Exsedol Folmo


 * This article is about the character from The Super Dimension Fortress Macross. See Exedore for the derived character in Robotech''.

Exsedol Folmo (エキセドル・フォルモ) is a fictional character in the Macross universe. He first appeared in the original Macross and then in Macross: Do You Remember Love?, Macross: Flash Back 2012, Macross 7, the movie Macross 7: The Galaxy Is Calling Me! and the OVA Macross 7 Encore.

The character was voiced by Ryūsuke Ōbayashi in the original 1982 Japanese animated TV series. In the 2006 ADV Films Dub he was voiced by Andy McAvin.

According to the fictional continuity of Macross, Exsedol is an alien Zentradi records keeping officer (a walking living encyclopedia) attached to fleet commander Britai Kridanik, and would always be seen at the side of his superior during Space War I giving advice. He is a Zem First Class "Archivist" Official in the Britai Fleet and his memory capacity is said to surpass any electronic device that ever existed, as he keeps details of every combat in the entire 500,000 year old Zentradi history for instant recall. During their first contact with the humans and upon their discovery that they were miclones, Exsedol advised that they should be left alone, quoting an ancient Zentradi battle directive. However, this particular piece of advice was ignored by his superiors.

Much later, when the Britai fleet had decided to defect to the humans side, he was micloned and sent to the Macross as a peace envoy. When the war ended and UN Spacy was re-established he joined up as an advisor. Some time later, he reverted to his larger size and his body went through major alterations as a precaution against him losing the trove of information lying in his mind, which explains his altered appearance in the later Macross productions.

Other appearances
Exsedol appeared in the movie The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?, also as a Zentradi advisor who becomes a defector to the human side. However, his appearance was radically redesigned, with a bald, swollen head, green skin, a cloak covering his body, and retractable tendrils for arms.

This design was carried over to his subsequent appearance in the TV series Macross 7, with some slight differences, namely that he has a blue collar, green tendrils, and a slightly darker skin tone. Exsedol in Macross 7 is also rarely seen without a hemispherical cap on his cranium, usually connected to the ceiling.

When the Macross 7 launched, Exsedol joined Cpt. Maximilian Jenius as an advisor aboard the Battle 7, and was a great source of information on the new and unknown (to the humans) enemy, the Protodeviln, though in earlier episodes Exsedol's instinctive terror of the Protodevlin gets the better of him, and he prefers to hide away from the new enemy.

For the entire series, Exsedol is depicted as being at full Zentradi size, initially with his head sticking up through an opening in the bridge floor, close to where Cpt. Jenius sits; several other such openings are seen to exist in the ship, so that Exsedol can participate in military conferences. Sometimes the animation depicts Exsedol as much larger than his original Zentradi form, but that could be attributed to variance in the artwork.

Episode 37 of Macross 7, The Mystery of the Ruins? also depicts Exsedol walking outside for the first time since the colony fleet launched, in order to investigate ancient Protoculture ruins. Later episodes have him leaving the Battle 7 for the science ship Einstein, where he sits among the crew instead of underneath the floor.

An unnamed Zentradi advisor who greatly resembled the Macross 7 Exsedol also appeared in episodes 12 and 13 of the Macross Frontier TV series. A human and Zentradi mall seen in episode 5 of Macross Frontier was also dubbed Folmo.

Character Notes
The original in-story explanation for the character’s new appearance was that Exsedol had been physically modified between series, presumably from his original design. This was found in the liner notes for the Macross 7 DVDs: “Although he was Micloned at one time, he purportedly returned to his former Zentradi size and realtered his body makeup for fear of losing his cerebral capacity and memories”. Many flashbacks to the original series in later Macross productions featured the new design for Exsedol.

Kawamori described the relation between the different depictions of Space War I: "The real Macross is out there, somewhere. If I tell the story in the length of a TV series, it looks one way, and if I tell it as a movie-length story, it's organized another way." According to him, the changes in the appearance of Exsedol Folmo in the different Macross series is due to them being all equally fictional and open to changes in the style and design of their plot and characters.