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Seto Kaiba

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    http://www.Macross2.net/m3/m3.html
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    MacrossMike

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    Male
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    Lagrange Terrace (a stable community)
  • Interests
    Anime (duh), Antique Firearms, Cryptography, Mechanical Design

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Starting another new one from this season, The Food Diary of Miss Maid. The plot summary is pretty threadbare. A slice of life series about an ethnically Japanese British maid who took a trip to Japan for a personal vacation (but apparently didn't pack any clothes besides her maid outfit) and finds she is now stuck living there for at least a year because her master's mansion in England collapsed during an ill-advised renovation project. As the title suggests, it seems to go no further than being food porn for traditional Japanese food. The first episode features taiyaki, takoyaki, odango, convenience store onigiri, and baumkuchen.. Ironically, this kind of leaves the episode feeling bland and directionless... since it doesn't seem to have really have anything to do except have the maid narrate the obvious in a cutesy voice. (You'd almost suspect this was made to promote tourism given its cultural evangelism... but Japan is getting pretty anti-tourist right now.)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Not just the NUNS... Macross as a whole has never used the new rank names created for the postwar Japan Self-Defense Forces. Most Japanese fiction doesn't use the Japan Self-Defense Forces rank names unless it's explicitly depicting the Japan Self-Defense Forces (e.g. GATE.) You could say using those older rank terms is a sort of linguistic shorthand to establish that these fictional and/or foreign militaries being depicted are not the kind of limited, purely defensive force Japan is permitted to maintain under Article 9 of its post-war constitution. Of course, this older and more sinocentric approach to rank terminology lacks a built-in way to distinguish between branches of service based on title alone and so translators are forced to either rely on guidance from the creators, in-story text, or other context clues to know whether to translate the terms into other languages as Army or Navy ranks. Mobile Suit Gundam's creators, for instance, opted to have the ranks of the EFSF translated as Navy-style ranks. Macross's creators made their intended translation clear by providing the English translations of Space Forces ranks into Army-style ranks in the production materials, in the onscreen text, etc. in a generally consistent manner throughout the franchise's official media.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    One example that shows up four times in what you've posted there is "New United Nations". That's not correct to the text of the novel or the official terminology of the setting. I know that's what's in the Disney+ subtitles, but they're demonstrably incorrect in this and several other areas. "New United Nations Forces" would be 新国際連合軍 (Shin kokusai rengou-gun). That's not what's in the book or in the animation. What's in the text of the book and in the animation is 新統合軍 (Shin tougou-gun), the official/correct translations of which are "New Unification Forces" or "New Unity Forces". The name of the government in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross is 地球統合政府 (Chikyuu tougou seifu) and its military is the 地球統合軍 (Chikyuu tougou-gun). The Earth Unification Government and Earth Unification Forces. Animeigo used "Unity" instead of "Unification", but both are equally acceptable correct translations. This distinction matters because the modern United Nations (国際連合 Kokusai rengou) is a separate entity from the Earth Unification Government in the official Macross setting. It drafted the framework for the Earth Unification Government in 1999-2000 and briefly served as a transitional world government before the Earth Unification Government was ready to officially assume power at the start of 2001. It effectively ceased to exist when the Earth Unification Government started. There hasn't been a United Nations for 57 years at this point. The government that replaced the Earth Unification Government (地球統合政府 Chikyuu tougou seifu) after the First Space War is the New Unification Government (新統合政府 Shin tougou seifu). Its armed forces are the aforementioned New Unification Forces (新統合軍 Shin tougou-gun). Another one that's based on a common misconception is translating 小隊 as "Squadron". That's actually officially translated as "Platoon" and has been used as such in a bunch of official Japanese merch. It's a much smaller formation... a subunit of a squadron made up of 3-4 planes. Probably best not to confuse those two. It looks like the ranks are also translated incorrectly. Official Macross translations, onscreen in-series text, and katakana transliterations throughout the franchise use Army/Air Force ranks for Space Forces characters. The Japanese terminology is interchangeable between Army and Navy, but they've made a point to consistently translate it using the Army ranks for in-series English text, official media, and goods for decades. (This is a bit of truth in television as real world space forces are typically under the Air Force, which Stargate inexplicably got correct but almost nobody else did! Yes, the Spacy is not a Space Navy, it's a Space Army or Space Force etymologically.) Chelsea's correct rank is given as 中尉 (Chuui), she's a First Lieutenant. Just "Lieutenant" is one paygrade higher and in the Navy rank system, equivalent to the rank of Captain (大尉 Taii) in the Army/Air Force style system Macross uses. There's also a moment where the phrase "gun encampment" is used... the correct term would be "gun emplacement".
  4. Seto Kaiba
    For a "cheap and cheerful" translation, this came out better than I'd expected. It has some rough spots, a fair amount of evident trouble with terminology and few romanizations, but the flow of the prose was preserved pretty well and that's what matters most. Well... yes and no? It's relative? Kind of a double-edged sword if you'll forgive the pun? In practical terms, the VF-19EF Caliburn has higher performance than the New UN Forces VF-171 Nightmare Plus that will be the main fighter of the New UN Forces into the next decade but it's actually less capable/powerful than a "normal" VF-19. Macross the Ride describes it using an old Cold War-era term: it calls it a "Monkey model". That term has a very specific meaning. Namely, an export variant of a piece of military hardware that has significantly reduced capabilities compared to the standard version. Earth restricted its arms exports after the events of Macross Plus and so the Frontier fleet had to both fill in some gaps in its specs with their own tech and apply limiters to some of its hardware to reduce its performance enough for legal production. Even then it's still kind of stuck as a small batch Special Forces VF because it's very expensive and its performance is still more than the average pilot can handle.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Starting the first of this season's new series... Always a Catch! It seems we're once again generously oversupplied with otome anime. The now-standard opening of "The prince broke off his engagement to the protagonist and now she has to find a new fiance" thing is getting kind of weird. You have to wonder if any of the authors who use this almost form letter opening ever stop to consider that having the prince of a kingdom arbitrarily dump a girl who is usually the daughter and heir of a Duke powerful enough to arrange for his daughter to marry into the royal family ought to have WAY more consequences than just "the girl is upset". Like, this ought to be a massive political faux pas that risks turning a very powerful ally of the king into an enemy if he has any kind of pride at all. Always a Catch! has all the usual staples, though the twist this time around is the protagonist is actually the cousin and best friend of the duke's daughter who gets dumped by the prince. She's an unladylike muscleheaded tomboy who's staying with her cousin to hunt for a fiance of her own because her parents finally had a boy after years of trying and she therefore isn't the family heir anymore. (That her family's coat of arms, and her hairpin, appear to be brass knuckles kind of says all that needs to be said about her.)
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Compared to today, Earth is rather sparsely populated in Macross after the First Space War. We see a number of emerging cities and towns in the aftermath arc of the original series, but thereafter we don't really get to see much of the planet aside from Macross City in Alaska. Presumably any housing that they put up for housing clones destined for emigrant fleets was either demolished or subsequently repurposed as regular housing for Earth's ever growing population. It's far from the only place to live in the solar system, though. There are space colonies at the LaGrange points, surface bases and cities on the moon and Mars, "satellite cities" orbiting Venus and several outer solar system gas giants, resource stations on various other moons etc.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    It's far from expensive. About $37 from CD Japan.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Or Admiral Kuznetsov. By all evidence that thing is even more cursed than the Kamchatka. Some might say the Admiral Kuznetsov is unsinkable... because a seemingly unending string of accidents, mechanical and electrical failures, and other calamities make it unlikely she'll ever leave drydock again.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    No, it's nowhere near that bad. Most sources agree that the number of Human survivors of the First Space War numbered approximately 1 million.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Yep. In fact, the reason given for why the cloning program was discontinued in 2030 was a marked rise in hereditary diseases in children. (Gene therapy exists in Macross, so presumably they were able to fix at least some of that.)
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Imagine my surprise to see the G-Self charted at all. I love G-Reco, but I swear it's a borderline "Hear me out..." among Gundam fans. I'm surprised to see the pig-ugly GQuuuuuuX Gundam charted at all. Blech. The usual suspects at the top tho. Nu, Zeta, Wing (ver. Ka), Strike Freedom, etc.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Zentradi and Meltrandi battle suits aren't powered armor in the sense that you're probably thinking. They're armor-shaped, but in principle they're closer to being humanoid battle pods and the pilot's body is located almost entirely (or in some cases entirely) inside the mecha's torso. The only part of the pilot's body that might be at risk that way would be their lower legs, which on some models protrude into the mecha's own upper legs. Presumably there are cases where the cockpit hatch has to be pried open if it's damaged, though since the Zentradi don't really have a concept of "repairing" this would probably be done without regard for trying to reuse the suit later. (Not to mention Zentradi and Meltrandi mobile weapons are generally lightly armored enough that anything that might make escape of the craft impossible would probably have killed the pilot anyway.)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. Humanity used the cloning technology they acquired from the Zentradi to carry out a large-scale Human cloning program designed to bolster the overall Human population, artificially boost the availability of personnel with essential skills and training, and support the provisioning of the early emigrant fleets with military crews and emigrants. A lot of the Humans living across the galaxy in the late 2050s and 2060s are the descendants of the clones produced between 2010 and 2030 before the program was halted. It's not clear if it was commonplace, but several characters who started families in that post-war period ended up having large numbers of children. Max and Milia's seven daughters are the most talked-about example, though Shammy Milliome and her husband supposedly had eleven children after she retired from the military. The population ratios aren't talked about, but Humans are still treated like the default/main species in the New UN Government into the 2060s. Part-Zentradi are common enough that nobody seems to find them at all remarkable and as the number of other Protoculture-created species joining the New UN Government grows we can assume that there'll be more interspecies marriages in the future. (It's already been going on long enough for there to be at least one named character with three-species ancestry: Michael Blanc from Macross Frontier.)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Definitely my favorite... it's one of the rare cases where my tendency to overanalyze things is actually useful. 😅 I've been doing a bit more poking at the VF-25, VF-31, and VF-31AX Master File books for more details on stealth technology lately. There's some bizarre concepts in there. I think the weirdest being the idea that the VF-17's passive stealth coating is made up of microvilli-like structures similar to an intestinal lining to maximize its surface area to allow it to intercept and absorb radar waves from all angles.
  15. Seto Kaiba
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