's well short of being treasure.

Rating:
50/50