This time, Ms. Saotome is appearing as green-haired Ranka in a Macross Frontier send-up. She blogs:

Today, TMA filmed the Ranka from XXcross cosplay.

I was able to do the dance numbers without any problem thanks to everyone who supported me.

It was the first time I wore a wig, first color contact lenses and first green eyebrows.

So everything else in the movie she had already done? (And bwah? Dancing? Again?) Odd that TMA's iDOLM@STER parody got shitcanned while this very blatant Macross Frontier adult movie grinds on. Sure, we don't know why that iDOLM@STER parody was canned, but we can throw out educated guesses. The dancing? No. Fucking. Clue. Maybe something like this.

Pretty sure the Macross legal eagles are as good as the ones at Namco Bandai, so what gives?

Sidenote: Namco Bandai just released PSP title Macross Ace Frontier, so...

キラッ [ネコ耳ぱるふぇ]

It’s strange to pick up a PSP and not just play a PSP game, but enjoy it. It’s been a while. But enjoy Macross Ace Frontier I did, finding the game to be one of the smoothest, most responsive and action-packed PSP games I’ve seen in a long time.

Most PSP game are sluggish. This isn’t. Your veritech pitches and rolls quickly and smoothly, with a consistently high frame rate untroubled by the enemies and missile trails flying around you.

Controls are of course a little tricky – made trickier by having three separate schemes for each transformation mode – but if I can get the hang of them in a 15-minute presentation without knowing any Japanese, they can’t be too hard. Those worried about input, know that the PSP’s awful analogue controls are used for toggling stuff, not for movement, which is handled surprisingly well by the d-pad.

As a Macross game, this is the best one since Super Dimensional Fortress on the PS2. I couldn’t really make out things like music (too loud) or plot (it was in Japanese), but it certainly looks the part, and the battles are fast enough to pay their respects to the franchise. Letting off a salvo of swirly missiles before transforming into robot mode and blasting with your rifle – the kind of little touch that’ll make all the difference to a Macross fanboy – is both easy and really, really satisfying.

One thing to note, though, before you think of importing this: it’s heavy on Japanese text. As an example, you don’t just jump in and start shooting; missions are precluded by a “hangar” mode, where you need to go through a ton of menus and screens configuring your payload, craft, etc. Sure, you could hope and pray for a Western release, but with that looking unlikely your time would be better spent brushing up on your kanji.

Please publish Macross: Ace Frontier for the PSP in the West. Please.

Kind Regards,

Everybody.

[via Matix @ NeoGAF]