Killer Robot

Macross II is a different timeline. As I understand, in that timeline Earth didn't capture a factory satellite until decades later, and it was apparently a different model/size as well. I don't know more than that, though.

The images would seem to bear that out, but it's still confusing: if the sizes are so similar and the extra length is in the flight deck, I wonder why Battle Frontier is over twice the mass of Battle 7.

No matter how big the factory satellites themselves are, just for the Zentradi fleets we're talking about billions of ships and trillions of Zentradi made over hundreds of thousands of years: and that few if there were only a few fleets of the size that attacked Earth, given constant attrition due to war and lack of maintenance. The numbers are staggering in any case. Fortunately, the amount of useful mass in the galaxy is also staggering, so it works out okay.

Again, I can see why people fell into that trap of thinking, but the results just don't seem to support it. If it was just the argument that the crowd who would stay up past midnight to watch Macross Frontier would prefer watching episode 8's high school antics and panty chasing to episode 7's mecha porn, I could believe it to be a disturbing pulse of the state of Japanese fandom. But on the other hand, if Star Date was so popular as has been noted, why did the slow paced bridge episode 6 have a higher rating than either the fun-loving episode 5 or the big production episode 7? Viewers being influenced by what they hear after an episode airs when their friends and fan postings spout about how awesome it was(or how lame), rather than checking TV listings, Newtype, or advertisements for a dry synopsis or a paid commercial for how incredible it's going to be - that just gives a better explanation of the numbers. I do concede, however, that for a late night series like Frontier, ratings don't mean so much since only the hardcore fans and bored night owls will see it. It all comes down to the DVD and other merchandise sales to show how successful it is.

Star Trek is another one of the prime examples of series where the onscreen events don't really have much or anything to do with published stats, and where consistency is limited in any case. The stats would indicate that combat is always at much greater distances, much higher speeds, and generally happening much differently than what's ever seen onscreen. Enormous numbers are thrown around corresponding to pretty small onscreen effects. Lots of "godlike" aliens are encountered against which the full power of a large starship is useless. Hand weapons which can be set to neatly vaporize most things are totally useless against others for little apparent reason, or act just like guns against other targets. It's usually consistent that "X in Star Trek will usually beat Y in Star Trek" but this is just as true in Macross, in Star Wars, or in anything else you might care to name: the tricky part is only in comparing that with something from a whole different source material.

How can a shield stop lasers, but not be opaque? Sensible or not, only stopping things above a certain speed or energy level is a staple property of sci-fi shielding, so I'm not going to argue with that part. Anyway, I could go on for quite a while myself about stupid stuff in Star Wars, especially the run of crazy EU stuff and "bigger and better" competitions between writers and RPG sourcebooks. On the other hand, given the other series being discussed has planes that turn into robots, people who are changed to be ten meters tall, giant space monsters that are impervious to all physical weapons but can be hurt by music, and cannons that draw on the power of Earth's gravity to destroy two million giant spaceships in a shot - maybe it's best not to start throwing stones. Or more practically, if some sort of baseline reliability isn't accepted for the technological capability of their ships and weaponry, the two series can't be reasonably compared and we might as well let it be now.

You know, some have an excuse. There seem to be a lot based on ongoing manga who have to fake it for some sense of resolution. On the other hand, something that starts as anime has no excuse.

I'm normally prone to take Star Wars numbers with a grain of salt since so many of them originally trace back to third party RPG sourcebooks rather than anything to do with the films, but I believe it goes right back to the original movie novelization that the Imperial Star Destroyer was armed such that one vessel could wipe a lightly defended planet to bare rock in fairly short order. This meant that just one would be sent to pacify a planet that showed risk of rebellion. A fleet of them would only be needed for a well-shielded planet or one that could mount a comparable fleet(recall how the Rebel fleet couldn't hope to break through without killing the shields in RotJ.) Further, it had heavy shielding and armoring, and could presumably stand up against vessels of its own class in extended fights. Going into the more detailed materials, there were some 25,000 just of the Imperial class made, not to mention those larger or smaller. Certainly fewer than the millions or more in a Zentradi fleet, though not exactly a small number either. By contrast, the Zentradi surely didn't need all 4+ million ships to swiftly destroy the Earth's surface, but I don't get the impression that even their Quiltra-Quelamitz gunboats specifically designed for planetary bombardment are meant to do so in small numbers. As a corollary, it seems unlikely that a Star Wars capital ship is likely to find any weapons on a Macross universe ship to be especially shocking or exotic. Further, they're, while not exactly fragile, still unshielded and thus not hard to destroy with similar weaponry. Do remember that a Valkyrie with reaction missiles can be effective against Zentradi capital ships. The thing to remember is that Zentradi fleets were huge, but they were automatically produced, fundamentally disposable weapons: similar in philosophy to the TIE fighters in Star Wars rather than the capital ships, though obviously far different in ultimate scale. Further, especially by the time of Macross they were being turned out by aging, decrepit factories and many of their more powerful weapons(reaction missiles, Glaugs, who knows what else) have become rare or simply unavailable. Further, they were bound to a rigid tactical manual, far beyond even what a heavily regulated human military would be: recall that Exedol's strategy against the Bodol Main fleet hinged on the idea that task forces would be forced to retreat the entire battle at the destruction of an individual flagship, because most vessels simply lacked any command ability at all. Now, a fleet of human-led Zentradi, or those in the old days under Protoculture command, that might be different. Since really, the Star Wars universe is in its way very much a Protoculture-era situation of an active, old, galactic civilization with the infrastructure and actively maintained and developed technological base that represents. Addendum: To the inevitable question of "if Star Destroyers can level planets, why make a Death Star?": the Death Star was a symbol of terror not for that capability but for its ability to literally blast the planet into an asteroid belt in a single shot while (they thought) fending off any conceivable fleet that could be sent against it, and presumably could easily smash through planet-scale shields.

I recall seeing a lot of this in the episode discussion threads, and as some people pointed out then, there's a lag to think of: the week after a really flashy episode, or the week after a cheaply animated or slow-paced one, seemed to be where the swings occured. My guess is that 8 got such high episodes because people saw rebroadcasts/torrents/etc of 7, or else just heard buzz from friends or online, and made sure to watch the rest. Vice-versa, after a slow episode people would be less likely to watch next week. Ratings swing a bit differently now than in the old days, so while I can't totally rule out the high-rated panty chase episode being more popular in Japan than the lower-rated flashy space battle+concert episode before it, I don't think that's actually the case.

Hey, maybe we should do the crazy thing and derail the thread into several pages of arguing whether Basara should have chosen Mylene or Gamlin.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is the top end that I know of, given that it was a progression of giant mecha taken pointedly to ridiculous extremes. The final mecha were literally outsizing galaxies. Attached gif: well, you really need to watch it to the end.

Not really. If the reaction engines engines use protium(ordinary hydrogen) or deuterium(heavy hydrogen) there would be a lot of gamma radiation released during the actual reaction, but since the engine would have to be shielded enough to turn that gamma into heat what comes out the back is just going to be superheated air and/or propellant. If it used tritium(radioactive hydrogen) there would be some more neutron radiation that can make other things radioactive, but there's no indication this is the case in Overtech reactors. A real world thermonuclear weapon produces a lot of radioactive materials, but that's because its fusion stage is sparked by, and used to contain and prolong, the fission bomb at its core - fission does create lots of radioactive remnants. I'm less sure, but I think that's also how reaction warheads have been explained as differing from real-world nukes: they're purely or almost purely fusion, so don't make all the fallout. And welcome to MW, though I'm not exactly an old hand here myself.

Agreed on these points: both with how Klan and Michael treated Sheryl and with how the later parts of the series were what gave me a lot more respect for Ranka. Now, there's meaning past "Mary Sue" than "character I think got too much screen time": a big part is whether it's more than the audience is ready to accept, and checklist methods have their flaws. All the same, the base take on Ranka had "author's pet" all over her in classic modes: The personality: As was put before: sweet and cute and innocent, with even her flaws being limited to the childishly adorable. If SK didn't see her as the perfect one, he sure wrote her as such. The hair: unusual eye and hair colors don't carry as far in anime as other genres, especially when it's a common Zentradi trait. Ranka went a step further and had animated hair thanks to her alien heiritage. Let's forget that it's a trait that had never been seen among the many other Zentradi seen in the franchise. Even Sheryl's digital coloration was less exotic by comparison. The singing: she's a great singer, that's fine given that her story arc is about being discovered as a city. What I mean is past that, how her singing had sudden, jarring effects on people. Just one little song out of the blue, pointedly where another singer was being ignored, got the whole crowd watching and loving her. Elmo immediately saw the star he wanted and staked his career on her. The director(SK incarnate) heard her song and immediately wanted it for his movie. Her career took off like a rocket even with forces actively conspiring against her. Zentradi warriors, ones quite used to human culture, seemingly forgot the latter fact when they sank to their knees in tears at a surprise concert. Basara would run crying, wondering why he had to work so hard to make people listen to his song. Actual magic powers: Okay, not literally magic, but as was pointed out, she was the girl who had the special resonance with the weird aliens, above and beyond just being a talent. Poor Minmay: all she did was serve as a visible face for the whole idea of human culture, not stop the war with her unique powers. Animal affinity: Explained by the previous, but still when the cute little alien critter immediately gravitates to and befriends the cute little heroine, that's one of those things. Center of attention: Not just the singing, though that's part. She's the focus of her social group, she's respected by those around her even when there's no particular reason. Even Sheryl swiftly took her for something special and made her a quick exception to the diva attitude. Anyway, the thing is that Ranka had the makings of a prime Mary Sue story. She almost realized them too: all she had to do was continue her unimpeded rise to the top replacing the outmoded pop antics of Sheryl Nome(hey, remember back when she was popular?), singlehandedly stop the war with her special alien powers, all while not just getting the guy but getting her choice between the two guys. This didn't happen: instead we got a much stronger and more believable story of a girl who made it far on talent and ambition, had some stumbles, and along with her friends saved the day before coming through as a much more mature person. Forgetting anything about Sheryl's story arc, if Ohnogi deviated Ranka from the simple path she'd been on, he did a great thing for her character and likeability. Though more central to the series than to a character, I'm still mostly missing what this "masterpiece that never was" would have had for a final act. Frontier had flaws and loose ends, and things I wish had been developed more - still, the great majority of its last several episodes pushed hard on the character interactions and central themes in the series. If SDFM was about the power of culture and rejection not of war but of soulless warlike existence, and if Macross 7 was about the spirit of the individual making a difference, Macross Frontier was about how people's relationships bring them together into something greater and stronger than they are alone. Given that Sheryl was the one of the main three that most had to find and accept that sort of strength, I think a take of the series where she had been disposed of or marginalized would have been as lessened as a version of SDFM where the writers had stuck to keeping Minmay as nothing more than that girl who delivers Chinese food to the bridge crew now and then.

I agree totally the love triangle in Macross Plus wasn't the most memorable, though partly I think that a love triangle is harder to do in a short work like that, while mecha porn is more instant gratification. I'm not sure what SK would have done with this story otherwise, especially if Ohnogi came in so late: it would have missed so much of the personal ups and downs which made the second half of the series interesting not just to watch but to go back to and dissect. In particular, I'm not sure where Alto would have been developed further, and especially Brera: more could have been done with his struggle between his lost memories and Grace's control, but I don't see that as making more interesting three-way character interaction regarding the love triangle. I will give that Macross Plus had a love triangle where all three members related to each other, and Guld was an estranged childhood pal, not just some other pilot after the same girl: this take sounds like Brera simply would have been a more persistent and complete foil for Alto, more of a cyborg Kaifun who also had a superadvanced Valkyrie. We might have gotten a little more mecha battles out of it if there was more pilot rivalry, but I think budget was the primary limit to what we saw so I don't expect there would have been much extra. I admit I'm also a little confused by the argument that if she wasn't a Mary Sue, Sheryl would have just yawned and moved on when she found out not only that the only person she'd known for years had both betrayed her career and knowingly left her with a terminal disease rather than having her cured ten years ago. On the contrary, her reactions were more complex and understandable than I had expected.

I don't know about Gundam, it just seems to be the natural joke people make about a fatal disease carried by bodily fluids in a sci-fi series. If you look at how it works, it's a lot more "space rabies" though. And really, I find it more amusing imagining Sheryl biting people.

I have to grant that since that whole mass murder and galactic conquest thing lately, the standards for behavior in Macross managers have reached a new low. Kaifun can only benefit from this.

We probably should up our estimate of what VF-19/22 pilots usually pull to more like 10-12g at the minimum since that's what the new generation of real world g-suits seem to be capable of, and I don't imagine the 2040s are inferior to that, alternate timeline or not. Not that it's a vast difference: the ISC still more than doubles what the pilot can withstand. Also, even assuming proportional/limited reduction rather than elimination, if at the 27.5g the airframe can sustain the ISC is capable of reducing perceived acceleration to a level somewhat lower level than the ace-straining VF-19 levels, so much the better: pilots suffer visually and cognitively before they actually risk blacking out. If for example the pilot is feeling some 25% of what the plane is, that 7g max is still a pretty wide range for tactile feedback, while remaining a lot gentler than the 2040 models. If it's less a constant percentage and more of a curve, then the same applies a bit differently: either way, a pilot trained on conventional variable fighters will need some retraining for ISC models, but it's less of a leap than going from conventional aircraft to VFs, or likely even from a VF-1 to a VF-19.

That's the main thing I'm getting at. "The ISC reduces(but does not entirely eliminate) the perceived acceleration of the pilot" is the simpler explanation. "The ISC totally eliminates the perceived acceleration of the pilot and any apparent inertial effects in the cockpit are technically animation errors" is the more complicated one. If a simple interpretation can fit both the tech writeups (the Chronicle translation here says "reduces"), and the animation (pilots not appearing weightless during combat maneuvers), I don't see a reason to hunt for alternatives that don't also satisfy both conditions.

Given when the ship crashed on Earth they rebuilt it right where it landed, I don't see too great a problem. I just imagine it covered in Zentradi-sized scaffolding now.

Also, the only disadvantage to remaining in humanoid configuration is apparently speed and maneuverability, which on the ground aren't major concerns. Presumably after the refit they replaced the missing power conduits so that it could fire the main cannon in normal form again, but there was still no reason to transform back given it had landed in that form.

The central motif of the variable fighter is "a fighter plane that is also a big soldier" and I don't see that much changing any time soon. With that in mind, and the particular modern rather than historical military spin, I see battroids with gunpod-rifles, knives, and the occasional bayonet(rifle+knife) being the norm for the foreseeable future of the franchise rather than any departure into ancient weapon flavors. Unless it's a deliberately goofy series, then all bets are off.

It's possible that the ISC totally insulates the pilot from acceleration within its limits, or that it simply lessens perceived acceleration such that, say, a VF-25 pilot pulling 27g only feels under 9g or what have you. Either way isn't deeply important: the main idea is that this suggests that in a ISC-equipped VF the pilot is no longer the weaker link. This means that during intensive maneuvers cumulative airframe stress becomes something that needs to be tracked by the fighter's systems, in much the same way that a modern fighter has to track fuel - right up to and including how the higher you throttle up the faster that gauge is going to go down. The same thing is true with the VF-27 simply using cyborg pilots. Either way, the new generation of VFs apparently takes the effective endurance of the pilot far beyond the prior limits of g-suits and cockpit restraints, and that causes a significant change in how variable fighters need to be designed, piloted, and deployed. It's certainly the biggest single change to variable fighter tactics since the introduction of the Project Super Nova technologies with the VF-19, and possibly even since the introduction of thermonuclear engines with the VF-1. Not, mind, that it's going to be a game changer as storytelling and presentation goes: Macross is too heavily built on the romance of the fighter pilot of the jet era for that. And hey, I still think the S is the luxury package. Upgraded upholstery and radio, man. More seriously, I do appreciate that in Frontier the brightly colored models with special gear piloted by major characters aren't higher class hero mechs, but rather were support-focused models for the two junior pilots on the team (before Alto came in to replace Gilliam, at least.)

That's about it: how long the airframe can survive a given stress will be a curve from what will break it in a few seconds, down to what it can withstand almost indefinitely. Further, every stress it takes, acceleration or damage or what have you, will push that limit down across the board. Again, since these are manufacturer ratings being described there's a level of accounting for stress over time and margin of error that we really can't estimate from the data given. I imagine in practice the VF's cockpit display would give a dynamic readout of calculated airframe stress, likely in a percentage/time left format estimated by current stresses, as opposed to just a simple "120 second countdown at speed" thing. I think we can agree though, that the "27.5G for 120 seconds" statistic on the VF-25 represents a somewhat different property than the limits listed for past VFs.

You're misreading Nied's post. It said that the vernier thrusters are on all models of the VF-19, and that while the F and S models lack the forward canards they also have broader wings and leading edge extensions which can only be there to increase lift and maneuverability in atmosphere. If that's the case, there's no obvious reason any model would have superior space performance, and while it's still possible the canard model has an edge in atmosphere it's not because the broad-winged model doesn't have its own unique maneuverability-enhancing control surfaces. It doesn't look like a simple environmental give-and-take optimization.

That's correct, they're nearby but not the same location: Hikaru and Misa came out of the Grand Cannon and landed not far away, then saw the Macross come down to land ahead in the distance in what appeared to be a crater.