After the steady stream of glowing accounts of writing upon giant panties, we finally found a contrarian:

But compared with the riveting romance entanglement seen in Macross Plus, Macross Frontier has approached the romantic aspect in a wholly uninteresting way. [...] Presently, I couldn’t care less who Alto ends up with. I like all three characters here, but because their relationships are so trifling, developments like this don’t seem to matter.

Unlike Sheryl’s number in the first episode’s concert scene, Ranka’s spot in the limelight was marred by cheap-looking animation. Actually, this whole episode was plagued by typical problems in tv anime: unnaturally empty background scenes, or, if they do have people they’re completely stationary to the point where it becomes a pretty big distraction. When clapping kicked in in the song, and it panned over a completely still audience, it just felt too cheap to ignore.

This is why Azumanga and Lucky Star use placeholders for background characters.